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Daniel Kies Department of English College of DuPage |
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| Composition 2 English 1102 |
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Dear
Welcome to English 1102, at the College of DuPage, taught via the internet. In fact, in this online section of English 1102, we will use the internet and the world wide web as our classroom and for our class materials. (See your syllabus for more information.)
How to Read the HyperTextBook
Since hypertext allows us to jump easily from page to page with "links," it is easy to get lost or diverted while reading an entire document in hypertext form. Therefore we will follow the following rule in this HyperTextBook: Bold faced links are the primary, required readings for that unit of the course or page in the book. Links with a regular font face are secondary readings of related materials that expand the topic.
Furthermore, each page has a set of "navigation links" to take you quickly to the important organization and communication features of the book. You will find links to the Contact Form, the Table of Contents, the Syllabus, the Course Calendar, eForum, and direct email to me on each page. Those will help you find your way through the book more easily.
Finally, I will use the What's New this Week? letters to provide you with reminders of each week's work.
This course requires access to
- a computer with internet access,
- a web browser,
- an email account, and
- a word processor.
! NOTE: Use the email link you will find in the header at the top of page above if you have email capabilities on your system. If you are reading this page on a system without email, you can use the which also has a link in the header of each page in the HyperTextBook. The computer labs on campus offer you free access to all of that technology, and the college has assigned you an email address as well. (There is more information in the email information link above.) My Contact Form is also the most reliable way to send mail to me.
As the second course in composition at the College, English 1102 emphasizes argumentation in the academic essay by studying the reciprocal nature of reading and writing. The course is a blend of workshop and tutorial, focusing on the researched, documented analytical and argumentative essay.
The writing labs I have written are the "workshop" portion of our course. In preparing them, I have tried to use the labs to help you learn more about the process of writing and the use of your computer as a writing tool. The tutorial elements in our course will take place online through the use of email and eForum — a bulletin board on my domain that will allow us to correspond with each other as a class. (You can read more about eForum here.)
Nonetheless, using the internet for teaching and learning is a new experience for me, though I have been teaching composition classes for about twenty years. I imagine too that for many of you this will be among your first classes — if not your very first class. So it seems to me that all of us in this class are explorers in a real sense, cybernauts, as some would say. Welcome, fellow cybernauts.
However, I for one see the internet as a natural environment for learning — especially for learning about writing. As you will soon see when you read more of the HyperTextBook and the writing assignments, I am interested in the whole idea of literacy, electronic literacy too, and how our ideas about literacy change the very nature of how we write. Consequently, if this course has a theme at all, that theme is "thinking clearly through the act of writing." You will see that theme I think in many of the reading assignments I will ask you to do. You will also see that theme in the writing assignments I have prepared for you.
Although it is commonplace today for computer gurus and futurists alike to write about the "digital revolution" and the enormous change that computers have already created (and are yet to create), I see the use of the internet for writing (and for the learning of writing) not as a revolutionary activity but more as an evolutionary process. To move from text to hypertext seems to me a natural next step on the road to literacy.
I look forward to making this journey with you.
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