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The semester is underway!

I have shared select syllabi every semester since I started this blog. A lot of people contact me asking me for my syllabi and for class assignments. And thus I am happy to continue the trend. You can find all past syllabi from the menu on the left! I’m so glad that folks enjoy these and find them useful!

This semester, two classes I will discuss are my Writing Across Platforms and my applied Communication Research class. I’ve talked about assignments, activities, and perspectives on both in the past (see posts about them under the menu on the left. Blog Topics->Teaching Social Media->Classes).

I have not changed each class all that much since last teaching them. So I’ll spare reviewing each in depth. But here are a few changes or little things worth mentioning:

Writing Across Platforms

Facebook – In the last post I wrote about my decision to continue to teach Facebook in this class.

– Mobile – This is a packed class and it is hard to add without taking something else away. I’ve squeezed in a little time to focus on mobile and writing for mobile. I have an exercise planned where I will bring in our department iPads and have students explore the look and feel of their writing as read from mobile devices. As more and more people rely on mobile devices to read, it is important that we emphasize the medium, its affordances, and its limitations.

– Concise Writing – I am placing more emphasize on conciseness in writing. This is something we all struggle with. I know I do. While it has always been important, shorter attention spans, mobile and digital platforms, and the high-stakes competition for reader attention necessitate saying more with less. We’ll do exercises where students help one-another find the shortest, most powerful way to communicate. There’s also a fun website I am incorporating that can help with writing. I will give it its own post in the future.

– PitchEngine – I used PitchEngine the past two years for my social news release. I haven’t blogged about PitchEngine much. But I’ll be sure to do so this semester. I always try to bring in industry software when possible. And the awesome people at PitchEngine have been very helpful. I’m excited we’ll be using PitchEngine again this year. PitchEngine has undergone exciting changes since last year. And I’ll be adapting my social news release assignment accordingly. Note: Dr. Gallicano and Dr. Sweetser have a great guideline for teaching the social media release.

Communication Research

I made some minor tweaks and improvements to how I’ll present content, and streamlined a few assignments. In a tough class like this, I provide a lot of handouts – such as for how to structure a literature review, methods, results, and discussion section. I worked hard to simplify and clarify those.

I’ve been chatting with colleagues about changes and advancement in social data analysis. I’m hoping to incorporate them into this class in a future semester. To do so, I will need time to dedicate to exploring these options this semester. Thus, I’m presently sticking with my same 3-project model I wrote about last year. Hopefully I’ll have a brand new social media analysis assignment for Spring 2016.

This semester I promise to do something I failed to do last year – blog about our final project in the Comm Research class where students use iPads to collect survey data around campus. I love this project and hope you do too.

Below are the syllabi. A happy start to the semester to all! – Matt

Writing Across Platforms:

Communication Research