Overview
Overview
The Senior Seminar offers Ball State English majors an opportunity to end their undergraduate careers with a time of reflection on their learning and a gathering of their best products into a "portfolio" in a computer-based multi-media format. This portfolio will serve a dual purpose:
The seminar also supplies a rigorous academic component, a kind of capstone experience that takes students into uncharted terrain and widens their vision of English studies. In tandem with the electronic portfolio project, our area of exploration is Textuality and New Media, with an emphasis on digital textuality. This phenomenon is transforming the way we relate to language in all its facets--the way we read, compose, communicate; the ways we understand our literacy skills; the ways we encounter poetry, fiction, and scholarly documents. Understanding New Media begins with consideration of textuality itself, including pre-textual orality, the origin and development of writing and texts, and the general history of literacy.
- It will provide the base for a part of their final assessment as English majors
- It will be a starting point for their next stage, be it teaching certification, employment, graduate school, or other pursuits.
One major focus of both our study and portfolio production is hypertext. Although it is not solely a product of digital textuality, hypertext is the term most often used to describe the kind of reading and writing made possible by computers and networks: text that is non-linear and often interactive, linked to other texts, and multimedia in potential. This is where we will concentrate our efforts at understanding what even now is coming to pass for all kinds of writing, but especially for imaginative literature and for serious non-fiction. Moreover, the portfolio projects will involve students' creation of "hyperdocuments" out of their existing work. Thus a major goal of the course is helping students understand the theory and practice of reading and writing digital hypertext: in short, "hyperliteracy."
The timing of this course on the cusp of the new century hints at the transitional point in history occupied now by students of literature and literacy. As students, you will need to develop multiple visions of reading and writing if you are to stay productive and involved in English studies (and just about everything else) on into the 21st century. You will look back to what you have done and learned, and consider how you have dealt with reading and writing; you will collect your portfolio artifacts and present them in electronic form; and you will experience reading and composing in hypertext environments and write about your experience and the enterprise as a whole.
- Become familiar with our computing environment and able to use common resources for text creation, presentation, and class processes such as on-line discussions
- Build electronic portfolio of your major works, including a "literacy autobiography" of the past four years.
- Study the "literacy of literature" through readings and discussions
- Learn about hypertext as an emerging literacy--what it is, what forms it takes, how it challenges traditions, etc.
- Read and critique a fictional hypertext
- Compose a hypertext document as a group research project
Texts
No texts need be purchased from bookstores. Readings indicated below will be distributed as handouts or accessed on-line; students will need to purchase a course packet from the instructor.
Fiction and non-fiction readings on literature and literacy Hypertext fiction WWW documents
Requirements
Attendance Willingness to learn and cooperate with peers Flexibility Projects (all must be satisfactorily completed):
- Senior Portfolio with Literacy Autobiography (30%)
- Literacy of Literature (Lit-Lit) Project (20%)
- Hypertext Critique Project(20%)
- Group hypertext project, with research (fiction or non-fiction) (15%)
- Investment/participation (15%)
- Final Period
There will not be a formal final examination for this class on Friday, Dec 15. However, there WILL be a demonstration open house during finals week where you will be required to present your individual and group work to visitors. This will be scheduled during the 12 noon to 2 pm "open period" on TUESDAY, DEC 12 in a lab classroom to be announced. More detailed information on this period will be forthcoming after Fall Break.
Investment
This category represents my evaluation of what you have put into the course process that isn't measured by grades on major projects. Here's what I do: all class meetings and preparatory assignments are opportunities for you to invest in your learning and the success of the group activities as well. I total up all such opportunities (attendance at class meetings, reading response messages, submission of first drafts when requested, etc.), find the number each student has fulfilled and make a decimal fraction. For example, if there are 40 opportunities and a student has fulfilled 35 of them, the student's investment grade would be 35/40, or .875. the 12-point scale equivalent would be 3.5; I would then use 3.5 as the investment grade for that person. This grade would be weighted as 15% of the total semester grade.