Syllabus

Course Description

Digital media and online spaces have both introduced and challenged how we write and interact. This course covers contemporary theories and genres of rhetorical practice including network literacies, remix and re-appropriation, theories of social media, sonic, visual, procedural and algorithmic rhetorics. This course emphasizes through theory and practice new rhetorical skills including design thinking, multimedia production, iterative composing, and social media engagement.

A class is a process, an independent organism with its own goals and dynamics. It is always something more than even the most imaginative lesson plan can predict. ~ Thomas P. Kasulis

And so we’ll start with a syllabus and schedule, but it will evolve throughout the term driven by our discussions and discoveries. In this class, we’ll approach writing in novel ways, examining and experimenting with rhetorical texts, including film, multimodal composition, games, and other interactive narratives.

What We'll Do and How We'll Do It

This course is primarily face-to-face, but we'll also be sharing our work together asynchronously online and out on the open Web. Not all of us are encountering this moment in the same ways, so each of us will have to make decisions about how we can engage. I want to be clear about several things:

  • Much of the work of the course will be shared online.
  • Each week, we'll have scheduled face-to-face sessions.
  • While our face-to-face sessions will be key to the collaborative work we'll be doing, I trust you to make decisions about what feels safe and how you can best approach the work for the course.
  • I encourage you to connect with me and your classmates in whatever ways make most sense for you. Ultimately, this is a community, and there are lots of different ways we can each contribute.
  • This course will live on the Web in three places: this site, our Discord server, and wherever you choose to put your work for the course. Our face-to-face sessions will inform our other work.
  • I look forward to getting to know you as a student, a writer, and a person.

Office Hours

I will be available for virtual or in-person office hours as necessary. Just reach out to schedule a video meeting, or feel free to engage via DM in Discord, which is the fastest way to get feedback or questions answered.

Disability Accommodations

I've worked to make this course adaptive and flexible, so that you can find your own way into the work, whatever your context. DU's Disability Services Program guides, counsels, and assists students with disabilities. If you have already met with them, feel free to chat with me about any changes we can make to help your learning. I will certainly offer accommodations. I'd rather we work together to make sure the course meets your needs. You do not need to divulge any personal information in order to have these conversations or to receive accommodations. I trust you. Learning is something we do together. And, of course, I will hold information you do share with me in confidence unless you give me permission to do otherwise. If you do not require accommodations due to a disability, understand that some of your fellow students might, and it is important to me that you do not make assumptions about where, when, or how they learn.

Basic Needs Security

What's most important to me is that you feel able to show up fully to our work together. I'm human first. Students are humans first. If you face challenges securing your food or housing and believe this may affect your learning in this course, visit DU's basic needs resource site for support. Please also let me know personally if you are comfortable doing so, because there may be ways I can help. 

You can seek confidential mental health services in the Health & Counseling Center (HCC) and My Student Support System (My SSP). Another helpful campus office is Student Outreach & Support (SOS), where staff can connect you to other campus resources.

I'm decidedly putting these accessibility and basic needs statements at the top of this syllabus, rather than buried with the fine print at the bottom. At this moment, at any moment, our basic humanity is something we need to be leading with.

Course Objectives

Nothing in this syllabus will be set in stone or taken for granted. The outline and objectives here are a beginning, something we’ll treat roughly as the course proceeds. This is not a map, but rather a direction we’ll point ourselves with the goal of vigorously rewriting the syllabus as we go, discovering what we’ll learn together as we learn it, questioning what we’ll do even as we begin to do it.

In this course we will:

  • Work to understand the history, present, and future of the web.
  • Think with the web, write for the web, and build upon the web.
  • Consider our own digital identities and how our digital selves intersect with, conflict with, or are synonymous with our embodied selves.
  • Discover the ways different individuals (with varied bodies, contexts, cultures) experience the digital in decidedly different ways.
  • Engage a broad network that stretches well beyond the bounds of University of Denver.
  • Have epiphanies.

The Work of the Course

This course will be as much about breaking stuff as it is about building stuff, focusing on critical thinking and process more than finished product.

Required Films and Texts

There is not a traditional textbook for this course. We will do some reading and watch some films, but the course will center around what we make and our discussions about what we uncover.

You will need to rent a handful of films throughout the term. There may be a small rental charge for these. Some are also available on streaming services like Netflix or Amazon Prime. You should plan to spend about $30 - $40 for the term. If that presents a challenge, for whatever reason, let me know.

The rest of our readings will be available openly online.

Weekly Activities

Each week, the course schedule will guide you through the various activities of the week. Watch our schedule and Discord for updates as we proceed.

Participation

This is a collaborative course, focusing on discussion and work in groups. The class will be a cooperative learning experience, a true intellectual community. And so, you and your work are, in a very real sense, the primary texts for this course. In order for us to work together as a community, we all have to come prepared to participate. If you can’t finish work for any reason, chat with me (and your collaborators) in advance.

Collaboration

You may collaborate with your peers on any of our projects. I've created a channel in Discord called #looking-for-group, which you can use to find collaborators. If you have questions about the various ways collaboration can work, chat with me at any point.

Self-reflection Letters

You'll do lots of writing for this course, some of it short, some long, some rough, some polished, some for an audience, and some of it just for yourself. There will be lots of room for you to decide how much time and energy you want to invest in each of the activities or assignments we'll do. The most important work you'll do is to reflect on your own work and creative process.

Public Work

Much of your work for this course will live publicly on the Web within open platforms. If you would like to remain anonymous, I encourage you to use a pseudonym. Think carefully about these choices. We will discuss issues related to privacy and the open Web extensively during this class.

Grades and Assessment

"Extrinsic motivation, which includes a desire to get better grades, is not only different from, but often undermines, intrinsic motivation, a desire to learn for its own sake." ~ Alfie Kohn, "The Case Against Grades"

Everyone who participates in our course community, finishes the major assignments for the course, and completes their self-reflections will get an "A." Instead of your grade, here's what I want you to focus on:

  • Actively engage in the work of the course.
  • Determine what participation in our community looks like for you – online, in-person, synchronously, asynchronously, on Discord, in our physical classroom, wherever you can best contribute and learn. Listening and reflecting can be just as important as speaking and questioning. Writing is not an independent exercise, so I encourage you to focus a good amount of your energy on helping your peers, reading their work, championing their accomplishments, and offering feedback that pushes them in their own writing process.
  • Reflect on your own work. This course is about process, not product, and so writing about our own creative work is the most important thing we'll do.

I will not be grading individual assignments, but rather asking questions and making comments that engage your work rather than simply evaluate it. The intention is to help you focus on working in a more organic way, as opposed to working as you think you’re expected to. If this process causes more anxiety than it alleviates, see me at any point to confer about your work in the course to date.

You should consider this course a “busy-work-free zone.” If an assignment does not feel productive, we can find ways to modify, remix, or repurpose the instructions.

Plagiarism

Authorship is a hotly contested topic in the academy. At what point do we own the words we say and write or the images we create? In literature and digital media, creative influence, collaboration, and borrowing are usually acceptable (even encouraged). So, what sort of statement or warning about plagiarism would be appropriate in this class? Let me go out on a limb and say: in this class, I encourage you to borrow ideas (from me, from the authors we read, from the films we watch, from your classmates). But, even more, I encourage you to truly make them your own — by playing with, manipulating, applying, and otherwise turning them on their head. In the end, it’s just downright boring to rest on the laurels of others. It’s altogether more daring (and, frankly, more fun) to invent something new yourself — a new idea, a new way of thinking, a new claim, a new image. This doesn’t give you license to copy something in its entirety and slap your name on it. That’s just stealing. Instead, think very consciously about how you’re influenced by your sources — by the way knowledge and creativity depend on a sort of inheritance. And think also about the real responsibility you have to those sources.

Turnitin

It is my commitment to you that I will not submit any of your work to Turnitin. Plagiarism-detection software like Turnitin monetizes student intellectual property and contributes to a culture of suspicion in education. I trust you. I trust that your work is your own. If you have questions about how to properly cite sources, let me know. If you want to know more about Turnitin and how you can protect your own intellectual property, here is an essay with info.

Inclusive Community

While some of the work for this course will be done independently or with a small group, think of all your peers as an audience for your work, as well as a source for feedback and encouragement. Draw on their expertise. This class will be as much (or more) about you teaching yourselves and each other as it is about me teaching you. Because of this, it's incredibly important to me that we create an inclusive community that is respectful of our differences and offers space for the boundary-setting necessary for positive relationships to form. Our diversity is reflected by differences in race, gender, sexuality, ability, class, religion, nationality, and other cultural identities and material circumstances.

Discrimination, Harassment & Gender-Based Violence (TITLE IX)

Discrimination, harassment, and gender-based violence can happen to anyone regardless of race, class, age, appearance, gender identity, or sexual orientation. The University of Denver is committed to providing an environment free of discrimination on the basis of sex (gender) and other protected classes, such as race, color, national origin, age, and disability. The Office of Equal Opportunity & Title IX (EOIX) is responsible for responding to and investigating reports and complaints of discrimination, harassment, and gender-based violence. In addition, all non-confidential University employees are considered “responsible employees” and required to report such incidents to EOIX. For more information, please visit the Office of Equal Opportunity & Title IX website.

DU Writing Center

The Writing Center provides writing support for undergraduate and graduate students at all levels, on all kinds of projects, and at any stage of the process: from generating ideas to learning new editing strategies. Consultants take a collaborative approach, working with you to help you develop your writing in light of your specific goals and assignments. To make an appointment for a free, 45-minute consultation, call 303-871-7456 or go to MyWeb > Student > Writing Center. Visit the Website (www.du.edu/writing/writingcenter/ ) for hours and additional information.

Teaching Philosophy

Critical thinking is like eating, something lively and voracious, something that drips and reels. It isn’t (and can’t be) virtual. And yet, somewhat paradoxically, we must increasingly find ways for this work to happen online. We must bring our subjects to life for both ourselves and our digital counterparts. Learning must fire every neuron — must touch us at the highest levels of consciousness and at the cellular level. No matter where it happens, this is what learning must do. It must evolve — and revolt.

Schedule

Here’s what we’ll spend our time doing this quarter. The schedule will evolve as we proceed. Watch regularly for more details, added activities, and stuff might change or move around as our conversation does. Note that there are online activities in place of some class periods.

Week 1: Jan. 1 - 7

Tuesday, January 3, 2pm: Meet in Sturm 435

Thursday, January 5: Online asynchronous (which means use class time or work at your own pace on the stuff below)

First, read:
Ray Bradbury, “The Veldt” (About the Book)
Ray Bradbury, “There Will Come Soft Rains”

Then, do some stuff:
1) Sign up for our Discord server, using the invite link I added to Canvas and sent by e-mail. Here's a quick getting started guide for Discord, if you haven't used it. Discord will be an extension of our classroom and where you'll be sharing your work for the course and engaging with the work of your peers.

2) At the time we'd normally be meeting on Thursday this week, make a short (less than a minute) video introducing yourself to us. This can be super simple (shot on your phone, no editing, etc.). Share your video in the #who-are-we channel in Discord.

  • Don’t tell us your major, unless you have a story about it
  • Don’t tell us what you did over the holiday break, unless it involves giant snakes, parachuting, a unicorn, or it will be documented in a viral video
  • Don’t tell us where you grew up, unless you’re going to show pictures
  • Do tell us what moves you, what you care most about
  • Do tell us what you hope to get from taking this course, but only if you can do so in a limerick
  • Do tell us where you are
  • Do give us random facts we can come to know you by
  • Do click here and answer the first would you rather question that catches your eye

To share a video in Discord, upload to YouTube (or any other site where videos live) and share with a link. Or click the little + to the left of the message box in Discord, select a video file you created, and add a title or hello in the message.

3) Watch some of the videos of your peers, respond, add reaction emojis, etc.

4) You'll need a space online to share your work for this course. A couple options: (a) Use your own personal site or blog, if you have one; (b) Sign up for a free account on Medium; (c) Prepare to publish anywhere else (Google Drive, WordPress, Tumblr, etc.), as long as you can post regularly and share your work with the class via hyperlinks. Feel free to leave your full name off of your site (or use a psuedonym).

Week 2: Jan. 8 - 14

Tuesday, January 10, 2pm: Meet in Sturm 435
Watch Lo and Behold (2016) (together in class)

Thursday, January 12, 2pm: Meet in Sturm 435

First, read:
Clay Shirky, “Does the Internet Make You Smarter”
Nicholas Carr, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”
“A Vision of Student’s Today”

Then, do some stuff:
1) Publish a post wherever you're doing your work for this course with a tentative response to the question, what is the internet? Draw on the various stuff you’ve read so far. Some stuff to consider: where is the internet? what is not the internet? how many internets are there? what is the internet becoming? is the internet alive? what do you love about the internet? what scares you?

2) The Web likes pictures (and especially GIFs). Add at least one picture to this post and all your other posts. My favorite tool for finding free pictures is Unsplash. Check out their copyright license. I also like Pixabay.

3) Share a link to your post in the #our-work channel on Discord. Read the posts of your peers and add comments. Respond to comments.

4) Begin to think about your first major project, which you'll finish by the end of week 4. In brief, start from scratch and redesign the internet in any medium using only analog tools.

First, think about these questions: What is the internet? How does the internet work? Where does the internet live? Who lives there? What is the internet for?

Then, read around, skim, browse Small Pieces Loosely Joined by David Weinberger. Start by glancing at the preface and chapter 1, but click around the site for the book. It offers one theory of what the web is.

More importantly, though, think about what the web is for you.

Now, working on your own or with a group, use only analog tools, like fingers, paper, scissors, mechanical (not digital) tools to represent, reassemble, reimagine the internet. Your work can be interactive or static, 2-dimensional or 3-dimensional, a conceptual map or a more literal one. Then, you'll remediate your work back into digital space by taking photograph(s) or video of it.

Week 3: Jan. 15 - 21

Tuesday, January 17, 2pm: Meet in Sturm 435
Watch Wall-E (2008) (together in class)

Thursday, January 19, 2pm: Snow Day

Read:
Douglas Eyman, Defining and Locating Digital Rhetoric
Preface and Ch. 1 from Small Pieces Loosely Joined

Week 4: Jan. 22 - 28

Tuesday, January 24, 2pm: Meet in Sturm 435. Discuss Wall-E, passages from Small Pieces Loosely Joined, and Ray Bradbury stories
Thursday, January 26, 2pm: Meet in Sturm 435. Discuss Mod and Weing, workshop drafts of Rebuild the Internet project

Read:
Craig Mod, “Books in the Age of the iPad”
Weing, “Pup Ponders the Heat Death of the Universe”

Do some stuff:
The art of the animated GIF
1) Instructions for making a GIF.
2) There are also apps and some online tools you can use to make a GIF. Just Google something like “make a GIF"

Week 5: Jan. 29 - Feb. 4

Tuesday, January 31, 2pm: Online asynchronous. Start by watching The Great Hack (on your own). Then, see below.
Thursday, February 2, 2pm: Meet in Sturm 435. Discuss The Great Hack.
Before class, share a finished version of your Rebuild the Internet project in the #our-work channel on Discord. And, optionally, bring the unremediated version with you to class.

First, read and watch:
The Great Hack (Netflix)
Howard Rheingold, “Smart Mobs”
Zeynep Tufekci, “We’re building a dystopia just to make people click on ads”

Then, do some stuff:
1) Find at least one other piece (an article, work of art, video, etc.) about social media that you think would be useful for our group to look at. Share a link in the #general channel on Discord with a sentence saying why folks should read it.
2) Publish a post wherever you're doing your work for this course. Respond in some way to one or all of the readings for this week. Share a link to your post in the #our-work channel on Discord.
3) Then respond to posts from your peers. Look for posts with no comments. And continue the discussions started on your own post.

Week 6: Feb. 5 - 11

Tuesday, February 7, 2pm: Discuss readings about ChatGPT
Thursday, February 9, 2pm: Watch M3gan (together in class)

We’ll take a bit of a breather this week, so you can take time to think about and work on your midterm self-reflection. But there’s some recommended reading that might help as you think about how to evaluate your work for the course.

First, read:
Some of these might by paywalled. So read what you can, where you can.
Chronicle of Higher Education: “Teaching Experts Are Worried About ChatGPT, but Not for the Reasons You Think”
John Warner, “How About We Put Learning at the Center? The ongoing freak-out about ChatGPT sent me back to considering the fundamentals”
Ian Bogost, "ChatGPT Is Dumber Than You Think"
Experiment with ChatGPT
Other Resources and AI Writing Tools

Then, if you haven't already, respond to the work of your peers in the #our-work channel.

Then, write your self-reflection:
Write a self-reflection by the end of the week (click the link here). Read some or all of this stuff, as you think about your self-reflection: Nancy Chick's “Metacognition”, Alfie Kohn's “The Case Against Grades”, and/or Audrey Watters's “The Web We Need to Give Students”.

Week 7: Feb. 12 - 18

Tuesday, February 14, 2pm: Think about and plan final project.
Thursday, February 16, 2pm: Discuss M3gan and fill out syllabus for weeks 9 and 10. Some topics we could explore: watch Catfish and talk about digital identity, watch Blade Runner and/or read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, talk about the dark web, play and discuss Limbo or Inside and play with game-making tools, learn some coding and write code{poems}, or whatever else we come up with together in class.

Begin thinking about your Final Project:
For the final project, you will work as an individual or group with a deceptively simple prompt: do something on the web about the web. You can use any of your previous posts or assignments as a jumping off point. At the end of the semester, you’ll share a link to your project or pictures of your project. And you’ll document your process (with a short video, text, and/or a series of images). You’ll share your work in the #our-work channel on Discord.

Week 8: Feb. 19 - 25

Tuesday, February 21, 2pm: Discuss Terms of Service and ideas for final project
Thursday, February 23, 2pm: Watch Citizen4 (together in class)

First, read:
Medium Terms of Service (be sure to click through and compare to their previous Terms of Service)
ChatGPT Privacy Policy
NPR, “Do You Read Terms Of Service Contracts? Not Many Do, Research Shows”
Inside Edition, “Social Experiment Proves That No One Really Reads Terms and Conditions”
Terms of Service; Didn’t Read

Then, do some stuff:
(1) Publish a post wherever you're doing work for the course (in any genre: text, video, sound, image).
* Respond in some way to one or all of the readings for this week.
* Write a parody Terms of Service or Privacy Policy.
* Follow some or all of the steps here or here. Write a post about what you did, why you did it, and what you discovered along the way.

2) Share a link to your post in the #our-work channel on Discord. Read the posts of your peers and add comments. Respond to comments.

Week 9: Feb. 26 - Mar. 4

Tuesday, February 28, 2pm: Catfish (watch together in class)

Thursday, March 2, 2pm:
Ruha Benjamin, Podcast: “The New Jim Code? Race and Discriminatory Design”
Julian Baggini, Ted Talk: Is there a real you?
Krystal D'Costa, "Catfishing: The Truth About Deception Online"
"Could AI swamp social media with fake accounts?"

Optional Fun with Coding:
Start by working through several lessons on Codecademy. I particularly recommend the first couple sections in this “JavaScript” course and/or the first few sections in “HTML/CSS”.

  1. Then, write a poem in code using JavaScript and/or HTML. Your code should be both human readable and machine readable. It doesn’t have to accomplish much when compiled (i.e. read by a computer), but it must accomplish something. But consider the text of the code itself the “poem.” Click around this site for some examples. Or here are some more.
  2. For reference, here is a page with sample JavaScript, showing some code and what results from that code. Here is a page with sample HTML, showing some code and what results from that code.
  3. Test your code. If you’re coding in JavaScript, you can test your code here. If you’re coding in HTML, you can test your code here.

Week 10: Mar. 5 - 11

Tuesday, March 7, 2pm: Blade Runner (watch together in class)

Thursday, March 9, 2pm:
Daniel Miessler, “The Internet, the Deep Web, the Dark Web”
Juan Sanchez and Garth Griffin, “Who’s Afraid of the Dark? Hype Versus Reality on the Dark Web” (note that this is published by a security company, so it's worth reading about them and considering potential bias)
(Optional): “The Dark Web: What is it exactly and how do you get there?”

Week 11: Mar. 12 - 17

We will not meet in person this week. Instead, you'll share your final project and finish your final self-reflection.

Wednesday, Mar. 15: Share final project in the #our-work channel in Discord. Respond to the work of your peers.

Friday, Mar. 17: Click here to finish your final self-reflection