Author: Jamie Hinojosa
Date published: 2024
Course level: 2000-level course (first years through seniors)
Course title: WRIT 2311: Writing in the Digital Age
Course description: These past few years have changed the way the world has been working, communicating, thinking, collaborating, learning, loving, and the list goes on… This past year we have seen an exponential increase in the use of generative artificial intelligence. This course is about examining, analyzing, and understanding how writing in this digital age continuously changes, shifts, adapts, and adopts new technologies and ways of thinking to accomplish tasks. We will explore how to create and analyze various genres: social media, organizational pages, websites, blogs, youtube channels, career documents, etc. We will focus on creating, revising, analyzing, and supplementing various artifacts for St. Edward’s University and its multitudes of audience. You will have ample opportunity to choose what you focus on and determine the rhetorical and design principles at work for various audiences and purposes. Through the process of analysis, drafting, and revising, I will provide different routes and strategies to help you create successful projects. We will delve into how rhetoric is different in various contexts and explore the best options for delivering information to specific audiences. By the end of the course, students will have an understanding about the intricacies and complexities of digital media and digital writing and be able to apply these skills in a multitude of situations with the most appropriate medium and message. The successful appropriation of information and form will transfer into other aspects of academic and professional contexts. This course introduces you to understanding that writing is everywhere and can look like anything. There are no “traditional, academic” essays in this course.
When we encounter, create, analyze, design, write, read, and experiment with writing and technologies, we must consider four things:
What will you write about? The content.
How and why will you present your ideas and arguments? The purpose.
Who should be, and will be, informed or interested? The audience.
What is timely and appropriate about this information? The context.
These four principles are necessary in all communication. These four principles are tied simultaneously to choices in rhetoric and design. As technology has advanced and changed so have the ways in which information is presented, read, written, discussed, etc. This course is an introduction and discovery of the multi-faceted ways in which technology and digital media has changed the way writing takes place in various contexts. Throughout the semester, we will explore a variety of different media through analysis, creation, discussion, and reflection to determine how the digital age has impacted in meaningful ways how writers now communicate.
Course philosophy/motivation: My teaching philosophy for this course is student-centered and process-focused. Students choose topics and modes of delivery which they feel allows them to show their strengths and create the most successful assignment. Students grades are primarily derived from the work they do during class each week. Their final products are worth only a small percentage of their overall grade allowing students low-stakes opportunities to try new technologies and modes of delivery. I encouraged the use of AI in all assignments but required it within their digital entry assignment. My goal for students was to engage with various technologies and AI and to discover how, why, and where these tools could assist them in their academic and personal lives.
This syllabus is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License .
