Permits Not Needed for 5000, 7000, 8000

We have removed the registration requirement that 5000, 7000, and 8000 hours need a permit from the grad adviser. You can register yourself for these hours on your own, in other words — I’ll go through and audit everything in mid-December, but I’d prefer for you all to do it right the first time. So here’s the flowchart:

5000 – we use this course for professional development and to pad out a semester’s registration when you need a certain number of hours. For example, if you need 9 hours to keep your teaching assistantship, and you and I have agreed that you will take 6 hours of organized coursework in the spring, then you’ll need 3 hours of 5000 in order to adhere to the 9-hour rule. Everyone should sign up for section 027 (my section, CRN 32292)

7000 – this is Qualifying Exam preparation, and you may take as many hours of this as you need (i.e. 3, 6, or 9) — sign up for section 027, please, CRN 32667

8000 – Dissertation hours — sign up for this if you have already passed your qualifying exam, or expect to in January or February. The graduate school rules state that you must have at least 12 hours of 8000 before you can graduate. If you’re a teaching assistant, you’ll far exceed this number because of the 9-hour rule, but if you’re not a teaching assistant, you’ll sign up for 3 hours every semester. If it looks as if you’ll finish early, you can always sign up for 6 or 9 hours in the semester you graduate. Better to put such a large registration at the end, however; delays are common in dissertation-writing, as I’m sure you’ve heard. You must register for 3 hours of 8000 in the semester you graduate (Grad School rules). If you’re a local student, sign up for section 027 (CRN 32719). If you’re online and in-state, sign up for section D21 (CRN 32743). If you’re online and out-of-state, sign up for x21 (CRN 32744)

Please note that these x21 sections do NOT show up in lists of courses offered. You’ll need to enter the proper CRN directly. Don’t ask me why.

Extra Section of 5371 Online for Fall

Due to demand (5371 is required for both the MATC and the PhD), we’re expanding the capacity of Dr. Zdenek’s online version of 5371 by opening another section. Well, not actually opening, but “de-stacking,” since every online course is made up of sections D21 and D31, “stacked” together to make one course. In 5371’s case, we’ll continue to enroll you in 5371, D21 or D31, but you’re going to have 2 separate online discussion sections in order to accommodate the large section sizes.

Dr. Zdenek wants to have 2 discussions on Monday night, one earlier and one later — I don’t know how many of you may still be at work, but an earlier section (let’s say 5:00) is one possibility. We’re going to have to work this out between you, me, and Dr. Zdenek, but today’s news is that everyone who was on a waiting list will be registered.

Section D21 is for all students except online, non-texas-resident, doctoral students, who must take D31. Regardless of this billing section number, this number probably won’t have anything to do with when you meet in the MOO. It’s a little odd, but it’s one way of dealing with relatively late developments.

May Workshop 09 Presentations

This year, we’re experimenting with something we talked about last year: having different lengths and formats depending on where you were in the program. Thus, we have scheduled 30 minute slots for upperclassmen and 20 minute slots for newbies.

1. What’s the purpose of presentations? First, it’s nice to get to know everyone and their scholarly interests. Second, we all have a stake in helping each other hone the various extracurricular parts of this profession, and presenting your work in front of a critical body of peers is a big part of what we do, whether it’s at a conference, in a job-talk, or in a lecture. We hope to establish a culture of sharing our work and sharing our criticism with each other — we figure it’s better to hear all about your presentational weaknesses from friends than from foes.

2. Who is the audience? Well, obviously your primary audience is your classmates and your faculty. But bear in mind that we’re hoping to channel the rest of your academic discipline when we ask you questions, so it is probably best to picture this audience as a typical group you’d see at a national conference like the STC, the 4C’s, ATTW, CPTSC, IEEE, or any number of specialized national conferences. In other words, this presentation isn’t an occasion for you to chat or tell a story — it should be taken as the kind of talk that’s worth proposing, flying across the country to give, and (for audience) to highlight in our program as worth listening to.

3. Can you speak for the entire block? No.

Both formats should allow for plenty of time for questions and formative criticism from the audience. Long-format talks should run no longer than 12-15 minutes, leaving 5 minutes for questions and 5 minutes for feedback (and 5 minutes for a break). In other words, when we’re on a longer-format schedule, we’ll start each speaker on the 30-minute mark, promptly. I’ll cut you off if you go past 15 minutes. Short-format talks should aim for 5-6 minutes of content, 4-5 minutes of Q&A, and 4-5 minutes for critique (leaving 4 minutes for breaks between speakers). We’ll start each short-format speaker promptly on the 20-minute mark.

If you are paired with someone in a round-table type of format, then you can pool your slots, but still allowing for lots of time for questions and feedback.

4. What should I speak about? Upperclassmen should speak about their own research, either something that they’re working for quals, a recent seminar paper, or their dissertation. Newbies should, by the very nature of a tight format, focus on something pithy, either from their seminar papers or literature reviews, or from a problem they’ve discovered in doing a literature review, or in their own work situation (something that intersects with rhetoric and/or technical communication).

And newbies, you’re not getting sold short — the CPTSC conference, widely praised as energetic and useful, requires a 3-5 minute position talk (robustly enforced) to allow for lots of interaction and engagement.

Regardless of your topic, please bear in mind that the 5 minutes or the 12-15 minutes you have in front of your academic field should be spent explaining, problematizing, detailing ideas that people want to hear. It never hurts to ask, “so what?” and imagine your audience asking themselves the same question while you’re speaking.

You will have a podium and an auditorium and a big screen that can show a networked computer, or even Powerpoint (if you’re into that kind of thing). Please be mindful of our need (as fellow academics and as students/faculty in your program) to hear you and engage with you — don’t turn your back on us as you enjoy your own powerpoint presentation. Use this occasion to make eye contact, to share your hard work, and build value for yourself and your academic program.

Because of the program’s stringent time/attention requirements, you should do what you should always do before giving any presentation at any conference: practice.

May 09 PhD Annual Review Schedule

May 09 Review Schedule

Job Talk 3 April

Please join us for a job talk by Amanda Booher, applicant for the program’s assistant professor position and doctoral student from Clemson University, Friday, April 3rd.

She will be visiting campus on the 3rd, and will be meeting with graduate students at 2 p.m. in the MuLL and online, and will give a research presentation at 3:10 p.m.

New Courses Approved

I’m happy to be able to announce to you that the four course proposals we worked on this past fall have been approved and will henceforth be in the course catalog.

• We renamed 5361 from Theories of Invention in Rhetoric to Introduction to Rhetorical Theory (catalog: “Classical and modern theories of rhetoric and rhetorical activity”)
• We added 5379, Empirical Research Methods In Technical Communication and Rhetoric, prereq 5363 or equivalent. (catalog: “Empirical Research Methods in Technical Comunication and Rhetoric”) — repeatable for credit when the topic varies
• We added 5382, Theory and Research in the Written Discourses of Health and Medicine (catalog: “Current theory and research in the written discourses of health and medicine, focusing on the foles of technical and professional communicators”) — repeatable for credit when the topic varies
• We added 5383, Grants and Proposals (catalog: “Theoretical issues and practical experience dealing with the genre and process of writing grants and proposals”) — not repeatable for credit.

Depending on timing, these may or may not be included in the printed catalog for fall 2009, but I believe they’ll be available for registration with their new numbers in time for fall registration in April.

May 09 Speakers

Dear TCR faculty and graduate students,

I am pleased to announce to you that our guest scholars who will be visiting us and presenting their research during the May doctoral workshop this coming year will be Karen Schriver, May 13-14 and James Porter & Heidi McKee May 18-19.

The May doctoral workshop will run from Monday, May 11th through Saturday evening, May 23rd.

Online PhD May Workshop Dates

• 2009: Sunday afternoon, May 10th – Saturday evening, May 23rd
• 2010: Sunday afternoon, May 16th – Saturday evening, May 29th
• 2011: Sunday afternoon, May 15th – Saturday evening, May 28th
• 2012: Sunday afternoon, May 13th – Saturday evening, May 26th

MATC Portfolios due 6/24

MATC portfolios for graduating master’s students will be due in the office by June 24th.

Please see the existing policy at http://english.ttu.edu/tc/MATCPortfolio/MATCPortfolio.htm

Based on a 3+ year evaluation of the exam, the faculty is planning a few changes to be implemented for the fall, including the use of a standard web-based portfolio system and asking for a specific reflective essay instead of a general reflection on your program. This summer, we would like to offer you the option of writing a guided essay instead of a general reflection. Although we’re moving towards the guided essay, however, there will be no prejudice as to which essay decide to write for this summer.

If you opt for the guided essay, here are the instructions:

Instructions
In an essay of between 2000 and 3000 words explain the significance of this quotation in terms of 1) your learning and work in the TTU MATC program, and 2) theories and practices in the field. Cite specific examples and references in your response. Your essay should clearly argue a thesis and should make a convincing demonstration of your competence as a candidate for the Master of Technical Communication degree.

Option 1: “To think about ethics, we first need to accept the premises that ethical insights are not necessarily intuitive, that they do not derive from divine intervention, and that they require a rigorous use of logical argumentation. Thinking about ethics requires that we examine our premises, that we test the logic of our arguments, and that we use evidence effectively.” Markel, Ethics in Technical Communication: A Critique and Synthesis.

Option 2: “For this more critical and proactive approach [to technology] we should borrow from the historians, the sociologists, the philosophers. We should enter the dialogue with our own values, ready to question our own approach while persuading them to question theirs. We should use this new dialogic space to realize new hidden potentials. It is this interdisciplinary space that we should enter as our discipline grows: a space where technical communicators can have the choice of becoming something other than scribes or instrumentalists. First, however, we must practice patience to comprehend what we borrow.” Johnson in “Complicating Technology”

Option 3: “Thinking about design is thinking about structure, function, and aesthetics. Making decisions about layout and text structures is one powerful way a writer brings organization and coherence to a text. Controlling documents with sophisticated tools of word processing and page composition is no simple matter, but goes directly to the issue of capable control over the hardware and software, a skill increasingly critical for all those of us who are surrounded by machines.” Kramer and Bernhardt, “Teaching Text Design”.

5388 cancelled for summer

The online version of 5388 (i.e. section 271 in summer 1) has been canceled for lack of sufficient enrollment.