English 394 focuses on the conventions and plasticity of electronic communication and is designed to increase students' awareness and understanding of how writers in various professions will create and communicate knowledge in increasingly virtual environments. Our goal throughout the semester will be to critically evaluate the impact of technology on writing, society and culture and our role in "composing cyberspace."
Writing, computers, and the Internet are at the center of this course. A substantial portion of this course will be taught using the Internet, and several weeks of the semester will be devoted to techniques in conducting research on the Internet. We will also discuss the concept of hypertext and its relationship to your own writing. And, we will do some web-based writing throughout the semester. In doing so, we will investigate the ways the Internet has influenced writing and vice versa.
Several big questions arise about what it means to "write" with computers. Here are a few we might consider: