RPW 233 Emerging Media: Information Design

Course Description

The SVSU Course Catalog description of Emerging Media: Information Design.

Exploration of professional tools, technologies, and design processes that technical writers use in contemporary workplaces. Focus on critical knowledge acquisition, technological adaptability, and information design in multiple media and modes, including text, images, audio, video, and static/dynamic content.

Course Objectives

Writing has always been a complex activity. Economic forces, industrial evolution, technological development, and cultural change all impact the way we share information. The discipline of Technical Communication (the core academic field of study that focuses on writing and design in professional settings) has itself transformed over time. We now more often talk about what we do as information design rather than as writing. Written communication is still very much at the core of what you will do in this course, but we will explore a variety of linked strategies that redefine writing in ways that are both appropriate and contemporary. In light of such developments, I have constructed this course to work toward the following learning objectives.

Explore strategies and practices of effective, context-appropriate, audience-aware information design. Effective information design demonstrates awareness of and respect for the needs, knowledge, expectations, and work habits of audiences, and takes advantage of the most appropriate and contextually effective media for expression. All information is designed in some manner. Some is crafted carefully and well to fit the context in which it is offered and encountered. Some falls short of audience needs and expectations in one or more ways. We study design with a critical eye because we want to do it well.
Examine cultural, professional, and disciplinary standards for communication. Quality communication is created to meet or exceed a spectrum of standards for excellence. Many professions have adopted their own particular standards to guide their members. Accessibility and inclusivity drive design in a variety of ways. Industries and economic unions maintain their own as well. It is thus important to explore what standards apply to each kind of communication we create.
Examine links among communication, professional authority, and ethical responsibility. Professionals and scholars earn privileges and opportunities with their credentials and certifications that carry with them both the authority to communicate and the expectation that you will do so responsibly. Above all else, we must remain consistently conscious that what we do impacts other human beings. Information design professionals are the mechanism (and sometimes the medium) through which organizations connect with their stakeholders. Ethical action demands that professionals examine the ways power knowingly and inadvertently influences the effectiveness and impact of design thinking, design action, and professional conduct more generally. Because technical communicators work within, and thus perpetuate, the language(s) of social, political, and economic power active in and beyond professional spaces in the United States, they must seek understanding of how to do so consciously, critically, and respectfully.
Mature and evolve as a problem-solving information bricoleur. Across all industries, the most respected and enduring professionals communicate effectively. Within information design, the professionals who earn respect and status are also effective problem solvers. Such success does not come easily, even to those who possess seemingly natural gifts and abilities for writing, speaking, thinking, and doing. The design bricoleur is adaptable, innovative, technologically savvy, context aware, and respectful of their human stakeholders' needs and expectations. The design bricoleur learns to approach problems carefully, critically, and systematically, and to use appropriate methods for gathering data and harnessing assets to respond to the challenges they face. Every course offers you an opportunity to build and refine your problem-solving toolkit. Reflect throughout this course on how the challenges you face help you develop the kind of professional self-awareness and strategic engagement you need to be a better information designer.

A Special Note On Preparation and Motivation

Student preparation and motivation have become recurring themes of conversation among educators since the pandemic. For understandable reasons, students were challenged to keep themselves motivated to learn and achieve during that time, especially during the 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 academic years. People came away from that experience with radically mixed results. In many ways, the system failed you. Keep in mind that it failed teachers in countless ways as well.

Like many people in positions like mine, I assumed our educational system would have had more success at re-establishing core teaching and learning processes by now. Instead, we struggle to defeat the soul-sucking apathy that still lurks in the shadowy corners of our classrooms, just waiting to disrupt you somehow. Although students and educators alike strive to adapt to the altered context we now find ourselves navigating, we continue to observe inconsistent impacts and outcomes.

To be clear, I do not agree at all with the voices who suggest that students today are just not capable of the same quality of work that students yesterday demonstrated during their academic careers. Although I too have observed that students struggle more now with some scholarly activities (e.g., working with source material, engaging deeply with difficult texts), you and your peers are notably stronger than your predecessors in some areas, including technology use and public speaking. However, I added this segment to our course materials to acknowledge that I understand that we are all in some ways still finding our way in the changing landscape of higher ed in the 2020s, and to issue a call to action for all who enroll in courses with me.

We must strive semester after semester to do better. That means me as well. I continuously evolve my courses in my attempt to adapt. I have generally replaced traditional textbooks with curated content from smart scholars and experienced professionals. I gather materials in multiple formats: digital books; audio books; articles; knowledge bases; podcasts; videos. Although I have never been a professor who relied on quizzing students or who concocted assignments just to keep students busy, I have invested even more deeply in designing meaningful challenges that offer you opportunities to grow and refine your design toolkit and to engage in knowledge-making and skill-building. I dedicate far more class time to action than to lecture. I still share my knowledge and experience, of course. However, design teams that wrestle with meaningful problems provide the base experience for many of my courses now.

That brings me to your part in this professional development narrative ... . There may be course design decisions I make that inspire you to invest or engage. However, I know from experience that what I do may be hit or miss for you. The challenge for you is to find your own motivation, even when my choices generate energy and interest, but especially when you are not excited by the work ahead of you. I hope that the problems you get to invest in spark something in you. But the journey will always include work that is less exciting: reading, listening, watching, doing. You have to push yourself to dig in when the materials and tasks I put in front of you are not exciting or inspiring. I promise I will never make you read anything without a reason. I will never ask you to invest in something for which there is no professional development value or without some meaningful return. I cannot promise that everything will be fun, and I will guarantee that many things will be difficult and challenging. Do your part. Invest. Engage. Ask yourself if you need to do so ... why are we doing this? and consider the possible responses. Look for the value in what you encounter, and strive to take every bit of possibility from it that you can.

Textbook + Software

This course requires no traditional textbooks. I will assign readings, listenings, and viewings from a variety of resources. I will provide or direct you to materials for these assignments through our course space in SVSU Canvas.

Although there are no required texts, you will need to have access to Adobe Indesign, Photoshop, and other professional-grade tools to complete much of the work for the semester. SVSU provides the full complement of packages supported through the Adobe Creative Cloud (including Indesign and Photoshop) in on-campus labs. You may find Adobe Illustrator useful as well. If you are willing and able to work in SVSU's lab spaces, you are welcome to do so.

That said, I strongly recommend that you purchase an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription for the semester. Your work with Indesign will require several hours of work time to build basic familiarity at the beginning of the semester followed by many more hours of time on the assignments that require the package. You will not be able to use less powerful tools, such as Microsoft Word or Adobe Canva to complete all of the work, although they may prove useful for some of it. However, the tradeoff for you is that an Adobe CC subscription grants you access to the full complement of packages in the suite, which means that if you need any for other courses, you will be covered.

Adobe Creative Cloud. Visit Adobe.com to subscribe.
Note the pricing options. InDesign only: $35/month (for the semester only). InDesign only: $23/month (billed for the full year). Adobe CC: $30/month (billed for the full year).
Adobe encourages you to pay ahead for a year, obviously. If you can afford to do so, this is your most economical option. Whatever you do, DO NOT opt for the month-by-month pro option: $80/month.

Other Course Materials

To support your work here this semester, you will use the following services, tools, and technologies.

Well-equipped Computer. To complete this course, you will need to have regular access to a well-equipped computer. Students have recently attempted a few of my courses with tablets or even smartphones. Do not follow their unwise example. It is just not possible to do well in this course without access to a computer. There are very few assignments that you can manage from other devices. The design work required to prepare a proper document goes beyond the capabilities of tablets, smartphones, and even Chromebooks.

Read on here in this section for some of the details of what I mean for a computer to be fully equipped. If you do not have access to the design software I list below, you'll need to either acquire what you need (SVSU supports student use of some, but not all of the packages it provides through labs), or you'll need to plan to work in SVSU computing facilities. As I said a moment ago, even a Chromebook will fall short of your needs this semester here. These under-powered computers do not support the use of professional-grade design packages.
SVSU Canvas. I post supporting materials (e.g., articles, sample documents, documents for workshops) to Canvas Files. I typically use the Announcement page to facilitate communication with the whole class. Although I create assignments in Canvas, it is only so I can use the Grades page. (No detail about workshops or projects appears on the Assignments page in Canvas. All descriptions are posted here on this course site.) You will post most of your workshop submissions through the Discussion page.
SVSU Vmail. Use campus Vmail (aka Outlook Mail) or Canvas Mail for all correspondence with me. Note, however, that I typically only check Vmail, and Canvas Mail is sometimes remarkably slow at forwarding messages to the campus Outlook Mail servers. I may not see a message posted to Canvas in a timely manner.
Dropbox.com. You will create and manage a shared folder on this service. All of the file exchanges between you and me for course projects (e.g., your submissions, my feedback and project evaluations) will happen through Dropbox.com. Dropbox offers a free service option. That will be all you need for this course. (Do not sign up for a paid business or pro account.)
Note. I strongly recommend that you install Dropbox on your computer if you have one. The service is much more easily navigated from a computer desktop than it is from a browser window. If you try to do anything other than view documents from a tablet or smartphone, you will likely be rather frustrated.
Document design software. All projects and workshops for this course require you to design documents. Use appropriate, professionally relevant tools, such as Adobe InDesign, Adobe Premier, Adobe Audition, and Techsmith Camtasia for this work. Although you might be tempted to rely exclusively on less powerful packages, such as Google Document, it does not meet the minimum design requirements for this course. I use it too, but only for developing draft versions of written projects. I do all final writing & design work in professional-grade software packages.
Screencasting software. I use screencasts to deliver content for most courses. You will create screencasts to facilitate some of your work, including at least one workshop and one project. There are many free tools available to you for creating screencasts. I often recommend Techsmith Capture for quick work, but steer people toward Techsmith Camtasia for significant projects such as those you might take on during this course. However, there are now many options for creating and recording screencast videos.
Screencast.com. We will use Screencast.com to share and stream the video content that you generate, because even a short video can result in a large file. Screencast.com offers a free service option. That will be all you need for this course.

Although you will use several communication tools and technologies during your work this semester, all of these things are either available through SVSU, or are available to you for free. If you have questions about such details, please follow up with me. Among the most important priorities in your professional development should be identifying successful strategies for acquiring and refining technological knowledge, and finding comfort in learning new tools and processes. If technology intimidates you in any way, then emphasize achieving this professional goal this semester.

Some of the work you do might be made more convenient or easy if you have access to the following additional materials.

Portable storage device. Always carry a portable storage device (e.g., flash drive, external hard drive) with you to store project and workshop files, or anything else you might need for your work in this course. Although SVSU provides you space on the Microsoft OneDrive system, I recommend that you use it as a only, rather than as your primary work space.
Scanner or scanning app for your phone/tablet. You will at times integrate visual content that you draw from source material into your work. Although you can use a camera to accomplish this task, the results are typically unprofessional. Scanners and scanning apps allow you to digitize such content at a much higher level of professionalism. Several apps are available for free or at little cost. I strongly recommend that you acquire one and learn to use it.
Headphones. Because you will use audio and video for some of your learning and design work, and because we use both media in class from time to time, headphones are a convenient item to have on hand.
Microphone. Because you will record screencasts this semester, a microphone (even an inexpensive one) is a useful addition to your toolkit. It will raise the quality and professionalism of your audio. If you have access to a headset for your phone or for gaming, you should be able to make use of it for your work here. Note that although many computers now have built-in microphones, this is not universally true. Check your machine to see if it does or does not.

Because I serve as the Director of the RPW Audio and Video Production Studio, I am able to loan out audio and video equipment when assignments demand it. However, we do have limited resources, so you may want to consider purchasing your own equipment at some point. If you do so, please consider consulting with me when selecting equipment.