English 420Y: Business Writing Online

Blackboard grades should be caught up today. If there's a problem seeing your grades, let me know. Final grades will be posted tomorrow, August 11th. Thank you all for a great semester and good luck in your future endeavors!

I've attached the project assessment form for the white paper project to this post. You must be logged in to see it. As with the employment project assessment you are to write an essay response to the list of prompts.

Apparently the post I made with the groups and the peer review instructions has been mysteriously eaten by Drupal, because I'm getting questions from people and I can't find the post. As no one mentioned this until today, there's not much I can do at this point other than repost. As a group, you need to peer review the white paper of another group. Each group needs to be peer reviewed, and each group can only be peer reviewed once. I had groups, but as it is late, I'm going to scrap that and say first come, first served.

I'll be holding office hours Thursday evening, 6-8, and a class session about Purdue's Island on Friday evening, 6-8. I'll also be holding two more class sessions next week in preparation for your final SL assignment, and one on the paper. These sessions will be Monday night, Wednesday night, and Friday night, 6-8pm. If you have conflicts at these times and still need class sessions, email me.

I've attached several examples of white papers and analysis of white papers to this entry. First, the White Paper on White Papers, second, a white paper by Sophos software and a visual analysis of their design. Third, a student white paper. For examples of presentations, I refer you to this page on podcasts by Purdue's OWL: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/733/01/ and to their main page (linked at the top of the menu bar) for their presentations in powerpoint.

Technically, your drafts for peer review are due today (Friday). I will, however, give you until Monday. However, your presentation draft will be due next Friday, and peer review of the drafts will also be due Friday. Peer review groups and instructions will be posted later today.

I've graded your employment projects. Some people did not have attachments, and therefore points were deducted. You do have revision opportunities for this project, and up to a week from today (Wednesday) to ask me by email if you can revise. People who received better than a 90 will not be allowed to revise.

The semester is halfway through, and there are limited opportunities for Second Life class sessions. Therefore, I've decided any group meeting held in Second Life will count as a class session. You will need to write up a special blog entry with Second Life Group Meeting as the subject, describing the meeting (i.e. who was there, how long you met, where you met, what you discussed, etc.).

Second Life Office Hours will be held Saturday from 6pm-7pm. I'll be taking questions on your white paper projects, SL assignments, and class sessions.

I've been fielding questions about project logs, so I'll repost the description from the project page:

Weekly Research & Work blog. Each individual will be required to turn in a weekly blog post which a) records their research and b) details their contributions to the project during the previous week.

This includes group meetings, assigned work, and completed work.