Category: Announcements

Greetings, all!

I want to wish you all the best of luck in our class, and your other classes, too!

As we close the book on this semester, I wanted to give you a few reminders to help you see things through:

• All work is due by the end of the day on Wednesday, May 19.
• The latest that I can receive your work is Tuesday, May 25 (email me by Wednesday, May 19 if you need this extra time).
• Our last office hours will be on Wednesday from 3:00-5:00pm on Google Hangouts here.
• To submit your team’s Collaborative Project:
• One team member creates a Post on our OpenLab Course Site, which includes the title of your project, all contributing team members’ names, and a link to your team’s OpenLab Project Site. Make sure that you test this link after publishing your post.
  • Your team’s OpenLab Project Site should include:
    • Link to Shared/Viewable Version of Research Report
    • Embed Presentation Video
    • Summarize Research Report across separate pages for Problem, Solutions, and Recommendations
    • Include an “About Us” page with bios, headshots, and links for all participating team members
• Each team member has to email me your Individual Report on Collaboration (250-500 words).
• Catch up on Individual Projects and email those revisions/make-ups directly.

If you have any questions, email me at jellis at citytech.cuny.edu or come to office hours this week!

If you couldn’t make it to the Literary Arts Festival last week but would like to earn the extra credit, you may watch the ~2 hour long event video above, write 250-words about your experience (who did you hear speak? whose work resonated with you? what did you take away from the event?), and email your response to Prof. Ellis (jellis at citytech.cuny.edu).

If you’d like to earn extra credit to apply toward a Weekly Writing Assignment or points to another assignment as needed, you can attend the Literary Arts Festival next week, write at least 250 words describing your experience of the event (naming the people you listened to, what you learned and liked, etc.), and email your event write-up to me at jellis at citytech.cuny.edu.

To attend the event, you will need to register at this website in advance to receive the Zoom Webinar link.

I wanted to give you all a heads-up that your midterm grades are now available on our OpenLab Course Site. Click on the Gradebook link on the left side to see your midterm grade. This is only an indication of how you are doing in the class. It doesn’t average into your final grade. I looked at your participation on the Weekly Writing Assignments and other work so far this semester. Midterm grades are: Passing, Borderline, and Unsatisfactory. If you received Borderline or Unsatisfactory, there’s still plenty of time to turn that around and earn a good grade in the class. If you have any questions or need some extra support, remember to email me or come to my office hours on Wednesdays from 3-5pm.

As discussed in this week’s lecture, I built an OpenLab Site called Job Search Advice. It offers help with preparing your resume, cover letter, and other materials for your job search. It includes a video lecture, sample documents, and useful links. It’s meant to be a useful resource for you all. If you know other City Tech students not in our class who might want to check it out, please feel free to share!

City Tech’s Writing Across the Curriculum program is offering a free workshop on what is plagiarism and how to avoid it. This is highly recommended but not required (we will be talking about plagiarism throughout the semester, too). Details are below:

Avoiding Plagiarism: A Workshop for Students

Plagiarism can be less obvious than you think, especially in an online environment. This workshop will give you practical information and strategies to ensure your writing assignments are plagiarism-free.
 
When: Thurs, Feb 18, 2021, 1-2 pm
Where: Zoom 
 
Students register in advance for this workshop:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYlcuisqDwiGdCAM6NjOX1bx7qOGExOV-wa
 
After registering, a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting will be sent.

Dear all,

I would like to welcome you to our Spring 2021 Technical Writing class! To make sure you’re in the right place, this is ENG2575 OL88. I am Prof. Ellis and I will be leading our class this semester.

It’s important that you read through this message carefully and follow my directions below to join our class on OpenLab.

Even though classes don’t begin until Friday, January 29, the school asked faculty to reach out to students early to help everyone acclimate to distance education. At any point, feel free to reach out to me by email with any questions that you might have.

Our class is completely online this semester and we will not be meeting synchronously (meaning at the same time). Instead, our class is designated asynchronous, which means each student can watch lectures and do the work at times of their choosing as long as deadlines are met. There are, however, required projects in which students will have to collaborate with others and coordinate times to work together.

We will be using City Tech’s OpenLab to coordinate our class and the work that you will be doing this semester. To get you setup with the OpenLab, you will need to create an account using your City Tech email address (if you haven’t already done so), which you can do here: https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/register/

After you login to OpenLab with your account, you need to visit the Profile Page of our class and click on “Join Now” on the left side under the avatar of a red painting of a figure pointing to the right: https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/groups/eng2575-ol88-technical-writing-spring-2021/

Then, to access our class site where I will post lectures and assignments, and you will turn in many of your projects in the class, click on “Visit Course Site” after you joined the course, or you can go there directly by following this link: https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/elliseng2575ol88sp2021/

On our Course Site, you will see this Welcome message from me at the top of the page. Before Wednesday, February 4, I will post the first lecture video and weekly writing assignment. I explain a lot about how the class works and what we will be doing in that video. It is imperative that you watch each video lecture completely and have a notebook out to take notes in during the lecture.

Also, look at the menu on the left side of our Course Site to find the link to the class Syllabus: https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/elliseng2575ol88sp2021/syllabus/. All of our class’ policies, major assignments and grades, and schedule can be found there. I go over the syllabus in detail in the first lecture video.

Finally, I will hold weekly virtual office hours on Wednesday from 3:00pm-5:00pm on Google Hangouts here: https://hangouts.google.com/call/ffqYdoXngPvd-4OB-HTtACEE. I will post a link to Google Hangouts on our Course Site each week, too. If you would like to meet with me at a different day and time, please send me an email with your availability for the coming week and we can arrange a time that works for both of our schedules.

I’m looking forward to working with you all over the fall semester. Remember to contact me with questions or if anything comes up that affects your performance in the class at jellis@citytech.cuny.edu. I want us all to complete the semester successfully!

Be well and stay safe!

Best, Professor Ellis