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Section 11 - K Monday / Wednesday 8:15 - 10:20
PM, Room H107
Number of Credits 3
Instructor Douglas Anderson
Instructor Availability office, H105
Hours Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday 7:30 - 8:15 PM;
Saturday 10 - noon;
anytime at Doug@RicciStreet.net
This course surveys the computer and public-speaking skills needed to prosper in today's networked organizations. By designing and running a laptop-based communications center, you will gain more control over popular software tools. You will demonstrate your competencies during oral presentations.
After completing this course, you will be closer to the leading edge of business communications, especially its technology, and you will be better equipped to stay there if not get even closer. You will know more about:
how computer hardware, software, and networks work
how to use networked communications tools
To demonstrate this increased knowledge, you will:
set up and run a laptop-based communications center
use the Internet to responsibly and professionally communicate, present, research, and collaborate
To help yourself continue to learn after the course is over, you will:
assess your computer learning styles
assess your communication skills and write a plan to continuously improve them
After completing this course, ...
software learning styles
online
collaborative work environments
taking the
tool to the job rather than taking the job to the tool
file
management on both a local PC and remote server
proprietary
software / open source software
the digital
document and the graphical user interface (GUI)
Internet
etiquette and abuses
atoms / bits; analog / digital; old media / new media
the history
and current capabilities of computer software
the history
and current capabilities of computer networks
Internet
architecture and metrics, especially demographics
transmission
protocols, especially HTTP and FTP
the Geek
Factor: formatting, coding, scripting, programming
the future
of embedded networks and information appliances
the digital development process
the digital
development toolkit
operating
system: software programs bundled with or added to the operating system to
extend its usefulness
web making tools: common software tools and utilities to
design, assemble, optimize, and run a laptop-based communications center and
World Wide Web site
collaboration tools: the Web for research, presentations, team
meetings, discussions, calendaring, shared whiteboards, individual and group
emails, conferencing, and Internet telephony; hand-held and other embedded and
portable devices
business media software: slide shows, web sites, charts and
graphs, and images both still and moving, including music and audio
Webtop tools: software programs on the
Web designed to be used on the Web, for example a search engine or banner maker;
user-generated content, participatory media
office productivity software packages: especially
spreadsheets, to process and display words, numbers, data sets, and images
In order to lead in business organizations, you must be able to do many things other than write well, speak well, and charm the boss. These five also apply to meeting the course objectives listed above.
It's called a PC or Personal Computer partly because you can personalize it. How you manage your files and directories on the computer is probably as personal and inscrutable to others as how you manage the documents and file drawers in your physical office. Learn more.
It's a world of too much information and too many complex computer programs bloated with features. You have to be able to learn on your own and just keep clicking.
If you're looking for the One Right Way to do things, this course will frustrate you. In that way, I try to make it resemble reality.
To keep learning -- to keep managing effectively -- you have to keep changing mental models. During that change, you may feel lost, confused, and stupid at exactly the time when the people you manage are expecting you to behave otherwise. I spend part of every day learning something about computers, so I spend a lot of time feeling all three: lost, confused, and stupid.
You'll never have only and exactly the information you need. You'll never have enough time. You'll rarely find that one path to the future is clearly correct and all the others are wrong. You will have wicked problems and you will have to make compromises that are guaranteed not to please everyone.
Transcend your and your organization's concrete situation into an intelligent awareness of broader, often abstract, contexts. A good test would be the ease with which you can draw valid inferences from articles in the news. For example, do you understand why the Department of Justice was so upset with Microsoft for bundling the Internet Explorer browser? Do you fall for the music industry's claim that you're "stealing" music when you share it? Do you think online voting for president would be accurate? In organizations, your contextual thinking helps the boss distinguish who gets promoted.
Your ongoing evaluation of your progress as a business communicator is the most useful tool for your improvement.
Did I emphasize that enough? Let me try again. Careful and effective managers are, at times, very self-conscious. I highly recommend that starting now you write about your work in some form of journal or file. After you have done everything else for the course, answer two questions:
Reflect on the experiences of the past two months:
choices you made; lessons you learned
difficulties you encountered and the
conclusions you reached as a result
successes you achieved and the new insights
you gained from achieving them
things to do differently next time and why
interesting ways the course relates to
previous professional work, especially unexpected or conflicting results
strong emotions you experienced and why
This reflection should not include simple lists of activities, reactions without explaining the reason for them, or complaints about external conditions that kept you from doing your best.
You must email this self-assessment to me. It's your way of telling me that you have finished the course. When I have the self-assessment, I will turn in your course grade based on everything you did before that date.
Any student with a disability who believes he/she needs accommodation(s) in order to complete this course should contact the Office of Disability Services as soon as possible. The staff in the Office of Disability Services will determine what accommodations are appropriate and reasonable under the Americans with Disabilities Act. The Office of Disability Services is located in the Main Building, room 021 and can be reached by phone at (716) 884-3281, extension 280.
Medaille's faculty and administration expect all students to complete their academic assignments with honesty and integrity. Students who engage in any form of academic dishonesty (e.g., plagiarism, cheating on a test, forging a signature or an entire college document) will be dealt with severely, with penalties ranging from an F on a given assignment to failing a course or even academic suspension. Students should consult their Student Handbook for full details on the college's policy and procedures for handling formal charges of academic dishonesty.
Grades on your papers will reflect standard English usage. The Modern Language Association's (MLA) bibliographic style is generally used at Medaille.
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