CMPT 376 (Spring 2008): Course Outcomes

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I would like this course to provide you the following experiences and skills, and suggest some values that you might apply in writing.

Experiences

Over the next thirteen weeks, you will experience:

Writing often, and writing for your own purposes, to communicate something that matters (at least a bit) to you.
Writing to improve your understanding of problems in computing and related professions.

Skills

You will be able to:

Match your style and structure to one of the common genres in computing science.
Select from several strategies for inventing material in your first draft.
Match your final version to the audience, message, and situation.
Edit at the sentence and paragraph level for clarity and coherence.
Use informal and formal writing processes, as the state of the article demands and your schedule allows.

Values

Values are a personal choice. A course can't give you values, but it can provide resources that you use in developing your personal values. These resources include new concepts or points of view, new ways of forming values, example outcomes of specific choices, and an opportunity to discuss and debate values. Here are some values that I hold strongly about writing. During the course, I'll make a case for them and give you opportunities to consider how they may fit with your values:

The ultimate arbiter of all writing intended for publication is the reader. Every writing choice should be made to provide the strongest benefit to the reader. The reader trumps the editor, the reviewers, "rules" of writing (which are more often imagined than real, in any case), your growth as a writer, and phrasings that strike you as fun (but will the reader enjoy them?). All of these other reasons are useful resources for suggesting choices you might make on the reader's behalf, but when revising the piece, shift focus from these secondary audiences to your primary one: the folks who will read it.
Writing is a great process for clarifying how you think or feel about a problem or a possibility. Or perhaps simply coming more to terms with something. Whichever you pursue, writing can help it happen.