About

This is the course syllabus web site for ENG/IMS 407/507, Interactive Business Communication, a new course being offered at Miami University during the Spring 2012 semester. The course will focus on this primary question:

How are interactive technologies, social media, virtual workspaces, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google +, etc., changing business communication? (See “How are Interactive Technologies Changing Business Communication?”)

Course participants will conduct research on this question, but will also produce business communication using interactive and digital technologies.

Participants will gain knowledge and experience with digital correspondence; personal marketing; social media communications (blogging, tweeting, facebooking); virtual meetings and conferences; online presentations; data visualization and visual reporting; writing in virtual teams and virtual work spaces; digital networking; proposal writing; and international, global, and cross-cultural communication. Participants will maintain a blog throughout the course and develop their own business communication eportfolio using interactive media.

The course starts on January 9 and ends on May 4. It will be taught fully online, using WordPress, Niikha (Miami University’s course management system), and a synchronous conferencing application (probably a web conferencing application like Adobe Connect). Mostly the class will be asynchronous, although there will be some required synchronous class meetings (scheduled for Wednesday evenings probably).

The course is dual-level — 407 for undergraduates, 507 for graduate students — and it is dual-listed in two departments (English, Interactive Media Studies). You may register for the course as an already admitted Miami student seeking a degree, but the course also welcomes nondegree students not currently enrolled at Miami University. (You will need to apply to the Graduate School as Continuing Nondegree Student.)

Further details will be added to this WordPress site during the fall of 2011. If you have questions, contact Jim Porter, PhD, Professor of English and Interactive Media Studies, Miami University, at porterje.muohio.edu.