Dr. Karl Stolley: Course Websites

COM380/580: Humanizing Technology

A combined undergraduate and graduate course covering both conceptual and applied efforts to humanize technology, especially computer technology.

COM521: Key Concepts in Technical Communication

A graduate course in some of the foundational and current intellectual work and scholarship in technical communication and related fields. As a course primarily intended for students in IIT’s PhD program in Technical Communication, it is also an introduction to becoming a contributing member of the field.

COM530: Standards-Based Web Design

This graduate course introduces the theory and practice of standards-based web design and development. The course focuses on an agile, incremental approach to building accessible, usable, and sustainable web pages that work across all modern browsers and web-enabled mobile devices.

COM580: Web Application Development

A production-intensive course in applied theory and practice of developing web-based applications, emphasizing interface and experience design using HTML5, CSS3, and the DOM; and backend development using Ruby-based web application frameworks. Students learn agile, modular development techniques grounded in open-source technologies, including Ubuntu Linux, version control (Git), jQuery, and Ruby on Rails.

COM542: Knowledge Management

This graduate course covers recent and emergent methods for collecting, creating, refining, aggregating, disseminating, applying, and evaluating knowledge, information, and data across organizations.

COM530: Standards-Based Web Design

This course introduces technical communicators to the theory and practice of standards-based web design and development. The course focuses on publishing accessible, usable, and sustainable web pages that work across all modern browsers and web-enabled mobile devices

COM561: Teaching Technical Communication

This is a graduate course in pedagogical approaches and course and curriculum design in technical communication, including service courses for scientists and engineers and specialized courses for technical communication majors.

COM532: Rhetoric of Technology

A graduate course in designing with cutting-edge communication technologies (particularly Ruby and git), emphasizing design practices informed by rhetorical principles that lead to pleasing and useful digital designs.

COM535: Instructional Design

A graduate course in a conceptual approach to the process of instructional design, featuring studio-style, project-driven class meetings for exploring and practicing the design of instructional materials and objects.

COM521: Key Concepts in Technical Communication

A graduate course in the intellectual work and scholarship of technical communication, including its history, grounding theories, methodologies, and interdisciplinary scope.

COM542: Knowledge Management

A graduate course in knowledge management, focusing on the design and theory of systems supporting distributed work, scalable collaboration, and content versioning--all grounded in activity theory.

COM530: Online Design

A graduate course in the theory and practice of structuring and designing information for web-enabled devices. This course emphasizes web standards, accessibility, and rapid prototyping.

COM537: Publication Management

A graduate course in intensive work developing and using systems to manage documents delivered electronically and in print using single-sourcing technologies. Theory and practice of managing publication projects across groups and organizations.

COM541: Information Structure and Retrieval

A graduate course that introduces technical communicators to leading methods and technologies for creating, manipulating, and sharing the structure of information and documents.

COM580: Open Source in Technical Communication

A special topics graduate course that investigates the nature of open source, and its role in various professions, including technical communication.

COM542: Knowledge Management

A graduate course that covers recent and emergent methods for collecting, creating, refining, aggregating, disseminating, applying, and evaluating knowledge, information, and data across organizations.

COM530: Online Design

A graduate course that covers very recent advancements in web production, both in terms of technologies and languages for production and in terms of modes of communication in/on the emergent semantic web.