last.updated 8.17.13

Research Remix with Rhetorical Reflection (4Rs)

Purpose

The IMRAD Essay (and its permutations) are often composed by experts (or those learning to be experts) for other experts. We rarely see this format used to communicate with the general public. Instead, research, like the research you did for the IMRAD Research Essay, often gets presented in a less academic way to make it more accessible to many audience. As a way to help you understand how to communicate within multiple discourse communities, you will choose a different way to present the results and argument of your research to a specific audience, for a specific purpose. Furthermore as a way to demonstrate what you have learned over the course of the semester, you will compose a rhetorical reflection that explains some of the decisions you made throughout the course of the project, especially with this remix.

Research Remix

Instructions-Research

For this assignment you will be remixing your IMRAD Research Essay, or choosing a different way to present the information in the essay to a specific audience, for a specific purpose. This means that not everybody will be turning in the same type of text at the end of the semester. Some options include...

• a magazine or newspaper article
• a brochure
• a slideware presentation (PowerPoint or Prezi)
• a letter
• a blog
• a mini comic book
• a wiki entry
• a video (posted to a site like YouTube)

You have already done the research for the content of this assignment with the IMRAD Research Essay. But you will want to use the other strategies that you have learned throughout the semester to research and better understand the audience you will be writing for and the genre you will adopting.

Instructions-Writing

Each of you will compose a text that you think will most effectively distribute the information you learned to an audience that would benefit from knowing it. The text you produce should be reasonably substantive. Therefore, the instructor reserves the right to set parameters for your project; these parameters, of course, will be decided by a process of negotiation.

When composing this document, you will want to use the knowledge that you now have to prompt your audience to a course of action or to reconsider how they understand the specific problem or issue. Due to the nature of the documents that some of you will choose to compose or the audiences that you are writing to, some of you will not be reporting your research within your documents. However, all of you will want to use your research to inform what and how you compose what you articulate in your document.

Rhetorical Reflection

Instructions-Research

Throughout the course of conducting research you have made numerous decisions that have affected the documents that you have submitted. And your instructor has responded to these decisions in one way or another. A lot of the decisions have been influenced by writing strategies that you have brought with you from previous academic, social , and/or professional contexts. But some of the decisions were influenced by the strategies that you learned in this class. For this reflection, you will explain the decisions that you made on the documents you composed throughout the semester with a particular focus on the the Research Remix. The following questions will help you gather information to write about:

• List at least three decisions that you made on conducting the research or composing any of the texts that you did in which you wondered how your audience, primarily your instructor, would respond.
  • What was the decision? What were the options as you saw them?
  • Why did you make the decision that you made? How did you want your audience to respond? Or how did you anticipate your audience would respond? Why?
  • How did your audience respond to that decision? Why do you think your audience responded that way? Knowing what you know now, what decision would you make? Why?
• Who was the target audience of your Research Remix? What was the purpose of the text you produced?
• What type of text did you produce for the Research Remix? How is this the best decision in light of your chosen audience and purpose? What do you think your audience expects from this text? How do you know?
• What generic expectations would an audience have of the type of text you chose for the Research Remix? How do you know this? In what ways did you comply with these expectations? In what ways did you purposely violate these expectations? What did you do? Why?
• How do you want your audience to respond to this text you composed for the research remix? How did your peers respond? In what ways to they represent your target audience? In what ways do they not?
• What might you do differently if you have more time or skills? How would this change how your audience read your text.

Instructions-Writing

Using your answers to the questions above write a 1000-word statement to the instructor in which you explain the rhetorical decisions you made while researching and writing this semester. A better reflection will 1) reference specific examples from the texts that you have composed and 2) draw upon and appropriately cite the readings you were assigned in class to explain your decisions. Use the answers to the questions above to compose your reflection (however, you should organize the text in a way that make sense for composing a cohesive discussion rather than just using the questions to organize your paper).

Criteria

Logistic for Research Remix:

• Parameters will depend upon audience, purpose, and generic expectations; the instructor will use your Rhetorical Reflection to understand whether you appropriately addressed these factors
• "Rough draft" brought to class for peer review on December 2, 2013
• On December 9, 2013 submit the final draft of the remixed text electronically to the instructor as an email attachments or a link in the body of an email by 5:30pm

Logistic for Rhetorical Reflection:

• 1000 words
• single-spaced
• On December 9, 2013 submit the final draft of the reflection electronically to the instructor as an email attachments with the remixed text by 5:30pm

• both assignments together are 150 points

In addition to the general evaluation criteria, the instructor will be looking for evidence of...

• a close connection between the Remix and the IMRAD Research Essay
• an understanding of your audience (your chosen audience for the Remix and the instructor for the Reflection)
• clear strategies for achieving your desired purpose
• an understanding of the generic expectations for the type of document that you are composing
• a clear articulation of the decisions you made throughout the semester that are supported by specific examples from various texts
• the Reflection helping the instructor understand how to experience the Remix
• an appropriate persona for the audience, purpose, and genre that you have chosen
• an academic or professional persona for the Reflection
• appropriate use of conventions, including MLA, APA, or an appropriate citation formatting