application

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Now that you are familiar with many of the principles of conducting research in professional context, the class will be given the opportunity to apply these principles to a real professional writing situation. The Media Instructional Development Center (MIDC) has hired the English 203 class to develop documentation for one of the software programs available in the Digital Learning Collabatory (DLC), Adobe Premier. Over the next eight weeks, the class will be responsible for conducting research and developing appropriate documents that address the needs of our client.

As an individual, you will be responsible for developing a research plan to address the client's needs. Then as a class we will pull from these individual efforts to design a master research plan. Group roles, individual roles, and the remaining class calendar will be determined at this point. Although you will be producing components of this research individually and in groups, what you produce will be evaluated by your peers and sometimes the entire class. This way the final documents that the English 203 class produces for MIDC will reflect the class's effort.

MIDC's collaboration with the English 203 represents one of the many new partnerships that the professional writing program is making with various on-campus programs and off-campus organizations. Since this is the first collaboration between these institutional bodies, the work that you do will influence the strength of this collaboration in the future; therefore, consider the implications of your effort.

After the representative from the Digital Learning Collabatory have explained to the class what their specific needs will be, each individual will be responsible for developing a research plan, conducting the proposed research, and drafting the necessary documents.

In this writing assignment, you will...

• develop a set of research questions
• outline the research and writing processes that will need to occur over the last seven weeks of the semester to answer these research questions
• justify the plan that you have developed

  Designing the research and writing process

  When designing the research and writing processes, you will have to address...

  • your research questions; use these to frame the plan that you design
  • the roles that each student* and the instructor** will play in this execution of this plan. Think about how will you divide a class of 17 students up into groups. For each group ask yourself...
    
    
    • what tasks will each group need to accomplish during the research and writing process? Ideally each group should have some kind of communicative responsibility (i.e., talking to the client, writing a research tool, writing part of the final documents) and a research responsibility (i.e., conducting some type of research)
    • how many people will be needed to accomplish certain tasks?
    • what type of expertise will be needed by persons in each group?
      
      
  • the resources that the class will need. You are encouraged to think outside the box, but draw upon resources that are mostly accessible from the Purdue University campus or the Greater Lafayette area
  • a detailed timeline that describes what parts of the research needs to be done by a certain time and what documents need to be produced by a certain time.
    • You can do this by imaging that you are filling in the last eight weeks of the semester. Consider that you have two ninety-minutes classes to accomplish some work; what should we do/learn during this time?
    • As you develop this section, you are encouraged to make the data collection process recursive/iterative (i.e., make one part of the research process feed into another part, repeat certain parts of the research process that should be tested more than once).
  • the documents that will need to be produced for this project; this will include documents to collect research (i.e., research tools), documents to correspond with the DLC representatives, and the final documents that the DLC has requested. Note that you do not have to design the research tools at this time; this will be the responsibility of the various groups.

    * You are not being asked to assign roles to specific class members; instead you are being asked to develop roles that specific class members will adopt.

    ** the instructors' role should be mostly limited to teaching, guidance and mediation.

Think of the project plan as a final exam; this document will demonstrate how well you can apply the research principles to a real context. It will be evaluated using the criteria listed under "Grading" on the syllabus page; more specifically the project plan will be evaluated using the following criteria...

• consideration of audience and purpose--how well does the plan address the clients' needs? how well does the plan address the research questions that you develop? how well do you choose appropriate research principles to develop this plan? how well do you demonstrate your knowledge and understanding of these principles?
• feasability--how doable is the research project? can this plan be reasonably executed with the resources that the class has? is the plan outlined with enough specific details that make each person's role and responsibility clear?
• justification--how well does the writer justify her/his decisions?

status reports

These individually written documents will be submitted every two weeks to update the instructor on your individual and your group's progress. These submissions are also your opportunity to converse with the instructor about successes, concerns and problems that your group are experiencing.

As with most of the documents written for this course, you will want to ground your discussion in a rhetorical framework. Therefore as you report what you have done, are doing, or plan to do, you will want to talk about these experiences in terms of audience and purpose; remember for a single situation you may have several different audiences--some primary and other secondary.

Write the 300-500 word status reports in the body of an email addressed to the instructor. In the email, you should provide...

• a detailed description of the group's accomplishments. Only summarize in a few sentences what the group has already reported in collaboratively written documents or class discussions. Your personal contribution to these accomplishments.
• questions that your group is thinking through or preliminary thoughts about your recommendation: what choices does your group have to make, what options have group members presented, and what is the rationale for each option? As you think through these options consider the rhetorical implications for each one.
• anything else you want feedback about.
• If your group was not assigned to produce much during the two week period, comment on the direction that you see the class taking the project.

The status reports will be evaluated using the criteria listed under "Grading" on the syllabus page; more specifically they will be evaluated using the following criteria...

• the discussion of the rhetorical aspects of the work (e.g., research, writing, communication) that you are doing. This means considering your audience and purpose when you are justifying your actions, posing questions, and considering alternatives to problems created by obstacles
• the specificity of the actions that you report; you want the instructor, your audience, to have a clear sense of what you have accomplished and what you are experiencing

See calendar for due dates. Each status email will be graded upon submission. However, you will want to save the evaluated versions of these submissions so that you can respond to them in your individual portfolio.

individual portfolio

As an individual you will be responsible for working through the rhetorical obstacles that you, your group, and the class faces. There are two purpose for the work you do for the individual portfolio: 1) allows you to demonstrate what you know about conducting professional writing research by getting you to propose directions that your group and/or the class should take or articulate alternative methods to an agreed upon plan of action and 2) makes you responsible for individually engaging in the project.

The purpose of the individual portfolio is to develop an argument about the research project. While this argument will be articulated in the rhetorical statement, you will want to choose the appropriate documents to support your argument. Therefore, it is recommended that you include...

• your evaluated research project plan
• the evaluated status report
• other relevant material that supports your argument

  The Rhetorical Statement

  At/towards the end of the project you will write a rhetorical statement. In the 750-1000 word rhetorical statement you will make an argument about the effectiveness of the class's research plan and the execution of this plan. You will want to frame this discussion using the rhetorical principles that we have discussed this semester. While you articulate this argument, you may want to...

  • talk about the project in theory (i.e., what could/should have happened) and practice (i.e., what actually happened); use this as an opportunity to reconcile the two.
  • speculate how your original plan may have turned out considering how the class's master plan was executed
  • reflect upon how you would have revised the master plan considering how it was executed: What could/should the class have done differently?
    
    

  Note that this is not an opportuntity for you to complain about the work that other students in the class did or did not do. The work of other students and/or groups should only be discussed using the rhetorical principles to explain the effects on the overall outcome of the project.

The individual portfolio will be evaluated using the criteria listed under "Grading" on the syllabus page; more specifically they will be evaluated using the following criteria...

• how well the documents support the argument in the Rhetorical Statement
• how well the writer supports the argument with specific details about how the master plan was executed
• the writer's ability to articulate the effectiveness of the project or speculate about an alternative plan using rhetorical principles

group work

After the class has developed a master plan, each individual will be asked to choose a group to work in. The work that you will do in this group will be determined by the master plan; therefore it cannot be articulated at this time.

As a group member you will be responsible for...

• contributing to and keeping track of the work and progress that the group is making. Therefore, you will want to use the resource page to keep in contact with your group
• turning your contributions to the class project in on time; any group's failure to complete their assigned task can disrupt the entire class's progress
• developing research and/or writing reports

  guidelines for research tools & research reports

  Each group will be responsible for composing various documents that contribute to the final products. And in many cases, the work that you do (i.e., collecting data, writing documents, communicating with others) will be used by another group or you will be presenting the research tools that you have created to the class. Therefore, you will want to make sure that you deliver usable information to these groups in an appropriate format. Use the following guidelines to help determine how you will present your information...

  format/media--what is the best way to present this information? what is the best way to transfer this information? In most cases, you will be presenting information your audience in one of several formats--a memo, a short report, a long report, a letter, and/or an oral report. For this course, you will be responsbile for a written document and an oral report. You should choose the format of the document based upon 1) the type of information 2) the amount of information and 3) the audience of the information; for guidance see the back of the course pack. In addition to the format, you will have to determine the media that you will use to tranfer the information. In most cases, you will have to determine whether to use 1) information in the body of an email, 2) an email attachment, or 3) a hard copy.

  content (research tools)--if you are developing research tools (e.g., usability tests, observations, textual research strategy, interview, surveys), you will want to compose the tool as it will be presented to the audience. Prior to using the tool, you will want to consult the class and receive feedback on the tool. In addition to the actual research tool, you will want to present a breif explanation about...

  • why are you using this type of research tool? what will you learn through this approach?
  • how will the research be conducted?
  • who will the research tool be used with (i.e., your participants)? why?
  • when will you conduct the research? why?
  • where will you conduct the research? why?
    
    

  Detailed answers to these question are crucial because they determine the validity of the information collected.

  content (reports, memos, etc.)--if you have collected information, you need to make it available to others, especially your peers in the class. as a result, you will write an appropriate document that provides the crucial details that you have learned. In the actual document, you will want to create a detailed summary, detailed enough to inform your audience, short enough that the audience is only given the crucial information. So if you have collected data through...

  • field research (e.g., usability tests, observations, interview, surveys), you will compile your results and summarize them in the body of the document. Consider using graphs, tables, charts, and bulleted lists to present the information. Also include typed transcripts from interviews or field notes from observations.
  • textual research, summarize each usable texs that you have read. Also provide your audience with a citation, copy, or URL for the text; your audience may be interested in exploring a few of these texts in depth and may want access to the text. Make it easy for your audience to do this exploration.
    
    

  If you have any questions or need advice, consult the instructor.

  correspondances

  You and your group will be corresponding with multiple audiences (e.g., the client, the instructor, your own group, other groups). As you correspond with these groups, consider other audience who you will cc on the message.

  • cc your group to keep them up to date on correspondances that you have had with others. Or you can forward information to them in a timely manner.
  • cc other group leaders who may be affected by the work that you are producing.
  • cc the instructor to keep him abreat of the work that you are produicing, the decisions that you are making, or your own negotiations with the client.

At the end of the semester, each group will submit a group portfolio which will include...

• copies of the work that the group did for this research project; this is your opportunity to show everything that your group contributed to the final product.
• include all relevant documents: this includes the documents thatthe group produced and the documents that directly influenced what the group produced. Use these documents as evidence to support your rhetorical statement.
• a 750-1000 word collaboratively written rhetorical statement in which you and your group will want to explain the role of your contribution (i.e., research, writing) in addressing the purpose and audience of the overall project. In this statement, you will...
  
  
  • explain in detail what your group contributed to the final project
  • describe the decisions and obstacles that you group experienced in fulfilling their role in this class project
  • justify the decisions that your group made in order to complete your section of the project--frame this discussion in terms of working within your group and as working for the class

Your group work will be evaluated using the criteria listed under "Grading" on the syllabus page; more specifically they will be evaluated using the following criteria...

• how well does your group contribute to the overall project? does your group perform the tasks that they have been assigned? do they do their work on time?
• how well does the group work together? how well does the group work with the rest of the class?
• how well can the group explain and justify their actions and decisions for contributing to this project?

class work

The entire class is responsible for this project, including the final product that gets presented to the representatives of the DLC. A lot of the work (i.e., research strategies, the research tools, drafts of documents to be presented to the client) will produced in groups, but discussed by a committee of the entire class; this means we conduct workshops in class. Therefore, your input during these discussions will affect the outcome of the overall project and the documents submitted.

The overall project will be evaluated using the criteria listed under "Grading" on the syllabus page; more specifically it will be evaluated using the following criteria...

• a discussion between the instructor and the client; after conferencing with the representatives from the DLC, the instructor will determine the rhetorical effectiveness and usefulness of the document(s) produced
• how well the final submission feasibly addresses the needs/problems of the client
• the class's ability to collaboratively develop the final product of this project