principles

[calendar]  [syllabus]

component	description	audience	due date	points
exercises	application of principles	instructor	see calendar	+, , -, 0
responses	reflection & analysis of others' research	instructor	see calendar	+, , -, 0
portfolio	collection of your work with rhetorical report	instructor	March 11, 2003	150 points
group work	submission to the Guide with rhetorical report	class, instructor, general	March 11, 2003	100 points

The purpose of the principles section of the course is to provide you, future professional writers, with a repertoire of principles and strategies for conducting and reporting the research that you do in a professional context. As a professional writer you will be called upon to write various documents (e.g., internal memos, company policies, software instructions, logos) for various purposes (i.e., inform, persuade, instruct, attract); to develop effective documents you will have to conduct research that will help you support your claims with credible evidence or test the document's usefulness and appropriateness for a specific audience. To prepare you for this type of research, the primary principles and strategies that you will learn are...

• rhetoric
• reporting
• textual research (library and the web)
• interviews
• observations
• questionnaires and surveys
• usability testing
• archiving
• and sustainability

Upon learning this repertoire of principles and strategies, you will be able to design and develop research projects that address the problems or needs of your employer or client.

Over the first several weeks of the course we will be looking at 1) definitions, 2) practices, and 3) examples related to each principle or strategy. You will be expected to read about the theory and practice of each, do exercises that allow you to practice different strategies, and write responses that demonstrate your understanding of a) the principle/strategy, b) how it is practiced, and c) how you and others have experienced it.

As stated above, you will be required to read about the various principles and strategies, as well as how others have put these principles and strategies into practice. During class time, the instructor will prompt you to do various exercises that will allow you to put these principles or strategies into practice. These exercises, although not extensive or comprehensive, will provide you with a sense of the logistics and outcomes of these research strategies.

Keep your evaluated exercises throughout the semester, you will be submitting them within your portfolio.

As you do the required readings, you will be asked to engage with how the writers conducted their research (or at least how they articulated their research process) and the content of the research. This engagement will give you the opportunity to analyze and critique the methods that the writers chose. In addition, you will be able develop an understanding of the constraints upon reporting one's research results.

Approximately each week, for the first eight weeks (see calendar), you will be asked to submit a 400-500 word response; in these responses you should use the following heuristics to guide your work:

Research Technique

The one type of reading you will do for each principle or strategy will be writers' suggestions for enacting a particular research strategy. Read these as "highly recommended suggestions" rather than rules. While these research techniques are often agreed upon by professional writers, each new research context will test the stability and applicability of these suggestions. Therefore, in your readings of others' practices and in your own practice, you will experience times when it will be necessary to deviate from the anticipated norm. Keep this in mind as you read these initial readings.

The second set of readings that you will do for each principle will be examples from writers who have used these techniques in their research. For the response assignments, you will be primarily responding to these readings. As you read these articles, you will want to pay attention to how the researchers addressed the problem, developed a research method, analyzed the data, and reported the results. Some of the questions that you may want to address are...

• What was the problem or need that the researcher addressed?
• What are the researchers' research questions? Do these questions correspond with the problem or need?
• (How) does the research project address this problem or need?
• What changes would you make to the research design?
• What else do you want to know about these studies' design that was not reported? Why do you think that this was omitted?
• What changes would you make to the reporting of the data in the same venue? a different venue?
• Do the researchers answer the initial research questions?
• Are these results valid? Why or why not?
• Are these results reliable? Why or why not?
• What else do you want to know about these studies' results that were not reported? Why do you think that this was omitted?
• What new research questions did the researchers develop from their results? What new research questions would you develop from their results?
• Who was the intended audience of the specific article?
• How was the overall readability of the article? How does this affect your reception of the information?

Content

The content of each reading will be about various topics (i.e., the evolution of a certain document, documents' affects on employees, how specific populations work within a specific setting). You do not have to be an expert about the topic being addressed in the article to respond to it. Instead think of yourself as a lay audience (e.g., a manager who has to develop a policy) and think about how you would approach a similar problem if you had to address it. If you have expertise knowledge about the discussed topic, you are encouraged to incorporate this knowledge into your response.

Use these questions and guidelines to guide your composition, but do not try to answer all of these questions. Since you are limited to 500 words, you will have to decide what is most important to address for the particular topic. This also means that you also are encouraged to develop your own approach to respond to these questions; however, if you want guidance on a different approach, please consult the instructor.

Keep your evaluated responses throughout the semester, you will be submitting them within your portfolio.

portfolio

Developing your portfolio gives you an opportunity to holistically reflect upon the principles that you learned during this first section. As you collect all of your evaluated exercises and responses think about the principles that were discussed, the recommended practices for each principle, and how various researchers implemented these practices. Also think about how the issues addressed and the specific context affects the implementation of these principles.

Content

The portfolio will consist of 1) the evaluated exercises, responses, and freewrites that you did throughout the first section (look through your email INBOX and the course calendar to determine what documents should be in the portfolio) and 2) a 1,000 word report of the first section.

As you collect the evaluated documents, you will be responsible for looking through what you wrote and the comments that the instructor has made. However, you do not have to revise any of these documents.

Instead of revising the individual documents, you will get the opportunity to respond to the instructor in the short report that you will be writing for the portfolio. You will start the short report by returning to the early response (see Response #1) question "what is the connection between rhetoric and research?" Look at what you originally wrote; then reconsider or develop what you had written. Using the instructor's comments as further prompts, develop the answer to this question by pulling examples from the various research principles that you read about and the exercises that you did. You are encouraged to make direct references to the documents that you are responding to. However, focus on developing a single coherent document that addresses the question rather than responding to every comment that the instructor has made.

Write the short report using the format of a memo. Submit the document in a manila folder with your name written on the tab.

Evaluation

The portfolio is worth 150 points; it will be evaluated using the criteria listed under "Grading" on the syllabus page. More specifically, the portfolio will be evaluated based upon evidence of the writer's ability to...

• make a clear statement about the connection/disconnection of rhetoric and research
• clearly illustrate this statement with examples from the exercises, the readings, and responses
• demonstrate a comprehensive knowledge of research methods in professional writing

group work

In addition to your individual work, you and a few peers will form a group that is responsible for writing a section of the class's Professional Writing Research Guide.

The Professional Writing Research Guide

The purpose of the Professional Writing Research Guide is to provide each student with a quick reference that each student can consult when doing professional writing research during the second half of this class, in future PW courses, or during their careers.

The Professional Writing Research Guide will include many of the principles discussed during this section. For each principle, there should be four parts:

• an explanation of the principle--including the conditions under which the principles are most appropriate
• a list of suggested practices--including potential obstacles and ethical concerns
• examples of research tools
• illustrations of the principle in practice

If one of these parts is not applicable, talk to the instructor about alternative information that should be included or why you feel the part should be dropped from your section.

Group Contributions

The class will be divided into six groups; each group will cover one of the following topics:

• textual research (library and the web)
• interviews/questionnaires and surveys
• observations
• usability testing
• archiving
• reporting and sustainability

Each group will be responsible for conducting research (i.e., primarily textual research) about their principle and writing that section of the Guide. To conduct research you should start with the readings in the coursepack--both the readings on suggested practices and the readings that illustrate how specific researchers enacted this principle. You will also be required to find more suggested practices and more examples about these principles. Therefore, you will need to go to...

• Heavilon 302 to look through other Professional Writing, Technical Communication, and Business Writing textbooks (ask Julie Knoeller before looking through these resources)
• the libraries to find any other resources that provide suggestion about the principle
• the HSSE stacks to look for other examples of researchers using this principle--each group is required to find at least one article per group member from the suggested journals
• any other sources that you believe is appropriate for collecting information

For some of these principles, you will not find much information through textual research; in such cases, consult the instructor early about alternative resources.

Presentations

Towards the end of the first section, each group will be responsible for presenting a draft of their section to the class (see calendar for specific days). These presentations are editorial meetings and will not be evaluated. During this presentation each group will

• present a complete (not polished) draft of their submission to the Guide
• provide a brief narrative about where the information came from
• explain some of the rhetorical decisions that you made when developing this draft
• pose specific questions to the class about parts of the draft that you want feedback on

During this presentation, take notes on the feedback that the class offers you. Use the feedback to revise and polish the draft that will be submit to the Guide. As an audience to the presentations, you will want to provide critical, but respectful feedback on others' contribution; remember you are the audience of this document.

Each presentation should be 15-20 minutes, including class discussion; please plan accordingly.

Submissions

The written submission will...

• include all four parts listed above; any variations should be discussed with the instructor and the class. Anticipate your submission being three to five pages.
• include appropriate visuals
• be readable--both in terms of formatting, grammar, and mechanics
• conform to an agreed upon format
• be submitted on time

  Rhetorical Statement

  Each group will also be responsible for submitting a collaboratively written 750-1000 word Rhetorical Statement that explains the group's process for developing their section of the Guide. This document will be written as a memo and submitted to the instructor as a hard copy on the day that you submit the final copy of your section. This Rhetorical Statement should include...

  • a discussion of the decisions that the group had to make; include both the planning strategies that you enacted as well as though you chose not to use
  • a discussion of the sources that the group consulted, even if they did not get used in the Guide
  • a justification of the decisions that the group made; this includes the both the planning strategy and the sources that you consulted
  • a discussion of the advice provided during the presentation with an explanation of how you all used this advice
  • a listing of the references that you consulted (use APA style)
  • any other relevant materials (i.e., the actual articles with your notes in them, group corresponances) that help to support what you discuss in the rhetorical statement.

Evaluations

The Guide submission is worth 100 points; it will be evaluated using the criteria listed under "Grading" on the syllabus page. More specifically, the portfolio will be evaluated based upon evidence of the writers' ability to...

• consider their classmates as the audience of this document; shows evidence of considering classmates' feedback
• develop a guide that will be useful for multiple research and writing contexts; in other words, the writers take into consideration the various audience of many possible research situations
• make the submission useful to professional writing researchers; this includes defining terms clearly and providing appropriate examples and illustrations
• make the information in the submission quickly and efficiently accessible (i.e., formatting, visual, grammar), as well as accurately (i.e., formatting, grammar, mechanics) displayed
• clearly articulate the rhetorical process of developing their respective section of the Guide and justify this process keeping their audience in mind.

last.updated 2.20.03