Assignment Sheets

Inquiry 5:

As you’ve completed each writing assignment, you have written a writer’s letter—a document that both reflected on your inquiry as well as setting up expectations for the next inquiry. As the semester progressed, the letters grew in complexity. This final assignment, Inquiry Five, acts as a writer’s letter for the entire semester. The goal of this inquiry is to engage you in intensive metacognitve analysis—you and your writing are the subjects.

The assignment

This inquiry is a reflective self-analysis. You will examine your writing practices, habits, and ethos by analyzing specific moments from the last six weeks. Keep in mind that the inquiry covers the span of the course, but does not necessarily cover the entire course. This means you need to have a focus. A major component of this inquiry requires you to explore your composing process and how it is affected by online communities. In exploring these aspects you will find a topic you want to focus on and further explore it. Some questions—but certainly not the only ones to consider—are:

• How is your writing affected by online spaces? Do you writing habits change when they are made public by the blog? Do you have a different ethos or persona when you write online?
• How has your style developed/changed? When you look over the work you’ve done in this course, does your way with words change? Why is this? You can talk about any of the factors involved—peer review, the compressed course structure, the readings and their applications, etc.
• What makes a community? We’ve looked at a lot of communities and definitions of public(s)—so what, in your opinion, makes a community? Where did you see communities at work in this class?

…And audience: You must select an audience for this paper and it cannot be me. You might choose to write to yourself fifteen weeks ago, to my next class of 111 students, to students considering taking 111 summer session in 2013, a future employer, or even your parents. Whoever you define the audience as, it should be a logical choice and the choice should be reflected in the tone and style of the paper.

A couple ancillary notes:

1. Start with a bigger idea (like one of the bullet points above) and then give specific examples. It is far better to give two or three concrete specific and detailed examples, than it is to make sweeping statements.
2. Avoid flattery. This is an inquiry about what you learned and how you learned it. You will not help yourself by extending needless compliments. Spend the words in the essay explaining yourself and your thought process.
3. Only bring up issues outside of your writing if they relevant to your writing. The focus of the letter is you—not a classmate, not the attendance policy, not a PowerPoint. If you have a grievance/comment/compliment you want to file, there is a proper place to do so and it is not in the letter.

Some nuts and bolts:

The final assignment should be 1,000-1,200 words and submitted to Google Docs by Friday, August 3 at midnight. I will not make comments unless you specifically ask me for comments. 

Inquiry 4

Ever wonder how things begin to trend online? Or how something goes viral? This inquiry is a small step toward understanding what we will come to call “rhetorical velocity.” So far we’ve explored how rhetoric influences us in digital environments and, in turn, how we use rhetoric in digital environments. In the last inquiry, we also saw how rhetoric defines whom or what is considered “public.” This inquiry pulls the first three assignments together by focusing on a process called remediation. As we will be discussing this week, remediation is a way to re-invent the rhetorical delivery of a message. That is, rhetoric can take a new form (and possibly even a different meaning) by changing the medium of presentation.

The assignment

For this assignment you will actively participate in the online community you studied in Inquiries 2 & 3. The goal of this inquiry is to demonstrate how our basic interactions in the digital environment are remediated through our mode of communication.

The first step of this inquiry is to put the knowledge gained from the previous inquiry to use. It is important that you use the analysis from Inquiry 2 to effectively communicate in the contexts you identified in Inquiry 3. Your communication may not be extensive, but you should, at some point, open up a dialogue with other members of your chosen community. In dialoguing with your online community, you need to direct them to a blogpage with your argument paper posted to it. You might post links or hashtags or simply ask your community members to check out the website. Note: You will need to capture this interaction in some way. (You might use a screen capture software like Grab, Screencast-o-matic, or a trial version of Camtasia.)

The most important part of this assignment is the writer’s letter. In the writer’s letter you will explain how you went about entering the conversation, what elements of design became essential to conveying your message, and why you chose this particular moment (or thread) to join. I also want to know if you were successful in your attempt to redirect community members to your blogsite. If you were successful, tell me what rhetorical moves seemed to facilitate this interaction. If you weren’t successful, you still have plenty to analyze! Look around your forum and examine how other participants are redirecting the conversation.

That’s a lot. Let me spell it out in terms of the three things I am looking for:

1. Redesign your Inquiry 3 as a blogpage- Use Blogger to create a new page that remediates your argument from Inquiry 2. The remediation should make use of the design principles covered in the videos for Inquiry 4. You may excerpt some of your essay, add pictures, graphs, or embed YouTube videos. Whatever you do, make sure there’s a rationale behind it. (See point #3.)

2. Participate in the community and drive traffic to blogpage- This part is a little complicated. First you need to go to the community you studied for Inquiry 2 and participate in the conversation there. While conversing, you need to make an effort to have community members go to your blogpage. (You can use hashtags, links, ask them to visit the page—whatever you think will work for that context.) Most importantly, you’ll need to capture this interaction using screen capture technology.

3. Communicate your decisions in a writer’s letter- This inquiry’s writer’s letter is a little different than the previous ones. In your writer’s letter you need to tell me why you designed your blogpage as you did. Look at issues of layout and design as well as content. You will also need to explain why you communicated and behaved as you did in your community (as a way to drive traffic to your blogpage). The end result should be a 1200-word formal letter that analyzes and synthesizes the design of your blogpage as well as rhetorical performance in your community.

Timeline:

This assignment officially begins on July 20 and is due July 30. To help you meet all the goals, let me provide a suggested timeline.

This weekend, July 21 and 22, you should being doing two things. First you should be looking over the examples of blogsites I am providing. Please note that these are design elements covered in the videos for this inquiry. I expect you to do likewise. Your second task is to use Blogger to build a blogpage (attached to your blogsite). Consider this a draft. We will be sharing them on Monday.

On Monday, July 23, you will receive peer feedback on your blogpage. After receiving and implementing feedback, you should begin participating in your online community and attempting to redirect community members to your site. It would be best if you wrap up your online communication by Wednesday evening (July 25).

Thursday and Friday should be spent writing the writer’s letter. This is actually the most important part of your assignment as it demonstrates the thoughts behind the design decisions you made on the blogsite as well as the thinking behind your rhetorical choices in the community.

Final assignment is due on Monday, July 30 at midnight. This includes the screen capture of the online community participation, the blogpage url, and the writer’s letter.

Inquiry Three: The Public Argument

The title of our textbook in this course makes the bold statement that everything is an argument. While you may not be completely convinced of this statement yet, hopefully you are realizing there are many arguments going on around you all the time. This inquiry will do two things: First, you will identify through research who your audience is and what methods of appeal are best suited for them. And secondly, you will draft an argument based on your research.

The assignment is broken down into two parts—the research part (Part a) and the argument part (part b). Because this is an accelerated course, I am asking you to stick with the community you analyzed in Inquiry 2. By choosing a community you are already familiar with, you will save time familiarizing yourself with its arguments and members.

Part A:

This is the research-based part of the Inquiry. Your research will be a mix of exploring the online community as a participant, reading scholarly articles, as well as engaging with popular texts. You have three options for Part A—choose only one. All of the options require that you have five solid resources cited in either APA or MLA (two academic, peer-reviewed sources and three other sources). Part A is due by midnight on July 16.

Option 1:

A dialogue paper- This creative writing assignment will put at least three different critics in conversation about your selected argument. The characters must be well-defined and style their thoughts from the texts that you have researched. The format is up to you. It can be a play, a short dialogue-driven story, a transcript, etc. The final product of the creative writing should be about 800 words. Setting, style of speech, and any actions must be explained in a subsequent paragraph of about 200 words. You will also need a works cited page with your five sources (APA or MLA format).

Option 2:

Mapping- If you are more visually and artistically inclined, you may illustrate how arguments are related and where voices are interacting by drawing a map. By map I do not mean that it has to have a compass and borders—the idea is to show through visuals who is participating in the argument and by what means. To take this option you will need to write me a short proposal of 200 words (a rough sketch would also be nice). The final product should be a free-standing (meaning the graphic explains itself), highly polished and professional looking illustration. You will also need a couple paragraphs of about 400 words explaining your design decisions (color use, layout, font choice, etc.). You will also need to include a works cited page with your five sources (APA or MLA format).

Option 3:

Annotated Bibliography- This is the most traditional of the three options. Each of the five sources will be cited them in either APA or MLA format. After each entry you will write a paragraph (about 200 words) that does three things: Summarize the text, analyze the text, evaluates how you will use the text to build your argument for part b.

Part B:

You will take into account the research you conducted in Part A to effectively argue in the context of your community about the topic you selected. You will need to adopt the community’s language as well as the proper rhetorical tools to effectively and respectfully communicate your stance.

And of course there is a projective writer’s letter. In 300 words you will need to describe how you plan to use multimodal venues to effectively communicate your print argument into something more succinct. (Make sure you read the assignment sheet for Inquiry 4 before writing the writer’s letter!)

The paper with the writer’s letter included should be between 1800-2000 words and shared with me on Google Docs by midnight on Monday, July 23.

Inquiry Two: Analyzing Community

In the last week you’ve all brought up some really good, thoughtful points about communities. Some of you are examining communities as having common goals. Others are looking at communities built on values as they are determined by various institutions, from companies to family units. Still more of you are examining communities from a different lens. All of these are valid ways to view community.

So how does rhetoric fit in to all of this? Whether it is a common endeavor, the idea of family, or simply location, rhetoric plays an important part in defining community. In physical, concrete communities existing in the “real world,” signs denote boundaries; common goals are outlined by leadership; family is defined by law. What I am interested in for this inquiry is what defines community in the digital sphere. Is community defined in the same way as the physical world? Are there different rules for community membership when we interact in the e-world?

In this assignment I want you to pick an online community. You may continue to use the same community you wrote about in Inquiry One or you might choose a new, digital community to write about—either way it must be a digital community. [Note: Whatever community you pick for this Inquiry, you will have to write about it for the next two assignments, so be extra careful in selecting your community. I recommend staying away from the “usual suspects” like Facebook or Google+. A more simple ad hoc sort of community like a commenting space or a fan forum might be better suited for these assignments.]

I also want you to analyze. The communities you are studying make certain rhetorical moves and appeals. Your job in this inquiry is to identify those moves and appeals and explain why these elements are important. Explaining why is key. To this end, you should focus on a few important details from the community and explain why the author(s) made these rhetorical moves.

In order to analyze, you must explore context. This will likely require some preliminary research into the history of your community and the goals/causes of that community. Use this inquiry to become familiar with the research tools available online. (This will come in very handy for Inquiry Three.)

Some questions to consider when analyzing an online community include:

• What are the barriers in this community? Are they using rhetoric that keeps certain people/groups out?   
• How do people communicate in this community? What is the tone of their communication and how do they address one another? 
•  Is a person’s “real world” identity important in this community? What is the value of having an identity? Is being anonymous okay?  
• What is the context for this community? Does this online community serve a larger purpose? Who is “behind” it all?

The writer’s letter: Like the last writer’s letter, this one needs to look toward the net assignment, which is entering into a public argument. So in this letter I would like to know what arguments you see coming up in your community, how you see members making these arguments, and what your stance is. Remember that the letter should be focused on how you plan to enter into an argument/conversation with this community.

Some nuts and bolts of the paper: The length of the paper should be 1200-1400 words. The letter should be at least 250 words. They are separate, so the total word count is about 1500 words. The paper should have a real title, not “Inquiry Two Paper.” The final draft of the paper is due Wednesday, July 11 by midnight. The projective writer’s letter is due the same day.

Inquiry One: Reflecting on Community

You are all rhetoricians. As you completed the readings for last night and today, hopefully you are developing a rhetorical consciousness—an awareness of the use of rhetoric in your everyday life. Hopefully you’ve already begun to think of some instances wherein you encountered uses of rhetoric. For this first major assignment I want to hear about a time you used rhetoric. More specifically I want to hear about a time you used rhetoric—whether it worked or not—to gain entry into a community. [Note: Pick a community that is not Miami-related. Yes, you all used rhetoric very well to gain entry into the university. Tell me about a time and community that might have more distance in terms of memory—a sport team, club, social group, etc.]

Consider this a sort of short, personal story. Besides telling a good story this paper needs to demonstrate what you’ve already learned about rhetorical principles and situations. It all boils down to this: tell a good story and analyze the rhetorical situation. While the two ideas—story and analysis—should be presented as one in the final paper, it might help to think of them separately at the onset of the drafting stage:

After selected a story to tell, consider these questions:

·      What’s the rhetorical situation in my story? Who is the rhetor? (You obviously are—but what’s your position? What’s at stake?)

·      What constraints are at work in your narrative? Who is your audience for this piece? How do you develop a relationship with the audience? What’s your ethos?

·      What methods of proof do you employ? (Ethos, pathos, logos)

·      What evidence do you mount?

·      How did you invent, arrange, and style your argument?

·      What was the mode of delivery? How would you describe the tone?

·      What was the result of your rhetorical effort? Was it successful?

·      What did you learn about rhetoric from this instance? What did you learn about the community you were seeking to join?

I do not want you to answer each and every question listed above! Pick out some of the questions that help you start writing your story and focus in on those points. But most importantly, tell a good story about a rhetorical situation.

After your inquiry we will meet via Google Hangout and talk about your Inquiry 1 paper as well as the upcoming Inquiry 2 assignment. From this meeting you will produce a projective writer’s letter. The letter needs to be at least 250 words outlining how this assignment maps on to your next assignment.

Some nuts and bolts of the paper: The length of the paper should be 800-1000 words. The letter should be at least 250 words. They are separate, so the total word count is about 1250 words. The story should have a real title, not “Inquiry One Paper.” The final draft of the paper is due June 29 by midnight. The projective writer’s letter is due as a blog post on July 3.