English 421: Technical Writing

Project Description

The ability to document your individual work as well as your personal contributions to a group project is an invaluable skill. Not only does careful documentation allow for you to prove what you have done and when you have done it, but also that you have the organizational and necessary rhetorical skills to be a success in the greater business world. Documentation comes in many forms, ranging from the financial to the personal. For this project in English 421, beginning with your first assignment, you will be responsible for documenting your ongoing individual work and research.  Beginning with your initial group meeting, you will be responsible for documenting—and ultimately presenting—your contribution to your team's progress throughout the semester. This documentation project will be comprised of four major components:

• Weekly contributions to  the collective knowledge-base, including discourse and genre analyses that you will complete during the semester;
• A weekly record of your contributions to the group and your individual workl;
• A rhetorically-sophisticated, well-designed, well-written, and self-explanatory document that details your individual contribution to the group;
• A collaboration evaluation project.

Project Goals

Writing in Context

• writing for a range of defined audiences and stakeholders;
• negotiating the ethical dimensions of workplace and/or business communication;
• representing one's goals and innovative ideas persuasively, in written and oral forms.

Project Management

• Understand, develop and deploy various strategies for planning, researching, drafting, revising, and editing the important and necessary documents of technical communication, including  white papers, resumes, usability reports, and multimodal "documents", both individually and collaboratively
• Select and use appropriate technologies that both effectively and ethically address professional situations and audiences.
• Build professional ethos through documentation and accountability.

Document Design
Make rhetorical design decisions about workplace documents commonly used by technical writers, including

• understanding and adapting to genre conventions and audience expectations;
• understanding and implementing design principles of format and layout;
• interpreting and arguing with design;
• drafting, researching, testing, and revising visual designs and information architecture.

Teamwork
Learn and apply strategies for successful teamwork and collaboration, such as

• working online with colleagues;
• determining individual and group roles and responsibilities;
• managing team conflicts constructively;
• responding constructively to peers' work
• soliciting and using peer feedback effectively;
• achieving team and business goals.

Research
Understand and use various research methods to produce professional documents, including

• analyzing professional contexts;
• locating, evaluating, and using print and online information selectively for particular audiences and purposes;
• triangulating sources of evidence;
• selecting appropriate primary research methods, such as interviews, observations, focus groups, and surveys to collect data;
• working ethically with research participants.

Technology
Use and evaluate the writing technologies frequently used in the workplace and for technical communication, such as emailing, instant messaging, image editing, video editing, presentation design and delivery, HTML editing, Web browsing, content management, and desktop publishing technologies.

Deliverables

Weekly Contribution to Collective Knowledge-base

This deliverable is the only one that you will be asked to turn in at regular intervals throughout the semester.   Each week you will find an article related to technical communication, summarize that article, analyze it as an example of a specific genre and discourse community, and then pdf and submit to the course wiki both the article and your analysis.  These will be due each Wednesday at 5:00 pm to give  your fellow students enough time to review them before class.  More information can be found on the discourse and genre analysis handout.

Weekly Record of Individual Contribution

The second component of the documentation project is your individual record of your contribution. You will devise a system for tracking, recording, and explicating the work you do as it relates to all of the group projects throughout the semester. This record can come in any form (e.g. chart, notes, journal, PowerPoint, website, etc.) and will be turned in at the end of the semester along with the other two components of the project, though you will also be asked to share this information with me periodically as a sort of performance evaluation. One portion of this weekly record can be comprised of information also found in the regular meeting minutes that your group will post on the course site. This will be detailed in class, but, at the least, minutes should include

• Date and location of meeting;
• Names of all present
• A brief summary of the meeting's business
• Decisions rendered, actions assigned, etc.

Individual Contribution Documentation

This documentation will be comprised of a single document that illustrates and details your ongoing class participation as well as specific contributions to your group, the group’s progress, the group deliverables, and group meetings. Again, this document can be crafted in any format that you choose, drawing on your records of your efforts and accomplishments throughout the project (i.e. weekly record and group minutes). It should, at the least, clearly and accurately illustrate what you did throughout the project--in a rhetorically-sophisticated, well-designed, well-written, and self-explanatory manner. That is to say, it should employ all of the rhetorical strategies we discuss throughout the class to make clear for your audience(s) what you believe your contribution to be.

When completed, you will give one copy of this document to EACH group member for approval, as illustrated by signature. This copy will be turned in to Catherine A Shuler by each group member (e.g. if you have four group members, you will be handing in three signed [or unsigned] individual project assessment documents) which has received [or not received] written approval from all members before submission (thus, you will need to design the document so that there is a space for said approval in the appropriate form--printed name and signature, for example). Further, this copy will be for them to use in completing component three, the collaboration evaluation. In the end, be sure that your document:

• Clearly and accurately illustrates what you did throughout the project;
• Receives written approval [or not] from all group members before said members submit it to Catherine A. Shuler;
• Is given to your team members to assist in completing the collaboration;
• Employs strong, logical, and clear rhetorical choices in addressing the audience and purpose of the document.

(Note: The above will only apply to your group work.  Your individual class work should be documented in a separate document and turned in to me with your signature verifying the accuracy of your document.)

You will be assessed on how well the document represents your work, ethic, contribution, commitment, success, etcetera to the group. Further, you will be assessed on the document itself—its presentation, design, and appropriate rhetorical choices for its audience and purpose.

Group Collaboration Evaluation

This component of the project assesses the group members and their individual performances and contributions to the group projects. Further, you will have a chance to assign a grade to each individual group member on the business plan and plan presentation projects. Ultimately, this component of the documentation project is meant to give you the opportunity to discuss, detail, and address issues (good or bad) that arose during the course of the semester group work. Please see the .pdf file with detailed instructions and prompt questions attached here.

Grading

The Documentation Project will be worth a total of 10% of your total course grade. This is an individual project. The grade breakdown for this project is as follows

• Weekly Record of Individual Contribution = 30%
• Individual Contribution Documentation = 30%
• Weekly contributions to class information repository = 20%
• Collaboration Evaluation = 20%

These documents will be graded on the clarity, rhetorical sophistication, presentation, and attention to audience and purpose.