ENGLISH 1301: Essentials of College Rhetoric

Unit IV: Investigating a Question

Rationale for the Unit

Writers in the 21st century increasingly compose and produce writing that communicates in digital environments and across space and time. Writing is no longer tethered solely to alphabetic text in a Microsoft Word document. In this unit, we will explore what it means to write for and in different media than the traditional essay. We’re also using this project to explore inquiry and investigation into a research question. Ultimately, your multimodal project should construct a new way of seeing an issue, topic, or problem that does more than simply reproduce the arguments of others; you’re composing your own meaning and knowledge here. Good research starts with a question and explores that question from a variety of angles. To research for this multimodal project, we will be drawing on a variety of research practices (observations, interviews, secondary research, other texts of various kinds).

Our goal is not to produce professional, studio-quality multimodal projects. Rather, our goals are to put into practice research as inquiry and discovery, to make purposeful and informed rhetorical choices as you compose a project, and to gain practice composing in a medium other than traditional, alphabetic text. In many ways, this project mirrors the work of much academic and civic writing: inquiring into a focused problem or question, exploring the contours of that problem or question, and creating a project that responds to that problem or question with a specific purpose for an audience.

Course Goals for This Unit

Rhetorical Knowledge

•    Use key rhetorical concepts through analyzing and composing a variety of texts

•    Develop facility in responding to a variety of situations and contexts (academic and

nonacademic) calling for purposeful shifts in voice, tone, level of formality, design, medium, and/or structure

•    Use a variety of technologies to address a range of audiences

•    Read and compose in several genres, understanding how genre conventions shape and are shaped by readers’ and writers’ practices and purposes

Inquiry & Research

•    Locate and evaluate a variety of primary and secondary research materials

•    Summarize, paraphrase, analyze, and synthesize information from a variety of sources in their writing

•    Incorporate work created by others in a variety of media (e.g., text, images, sound, video) ethically and effectively for rhetorical purposes

•    Apply citation conventions appropriate for genre, purpose, and audience

•    Formulate viable research questions, hypotheses, and conclusions

Writing Processes & Craft

•    Develop a writing project through multiple drafts

•    Develop flexible strategies for reading, drafting, reviewing, collaborating, revising, rewriting, rereading, and editing

•    Evaluate the work of others, give useful feedback to others on their writing, and evaluate and incorporate feedback from others in their own writing

•    Assess accurately the strengths and weaknesses of their own writing, and develop individual plans for revision and improvement

•    Enact revision as substantive change

•    Assess accurately the strengths and weaknesses of their own writing, and develop individual plans for revision and improvement

•    Enact revision as substantive change

Project 4: Inquiry-Based Multimodal Project with Statement of Goals and Choices

Prompt

Create a multimodal project that investigates and explores a focused research question about an aspect of where you live (i.e., in Lubbock; in a specific area within a city [TTU housing, for example]; and/or in another city, state, or region). Drawing on primary research, your multimodal project should go beyond a physical description of the location and examine a detailed question (or two) that you have about the   experience(s) of doing life in this place. In other words, you are invited to discover more about this place as a site of cultural, social, and material realities, as you engage with interesting research (like observations, interviews, and secondary research, if necessary).

Further Explanation

For this project, you will make interesting connections between your focused research question and the sources you are working with. Those connections do not just exist “out there”: Good researchers make those connections for their audience and do interesting things with the research. You will need to consider who your audience is and to develop a clear statement of purpose for your multimodal project. Who do you want to reach with this project? And, in what ways and through what methods will you best be able to achieve your goal(s)? You will want to choose the genre, medium, form, and organization of ideas that will best engage your audience in order to successfully reach your purpose (to investigate and explore, NOT to argue a point). You will want to find models of the genre and form to help you understand the conventions expected of this genre and medium. For example, if you select to create an interactive essay for a specific online venue, you should read/view models in that venue to understand   the conventions and expectations of that forum and audience.

To explore your focused research question, you should draw on primary research—or data and information that you’ve gathered yourself. While you’re welcome to include secondary research (what others have already said about your topic), you should explore your research question primarily through primary research: interviews, observations of places or spaces, quasi-ethnographic studies, historical documents, oral histories, and so forth.

I recommend starting with your research question (what you want to explore), then deciding how you’ll explore that question (what researchers call methods), and then considering how you want to convey  your exploration (the genre and modes you use) and to what purpose and audience.

As you brainstorm, draft, research, and compose, you should consider many of the same aspects of a situation you would if you were writing something more traditional: audience awareness, evolving an idea, anticipating listener/viewer/reader objections, creating cohesion, referencing and giving credit to sources, and so forth. You should also make decisions about the tone, form, genre, and organization of your multimodal project to help you reach your rhetorical goals.

The multimodal project will be accompanied by a Statement of Goals and Choices that explains your rhetorical goals, risks and constraints, and what rhetorical, technological, material, and methodological choices you made for the project.

Explanation of Statement of Goals and Choices

This explanation of at least 750 words should explain to me exactly how this project makes (or perhaps fails to make) particular meanings for your audience. In this essay, detail your rhetorical and technological choices. Your statement should respond to the following questions:

1.    What was your focused research question(s)? What, specifically, are your goals (personal and rhetorical) in creating this multimodal project to investigate this question(s)? What does this   multimodal project do and for whom (the audience)?

2.    You will make a lot of choices as you create this multimodal project. What specific choices did you make in service of accomplishing these goals? Include both intentional choices and choices you made that you only realized were choices after the fact. Include a discussion of choices regarding material and technology (what you used and how), methods (how you researched and approached your audience), and rhetoric (organization of ideas, visual/sonic experiences for the  audience, the inclusion or exclusion of material, and so forth).

3.    Why did you pursue this plan and make these choices instead of other plans or choices? How did these choices help you accomplish your goals?

4.    What risks did you take and why? How did those risks play out in terms of accomplishing your goals with the project?

This statement is a formal essay: It should make clear claims about your process and product supported by explanation and evidence.

Expectations & Guidelines

In order to earn a C, your project should conform. to these guidelines:

Multimodal Project

• Focused and cohesive. Your multimodal project should investigate a focused research question (or two) about how the experiences of doing life in a specific place. The project should go beyond physical descriptors and explore cultural, social, and/or material realties of the place. Important: A successful project will be exploratory, not argumentative.

•    Reach the length guidelines. Interactive/Multimodal Essay or Report (1500-2000 words);

Podcast Episode or Audio Essay (8-10 minutes); Video Essay (5-10 minutes); Social Media Campaign (8-12 interactive, multimodal posts); Instructor approval for Other Ideas

• Multimodal. Your multimodal project is not simply your words as text on a page or screen, but incorporates other modalities, like audio, visuals, movement, tactile materials, etc.

• Explores your question through primary research.

• Carefully put together assets (images, clips, sound effects, music, printed text) in ways that

are purposeful. You will want to effectively compose with a variety of sources and to be purposeful in your decisions of what to include, being able to connect those choices to your audience and purpose. Consider what each asset is doing (e.g., creating an emotion) and be able to explain its use.

• Ethical and legal use of source material. As you compose, you will need to consider your source material, the ethical and legal constraints of selecting material, and how you integrate sources and cite, reference, or give credit to them.

• Posted in a location that is conducive to the medium and shared to Blackboard. For example, for a podcast, post to SoundCloud (or a similar site) and share the link to Blackboard. For a video essay, you may want to upload to YouTube (or a similar site) and similarly share the link to Blackboard. Files that are image or print-based with interactive materials may be uploaded directly to Blackboard if within the file size limitations.

• Includes a title and blurb that readers, viewers, and/or listeners might initially encounter before consuming the entire project. The title should be engaging, and the blurb should briefly introduce your project to the audience, helping them understand the purpose.

• Designed for accessibility. We want to design new media projects for universal design, so we

want to take into consideration audiences with different abilities. For audio-based projects, you will need to also submit a transcript as a .docx file to Blackboard to accompany your project for  accessibility purposes. As you transcribe, you will want to describe sounds contextually and be clear about who is speaking (and perhaps even for what purpose). Or for video-based projects, you will need to include captions, and perhaps even visual descriptions. For whatever medium    you’re working in, consider how you can make the project as accessible as possible.

Statement of Goals and Choices

•    Is at least 750 words in length, double-spaced, in a 11-12 pt. font

•    Is clear about both your personal goals and your rhetorical goals (what the project is trying to do and for what audience)

•    Explains the choices you made regarding material, technology, methods, and rhetoric and why you made those choices

•    Explains why you pursued this plan or these choices instead of other plans or choices

•    Explains risks you took, why you took those risks, and how those risks helped (or harmed) you reaching your goals and purpose

•    Uses clear language and is carefully edited

In order to earn an A or B, your multimodal project and statement of goals and choices should conform to the following degrees of excellence:

• Sophistication of discussion. Does the multimodal project explore your question in sophisticated and interesting ways? Does your statement of goals and choices show a sophisticated understanding and explanation of your goals and choices?

• Specificity and clarity. Does the multimodal project dive into specifics about the question, rather than sit at the level of generality? Does the statement of goals and choices provide specific and clear claims about your goals and choices? Does the essay support these claims with clear and specific evidence (that is, examples from your project)? Is the evidence discussed in ways that support claims (that is, they are analyzed and explained rather than expected to speak for themselves)?

• Organization. Is the multimodal project organized in a purposeful, sensible, and effective

fashion that helps it cohere and accomplish its purpose? Is the statement of goals and choices  organized in a sensible fashion that helps it cohere as an essay, with transitions between ideas and clear topic sentences?

• Style. Are the multimodal project and statement of goals and choices relatively free of surface errors? Do the multimodal project and statement of goals and choices show evidence of being crafted rather than simply drafted and submitted?