7-18-2019 Lesson Plan (WPC)

Unit 2 Project Peer Review (30 min)

Partner with someone and be prepared to give feedback on each document according to the following:

-Let’s do peer review like the other day. Give partner time to reach each job ad, and make sure they know which cover letter/resume pairing is for which job ad.

Here is simplified version from the other day:

Piece is read aloud. Author can stop as needed to make changes. Listener/reader marks page with things they like (underline) and things that could be improved (undersquiggle).
Listener then says back to author what they think the piece is doing at big picture level.
Then listener praises important or exciting ideas or beautiful or well stated language.
The listener talks about what is stuck, some suggestions to improve.
Listener clarifies feedback and listener/author talk through together plan for revision.

Visual Rhetoric (20-30 min)

Activity: Choose one of the example reports or one of the example proposals and take 5 minutes to consider how the “visual” components tend to strike you–what is “good” or “bad” about them? How do they help you understand the written components? Etc. If it takes you less than 5 minutes, choose a second proposal or report to look at and do the same task.

Adapted from BWE, here are some visual tools to support rhetorical goals:

Tables
Charts / Graphs
Illustrations
Maps
Photos
Infographics / Data Visualizations
Icons (e.g., a logo, a red octagon to symbolize stopping, etc.)
Elements of document design (color, font, lines/borders, spacing)
What else?

To depict:

Objects (diagram of mechanics of a machine, natural photograph of a tree, etc.)
Numbers (statistics of company performance, etc.)
Concepts (flow chart, concept map, hierarchical chart for org, model of theory like CMAP model of communication in BWE)
Words (font, color, borders/lines, other elements of document design)

Tips:

Be purposeful: just like words, carefully consider audience needs and goal of document before choosing and composing a visual component. Redundancy is totally okay, but NOT if it is making your document too long.
Cite any reference to a visual you did not create. If not in public domain or under CC license, you should recreate if drawn from public data instead of copy/pasting.
If working digitally, consider possible formatting issues. Something pulled from a website or from a PNG or JPEG may not look the same in a Word or PDF file. Consider adjustments as needed.
More resources for finding and using images can be found on this resource page I made about a number of resources on images, audio, etc.
To create or edit images, get comfortable being uncomfortable in programs like Excel, Photoshop, InDesign, PowerPoint, Publisher, etc. Lots of tutorials online: YouTube, Lynda (through Pitt), and free resources elsewhere that can help you learn as you go.
Be creative! People generally respond well to writing that has some images interspersed in a careful way. Always ask if there are ways to convert the more complicated parts of your writing into imagery somehow, or, to support parts of your writing with imagery that livens up your writing.
Don’t forget about accessibility! Always a good practice to use image descriptions, consider issues with color blindness, etc.

Advertisements:

Print ads (magazines, billboards)
Digital ads (targeted ads on webpages, video ads, interactive ads)
Television ads (15-30 second commercials on TV)
Radio / Podcast ads (person reading ad copy)

Look at some examples of effective advertising material here. What about the visuals draw you? Think about good qualities of visual rhetoric and how those are used to draw your interest and construct the kind of person they want you to be in response to the ad

Speaking of, with targeted advertising, a lot of ads we see are designed for kinds of people the advertisers see us as. Open your phone and scroll through your social media account. What kinds of ads pop up? Who are they “for”? Why are you getting them? What visual qualities are effective here?

Quantitative Rhetoric (45-60 min)

Quantitative Literacy

sample size (too small, subject to high variance)
not a representative sample (population looks very different from sample)
unfair comparisons (e.g., batting averages of hitters and pitchers, fat content of ice cream and pretzels)
losing context of study or figures (e.g., chocolate — study talks about associations between chocolate and weight loss, but reported on as chocolate causing weight loss…thus, study’s results are oversold unless correlation is extremely high in very large sample, there is other supporting evidence, etc.)
Are the methods appropriate? (How’d they measure? Does it make sense?; e.g., associations between chocolate and 18 other variables in the study made it likely that there’d be an association somewhere: see this article on an experiment in media coverage of a p-hacked study)

What else?

Questions to ask:

Ask “Who Says So?”
How Do They Know?
What’s Missing? (something being left out that could explain a point of emphasis?)
Did Somebody Change the Subject? (the author tells you how to interpret the figures, and maybe the interpretation and what comes after it don’t quite match up)
Does It Make Sense?

Potential outcomes:

These numbers don’t look right to me, I don’t trust this author’s competence.
I do not understand this statistic, I don’t trust my competence.
I understand this statistic. I trust my competence and, correspondingly, the author’s.
These numbers don’t look right to me, I don’t trust this author’s integrity.
I do not fully understand this statistic, but I trust the author’s integrity.
I understand the statistic, but don’t like the implication–perhaps my integrity is compromised by bias.

*Start with a combination of your gut and your ability: do I trust it or should I dig deeper?

Various Versions and Rhetorics of Quantity

Activity: What are all the other possible ways you could express “there’s a 98% chance everything is fine”?

With a partner, think of all the alternate ways you could express this statement. We’ll talk about if they “mean” the same thing, and what their effects might be.

Have at least 2 alternatives posted on this Google Doc.

Activity: With a partner or two, pull a statistic from this article on the statistics of the year for 2018. Think of at least 2 ways or more to rewrite the statistic while maintaining mathematical equality. And think of all the possible effects that these alternatives might have; list them out.

Now, try to make a visual. Keep track of your decisions. Have a title.

Questions to Discuss with Group:

Of these alternative versions of the initial statistic, which one does your group like best? Why? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each expression?

What general tips can you think of about word choice, syntax, use of visual rhetoric, mathematical expression (e.g., ratios, percentage), and contextual information based on this exercise? What sorts of things do you think are important when working with numbers rhetorically?

Graphs, Graphics, and Infographics

What qualifies as an infographic? What are its characteristics? How are they different from things like bar graphs that you can generate from Microsoft Excel or a table that you can make in a word processor?

Are there conventions as a genre you can begin to see as you compare these four infographics?

Think about these questions as you and your group look at the following infographics:

Caffeine in food and drink industry (scroll down for the larger graphic).

Acquisition strategies of tech companies

Drone strikes

Music artist online income

Let’s try to define some conventions for this genre and what is possible when composing an infographic. What should we keep in mind in regard to the following?:

Color?

Typography?

Arrangement?

Size?

Use of text?

Use of images?

Motion?

Where does an infographic go? For what purpose? For what kind of rhetorical situation (problem, constraints, audience)? What media can utilize it?

Why would you do an infographic and not an APA table or graph? What is the difference between an infographic and such a thing? How about a bar graph with some nice design elements: infographic or not?

Activity: Go back to the visual representation you made earlier. Would you call it an infographic? Why or why not? Go back and revise it–infographic or not–and make some changes in light of what we have talked about so far.

Break (10 min)

Public-facing Writing (30-45 min)

Public Writing Summary

What are some differences you’d have to consider when writing internally vs. writing to a larger external group vs. writing to (technically) “everyone”?

Websites and Social Media

How do you read a book or piece of paper differently from something on your computer or phone? If not sure, test it out with a piece of paper and compare to phone reading. Quantity over quality here, name everything that comes to mind.

Important principles for websites (adapted from WW):

Chunked text
Navigation at all times; be okay with redundancy
consistent design and organizational patterns
can scan for the essential information
use likely search terms in the text of your website (and, use in HTML…see Google’s SEO guidelines for a lot of tips related to this)
Use lots of links to connect within the site and (when relevant) connect to other places when they come up
Accessibility and alt text

Activity: Go back to these two examples from our design/accessibility activity: PennDOT Construction Webpage and Pittsburgh Public Schools “Facts at a Glance” Webpage. Click around the whole website, not just these two webpages. How did you navigate through? How is the text divided throughout the site? How is the design and organization throughout the site? Can you scan it easily? Why or why not?

Next, choose one of the companies you applied to and find their website. Do the same for what you did for PennDOT and PPS.

For those who get hired for the web development team, you’ll have to think about user needs which may alter your approach to your design. However, these general principles are very useful to website design.

I have information on this page of resources for some free website development platforms that you can play around with if that is the job you want.

Next, go on a social media account you have (if you don’t have one, google “social media” and “strategy” and “business” to find some examples or articles). Scroll looking for advertisements again. Choose a company and analyze their feed. What are some patterns you notice? What is the goal of companies on social media? How do they try to meet those goals rhetorically?

Differences between platforms for how companies write and engage with users? (Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, etc.)

The Press Release

Press releases are designed to get the company’s message out the way they want it to be out in news media. Therefore, there are two goals:

1) compose a message in a way that best reflects the company’s interests
2) write it in a way that makes it as easy as possible for a journalist, blogger, or whomever to more or less copy/paste chunks of your press release

Press release activity (adapted from Ridolfo and DeVoss, 2009):

Step One): Go to https://www.prnewswire.com/

Step Two): Select press release from last seven days. Event-specific or popular news item.

Step Three) Select and search for phrases (in word groups of three, preferably including one proper name) on both the web and the Google news aggregate site (www.google.com/news). Use quotation marks to perform a more honed search. So, rather than searching for a string of terms, search for an exact phrase from the original release, for instance: “three U.S. servicemen, missing from World War II, have been identified and will be returned to their families for burial with full military honors.” The quotation marks will direct the search engine to search for that particular phrase, rather than for web pages that happen to have individual words (e.g., families, burial, honors) within their content.

Step Four) If you’ve located some hits, analyze the results and compare what you have found to the original press release. In what different types of documents has the press release content been used? For what purposes? For what audiences? Are there any authors listed on the original release? On the new documents you have found? What can we learn about the compositional use of the original release?

Also:

What sentences and paragraphs are worth focusing on here between the press release and some of the articles you found? What about that selection or two seemed easily lifted from the original press release? Was it remixed in any way or was it a verbatim reprint?

Step Five) To what degree is it strategically plausible to think that experienced writers in this genre anticipate or strategize the re-composition of their work?

What other contexts in your future might you have to compose to be re-composed? Any professional writing contexts? Where does this most happen in public writing do you think?

Unit 3 Project Work (30-45 min)

Continue in your groups from Tuesday (7/16) to brainstorm potential ideas for our company’s product. Take 10-15 minutes to get down to 2 choices for your favorite ideas. Once both groups have their 2 choices, you will explain idea to class and we will vote for one of the four.

Next, start working on your resume and cover letter for the job you want: website development, public relations, marketing, advertising, or accounting.

Procedures and Instructions (20 min)

–Procedures. Go to the associated “procedure” for the copyright photocopying policy from earlier. Organized in terms of necessary knowledge and actions to take: E.g., purpose, scope, definitions, roles, actions to take for those roles for given situations.

Activity: If time, also, do the “make it worse” activity as we did for the policy. What did you do? Why?

–Instructions: usually for smaller, more material, and simpler/less legalistic tasks.

Activity: Pick something that you do everyday or nearly everyday that can also be done in class today (and is appropriate!). Write out instructions to do it. Partner will then follow your instructions exactly and see if they were successful.