ENG 301 8.R: Social Media Crash Course

Posted on October 13, 2022 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Today’s Plan:

  • Write a Go West Email; Alternative Assignment
  • Elements of Social Media Management
  • Let’s Craft Some Tweets
  • Photoshop: Let’s Crop and Adjust Some Images
  • Homework: Fadde & Sullivan Email (from Tuesday’s Class); UNCO Social Media Project. Due next Thursday: Proficiency Project Materials

Elements of Social Media Management

Tweet composition exercise:

We’ve been hired by Connexions journal to craft a media campaign promoting Fadde and Sullivan’s article. They want us to produce 3 tweets, and one Instagram post.

Mentions: @psulliva, @DrFadde

We’ll collect that work here.

UNCO English and Halloween

I’m saving the last 20 minutes of class to discuss this project.

In the fall of 2020, we designed a quick contest called the Trick or Tweet contest (which last year we renamed FiveSentenceFrights–follow the UNCO English department and submit your story to be eligible for a prize).

NOTE: Make sure you are designing a contest that you would actually participate in! Because, um, y’all will (and so will all your classmates).

Here is a link to the Google Drive folder for media assets.

Homework

There’s two things I would like you to develop for Tuesday’s class. First, I would like everyone to develop and submit to Canvas a potential Halloween social media project for the UNCO English department. Please keep your pitch to one page (single spaced). I will print out these pitches and we will review/refine them in class on Tuesday.

We’ll also spend time on Tuesday discussing Fadde and Sullivan.

Let’s review the schedule I mapped out last Tuesday:

  • Tuesday, Week 7: Grant Writing Crash Course. Homework: Revising the Project section of a grant application.
  • Thursday, Week 7: Design Crash Course. Homework: Redesigning a bad flyer. Read Fadde and Sullivan.
  • Tuesday, Week 8: Discuss Fadde and Sullivan. Designing Information crash course.
  • Thursday, Week 8: Social Media Crash Course. Homework: Designing social media materials. Work on Major Project. Begin drafting Presentation script.
  • Tuesday, Week 9: Review and refine UNCO Social Media project. Discuss Fadde & Sullivan Emails. .
  • Thursday, Week 9: Team Presentations [October 20th]

Here’s how I originally described the Team Presentation project:

At the end of the three weeks, you will give a presentations that does two things: first, it informs the audience about the book you have purchased and read. It gives us a concise and practical sense of the rules, tips, theories you have learned.
Second, it shares the results of your group’s major work project. Those are:

  • Grant Writing: Your major project will be to complete a revision of the Kush Desai grant application–revising the other sections of the grant. You will also put together a preliminary funding target report.
  • Design / UX: Your major project will be to design a flyer, brochure, and 3 instagram posts advertising our new Writing, Editing, and Publishing major. This project probably involves interviewing me.
  • Social Media: You will design a Halloween contest for Instagram (Facebook and Twitter?). This will require rules, posts, images, documentation for the department team [a mini-content calendar], etc.
  • Go West Documentary Team: Conduct an interview with a friend. I will provide you some documentation on how to record an interview. SUPER CRASH COURSE.
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ENG 123 8.W: Interviews and Focus Groups

Posted on October 12, 2022 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Today’s Plan:

  • Interviews and Focus Groups
  • Homework

Interviews

Like focus groups, interviews are also constructed around recording responses to open-ended questions. Asking “yes” no questions, even with a “why?” follow up, tends to be counter productive.

For instance, don’t ask: “do you think gender portrayal in AAA video games is improving? … Why / not?” That might be an okay warm up question in a focus group (maybe), but if you’ve properly researched your interview subject, then you should be able to ask a more pointed, substantive question (move from attitudes to ideas): “What are some recent examples of games that are moving gender portrayal in more positive directions?” Or “Why, as the industry as a whole moves toward more positive portrayals, do you think games like Daddy’s Sugar Factory are still popular?” Good interviews will prompt experts to *think* rather than merely respond. And, like a good focus group leader, a good interviewer will be attuned to a subject’s comfort and mood–they can notice agitation and work to pull something more out of the subject (subtly re-asking a question).

So while you should enter an interview with a script of questions, you should also treat them as more free-flowing encounters. Great interviewers adapt their tone and approach to the specifics of the situation, paying close attention to their subject’s deportment and comfort level as the interview goes on.

Resources on interviews:

What is a prompt?

The goal of the prompt is not to get the respondent to answer a specific question but rather to provide the respondent with a device to think through and discuss a set of topics.

Jimenez and Orozco's 4 prompts: Grand Tour, Comparison, Counter-Factual, No-Limits

Let me try an example. Lets say I was going to interview someone on LGBTQ+ representation in video games. I could ask them a question like: “Do you think we need better representation in video games?” But this is a bad question. First, it is *really* leading them to say yes. Second, it is a “yes/no” question and offers them nothing to work through. What happens if I follow J&O’s four prompts?

My first question might become something like this:

  • Grand Tour #1: Where do you think we are in terms of representation of LGBTQ+ characters in games today as opposed to ten years ago? What milestones do you think of?
  • Grand Tour #2: For National Coming Out Day, Bungie officially announced the sexual orientations of 4 main characters. They identified St. 14 as gay, Eramis as lesbian, Mara Sov as bisexual, and Drifter as pansexual. What is your perspective on this kind of official announcement?
  • Counterfactual: So would you say we are past the point where these kinds of announcements matter?
  • Comparison: How do you compare what Bungie is doing here to, say, what Naughty Dog did in the opening chapters of Last of Us 2? [Follow up #1: If you had to chose one, which move is more impactful, LoU2 or Destiny? Follow up #2: How would you respond to accusations that LoU2 is gratuitous, using sexual activity as a selling point?]
  • No-Limits: What kinds of backlash do you think Bungie might face regarding this move? [Follow up: how might they best handle this backlash?]

My first two questions are both grand tour questions–I go from a general question to a reaction regarding a specific event. I move into counter-factual as a kind of follow up (counter-factual, because I imagine that my respondent WOULD think that representation matters a lot).
What happens if I follow Jimenez and Orozco and turn this question into a prompt? Something like:

Let’s take 5 minutes and think about how you might use J&O’s frame work to craft an interview question about gun policy, vaping, climate change, or some other topic. Indicate what kind of prompt you are crafting. Let’s put those questions here.

Focus Groups

Today I want to spend some time exploring focus groups. Focus groups can come in one of two generic flavors–either simple question/response (more common) or activity-based (less common). The value of a focus group lies in collecting a variety of perspectives *and* recording how people react to the ideas/opinions/experiences of other people. There is something unpredictably inventive, or choric, about the kind of dynamic conversations that focus groups can prompt.

  • Group size: 3-5, 6-8
  • Record discussion, assistant moderator takes notes
  • Generate an outline and a “script” of questions
    • Welcome
    • Overview of Topic
    • Ground Rules
    • First Question [Build Trust]
    • Follow Up Strategies
    • Second Question [Probe Attitudes]
    • Third Question [React to Commonplace / New Information]
  • Sample questions / activities
  • How to synthesize data

Let’s start by walking through this guide to focus groups by Richard Krueger.

Outside of academia, focus groups are generally used by marketing researchers.

You will also encounter focus groups in local journalism and political research

A potential activity.

Homework

Read the Corder essay and complete the post in Canvas.

Over the weekend I am going to ask everyone to focus on their methodology–even if I haven’t commented on the proposals yet, go back into your proposal and revise the primary research section. [If you are simply doing “extra research,” then just spend time doing research].

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ENG 301 7.R: Design Crash Course

Posted on October 6, 2022 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Today’s Plan:

  • CRAP
  • What Not To Do
  • Works Every Time Layout
  • Homework

As I said last class, I do not consider myself a designer. But I am someone who, when the occasion arises, can design something. While I might not think of myself as a creative genius, nor as someone who knows the fine minutia of the discipline, I know enough to create something that will look nice, communicate its purpose clearly, and not ended up being mocked in front of a class like this one.

What I have always liked about Rhetoric and Composition as an intellectual field is that our analytical tools, the ways of seeing we develop, are methods for generating, creating, composing. That is, we look at things to learn how to (and how not to) make them. Flyers. Speeches. Video games. Societies.

Today we work with flyers.

Basic Principles

My first foray into design was Robin Williams’ Non-Designer’s Design Book. In it, Williams lays out the basic C.R.A.P.:

  • Contrast
  • Repetition
  • Alignment
  • Proximity

These principles still ground a lot of design theory two decades later. Those who read White Space will encounter them with some different names, but the principles remain the same. For instance, let’s check out the website Clean Up Your Mess.

What Not to Do

Golumbiski and Hagen’s layout sins. How many sins does your image have?

Examples.

Works Every Time Layout

My bad to those on the Design team–I forgot I had a .pdf of the entire.

Homework

Redesign your ugly flyer, clean up its mess, using G+H’s Works Every Time Layout as a guide. You can use any technology you are comfortable with for your redesign. I’m not looking for a Canva template here–I am looking for you to design something (metaphor calculators vs boats).

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ENG 225 7.R: Project 2 Team Formations

Posted on October 6, 2022 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Today’s Plan:

  • Review Methodology Basics by Discussing Burgess et al.
  • Team Gender and Team Race
  • Starting Questions
  • Homework

Review Methodology Basics

Last class I introduced the 3 core methodological questions:

  • How did they collect the objects they wanted to analyze?
  • How did they analyze them? What measurements did they take? What “tools” did they use?
  • How did they ensure reliability? If there tools require human judgement, then how did they attempt to reduce variability or noise?

Those are the questions researchers use to gather evidence, analyze it, and produce knowledge. So, how does Burgess address this in its three different studies?

A Key Methodological Tool: The Likert Scale

While the term likert scale might be unfamiliar, I can almost guarantee you’ve encountered one before.

  • It is very likely you have encountered a Likert scale
  • It is likely you have encountered a Likert scale
  • It is neither likely or unlikely you have encountered a Likert scale
  • It is unlikely you have encountered a Likert scale
  • It is very unlikely you have encountered a Likert scale

Note: social scientists and marketers often omit the middle option above. Doing so forces a respondent to make a decision–and often the hardest decisions are those that require us to put something above or below the median cut line. The middle option provides respondents with an opt out.

Note: If you do a ranking scale, make sure you tell someone whether 1 is their favorite/good or 1 is their least favorite/bad.

I’ve already shared a few scales from previous semester with you. A refresh:

Story Driven Female Protagonist Tool

Is this character highly sexualized?

  • Highly sexualized (4)
  • Somewhat sexualized (3)
  • Somewhat unsexualized (2)
  • Highly unsexualized (1)

Let’s give this a try.

Race Research: Representation of Latino Characters

Does the character fit one of the following archetypes?

  • Spicy sexpot [oversexualized characters]
  • The maid / domestic servant
  • The gangbanger / drug dealer
  • Spanish only speaker / hyperbolic accent

Even this group was able to construct a Likert scale for these archetypes:

  • Very sexpot (4)
  • Somewhat sexpot (3)
  • Somewhat un-sexpot (2)
  • Very un-sexpot (1)

It isn’t as “clean” as the gender question, but it works.

Developing a Project

A few pointers. First, think about whether you want to analyze games covers, character selection screens, free mobile games, console games, a specific genre of games (sports games, non-major sport games, racing games, rpgs, fps, games marked E for kids, etc etc), user reviews of games, game trailers, etc etc. What are you going to look at? Are you going to check to see if a game has a Damsel in Distress, for instance? Or to see if the game has a non-male playable character? Or to see if the character creation process has start body size differences between male and female characters? Some of these things take more time to check than others–but I will set my expectations for what you do based on how much time it takes to process your research objects.

Second, think about what you are going to look for. I’d like for you to have one or two research questions to check. The gender group above asked the sexualized question, which is easy to see and measure. But they also asked an “empowerment” question, which was a bit trickier to suss out from looking at a game cover. Finally, they asked what we called the “Hawkeye” question: If the character is a woman, would it be weird to see a man in the same outfit? [Very weird, Somewhat weird, Somewhat normal, Very normal]

Group Spaces

Team Race:

Team Gender:

Homework

TBD.

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ENG 123 7.W: Constructing a Collaborative Annotated Bibliography

Posted on October 5, 2022 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Today’s Plan:

  • Annotated Bibliograph
  • Homework Reminder

Collaborative, Annotated Bibliography

Today most of you will be working in your team workspaces. The goal for today is to assemble all of the research you have individually conducted–and list all of the research that you plan to do–in one alphabetical list.

The plan will be to take every article from your proposal–whether a preliminary research article or a future research article–and add it to a collaborative annotated bibliography. This will involve revising the material you have and, in situations where more than one person has written an annotation, merging them. We’ll start this work in class and you will finish it for homework. The work you do assembling this out of class can go towards your 2 expected hours in the log (although I would like you to work for at least 30 minutes on something else related to the project this week–revising or combining annotations would count toward that work). Those of you working alone can take today to do some research and get ahead start on your week 7 Work Log.

To make the document more usable, we are going to use Headers similar to how we used them in your personal workspaces. Some of you have kept up with using headers and some haven’t, so lets review.

An annotation should have:

  • A first line drop indent
  • Keywords
  • Body paragraphs in block format with an additional 1/2″ indent

Homework

I’ve added the first work log assignment to Canvas.

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ENG 301 7.T: Grant Writing Crash Course

Posted on October 4, 2022 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Today’s Plan:

  • Parts of a Grant
  • General Strategies
  • Grant Research / Tools
  • Revising a Grant Application for Concision and Readability

Parts of a Grant

Let’s take a look at the Community Resource Center’s Common Grant Application. While there:

  • User’s Guide
  • Tips
  • Length of a Narrative: 4 pages, single-spaced

Grant writing 101: A Few Introductory Tips

  • Invention/Organization: Always be sure to read an RFP / application form extremely carefully and provide exactly [only] what the app / prompt is asking for
  • Invention/Diction: Always scan an organizations website and promotional materials for language and terms
  • Research: It is easier to find funds for “new” projects than for “general operating costs”
  • Style: Your prose must be concise, yet detailed and engaging. Every word or sentence has to count (because)
  • Organization/Style: Your reader is under no obligation to read your entire proposal. They will likely skim. We have to do everything we can to make the most important part of our application the most prominent and accessible

Grant Writing Research Tools/Process:

Homework

Two Things:

  • Revise the program section of our sample grant.
  • Find and take a photo of an “ugly” or “ineffective” flyer.

Also, here’s the calendar for the next few weeks:

  • Tuesday, Week 7: Grant Writing Crash Course. Homework: Revising the Project section of a grant application.
  • Thursday, Week 7: Design Crash Course. Homework: Redesigning a bad flyer. Read Fadde and Sullivan.
  • Tuesday, Week 8: Discuss Fadde and Sullivan. Designing Information crash course.
  • Thursday, Week 8: Social Media Crash Course. Homework: Designing social media materials. Work on Major Project. Begin drafting Presentation script.
  • Tuesday, Week 9: Designing Professional Presentations crash course. Homework: Complete Team Presentations.
  • Thursday, Week 9: Team Presentations [October 20th]
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ENG 225 7.T: Introducing Project 2

Posted on October 4, 2022 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Today’s Plan:

  • Introducing Project Two
  • Homework

Project Two: Representations of Gender, Race, and Sexuality in Games

Our first project this semester approached games as aesthetic objects; that is, we treated them as artistic objects and analyzed them to learn/challenge how they operate. Our second project this semester will approach games as social objects. Rather than analyze how they operate on us (affect our emotions and/or shape our attitudes), our analysis will focus on how games represent marginalized groups (particularly in the gaming sphere, which has a notorious reputation for being white, male, and hostile to difference).

You will work together in groups to analyze representations of gender, race, or sexuality in a specific genre of video games. You will work as a team to design a research methodology, collect “artifacts” (which collectively form your “corpus”), and analyze those artifacts. As a group, you will construct a heuristic for that analysis (a list of yes/no or a likert-like scale of things you can see). Unlike our first project, we do not have time to actually play the games for this project. Your group will analyze something like:

  • Game covers
  • Character selection screens
  • Game trailers
  • Significant NPC’s

You will work collectively to gather objects and generate your data. Here’s a few projects from the past couple of years. This means developing a methodology to select games to analyze. Here’s an example of a past methodology I helped a group develop that focused on female protagonists in story-driven games. This produced a list of games. And then this lead to a refined methodology.

Then, you will (collaboratively or individually–your choice) develop a paper of around 2000 words. Drafts of the paper will be due the Friday before spring break. Final drafts will be due Friday, March 26th. The paper will follow the “traditional” outline for qualitative or quantitative research:

  • Outline
  • Literature Review (we will likely skip this step by incorporating it into the introduction)
  • Methodology
    • How did you find the artifacts in your corpus?
    • How did you analyze them?
  • Data
  • Discussion
    • How does your findings compare to previous studies?
    • What didn’t surprise you?
    • More importantly, what did surprise you?
    • Why do you think you found what you found? What do you think you would find in 5 years [is there a trend? a reason to think some things might change?]
  • Conclusion

Let Me Do the Literature Review for You (Sorta)

The inspiration for this project lies in the work of This will be built off of the work of three other game scholars. First, the work of Extra Credit–I want to watch an example of this (to plant the seed for a future project), but also stress that this is the kind of deep analysis for this second project.

Second, Anita Sarkeesian, and her “Tropes in Games” project. Tropes in Games started as a kickstarter in 2013; Sarkeesian produced a series of videos examining the stereotypical portrayals of women in games. Let’s take a look. Again, Sarkeesian points to a problem that I would like to measure, but I do not necessarily believe we have the time (in this project) to replicate her method of analysis.

We might need this.
And this: Hawkeye Initiative.

Sarkeesian has done considerable work in this area. I see two ways of building off her work. First, we might explore whether representations of women have progressed: are contemporary games making the same mistakes? Are there some genres where this is more of an issue than others? Can we extend her analysis of Beyond Good and Evil to find other positive representations?

Second, we can extend her robust methodology to other representations: can we identify and develop a list of racial tropes for characters of color (for instance, “the criminal,” “the athlete,” “the minstrel,” “the black panther,” “the rapper”). Can we investigate representations of sexuality in games? Are there tropes for LBGTQ+ characters? Can we (maybe outside of the Mass Effect series) identify positive representations of non-CIS/heteronormative/binary sexuality?

The third scholar who influenced this project is Melinda C.R. Burgess, who has done a few studies on video game covers. You’ll read one of her co-authored articles tonight for homework. This is, I think, the best model for what we can hope to do in a few short weeks.

Full disclosure: I originally wrote the paragraphs above in 2018, and I just copy/paste them every time I teach this class. However, I do think there is some progress that suggests we are seeing better representation (even if Sarkeesian herself has done research that leaves her underwhelmed). This is probably a question of for what and where you want to look–if you want to find progress, then you can find it. And if you don’t, then you won’t. I don’t write this sarcastically, simply to say that the representation of race, gender, and sexuality in games reflects the fraught social and political climates outside of them.

Homework

For Friday’s class, read Burgess et al (2011) “Playing with Prejudice” in the files section of Canvas. There’s a writing assignment in Canvas called Writing a Research Annotation that you need to complete before class.

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ENG 123 7.M: Surveys and Work Logs

Posted on October 3, 2022 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Today’s Plan:

  • Surveys
  • Work Logs
  • Homework: Finish Proposals

Surveys

Surveys typically collect three kinds of information:

  • Attitudes and Preferences [data]: Generally leans towards what we should do.
  • Opinions and/or Reactions [data]: Generally measures thought about what we have done.
  • Demographic information [What do I need to know about my audience to frame my data]

Generally, you measure attitudes and preferences using multiple choice, ranking (favorite to least favorite) or likert scales. While the term likert scale might be unfamiliar, I can almost guarantee you’ve encountered one before.

  • It is very likely you have encountered a Likert scale
  • It is likely you have encountered a Likert scale
  • It is neither likely or unlikely you have encountered a Likert scale
  • It is unlikely you have encountered a Likert scale
  • It is very unlikely you have encountered a Likert scale

Note: social scientists and marketers often omit the middle option above. Doing so forces a respondent to make a decision (the middle option provides them an opt out).

Note: If you do a ranking scale, make sure you tell someone whether 1 is their favorite or 1 is their least favorite. That is, if you ask someone to rank their preferences from 1 to 5, then be sure to write something like: please rank the following options from 1 (least favorite) to 5 (favorite).

We can collect more information in surveys via open ended, free write questions. There’s a few issues with these though. One is that people are likely to skip them. If you have more than one of these in a survey, your response rate is likely to plummet. The other difficulty is that these require quite a bit of time to “code”: that is, to go through and synthesize responses. However, that time is usually rewarded; for instance, I’ve published several articles on experimental class projects and I often get the best data from open-ended student responses, but this data takes much more time to analyze than a likert question.

Collecting demographic information is tricky because (some) people are skeptical of surveys. People can become suspicious if they think they know what your survey is attempting to prove. This can, if they disagree with you, create animosity, and lead to survey trolling. This is one reason it is important to create neutral, objective, balanced questions that do not preference a particular response.

Survey skepticism can often surface as a resistance to supplying demographic information. You have to think about what information you need to meaningfully code and analyze your data. A lot of the time, I complete a survey and wonder why they need to know how old I am or my sexuality. However, sometimes demographic information is extremely important–especially if we hypothesize that subject position informs outlook. So–an important preliminary question is to ask whether I *really* need to know demographic data.

If you need to collect demographic data, particularly data relating to race, sex, gender, and/or sexuality, then you need to be careful, diligent, and respectful. I think gender and sexuality are particularly difficult these days, given the rapid reconceptualization of those concepts (which is a good thing). So we should spend some time investigating how to ask demographic questions, particularly about gender and sexuality.

There’s more information on question types and some tips in this article.

What Not to Do in a Survey

Some general tips (emphasis–avoid loaded words). Some more tips (emphasis–use audience’s language).

Ok, let’s try an exercise.

A classic example of how not to construct a survey.

Okay, now let’s try crafting a survey question.

Work Logs

Wednesday we are going to be working in our old group workspaces.

The plan will be to take every article from your proposal–whether a preliminary research article or a future research article–and add it to a collaborative annotated bibliography. This will involve revising the material you have and, in situations where more than one person has written an annotation, merging them.

Beyond the annotated bibliography, I expect you will spend the next 3 weeks doing two things:

  • Reading the future research you listed in your proposal. You will add annotations to the group bibliography (that is, share your work)
  • Developing & conducting your primary research (survey, focus group, interview, textual analysis)
  • Writing Work Logs in your own personal workspace

A work log is a 3-4 sentence description of the labor you invested in your project that week. It details how many hours you spent, and what you did during that time. These do not need to be extensive, especially if I can see the work in your workspace. For instance, you might say “this week I spent and hour and a half writing an annotation and another 1/2 hour developing the survey questions.” Clear cut.

You might also write something like: “This week I spent an hour revising two of the annotations in the shared workspace (Brunell 2013 and Higgins et al 2020). I also spend a half hour searching for more relevant articles on Google Scholar (found this article here, skimmed it and plan on using a few survey questions). Finally, I spent a half an hour writing up my methodology section.

As you can see from these examples, I expect you to invest two hours a week into our writing projects outside of class. I use work logs here because everyone writes in different ways. I cannot rigidly demand that you do X amount of research or draft Y amount of pages. I can tell you that around November 1st I will ask you to have completed your primary research project and that you’ll be expected to have a full draft of your paper the Friday before Thanksgiving. Rewarding the incremental progress you make via Work Logs should help keep you productively on track, however you chose to approach those goals.

Homework

Complete your proposals!

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ENG 301 6.R: Proficiency Projects

Posted on September 29, 2022 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Today’s Plan:

  • Proficiency Project
  • Community Engagement Opportunities
  • Reports
  • Homework

Proficiency Project

Somehow I’ve fallen a little behind this semester–looking at last year, we normally have completed the report by the end of week 5 and are working on the Proficiency Projects in week 6. To make up for lost time, I am going to slightly modify what we do this semester. Normally, I would break you up into three different “classes,” with each team working on a different set of three deliverables. This semester, we’re going to do something different.

For the next three weeks, we are going to dedicate one class session to three different professional writing specializations, so that everyone gets a taste of different work you might do in our major project, Project 3, the Community Engagement project. Those specializations are:

  • Grant Research and Writing
  • Design and User Experience
  • Social Media Content Development and Management

At the end of the three weeks, you will give a presentations that does two things: first, it informs the audience about the book you have purchased and read. It gives us a concise and practical sense of the rules, tips, theories you have learned.

Second, it shares the results of your group’s major work project. Those are:

  • Grant Writing: Your major project will be to complete a revision of the Kush Desai grant application–revising the other sections of the grant. You will also put together a preliminary funding target report.
  • Design / UX: Your major project will be to design a flyer, brochure, and 3 instagram posts advertising our new Writing, Editing, and Publishing major. This project probably involves interviewing me.
  • Social Media: [I need to talk to our department social team, so this is tentative] You will design a Halloween contest for Instagram (Facebook and Twitter?). This will require rules, posts, images, documentation for the department team [a mini-content calendar], etc.

So let me map out the next few weeks:

  • Tuesday, Week 7: Grant Writing Crash Course. Homework: Revising the Project section of a grant application.
  • Thursday, Week 7: Design Crash Course. Homework: Redesigning a bad flyer. Read Fadde and Sullivan.
  • Tuesday, Week 8: Discuss Fadde and Sullivan. Designing Information crash course.
  • Thursday, Week 8: Social Media Crash Course. Homework: Designing social media materials. Work on Major Project. Begin drafting Presentation script.
  • Tuesday, Week 9: Designing Professional Presentations crash course. Homework: Complete Team Presentations.
  • Thursday, Week 9: Team Presentations [October 20th]

We will start the Community Engagement projects Week 10.

Community Engagement Projects

Speaking of these, let me share a few emails.

Homework

Finish your Job Analysis Reports and make sure you have gotten a hold of one of the following books (this will determine your Project 2 team, but you will still have the option of working on a different project 3 team):

  • Grant Writing: Karsh and Fox, The Only Grant Writing Book You Will Ever Need
  • Document Design: Golumbiski and Hagen, White Space is Not Your Enemy
  • Campbell, How to Build and Mobilize a Social Media Community for Your Nonprofit in 90 Days
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ENG 123 6.W: Developing a Research Question

Posted on September 23, 2022 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Today’s Plan:

Sample Project: Heller

So I just got finished going through the first round of Booth questions, and I have some concerns. I do not see enough focused research questions. Some of this might be that folks haven’t read the research they are annotating closely enough and are just surface skimming. But some of it might be that I am asking you to do more cognitive work than you are ready to do. So let me show you how I would go about putting together a research proposal on gun policy.

Thinking through Friday’s Booth #2 activity: when it comes to guns I know one of the big historic shifts is a Supreme Court case called District of Columbia vs. Heller. I’d be kind of surprised if anyone in the Gun Policy groups hasn’t heard of this one. Before I started researching it, all I knew was that this decision reinforced (or expanded–depending on your academic/political perspective) an individual’s right to own a gun.

So, what am I going to do?

Just skimming some stuff while searching, I’ve learned that Heller was a surprising decision. It settled a LONG standing debate about the second amendment, and it did it in a way that legal scholars and experts didn’t expect.

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