Today’s Plan:
- Quick Gloss of Abras et al
- Grant Project Dates
- Developing the Grant Project
- Grant Project Teams
- Homework
Abras et al on UCD
A few questions:
- What is UCD?
- How do you do UCD?
- How does UCD fit into the theoretical discussions of rhetoric we’ve been having all semester? That is, think of the following GRE style analogy: UCD is to X as Rhetoric is to Y
Grant Writing Project Dates
Let’s review:
- Week 8 Oct 9 & 11: On the 9th I will introduce the new third project. In place of a documentation project, we are going to do a recommendation report. Groups of 3-4 will research 4-6 potential grants in order to identify which ones would be most useful for our client. Reports will look into past award winners, application materials, organizational history and mission, and whatever else we can come up with. Between now and October 9th I’d like you to read Karsh and Fox Lessons 2 and 3 (“What is a Grant” and “What Do Grantmakers Want?”). We’ll use that reading on the 9th to inform the recommendation report.
- Week 9 Oct 16 & 18: Keep trucking on that report. Officer Reis will be visiting us on the 18th
- Week 10 Oct 23 & 25: Research for the grant. Begin Drafting.
- Week 11 Oct 30 & Nov 1: Complete drafting. Peer review.
- Week 12 Nov 6 & 8: Revise and complete grant application.
We’ll spend weeks 13, 14, 15, and 16 focusing on the job materials project–putting together a resume and cover letter for a specific job, developing an online portfolio of written/multimodal work, and establishing a professional online network (via twitter, linkedin, etc).
Grant Writing Project Stage One: Researching Potential Grants
Between now and next Thursday our priority will be identifying which grants we should pursue as a class. You will be breaking up into teams of 3-4. Each group will examine 4-5 potential grants and write up a recommendation report that includes their group’s detailed research. Officer Ries will be visiting us next Thursday–I’ll ask each group to develop a very quick presentation and handout that identifies why this grant is the best option out of the 4-5 they examined.
So there’s two group deliverables for the first stage of Project One due by next Thursday:
- Report
- Presentation
In next Thursday’s class we will identify which two grants, out of the four leading candidates, we are going to pursue.
We will spend time today figuring out what needs to be in the report. Obviously time is limited, so we need to be strategic and thoughtful in where we invest our energies this next week.
There is one thing I’d like to avoid. Each group will be examining 3-4 grant applications. I want to make sure that there is collaboration–that more than one set of eyes pass over each application.
Grant Writing Report
I want to try something a bit different today, something similar to how we collaborated on the Project 1 assignment expectations. I’ve put together a new Google Doc for the grant writing project. I want you to go through the Karsh and Fox chapters and populate the sections of the Google Doc. Let’s take a look and talk about how this can work.
Homework
We will talk about this in class. I have some thoughts.
