Today’s Plan:
- New Major is Approved! Available starting in Fall of 2022
- Finalizing Data
- Generating Graphs
- Describing Visual Data
- Homework
New Major is Approved!
You can now major in Writing, Editing, and Publishing.
You can minor in Writing, too.
If you are an English Major, then you can complete your MA in our 4+1 program.
Finalizing Our Data Part One: A Final Review
Let’s go look at our spreadsheet. For the first 15 minutes of class, I’d like you to review codes–check for accuracy.
Let’s divide up the codes by rows so we get coverage all over the sheet.
Jobs:
- 0-40:Daggett, Garverick
- 41-80: Heppenstall, Kerr, Mason
- 81-120: Finken, Hoop, McIntire,
- 121-160: Flanagan, Kamm, Melendez
- 161-200: Freidenson, Kirk & Kirk,
- 201-249: Duran, Santos, Ruck, Miniter
Finalizing Our Data Part Two: Arithmetic
Let me share another spreadsheet, the Spring 2022 Final Codes Total Sheet.
Visualizing Our Data: Let’s Make Some Graphs
Today we are going to work with the data we produced in the last class to generate, label, and modify some graphs in Google Sheets. Learning outcomes:
- Inputting Data to the Template
- Generating a Graph
- Editing the Graph’s Axis/Labels/Title
- Modifying the Graph’s Appearance
- Inserting the Graph in a Google Doc
Inputting Data to the Template
Now you have to decide on which jobs your report will focus. You could write your report about all of the jobs. You could focus on Writing and Editing jobs. You could focus on Social Media and Marketing Jobs. Or Social Media, Marketing, and Design. Etc. Etc. My only requirement is that you report on more than one column of jobs.
In order to make it easier to generate graphs in Google Sheets, you are going to make a copy of this template and populate it with numbers. This will require you to do a bit more math.
Unless significant (something you want to highlight in your discussion), delete any columns that contain a zero or a really low number.
Generating a Graph
Here is a link to Google’s documentation on creating a graph in Google Sheets. Insert > Chart. Easy Peasie.
Editing the Graph’s Axis/Labels/Title
This is also covered in the documentation. Let’s change the title first to Figure 1. Tools and Technologies
Editing the Graph’s Appearance
Fonts
Label angle?
Neat trick: series > data labels
Inserting a Graph in a Google Doc
Two ways:
- Right corner of graph: Three dots. Copy. Then paste in your document [benefit: graph is linked, if you change the spreadsheet, it will auto-update the graph]
- Convert the graph into an image [benefit: easier to email to technophobes]
Describing Visual Data
Some generic Google search advice.
Homework
Remember that your homework for this weekend is to draft your methods section. If you want to get ahead, you should also write up the rest of your data section. We’ll brainstorm the Discussion section in Tuesday’s class, and talk about Introductions on Thursday.
One other challenge: these are not academic papers. They need to be formatted like a business paper, white paper, green paper, formal report, recommendation report, etc etc etc. The ABO book has a few useful examples. My thing(s):
- Title Page
- NO Abstract
- Table of Contents
- ToC means Page Numbers
- Headings
- Visuals need Figure labels and titles
- A bit of color never hurt anyone–or did it?
- I hate Times New Roman font and never want to see it again in my life
- 11pt sounds about write for body copy
- If you indent a paragraph, then I’ll think less of you (look closely at the formatting examples)
I think I’ve given you more hints about formatting here than I typically give.
Job Ad Report Expectations
Our first major paper this semester is the Job Ad Report. Generally this report is 6-8 pages, single-spaced (including title page, table of contents, and potential appendix). It does not need a formal reference list.
Rhetorical situation: we have been hired by the UNCo Department of English to write a report that can be delivered to high school seniors, and their parents, discussing the current job market for English majors. The report will also be distributed to University Administrators and used to leverage funding for the Department. The report will be shared with faculty in the Department ahead of a round of curricular revisions.
So we have multiple audiences for this report:
- Client: English Department
- Primary Audience: High School Seniors
- Secondary Audiences: Parents (who may or may not be skeptical that English is a viable career field), Administrators (who may or may not be skeptical of investing more resources in English, particularly money on technology-driven classes/computer labs), Faculty (who may or may not still see the mission of English tied to the traditional Liberal Arts education)
Specs:
- Length: Generally this report is 6-8 pages singled-spaced (this includes a title page, a table of content, and properly sized charts/graphs)
- Front Loaded Introduction: Does the intro summarize all significant findings and include specific, actionable recommendations?
- Methodology: The methodology section needs to do a few things. First, how did I collect the job ads (I described this process in a blog post, condense my Brumberger and Lauer discussion)? Second, how did you select your 20 jobs from the job corpus? Third, from where did we draw our coding scheme? Fourth, what did we do to ensure that our data was reliable? Could I recreate this work based on this section?
- Presentation of Data: Does the section contain a table or graph of data?
Can you understand the table or graph, or is there some mystery meat?
Does the writer make clear what the table or graph says? (Is there summary of visuals?) - Discussion of Data: Does the writer highlight significant or unexpected elements of the data? Does the writer put the data in conversation with previous research (Brumberger and Lauer)? Does the writer make specific recommendations based on the data?
- Style and Grammar [commas, run-ons, fragments, tense shifts, agreement errors, etc]
Does the paper reflect our work on style (Williams and Bizup, Characters and Actions)? - Does this paper reflect expectations for business formatting? (Check the ABO book)
- Title Page
- Page Numbers (should not include the title page)
- Also, this is a professional report, not an academic paper. We are not using APA or MLA format for citing sources. Instead, we will rely on AP style–which uses in-line citation.
