Project 2 (30 points total)

1. Ana­lytic Web­text — Infor­ma­tion & Argu­ment in Dis­ci­pline

due 13-Mar; 20 points; 1000 words 
• Post link to the web­text on your blog.

Objec­tive: Ana­lyze and syn­the­size ideas from crit­i­cal obser­va­tions: dis­ci­pli­nary con­ven­tions, of infor­ma­tion and argu­ment, com­mu­ni­cated to aca­d­e­mic read­ers (imag­ined audi­ence).

Web­text: (20 points, text + me­dia)
— first cre­ated indi­vid­u­ally, pre­sent­ing rhetor­i­cal analy­sis; then linked and pub­lished as class col­lec­tion for on­line read­ers.
 

• Con­tent: Present in­sights in crit­i­cal dis­cus­sion us­ing ana­lytic per­spec­tive & key terms; exam­ples drawn from sources se­lected (famil­iar and re­searched) for anno­tated bib­li­og­ra­phy, rel­e­vant and cur­rent for field con­sid­er­ing aca­d­e­mic read­ers (imag­ined audi­ence).
  Of­fers in­sights about forms of infor­ma­tion and argu­ments in spe­cial­ized dis­course of your field/discipline in “Infor­ma­tion Par­a­digm” —
  Dis­course com­mu­nity, com­mu­ni­ca­tion con­ven­tions (rhetorical/written)
  Infor­ma­tion, Knowl­edge, Exper­tise, Re­search, Argu­ment, Evidence/Proof

• For­mat: For­mal aca­d­e­mic style; present analy­sis effi­ciently and effec­tively con­sid­er­ing audi­ence and pur­pose, sup­port­ing with both spe­cific exam­ples and mul­ti­me­dia (e.g. screen­cap im­ages & screen­cast videos)
  → see De­sign Guide page
   
  Web­texts: “screen-based schol­arly arti­cles that use dig­i­tal me­dia to en­act the au­thors’ argu­ment.” (Ball)

Dig­i­tal Rhetoric
— thought­ful and reflec­tive prose with ad­vanced con­tent knowl­edge & per­spec­tive; sep­a­rate com­po­nents from web­text. → Present on page(s) on your blog.

1. Sum­mary (“De­sign Memo”)

• 300–400 words, 5 points, due 14-Mar

» Prompt: con­cisely and pre­cisely, de­scribe your Web­text de­sign and ratio­nale con­sid­er­ing audi­ence, pur­pose, and pub­li­ca­tion.
Rather than sum­ma­riz­ing process, be sure to dis­cuss thought­fully your in­tent and the ef­fects of the web­text, not­ing spe­cific choices and ele­ments — in terms of reader-focused de­sign (par­tic­u­lar audi­ence imag­ined) and your ratio­nale (most impor­tant).
 
 

2. Reflec­tion

• 500 words, 5 points, due 14-Mar

» Objec­tive: expe­ri­en­tial in­sights from over­all project, about your discipline/field and Web writ­ing.

Dis­cuss thought­fully and specif­i­cally your in­sights about dis­ci­pline, con­ven­tions, knowl­edge within “Infor­ma­tion Par­a­digm” (as one world­view):

- how infor­ma­tion is used/privileged; argu­ment/proof
– exclu­sions/omissions? (in what is thought or com­mu­ni­cated?)
– knowl­edge in­vented, dis­cov­ered, cre­ated, con­veyed, “ac­quired,” cir­cu­lated
– insti­tu­tions, roles; forms, “struc­tures”; lan­guages, dis­course com­mu­nity
– dis­course and knowl­edge dis­tinctly aca­d­e­mic, pro­fes­sional, pub­lic, social/community, per­sonal?

→ note: you need not ad­dress all these is­sues; how­ever, be sure to in­clude at least 2 of these top­ics when dis­cussing the Infor­ma­tion Par­a­digm as a par­tic­u­lar (sit­u­ated, rel­a­tive) “world­view“ 

* also: no need to compare/contrast with other par­a­digms (for in­stance, Belief/Story of Unit 1); this will be fo­cus of Blog En­try 3, sep­a­rately.