Due Date: April 27
Your final project will show us the results of your platform or format research. The project can take any form and use any medium you choose, but you should choose that form or medium with a purpose. If you chose to make a short film, what is it about moving images that allows you to make your argument? If you choose to use sound, what does it afford you as you present the material? If you decide to write a paper, what is it about words on a page that make it the most useful medium for your project? These are just three examples, but the idea is to choose a medium and design your project with a purpose.
In addition to the project itself, you will compose a Statement of Goals and Choices (SOGC). This is an assignment that comes from Jody Shipka's book Toward a Composition Made Whole, and it asks you to reflect on why you built your project the way you did. There is no minimum or maximum number of words for the SOGC - it takes as many words as you think it takes to explain why you made certain choices and what you were trying to accomplish with the project.
The SOGC should answer the following questions:
- What, specifically, is this piece trying to accomplish - above and beyond satisfying the basic requirements outlined in the task description? In other words, what work does, or might, this piece do? For whom? In what contexts?
- What specific, rhetorical, material, methodological, and technological choices did you make in service of accomplishing the goal(s) articulated above? Catalog, as well, choices that you might not have consciously made, those that were made for you when you opted to work with certain genres, materials, and technologies.
- Why did you end up pursuing this plan as opposed to the others you came up with? How did the various choices listed above allow you to accomplish things that other sets or combinations of choices would not have?
When providing feedback on your project and SOGC, I will be looking for the following:
- Does your project demonstrate detailed and in-depth research of your platform or format?
- Have you carefully considered your research method and made that method clear to the audience?
Is your project effectively designed? Is there evidence that you've carefully chosen your medium and that the medium is appropriate for what you're trying to communicate? - Does your SOGC address all of the questions listed above?
- Is your SOGC (or your project, if it uses written language) generally well-written and free of grammatical errors?
