Month: August 2021

Instructions for submitting your final work

With the end of the summer term quickly approaching, you’ve got some key deadlines this week. Read on for instructions and deadline info.

First off, if you have any missing assignments, you can submit those through the end of the day on Friday, 8/27. I cannot accept any work after that time. We’re headed directly into the fall semester, so it’s essential that we get this summer term wrapped up on time.

Now, for the week’s main events:

Research project

Final projects will be due by the end of the day on Wednesday, 8/25. Please post your project to the blog, and be sure to do the following:

  • if your project takes the form of anything other than a blog post (for which you could use Expressions to build your document), please insert your project into the post as a universally usable file (i.e. PDF) or link. Use the “+” button on your post to do this (scroll down to the Media section and choose “File”).
  • in the body of your post, include a brief outline of the rhetorical situation for your text–the audience, purpose, mode of delivery/publication, etc. (Remember that you have full control over this and can create whatever hypothetical situation you desire.)
  • categorize your post as “Taking it public,” and tag it with “final project,” “unit3,” “weekof8/23,” and [your name].

Course reflection

Your Unit 3/final course reflection will be due by the end of the day on Friday, 8/27. Please refer to the unit 3 assignment sheet for the prompt for this 500-word post. Please note:

  • this should read like an essay (not just a Q&A)
  • you should categorize this post as “Taking it public,” and tag it with “weekof8/23,” “reflection,” “unit3,” and [your name].

Thanks for all your hard work this summer. You’ve been great colleagues to one another–engaged and supportive. I know this next few weeks will be busy, but I hope you will check back in to review one another’s projects. You’ve all done some great work, and it’s been really rewarding to see you share your ideas with one another.

Discussion Questions Week of 8/16

“LGBT Workers and the Minimum Wage” is a one-pager that looks into the disparities Queer workers in America face and how raising the minimum wage will help alleviate them. The Leadership Conference Education Fund, National Center for Transgender Equality, and National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Action Fund all contributed in the creation of this text. Because of this, there is a great variety of relevant statistics throughout. There is also a good connection between these facts and idea of raising the minimum wage on a federal level. The authors also include support in the form of benefits that spread beyond the LGBTQ community which help their text appeal to a wider audience. 

The use of the image and quote from Bayard Rustin in the upper right hand help to break up the writing and shift the readers focus away from the main text. I believe this is a good decision because it keeps the readers attention through the use of a visual aspect. However, I also believe that the size of the image is disproportionate to the page being that they included the sources into the one page format. For my one-pager I will also include an image or two but I will include them in the middle of the page and center the text around it in order to have more space for my own writing.

https://www.thetaskforce.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/LGBT-Workers-and-the-Minimum-Wage-2014.pdf

Discussion 7/5

Response #1

I found Caitlin’s focusing on gender diversity in the police force to be intriguing. In the article, several female interviewees from the Canadian police department were asked about their experiences with discrimination, and various factors were noted which made them feel that way (such as the treatment pre- and post-pregnancy, examinations that give advantages to males, and etc.) For years, the female makeup of the Canadian police force stabilized at 13% and does not correlate to the sex ratio in Canada (from figures 1 and 2). In the TED video that came along, a woman that rose in ranks from officer to police chief pointed out the benefits of having women in the police force. This video was interesting to me because I remember many years ago when I read a report about criminal psychology and interrogation within the police department, and that an outstanding amount of criminals are willing to confess if the interrogator is a woman. I don’t know if studies have changed over the years, but if this maintains to be the case then having more women within the force should become a necessity, not out of social obligation but out of the will to increase the efficiency of the police department.

Response #3

Bogost’s article was a great read since it was similar to Austin/Pisano’s style of writing: a storytelling narrative. The audience follows the journey of Amy Webb, and we have the ability to empathize with her after reading through her experiences at the airport and truly understanding her problems. But writing a post simply in a storytelling method does not guarantee success, and Bogost managed to capture the reader’s attention with his transitions. Strong transitions in the article such as “But that’s an aspirational hope” and “Those efforts have merit” easily helps to bring the reader to the author’s next point.

Discussion 8/16

For my unit 3 project, I have decided to focus on men’s mental health and raise more awareness on the stigmas surrounding the issue, such as “men are not allowed to show emotion”, “men should not cry”, etc.  To teach more about this, I think that the target audience is between teenagers to young adults, so high school and college male students.  The best way to reach this group, in a professional manner, would be through an educational infographic sent by the place of education.  By sending out a campus wide email, it ensure that the pertinent information is easily accessible, concise, and available to a large portion of the target demographic. 

I am aware that an issue with sending a school wide email is that many students tend to, either ignore their emails or briefly skim them.  To counteract the proclivity to glance at the emails, I would make it as brief as possible, yet maintain a good amount of necessary information in easy-to-read sections.  And for the students who neglect to read the email at all, the infographic could be printed out in poster format and posted to various doors in different halls.  Therefore, I will try and make the infographic as visually pleasing as possible.

The reason I think that this information for this target audience should come from the schools, is to solidify that men have resources to help deal with their mental health issues that are offered at most colleges/ universities/ high schools.  At the end of the memo, I would remind the students that there are always people willing to help, and in Syracuse’s case, just a phone call away or right across campus at the Barnes Center.

What is an Infographic? Examples, Templates, Design Tips

I personally really like this infographic in reference to my research because I could try to make mine come across as a sort of step by step to getting help and to counteract the stigma behind men’s mental health.  I also want to include statistics on my infographic so I am still looking around at different examples. With this particular one, I enjoyed that it is very simple and easy to understand but that also just makes it a little boring, so I want to make mine more engaging.

Audience, audience, audience

Know the 3 most important factors in real estate? Location, location, location.

Well, for writing, it’s audience.

Take a look at the rubric for your Unit 3 project, and you’ll see this come up again and again–note how many of these items hinge on textual features that are appropriate to the audience. That’s why you need to have a very clear picture of who your audience is, so that you can better assess what they will need and expect from you, so that you can deliver.

Presenting your research in an audience-appropriate fashion is the critical to the success of your communication. You might have terrific information and important new ideas to share, but if you can’t make them land with your audience, there’s little point in you writing in the first place.

That’s why we’ve spent the last couple of weeks looking at texts that weren’t scholarly articles or straightforward academic-style essays. Those genres work really well for certain audiences and purposes–to communicate cutting-edge new ideas to other people with some background knowledge/expertise in the field–but they don’t work well for everybody all the time. We depend upon other genres to communicate in other situations.

And that’s why I’ve asked you to get pretty specific in setting forth the rhetorical situation that you’ve conjured for this text you’re creating. In order to understand and evaluate your work, your readers need to know just who you’re aiming to reach and under what circumstances. That’s why I asked you to include an explanatory note with your draft. You’ll do the same with your final revised version.

It’s worth reviewing some of the myriad ways in which audience matters

Decisions about audience and purpose are intrinsically connected–it wouldn’t make sense to provide general knowledge background to people who are already experts, nor would it make sense to lobby entry-level workers for policy change (since they’re not the ones who make those decisions). Your audience and your objective need to be tightly and logically connected.

Your audience dictates various writing choices–how long will you be likely to have your readers’ attention? how much specialized jargon can you use? how much background information will you need to provide? what’s an effective level of detail? what kinds of examples will they be most interested in? what source information will your readers expect to have for their own follow-up? what kind of relationship will you seek to establish with them?

Knowing your audience lets you shape your text to be functional for them–in terms of level of formality, voice, use of graphics/media, visual organization of the text, incorporation of external links, etc.

I encourage you to reflect on these choices as you’re completing the revision exercise this weekend and as you’re revising your final project for submission on Wednesday, 8/25. Please note that due date–the final project is NOT due on the final day of the summer term, in part because you have some other work to complete afterward (your course reflection and any outstanding assignments you might have, AND in part because I know this is a transitional period for many of you who are heading into fall classes and/or other responsibilities. This way you’ll have one big thing cleared off your plate and will be that much closer to moving on.

If you have any questions as you’re working on your revisions, please don’t hesitate to email me. I’m happy to correspond that way or to chat by phone/Zoom. It’s been nice to see some of your faces (albeit on a screen) over the last few weeks. I’ll gladly arrange a time to chat with any of you who would like.

Hope you can all find some time to enjoy this last week of summer. To those of you in NY/New England, best wishes over the next 36 hours–I hope Hurricane Henri decides to shift course and pass offshore. Stay safe.

Research Project Draft- Joanna

rough-draft-final-vines-wrt-205Download

I attached my rough draft/brainstorm sheet for my infographic! I have found a lot of sources and took some notes but I need to organize it and pick out the most important pieces. I created my own template on canva and I made a tentative title. I am nervous all my information will not fit. Let me know what you think! 🙂

Research Project Draft

AI in HR Resource Center Blog

Here’s a link to the blog I created. The content to review is on the Home/Welcome page, Blog page, and Essential Reading page, which includes all of my references. I look forward to getting everyone’s feedback.

As I researched AI in HR this summer, I realized that there isn’t an online resource center dedicated to collecting and sharing information about this issue. I saw an opportunity to create a blog that could eventually grow to become the trusted resource for the community interested in this topic. My target audience includes people concerned with protecting worker and civil rights, including the workers themselves, but more specifically individuals who have some authority to make change, such as disability rights activists, social justice activists, legislators, scholars, journalists, and people working in employment law. My audience also includes business and human resource leaders, developers of AI for HR technologies, and others interested in improving their products and practices.

I realize that the long-term scope of this project is huge, so my goal was to set up a flexible framework for the blog and write a couple of posts to welcome readers and introduce some of the more pressing issues, especially those related to bias and discrimination. Depending on how much revising I need to do by next week, I may also add a sample advocacy letter in that section of the site.

I know it will require lots of effort to draw traffic to a new blog, but I can imagine ways to do that by writing posts on other sites and referencing my blog, using social media, and inviting contributing writers who have many followers. Because different stakeholders have different goals, I will strive to invite contributions from different points of view. Ideally, the blog would grow to become a vibrant forum for the exchange of information and discussion of issues leading to more transparency, more accountability, and real change.

Taking It Public Draft-Ed-Invisible Disabilities

This is a draft of my project which is a memo written to advisors of individuals with invisible disabilities. I envision this as offering advise to professionals who work with individuals with disabilities. For example, Syracuse University has individuals assigned to work with people that have disabilities to help their transition to the University as well as work with them on whatever adjustments are needed.

Let me know what you think.

WRT-205-Draft-Final-Project-FurcinitoDownload

Research Project Draft – Sherri

I am writing an article for business leaders who understand that they should have a solid diversity policy in place but don’t realize that those policies might miss the mark when it comes to their Black employees. These leaders might not know much about the history or current state of Black labor in the U.S. and may view D&I as just making sure there are a variety of different ethnicities at their company. They haven’t really thought much about inclusion and equity. I envision readers will be checking out their online subscription to a business magazine that regularly offers insight into employee matters.

Research-Project-DraftDownload
Research-Project-ReferencesDownload

Project Draft- Intersectionality and Bias

Project-DraftDownload

My Project Draft is not in a poster layout just yet. This is because I wanted to focus on my writing first and plan that out before focusing on graphics and visuals. However, when both are incorporated, I think the message will be even more compelling.

As noted before, my poster’s audience is students our age, who are usually pretty busy but find themselves passing the time in a hallway or elevator and can read and retain information. I believe our generation is crucial for who needs to learn about this topic and spread it. As a result, I may find myself cutting down some information when I lay out my poster since information should be briefer to be intrigued. That has been my struggle, but I am eager to get started on the final project and attempt to incorporate effective visuals and effective writing.