WRIT 340 Spring 2024
Writing Project 4: Engaging Your Audience – Thinking and Presenting in Multiple Media Contexts
Purpose:
Building on the fundamentals of engagement and communication that we used in our earlier writing projects, we will continue to develop a better understanding of audience with this last assignment. By transferring some of your analytical or creative ideas into a different media format, you will explore diverse ways of interacting with the audience and transforming your ideas for a new rhetorical context. In presenting these ideas to the class, you will also have the opportunity to use their responses to refine your work.
Reading:
Bob Woodward, The Opinions Essay. “The Trump Tapes: 20 interviews that show why he is an unparalleled danger,” The Washington Post (23 Oct 2022). Read with and without Sound Enabled.
Premise:
In contributing to your educational experience at USC, with our Writing 340 assignments, I hope to help you acquire ideas and skills that will later allow you to generate meaningful work in the world beyond college. In this last assignment, by exploring multiple modes of communication – text, image, sound, or motion – I’m encouraging you to find additional creative ways to transform and convey your message. I have envisioned this project to be a multimedia iteration or translation of an earlier project that you have completed this semester, to minimize the additional research or critical analysis that will be expected of you at this point in the semester. However, as with your earlier projects, this project should have a message and a purpose,
which you may wish to convey in other ways when you present the project to the class. My hope is that this will be an exciting challenge that will allow you to showcase other modes of expression and to also learn
from your peers.
Required tasks:
There are two tasks necessary for this last project:
1. First, you will create a proposal that outlines your goals and frames your message for your project. As you write this document, be sure to keep in mind your central idea and your intended audience and why you think the media/form that you have chosen for the project will effectively advance your message. The written proposal should be around 400 words. The proposal is due April 10.
2. You will create a multimedia project of your design that you will present to the class. You should expect the presentation to be around 5 minutes. If you create a TikTok, short film, or a podcast episode, or any recorded work, be sure to prepare a very brief introduction for the class. We will also make time for you to receive feedback from your peers after your presentation. Feedback for others will represent a significant portion of your credit for this assignment. The goal is to encourage you to use new tools that incorporate visual and sound media and to recognize how those tools open up new ways to approach topics and issues.
That means no Powerpoint, Googleslides, or Prezi, etc. Instead, try something new!Calendar:
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April 3:
Begin WP4
HW for 4/8:
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Read and listen to the Bob Woodward article on the Trump tapes. Decide which assignment you will adapt to a new media form, brainstorm about this format .
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April 8:
HW for 4/10:
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Discussion of the value of different media and tools - Invention
Finalize proposals
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April 10:
HW for 4/15:
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Proposal Due – Further developing ideas/Revision for Portfolio Essays
Prepare presentations
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April 15:
HW for 4/17:
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Class Presentations – Group 1
Prepare presentations
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April 17:
HW for 4/22:
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Class Presentations – Group 2
Prepare presentations
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DURING THE FINAL WEEK OF CLASSES, I WILL ALSO HOLD EXTENDED OFFICE HOURS TO DISCUSS
YOUR REVISION – I WILL CREATE A SIGN UP SHEET FOR THOSE OPTIONAL CONFERENCE SESSIONS
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April 22:
HW for 4/24:
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Class Presentations – Group 3
Revise portfolio essays
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April 24:
HW for April 28:
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Revision Workshop – Last Day of Classes
Finish Revision of Portfolio Essays
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April 28:
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FINAL PORTFOLIOS DUE to Bb BY MIDNIGHT
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