Technical and Scientific Writing (HU333)

This is an undergraduate course that Nancy Hoft teaches at
Michigan Technological University, Houghton, MI USA.
Current Offering: WINTER QUARTER 1997-98

Assignment Five:
The Wildcard

Date Assigned: 19 JANUARY, 1998 Date Due: 16 FEBRUARY 1998.

Objectives

To choose (pending instructor approval) and develop a high-quality information product by applying the concepts and methods covered in this course
To write a proposal for this information product that includes a statement of purpose, a description, an analysis of primary and secondary audiences, and a project plan
To apply the audience analysis in an increasingly sophisticated way to your information product

Your Job, Your Deliverables

The Wildcard assignment has three written deliverables:

Information-Product Proposal
Weekly Status Reports
High-Quality Information Product

Each deliverable has its own due date. If you don't understand something in this assignment, it's your responsibility to meet with me in conference and ask for clarification.

Get my approval on the information product you want to develop before class on FRIDAY, 23 January, 1998. You are permitted to combine this assignment with a writing assignment from another course. To do so, you must write a memo to the other instructor and carbon copied to me stating that you intend to use your writing assignment for such-and-such a class (be specific about what it is) in this HU333 class for the final assignment. You should also include a statement like this, "Please sign below to verify that you and I have discussed this issue in person and that you concur with my using X assignment in my HU333 course." The other instructor must sign and date two copies of the memo. One copy is for him/her, the other for me. I encourage you to share the URL to this Web page with your instructor so that he/she knows what you'll be doing for me.

1. Information-Product Proposal

Due: Monday, 02 February, 1998. Write an information-product proposal. Length: Four or five pages, single spaced. Your name and a page number must appear on each page (cover page is an exception). The proposal should look like a professional proposal, which consists of a report cover, a cover page, and a table of contents. If you want more ideas, see your instructor. A first draft must be mostly complete by Wednesday, 28 January, 1998. We'll use this draft in an inclass workshop on editing.

The proposal consists of four pieces:

Statement of purpose: Two sentences that define the purpose of your information product in the context of audience. Its form might go something like this:

This information product does this for this group of people. These people need this kind of information because of this.
Description: This is a two page (or longer) description of what you're going to write about. Tell me what you want to write about and why, what kind of research you'll need to do to develop the content and why, and how you might organize the content and why. Also tell me about the kind of information product you want to create (report, set of instructions, critique, and so on); explain why that information product is appropriate given your purpose and audience. You can include a rough outline of the information product if you want, but it is in addition to the 2+ page description.
Audience Analysis: Please create a table with these categories and fill in the table with data (see Table 1). (If you need help creating this table in your word processing software, see me. I'm happy to show you how.) Also, do your audience analysis by using techniques like interviewing and observation to figure out the learning styles of each type of reader in your primary and secondary audiences. You'll use classtime on Monday, 26 January, to work on this table. Bring audience data with you to class.
Project Plan: In its simplest form, a project plan is a document that commits a to-do list for a project to a calendar of deadlines dates. Your project plan will be a one-page spreadsheet- or calendar-like page that associates task categories and their specific tasks with deadlines. Sample task categories include: Researching, Writing, Editing, Revising, Testing, Revising, Publishing. You'd need to identify specific tasks within each category that are specific to your particular writing project and then assign yourself a deadline for each of these tasks.

**TABLE 1**: *Primary and Secondary Audience Analysis*
Who?	Description	Learning Style	Reading Value	Personal Comparisons
Job titles? Roles? If this information product is for a particular person or people, name them and describe their roles. Separate PRIMARY from SECONDARY audiences.	Consider their jobs, working environments; ages; genders; technical expertise; educational backgrounds; cultural expectations; and so on. Identify concerns that you have about these readers. Make sure you specify whether something in any of your descriptions is an assumption or a fact.	Given what you know about this audience, what can you say about each of their learning styles? Do they have the technical background to learn the information quickly? Do they prefer visuals? learning by example? Do they need lots of technical detail and detailed instructions to feel confident? Do they get impatient or bored quickly? For each audience you identify, write down what learning style you think they have.	Why will these people read this information product? What value does or could its content have in their professional or personal lives? What content will they be most interested in and why?	How does each audience differ from you? Get ideas from the Description, Learning Style, and Reading Value columns. Consider comparing your information needs and your learning styles. Defend your opinions with evidence from the other columns in this table.

2. Weekly Status Reports and Deliverables

Due: In class, every Friday, beginning on 23 January, 1998, and ending on 13 February, 1998. These are memos addressed to me that consist of three sections labeled like so: Work Accomplished, Work In Progress, Problems and Concerns. The content of each section is a simple bulleted list. Each list item should begin with a meaningful action verb. Each list item should also clearly relate things you've accomplished and things you're going to accomplish based on your project plan of tasks and deadlines. The Problems and Concerns section is a place for you to tell me if you're having trouble with any part of the assignment and whether a deadline or the quality of your work is in jeopardy. You'll need to justify this, of course. If your weekly status report says that you've accomplished something for this project, I want to see it in class that Friday.

3. High-Quality Information Product

Due: 16 February, 1998. Develop a high-quality information product that's 5+ pages (single-spaced) long. The information product's success is dependent on how well it addresses the information you provide in your information-product proposal. The information product should look professional and complete. If you don't know what "professional look" would be most appropriate for your information product, see me to explore some ideas.