Your mission this week is to continue forward progress on your Analytic Memo (and reflection) for Module 1 and to complete the readings and reflection for Module 2.
What's due this week:
Read
- Designing Visual Language, Chapters 3-4
- Non-Designer's Design Book, Chapter 7
Submit REVISED draft of your Module 1 Analytic Memo for optional instructor review
By Sunday, Sept. 12
- Quizzes 4, 5
- Exercise 2
- Submit your Module 2 Reflection for evaluation
Analytic Memo revision and instructor review
Everyone should have submitted a draft to your peer review group and each of you should have feedback from your peers for your draft by today. If no one else in your group posted a draft, please let me know today and I will assign you to a group with more responsible parties.
You have a week and one day until the final draft is due to me for evaluation. As I said before, think deeply about the comments that you received and determine if they are right for you. Then revise your draft. After you revise, if you have time, I would suggest that you re-submit it to your peer review group and/or find a person or two from your peer review group that you might exchange second drafts with.
Reviewing second drafts more closely for the higher-order and, especially, lower-order concerns (see background reading on top-down editing) will help your paper achieve everything that you want it to achieve. One draft, one peer review, and one revision does not always make for good final product, especially in a professional writing course.
How the optional instructor review works
For each of the major "project" assignments in this class, you have the option of submitting your work for feedback from me.
To take advantage of this option you must:
- Participate actively in the peer review process. This means, you must have submitted a draft for peer review on time, and you must have provided feedback on the other drafts submitted in your group. I must be able to see your participation, which means you'll need to exchange drafts and feedback through the discussion board. If you did not submit a draft to your group (at all or not reasonably on time), or provide feedback to your teammates on time, please do not submit your draft for the instructor review.
- Submit a draft to me that has been REVISED based on the feedback you received from your partners and/or your own rethinking of the work after a few days away from it. When you submit your work, submit the draft you submitted to your peer group (as a separate file) with the word "orginal" in the file name. Submit the draft you'd like me to review with the word "revised" in the file name. Revision is a key skill you'll be learning in this class; if the differences between the first and second documents are inconsequential, I will not provide feedback.
- Submit your draft on time through the link for the assignment in the Assignment dropbox. You'll use the same link to submit your draft for instructor review as you will to submit your final document. When I've finished reviewing your draft, I'll return it to you electronically through the assignment link.
Submitting your document for the optional instructor review does not in any way ensure that you will get a particular grade -- or even a better grade -- on your final product.
I am not editing your work. I am not identifying all of the problems in a particular document. I am not giving you a list of "things to fix" that will move your document from its current state to a state of perfection...or excellence...or even greater adequacy.
I'm looking at your document the way I would look at it if I was your supervisor on a writing team; I'll tell you where the biggest problems are. If I have a specific tip that I think might be helpful to resolving a particular problem, I'll share it.
If you have particular questions about your document or are struggling with resolving some thorny issue, by all means leave a note for me in the Comments box when you submit the draft. I'm always very happy to do the instructor review with an eye toward helping you sort out whatever you're having trouble with.
As a general rule, in the introductory courses in the Professional Writing Certificate (business writing and technical writing), participating in the instructor review tends to improve students' grades roughly one letter. This is largely due to the rather large number of students who have simply missed the boat on one or more key components of the assignment, and who would be in F, D, or low-C range because they didn't do the assignment correctly.
I can't give you any similar statistic for this course, because this is the first time I've taught it here at UNLV. I CAN tell you I do not expect to see revised drafts coming my way that fail to execute the assignment fully. If your first draft has missed the boat in some fashion and it gets to me in the same off-kilter condition, either you or your peer partners have not done your job.
I'm thinking that's about it for today, folks. I hope everyone enjoyed our last long summer weekend.
Have a great week!
Dr. S.
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