Week 4 Tuesday

Good Morning,

All drafts -- Research Design Plan and Faux Pas Case -- have been returned, and I'm grading my brains out on Progress Reports and Intro Memos.

Your Faux Pas Case documents are due on Friday. Once again, please put all of the documents in one file. (Either merge files in MS-Word or convert documents to PDF and submit as a single PDF. Youtube has excellent videos on how to do this.) If you try to submit them separately, they will be returned ungraded.

If you have questions about my comments on documents I have reviewed, please let me know. Remember, most of my comments are higher-order, so be sure to edit your documents closely. I did not point out every grammar/punctuation error.

I am seeing a LOT of verbatim language -- phrases, sentences, whole paragraphs -- lifted directly from the sample documents for this project. The samples are not models. That is, some of the samples have elements that are very, very poorly executed. I will 100% treat borrowings of language from the sample documents like plagiarism. 

Tips for the Faux Pas Case

Here are a few general comments about the Faux Pas Case::

1. The introduction of any memo needs to set the context for the memo, state the purpose, and preview the memo content, especially the internal document for the Faux project. Similarly, any conclusion you write needs to summarize, offer to answer any questions the reader might have, and provide an open avenue for communication.
   
2. The first part of the memo should describe the situation so that everyone understands the problem in the same way. In other words, the background section is important in that it establishes the situation so that there are no misunderstandings and so all of the details are out in the open.
   
3. The rest of the memo needs to outline possible solutions and then make an argument for the best solution. Each of the options needs to be discussed in detail in terms of both strengths and weaknesses. You need to convince your supervisors that you have carefully considered all possible options before selecting the one that you feel is the most appropriate. You should include a discussion of your plan to revise Nestor’s letter and get him on board. Remember, the key to this memo is that you SHOW your boss that you have thought about this problem in great detail and that you have made an INFORMED decision.
   
4. The key to revising Nestor’s letter is to write something that will solve the existing problem without creating new problems for the parties involved.
   
5. Finally, when writing your PAMs, you need to spend time discussing WHY you made the choices you made for the two documents. And the “production” section should discuss your writing process and what you have learned about how you write and how you can write more successfully in the future. In other words, the whole PAM needs to be more reflective, for most of you, throughout.

Hang in there, people. This is a really, really hard week.

Dr. Staggers