Maymester 2004
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Section 0201
Heavilon 227
M-F, 9:50-12:00.
Dr. David Blakesley
Office: Heavilon 302c
Hours: M-Th, 9:00-9:50 a.m. and by appt.
Ph: 765.494.3772
Fax: 765.494.3780
blakesle@purdue.edu

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For Project 3, our class will formally launch the first stage of Purdue's Open Source Development and Documentation Project. In this larger project, students interact with new people and new technologies to provide valuable Open Source enterprse and application development and documentation. Students in a variety of business and technical writing courses will study open source software, talk to its designers and users, use the software themselves, then write and test user documentation, help organizations promote their software in the wider community, and even develop action plans for deploying such software in new business and academic ventures.

project summary

To begin this larger project, our class will function as a consulting firm to map out its parameters, develop essential background content, create a promotion and marketing package, and draft a grant proposal. The client for the project is the Professional Writing Program at Purdue, including the students who take courses like ENGL 420 and the instructors who teach it.

The work will be distributed among five teams, each one responsible for a different component. All components will be assembled in a Recommendation Report that will serve as a comprehensive package of information and resources to use for future development of the project. Each team will need to conduct some research (such as an interview) and work closely with the other teams as the project is developed.

project goals

This project emphasizes several important goals that all professional writers should bear in mind and that are consistent with those of the Professional Writing Program at Purdue. In the Open Source Contexts Project, you will learn to shape your writing for very specific situations and purposes:

Writing in Context
Analyze professional cultures, social contexts, and audiences to determine how they shape the various purposes and forms of writing, such as persuasion, organizational communication, and public discourse.

Writing Process
Develop and understand various strategies for planning, researching, drafting, revising, and editing documents that respond effectively and ethically to professional situations and audiences.

Collaboration
Learn and apply strategies for successful collaboration, such as working and communicating on-line with colleagues, setting and achieving project goals, and responding constructively to peers' work.

Research
Understand and use various research methods to produce professional documents, including analyzing professional contexts, assessing and using information resources, and determining how various media and technologies affect and are affected by users and readers.

Technology
Develop strategies for using and adapting various communication technologies to manage projects and produce informative and usable professional documents.

Document Design
Learn to argue with visual data, understanding and implementing various principles of format, layout, and design of professional documents that meet multiple user and reader needs.

project summary | project goals | deliverables | resources | grading | grading criteria | revision | top

Team Responsibilities and Deliverables

I will work closely with each team throughout the process to help coordinate the work. The management team will help set intermediate due dates for drafts of components of the project. Here are the team responsibilities:

Management Team This four-person team will define the nature and structure of the recommendation report and work with individual teams to help them shape individual components so that they are well-suited to meet the goals of the document. Members of the management team will function as coordinators, facilitators, and editors throughout the project.

Deliverables for the Management Team:

1. The final recommendation report, including all of its components, assembled from components produced by the other teams;
2. a brief overview introducting the report's components to the client;
3. a two-paragraph overview of the document development process that explains how the project was managed; and
4. a collaborative project evaluation form.

Content-Development Team: This team will be responsible for developing important content for the recommendation report and supporting documents. The team will draft and edit this content for prompt distribution to the other teams who will need it, using a schedule established by the management team.

Deliverables for the Content-Development Team:

1. A 500-word overview of the Open Source movement;
2. a 250-word statement about the nature of "community" in the Open Source Movement;
3. a 500-word statement about the benefits of service learning projects and community engagement; and
4. a compilation of useful resources for studying Open Source development and conducting further research.
5. a collaborative project evaluation form.

Grant-Development Team: This team will draft a proposal to be used for applying for an internal Purdue grant from the Office of Engagement. See this successful grant application for a sample, which describes a service-learning project for a course taught at Purdue and that involved a local community organization. Please also see the press release, Professional Writing Students Receive Grant, for further information. The proposal will need to including all necessary components of the grant application and may use material from the content-development team in certain portions of the document.

Deliverables for the Grant-Development Team:

1. Full draft of the grant proposal, which should include a section on the nature of Open Source as a community-based effort (from the content-development team) and on how the Open Source Development and Documentation Project meets the goals of courses like ENGL 420 and 421. For information about the ENGL 421 (Technical Writing) course, look here.
2. Working budget, with information about how funds will be spent.
3. a collaborative project evaluation form.

Project-Development and Action-Plan Team: This team will focus on how the Open Source Development and Documentation Project can be developed further for ENGL 420, including discussion of useful student projects and learning goals. The focus will be on developing a proposal for needed projects, possible clients, and future evolution of the initiative.

Deliverables for the Project Development and Action-Plan Team:

1. A 250-word overview of how the OSDDP can help students learn to be better writers in real contexts, manage complex writing projects, and collaborative effectively with peeers and members of the community.
2. A sample list of five student-based projects that will meet the learning goals of ENGL 420 (or 421) and help advance the goals of the OSDDP. Student projects should be given a title and include a short discussion of their contents or goals, including the required deliverables.
3. a collaborative project evaluation form.

Marketing and Design Team: This team will create the promotional documents that can be used to promote the Open Source Development and Documentation Project to the Purdue and Open Source communities. The team will need to have some familiarity with or desire to learn desktop publishing using Adobe InDesign. The focus will be on creating the templates that can be filled with content later, as it is developed.

Deliverables for the Marketing and Design Team:

1. Logo and Motto for use on promotional materials, official documents, and project Web site.
2. Fully designed Template for a tri-fold brochure, with placeholders for specific content and that includes the logo and motto.
3. Template for a PowerPoint presentation that includes the logo and motto, as well as placeholders for text and other images.
4. a collaborative project evaluation form.

Collaborative Project Evaluation

An important component of this project is successful collaboration. At the end, I want each member of the team to complete and submit individually in your Turn-In folder this completed the Collaborative Project Evaluation form (Word format). Your evaluation is intended to be private, so it should not be completed together as a team.  It should be in your turn-in folder on day your project is due, Thursday, June 10.

Turning in Your Project:
The management team will be responsible for collecting and turning in the consulting firm's recommendation report in a folder including all of its components (the recommendation report, grant proposal, templates, etc.). However, each team should also collect its deliverables (in their final drafted form) and submit them to a team member's turn-in folder. Please submit PDF versions of your documents and versions in their original format (Word, PowerPoint, Fireworks, InDesign, etc.). Use file and folder-naming conventions that help with easy identification of the documents and authoring team.

All materials need to be submitted to the turn-in folder by the end of the day on June 10 (before midnight).

grading criteria

The Open Source Documentation and Development Project is worth 40% of the course grade. When I assign a grade to your project, I will pay particular attention to the quality of the documents your team produced, your success at collaboration, and the quality of the final materials submitted by the group as a whole. I will also weigh your feedback on the Collaborative Project Evaluation form (Word format) in assigning a grade for your participation in the project.

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