Group Project

For the group project, you will work in teams of 2 to 4 people to complete a scholarly or creative project that improves our understanding and appreciation of visual rhetoric in a technological age. A major part of the group project will involve the composition and production of visual or design content. You will be asked to keep short, weekly project logs in a group meeting space on the course website following the guidelines provided. During Week 10, your group will be asked to give an oral progress report that employs multimedia as some aspect of the presentation. (Collaborative; 20% of course grade)

Possible Topics

There are more ways to focus your group project than offered here. These are just suggestions that may help you judge what's possible.

1. Develop a book project for the Prospects in Visual Rhetoric series. You'd develop a prospectus first, then put together source text, an introduction, and a bibliography.
2. Create a virtual museum, exhibit, or demonstration that will teach people about some aspect of visual rhetoric.
3. Develop a Drupal-based theme and website/blog on visual rhetoric.
4. Develop a print-based book or journal and have it printed, using something like Blurb. The topic can be anything that allows you to put visual rhetoric into play as a critical component (topically or design-wise).
5. Create a series of informational posters or other type of display art that promotes a program, event, or idea.
6. Develop a new CSS theme for a Drupal site hosted at Purdue (The Writing Instructor, KB Journal, PW Program, any course, or . . .)
7. Make a short film on visual rhetoric and publish it to YouTube. Alternatively, you can broaden your topic to any subject, so long as you show alertness to the ambiguity and potential of visual rhetoric.
8. Develop a series of lessons or modules for visual rhetoric in composition or professional writing courses.

Steps in the Process

1. Topic development and group formation: post a blog message tagged as "Group Project Discussion" in which you toss out a topic/project or two that you might be interested in working on. You can work from the list of possible topics above or create your own to see if others might be interested. Post your message by Thursday, January 24.
2. Meet in your groups during class on Tuesday, January 30 to discuss your project and plan first steps. Every group member should post a short "project log" posting to the Group's Project site. (Categories for tagging your blog posts will be created after the groups and topics have been formed.)
3. Week 10: Give an oral progress report to the rest of the class in which you present your topic, describe the work you've completed thus far, and outline remaining steps. Utilize the presentation technologies available in Heav 227.
4. Week 15: Complete your project. Give a short presentation to the rest of the class in which you sum up your results.
5. Week 16: Submit individually to the instructor your "Peer Collaboration Evaluation Form," which you will see attached to the calendar for Week 15 and below.

Grading

Your grade for this project will be a composite of the project itself, your effective and consistent participation in the collaboration (as indicated in the project logs), and the Peer Collaboration Evaluation Forms.

Research Project

Throughout the semester, I would like you to work independently on a project, paper, hypertext, film, or visual project that examines or displays the nature and/or function of visual rhetoric in print, film, art, photography, performance, or electronic media (or in some combination of these forms). In the end, your finished project will need to be very sharply focused and draw on the readings and concepts discussed in class, as well as any relevant outside sources. One purpose should be to articulate the way or ways that the visual and the verbal interanimate each other as part of a wider rhetorical system, of which the visual is but a part. (Individual; 25% of course grade)

Steps in the Process: I would like you to complete the final project in a series of steps, as outlined below. By the midterm, you will have made good progress on the project and at that time will be asked to provide the rest of the class with an update. You should post each step of your project to your blog by the end of the day on the date listed. For the shorter pieces, it is okay to embed any text or images in the blog body. If your work is longer or involves complex verbal, visual, or design elements, you should submit it as a PDF or Flash file. Please don't attach Word files to your blog posts.

1. A Contract Proposal in which you explain your subject, suggest some parameters for your research, and indicate why the subject interests you and how studying it will be beneficial. (Suggested length: 150-200 words;.due: Thursday, January 25.)
2. A Clarification Project in which you explain what you already know about your subject, reflect upon your feelings and thoughts about the subject, and suggest how you might develop your understanding of the subject. (Suggested length: 250 to 300 words; due: Thursday, February 8.)
3. An Information Project. Find out what is already known about your subject and communicate that knowledge concisely in 1,500 words or less. The form of this portion of the project could be an annotated bibliography, a bibliographic or informative essay (i.e., a review of the literature), or some other format conducive to conveying information. Your purpose at this stage will be to inform, not to take a critical stance. (Suggested length: 1,500 words; due: Thursday, March 1)
4. The Exploration Project will be the stage when you foster intellectual "turbulence" by investigating the many facets and problems of your subject, asking a number of questions and offering a number of answers for each question, without feeling the need to present these questions and answers in a tightly organized essay. You may compose your Exploration Project as an exploratory essay or by answering more directly a set of questions that will be provided. You'll be given additional guidelines for this step. (Suggested length: 1,500 words; due: Thursday, March 29)
5. A Working Document Project where you will present the results of your inquiry in a format and with the depth that suits it. If you use a traditional format, think of your working document as the draft of a journal article. If another format, you'll just need to be careful to cover your subject matter effectively, given the medium and your purpose. A website or other multimedia presentation is encouraged. (Suggested length: open; due: Thursday, May 3, during final exam week )