English 680V: Visual Rhetoric in a Technological Age (Purdue)

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.