At this stage, many of us are looking for ways to visualize and anticipate the contours of a final project. One model for segmenting and evaluating our progress: proposing a work plan that builds on a sequence of writing tasks, each one focusing on a particular set of rhetorical and research strategies:

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narrative

definition

using analogy and finding audience

evaluation

cause

final format: genre, design, format and standards

This proposal exercise should help you script the rest of your semester. We will spend two weeks writing on the wiki towards this deadline. For each of us, this informal writing (blogging) will include:

-writing formal request memos (permission to proceed, requests for resources/materials)

-an "audience finder" research exercise using social bookmarking strategies

-and the development of a group project page featuring a project mission statement

You will turn in two versions of your proposal:

a wiki version

a version formatted in the word processor of your choice and uploaded/linked as a .pdf file.

Each proposal will feature a timeline with "due dates" for at least two specific writing deliverables: just as the narrative/remix exercise was "unit one" and this very proposal, also worth 25 points, is "unit two," these deliverables will count as "unit three" and unit four," for a total of 100 points or 1/3 of your grade.

forming storming norming performing a popular algorithm for organizing and sharing research and writing procedures

When we write proposals, we write "up the hierarchical chain," asking for permission to proceed, or justifying a particular allocation writing/research time and resources within a given time frame. So, when you arrange your final draft of this unit assignment, keep your audience in mind: tailor your appeals and set your tone accordingly. At the beginning, though, you need not confine your process to the prose standards of any specific discourse community or peer-reviewed journal. For starters, try the following heuristic as a way of envisioning and enacting a process appropriate to your group's vision. If this template isn't helpful, by all means try another framework. Just propose that framework, with a detailed timeline, and then we'll synchronize each group's timeline into units on our CourseCalendar, so as to maximize feedback.

1. Idea/ Purpose : What is the topic of your project? From this topic, formulate the most important and practical question or set of questions you expect your readers need answered. What is your purpose in writing about this issue or problem?

2. Form : Think about the media and research methods you will mix: film clips and sounds from the world wide web and beyond? Of course. A poster, story board, or presentation of some sort? Perhaps. Text documents, interviews, field research....be creative with this one, use the wiki's flexibility for all it's worth. Your final project should combine various forms.

3. Idiom and Audience : At the same time, consider your audience – will you deal with your subject as a technician might? Like an artist? Like an athlete? Like an entrepreneur? A literary scholar? An employee at large firm? Each project will be different, because each will be tuned to a different scenario.

4. Rhetorical process and unit assignments : How will you, as a group, divide the tasks? How will you plan your time? Include a timeline in your proposal. How will you align the pieces of the project? How do you anticipate that you will parse the process and divide the work? You can break down the process many different ways, and each project will surely end up diverging from the provisional memo produced for this deadline. Still, consider what you'll need to do in any case: experiments with transitions and arrangement strategies via argumentative technique (definition, evaluation, cause, analogy, idiom translation, prolepsis, prolepsis, and more prolepsis), deployment of technical editing skills (grammar, syntax, drawing/drafting, audio or video work). Most importantly, you'll establish the format and genre your 2 major unit assignments, which will comprise the spine of your final project. What kind of writing do you want to learn more about? Here's your chance to customize your distributed learning project.

5. Exportable versions: you will prepare 2 versions of each major unit assignment: wiki, and print. Also, plan for rendering an abstract, or some sort of serial (linear) description, narrative, or argument detailing your overall project in a .pdf file. Try and tune your document to the needs and strictures of a particular discourse community or even a particular journal.

Remember, it's still early, yet. As we continue to tune in on the particular communities that determine what/how we write, we should expect our projects to diverge a little bit, here and there, from the proposed paths sketched in our memos. This memo is really just another exercise in "prolepsis," ye olde art of anticipation.

When writing your proposals for final projects, try not to panic. Or, rather, welcome the panic and consult the wiki, so you can convert that panic energy into a rhetorical process. Don't think of a project as a "big paper," rather, imagine a chain of little papers that you describe in your proposal memo.

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