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4.4: Large Projects

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    These projects may or may not be used in the composition course you are taking. Or your instructor may assign just a few. Or your instructor may give you a choice.

    SDGs Project

    What Can You Do to Make the World a Better Place?

    Goal: The purpose is to ask WHAT you can do to make the world a better place. Link this to your future job/career, if you’d like. Consider the SDGs (https://sdgs.un.org/goals), by the United Nations Development Program, as a starting point for the issues facing the world.

    Create a video, slide presentation, or infographic (or choose another medium) in which you research one way to make the world a better place. At a minimum, the project will include:

    Students will choose a research question & attempt to answer it using primary sources. Primary research is first-hand info like interviews (conducted by the student or others), surveys, personal experiences, etc.

    Brainstorming:

    Textbook Tweak

    Goal: Imagine a textbook written by students and for students! What if we threw out any textbook for this class! What could the textbook look like with total student control? Create a chapter for that sort of textbook that doesn’t exist yet.

    Create a video, slide presentation, or infographic (or choose another medium) in which you create a student-friendly chapter for an imaginary textbook. At a minimum, the project will include:

    STEPS:

    Step 1: Brainstorm what you either think is missing from the current textbook for this class and compose that chapter OR ask yourself what current chapter needs to be completely tweaked and revise that one heavily. 

    Step 2: Compose the chapter with at least one visual aid (chart, meme, picture) that is openly licensed (possible sites to check out: Unsplash, Shutterstock, Getty Images, Pexels, Freepik, etc.). 

    Step 3: Double-check all facts and information you use. Cite information that doesn’t come from your head (and/or use footnotes).

    Step 4: Submit a final draft before the deadline and self-assess your project.

    More brainstorming...

    Project Playlist

    Goal: Students will choose 5-10 media works that demonstrate who they are as people. 

    Create a slide presentation or infographic in which you create a playlist of media works that showcase who you are as a person. At a minimum, the project will include:

    The Unessay

    The Un-Essay\(^{90}\) is an assignment that allows the ultimate in creativity. It asks you to focus solely on your intellectual interests and passions. In an Un-Essay you choose your own topic, present it any way you please, and are evaluated on how well it all fits together and if it’s effective.

    Choose Your Own Topic

    The Un-Essay allows you to write about anything you want provided you are able to associate your topic with the subject matter of the course. The only requirements are that your treatment of the topic be compelling and effective: that is to say presented in a way that leaves the reader thinking that you are being accurate, interesting, and as complete and/or convincing as your subject allows.

    Present It Any Way You Please

    There are also no formal requirements. Your essay can be written in five paragraphs, or three, or twenty-six. If you decide you need to cite something, you can do that any way you want. If you want to use lists, use lists. If you want to write in the first person, write in the first person. If you prefer to present the whole thing as a video, present it as a video. Use slang. Or don’t. Sentence fragments if you think that would be effective. In other words, in an Un-Essay you have complete freedom of form: you can use whatever style of writing, presentation, citation,… even media you want. What is important is that the format and presentation you do use helps rather than hinders your explanation of the topic.

    Be Evaluated on How Effective You Are

    If Un-Essays can be about anything and there are no restrictions on format and presentation, how are they “graded”? Well, they are “graded” by the student; they will assess how well it all fits together, and whether the project is effective. 

    Project Statement\(^{91}\)

    You must write a statement that explains what you did, why you did it, and how you went about producing, and the sources you used for the Un-Essay. 

    Self-Assessment Questions

    1. What did you learn?

    2. What challenges did you face while completing this assignment?

    3. How did you overcome these challenges?

    4. How effective or successful do you think you were with your final product?

    5. What do you think you could have done differently?

    The Fake Company Project

    Create a slide presentation or infographic in which you showcase specific pieces of a fake company you\(^{92}\) may like to start one day; this needs to be an original idea. At a minimum, the project will include:

    The Self-Improvement Project

    Create a slide presentation, or infographic, or choose another medium in which you report on a 2-week experiment done on yourself. At a minimum, the project will include:

    The Open Project

    You might spend some part of the semester working on an open project. This planning document will give you the tools you need to guide your work.

    Tools and Media

    Your project can take any number of forms, such as a new chapter for the textbook, a “how to” guide, a novella, an original website on a certain topic, children’s book, graphic novel, flash fiction challenge, a research project, an argumentative paper, an infographic, a video, or a set of Google Slides or a Powerpoint that tells a story. 

    End product

    My open project will be: ____________________________________________________.

    At a minimum, 

    you should create a high-quality project and design everything yourself. 

    Brief Proposed Timeline

    Fill out this proposed timeline outlining your plans for this final project: 

    Peer Review/workshop

    On ____<date>____, you will share a draft of your work [online]. My draft will include ____________________________________________. I will offer WWW/TAG feedback to my peers. And, of course, I will chat with Sybil via email or over the phone/Zoom if I want to chat and get additional feedback at any point.

    Sharing Your Work

    You should consider publishing your work to the web or in a future edition of this book. The audience for your work shouldn't just be Sybil or the members of our class, but rather the public, your friends, and your family.

    I Promise

    I promise to trust myself, my classmates, and to do as best I can on this project. I am capable, creative, and willing to engage with the material necessary to complete this project. Initial here: ___________________

     

    Ultimate Student Choice Project

    Place a checkmark next to the option you’d like to complete. You can change your mind at any point, but that does put more stress on yourself, so keep that in mind.

    __Option 1: Student-Created.

    You will proposal a project to Sybil no later than Week 14. Please use the planning pieces of “The Open Project.”

    __Option 2: Workplace.\(^{93}\)

    You will complete everything in Chapter 3.7.

    __Option 3: Reading.

    You will complete 10/30 reading responses in Chapter 3.6.

    __Option 4: Creation.

    You will create questions, activities, and/or exercises for 5 chapters that do not have any right now.

    __Option 5: Visual.

    You will create visuals for 5 chapters that need them. These should be original and not copied from Google, etc.

    __Option 6: Random.

    You will complete HALF of the prompts in Chapter 3.5

    OR 

    ALL of the prompts in Chapter 3.8.

    Future Life Project

    Create a slide presentation, or infographic, or choose another medium in which you report on your future life possibilities. At a minimum, the project will include:

    *Screenshots: 

    When you are on a website that you will take information from, hit the Print Screen button on the keyboard, if you are on a PC. With a Mac, use Shift + Command + 4.

     

     

    \(^{90}\)This content comes from Daniel Paul O'Donnell - https://people.uleth.ca/~daniel.odon...ng/the-unessay. Unless otherwise noted, the non-negotiated licence for all work on this site is Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License

    \(^{91}\)CARA OCOBOCK, PH.D. - https://sites.nd.edu/cara-ocobock/un-essay/

    \(^{92}\)You might be allowed to complete this in groups of three or less

    \(^{93}\)This one is “perfect” for students who are into technical writing and/or are majoring in technical fields.

    This page titled 4.4: Large Projects is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Sybil Priebe (Independent Published) via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform; a detailed edit history is available upon request.