4.4: Large Projects

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:

• Introduction with two headers: Background on Topic & Research Question

• Quality interviews & their summaries conducted by the student or others.
• Quality surveys & their summaries conducted by the student or others.
• Implementation of student personal experience with topic.
• Quality content and a solid structure (intro, body, conclusion) that answers: What, Who, How, Where, and When.
• All sources cited correctly in the text and at the end of the project.

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.

• Brainstorm.
  • A research question that is interesting to you.
  • Who could you interview?
  • Who could you survey?
• Read the Research Chapter in our textbook.
• Begin to collect research.
  • Conduct your own interview or seek out experts who’ve already been interviewed (TED, YouTube).
  • Create your own survey using Google Forms or Survey Monkey (or use email, text, social media) OR seek our surveys completed by others on your topic using the resources found on the campus library site OR Google Scholar.
• Follow the writing process phases to draft, revise, and edit. This is optional.
• Submit the final project draft & fill out the self-assessment, if necessary.

Brainstorming:

• How does recycling help the earth? What more can I be doing? (SDG #12)
• How can free college programs nationwide help to eliminate poverty? (SDG #4)
• How can Z-Degrees assist all students in learning, persisting through college, and graduating? (SDG #4)
• [Architectural Drafting Student] Could I design some kind of living community off-the-grid that assists homeless people? (SDG #11)
• [Auto Body Student] What technologies exist to lower emissions? (SDG #7)
• [Dental Student] How can dental hygiene contribute to the SDG #3: Good Health and Well-Being?
• If you plan to become a parent, you might ask: “What are the best parenting philosophies?”

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:

• A new chapter.
• An accompanied visual aid.
• Facts.

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.

• Feel free to be silly or cuss or use stories to talk about the genre.

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...

• Should there be a “history of writing” chapter?
• What about a chapter on swear words and their histories?
• What about a chapter on slang?
• Why isn’t there a chapter on AAVE/Ebonics?
• Should there be a chapter on note-taking?
• Are all the genres and strategies for writing covered?

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:

• Seven slides.
  • Cover page.
  • Table of Contents.
  • Five slides of media.
• An annotation or summary of each media work.
• A picture (one preferably in the Creative Commons) of the media work with a citation of where the picture came from.

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 company’s mission statement.
• The company’s logo, motto, letterhead, and business card.
• Advertisements – both to customers and future employees.
• Pie charts of the company’s monthly or yearly income and expenses.
• A progress report.
• A condensed business plan.

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:

• One narrowed experiment; here are possible categories:
  • Spiritual: meditate, read up on a new religion, etc.
  • Academic: improve study habits, decrease procrastination, etc.
  • Physical: strength training, flexibility, endurance, drink more water, etc.
  • Financial: save money, learn about the stock market, etc.
• Research on what the experts say about what can be achieved in 2 weeks within that category.
• Then create one goal for the 2 weeks.
  • Possible example for spiritual = Meditate 5x a day.
  • Possible example for financial = Save
• A log of information displaying the 2-week experiment.
• A summary of the experiment.
• Conclusion.

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:

• ____<date>____ - Phase 1 of Writing Process (Brainstorming & Outline) completed; I will ____________________________________________________.
• ____<date>____ - Phase 2 of Writing Process (Draft and Revision) completed. I will ____________________________________________________.
• ____<date>____ - Phases 3 and 4 (Proofreading/Editing/Submission) completed. I will ___________________________________________________.
• Please consider using a tutor or Grammarly/Hemingway App or a nerdy classmate.

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:

• A cover page and table of contents.
• Bulleted List of Possible Incomes in 3-5 different places.
• A Screenshot of a list of Job Responsibilities/Qualifications for the job you want.
• Bulleted List of 3-5 Companies that you could work for.
• Images of 3-5 Places you could live.
• A Valid and Detailed Pie Chart showing the breakdown of spending once you have the job you want.
• Screenshots* or citations of sources = where you found all of your information (web sites, names of newspapers, people you interviewed, etc.).
• Reflection: summarize what you want your future life to look like – think 5-10 years into the future and give your readers a snapshot of what your daily life looks like. What are you doing, where are you living, what are you living in, who are you surrounded by, are you happy, etc.

*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.

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\(^{90}\)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.