Final Report Professional Writing Course

Jordan Houser
English 310 Capital University 26 November 2013

Summary This final report pertains to the course and assignments produced for English 310, Writing in the Professions. This course was designed to educate and equip students with the knowledge and ability to write and communicate properly in professional settings. For each student, this professional operation will be unique to the career chosen; as a student of journalism I will require a different set of skills than a medical student. As such, the assignments that most benefited me will not be the same as those that benefitted other students. This final report delves into the process of production and learning throughout the course, and how I anticipate it benefitting my future.

Table of Contents
Summary i

Critical Biography

Technical Definition

Software Demonstrations

Visual Rhetoric

Class Facilitation

Collaborative Project

Career Related Project/Conclusion

ii

Introduction

In this course, we produced writing in multiple forms and through multiple mediums. During this process, I learned of my strengths and my weakness. While I am capable of both writing well (personal autobiography) and designing info-graphics well (technical definition), I fall short in photo illustrations (visual rhetoric assignment). Through this, and the development of multi-modal writing skills, my professional future has benefitted from this Writing in the Professions course. I intend to pursue a career in journalism, and was recently offered a full time position pending graduation in May. This opportunity arose through an internship through which I have worked this semester. I primarily work with online print forms, which includes verbal, rhetorical, visual, and many other forms. The multi-modal interest of this course equipped me with the skills to better perform in my internship and in my current position as editor of the student newspaper.

Critical Biography

For our first assignment, we composed a critical biography. This biography had the purpose of allowing us to not only produce a document that included all important and appropriate personal and professional occurrences in our lives, but also to understand the factors that have contributed to our success today. I had written multiple kinds of biographies before (literary biographies, religious autobiographies, etc.) but had not composed a professionally slanted piece that would best represent my experiences and qualities for employment and success in the professional world. I am interested in pursuing a career in journalism, and as such the opportunity to express and share experiences with others in an easy-to-understand and engaging format is vital. It is easy to fall into the trap of text-only production for such assignments, but by carefully choosing the font and layout, it was possible to create a more reader-friendly product. This was a wonderful introduction into understanding the relationship between text and visual design to further work in mutli-modal production.

Technical Definition

Our technical definition was a difficult project for me. I chose to explain a technique in weightlifting called The Lightened Method. I chose this because it is something with which I am familiar with and have discussed in a professional arena through my journalism internship. I am easily capable of explaining in technical terms and in common-speak the ways to implement and use The Lightened Method to the benefit of a competitive athlete. Through my work with The Chimes, I also have extensive experience using InDesign to layout aesthetic and informative pages. I expected this to be an easy project. My expectations did not turn into reality, however. I failed to realize that my ability to speak on this information and explain with diagrams and hands-on demonstration did not translate well into writing. I failed to acquire pictures that would benefit text, and I failed to find a suitable technical definition. Using my (admittedly brief) background in biomechanics, I crafted a technical definition to then recreate in laymans terms. While I do not feel this was the greatest weakness of my technical definition, it certainly is something upon which I could improve. The idea was there, the content was mediocre, but the execution was poor and did not justify the goals of the project. I consider this one of my weak points and something with which I could benefit most: creating a stronger vision for the final product before starting the production process.

Software Demonstrations

I learned something unrelated to writing during my software demonstration. While this may have not been the primary goal of the demonstrations, what stood out to me most while demonstrating InDesign for the course was the enjoyment I took out of teaching. I have always enjoyed public speaking, and in the case of being able to share my knowledge with others, the enjoyment increased. I have used InDesign for several years now for page layout and design for the student newspaper, and through it I have developed practical skills for using the program. This is very different than theoretical skills, or knowledge, in which the knowledge is present, but unusable.

This was something I became more and more aware of watching the software demonstrations of others. In particular, I enjoyed the Photoshop presentations because I was (and still am) struggling to develop my preferred proficiency with that program. I have been steadily learning all semester how to best use Photoshop, and many of the presentations were useful. Several, however, seemed not only pointless for my purposes with Photoshop (developing and editing photos and illustrations for online and print mediums) but also irrelevant to the program itself. For instance, a tutorial on how to alter text in Photoshop is not a particularly useful one, given the large number of software programs (Illustrator, InDesign, etc.) that allow more control and customization of text. These software demonstrations revealed to me that in my career, I must be able to proficiently use not only one, but many software programs. They each offer benefits particular to themselves that are not available in other programs; what I am able to do in Photoshop differs from what I am able to do in Illustrator or InDesign. It is important to not only be able to use multiple software programs, but also to be able to discern when it is appropriate to use each.

Visual Rhetoric Project

For the visual rhetoric project, I used Photoshop. The most difficult aspect of this project was formulating an idea I could convey through visual rhetoric. It certainly would have been easier for me to write an essay discussing the visual rhetoric of another piece, but this does not serve me well in my professional future. I intend to become not only proficient but also skilled at producing multi-modal content. For me, it is more beneficial to develop production and creative skills than to critique skills of others. What I developed was unclear. I used Photoshop to place American dollars on the turf in Capital Universitys Bernlohr Stadium. The intended message was this: student and faculty dont realize the large sum of money that goes into sports and the turf field. This message was lost, however, and not obvious to my audience. In hindsight, I realize that I should have added text to the document in the form of inquisition to elucidate the message.

Class Facilitation

I worked with Jess Cogan and Theron Mackey for our class facilitation. We read a selection regarding the ethics of rhetoric. For our presentation, we shared a basic summary of the piece and then had a class participation portion in which students shared their reactions to photos. We chose an event, and then two photos that demonstrated strikingly different aspects of the event. For instance, one photo was of a father and a son in hunting gear juxtaposed with a photo of a deer being skinned. Both photos demonstrate aspects of hunting, yet evoked entirely different feelings in the audience. This demonstrates the importance of photo choice when used to accompany text. This has already benefitted my position as editor of the newspaper. Far too often, I have allowed section editors and page designers to get away with using any photos pertaining to the story. For instance, there was a student spotlight several weeks ago and permission was given by the person to use any photos found on her Facebook page for the print version of the story. The editor chose a seemingly reasonable photo of the student. However, she was standing next to a Christmas tree. The story had nothing to do with Christmas and was not only misleading but also actually hurtful to the story. I have since worked to encourage the editors to understand the importance of photo selection and how it affects the perception of the readers. The importance of this only increases for online media.

Collaborative Project

For my collaborative project, I again worked with Jess Cogan and Theron Mackey. These two classmates, in addition to being good friends, are also fellow members of mine in Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity. For this reason, we chose the local chapter of our national fraternity as our client for the collaborative project. As current members who have been involved with the organization for a significant amount of time, we are each aware of the downfalls of the fraternity and what could be done to improve those things. With this in mind, we made an online website for the local chapter of Phi Kappa Psi. First, we determined the need and purpose of the website. We asked important questions before starting work. How would this website operate? What would be important to the design

and function of the website? What information would be helpful to its purpose? What software would we use to create it? We decided on Weebly, an online website host provider, to create our website. We then produced content including text, photographic, and video content to be displayed on the site. To ensure that the website would allow prospective members or other organizations to gain information regarding our fraternity, we included a feedback form and a contact section. This allows visitors to interact with us easily. Most beneficial about this assignment was the proper planning that was required to produce a useful and professional website. We had to understand and determine our purpose prior to starting work, and by doing so we were able to understand the organization and the ways in which a website operates. Weebly also allowed us to see the ease that can go into creating a website. I, personally, will be using Weebly to host my portfolio finalizing the semester of work in this Writing in the Professions Course. We plan to purchase the domain (it has already gone live, but includes Weeblys backtrack in the URL) and pass it on to the public relations committee of our fraternity. This will be beneficial long term and allow the work to continue after weve graduated in May 2014.

Career Related Project and Conclusive Statements

I have enjoyed my career related project more than any other of the class. This is likely due to my personal interest and professional benefit of completing the project. Through my internship, I was recently given the opportunity to organize an internal company story to be shared with all employees and sponsored athletes involved with the company. The writing has been completed by the owner of the company and submitted to me for revision. As the editing is completed, I am laying out the story into a comprehensive eBook that will allow the company story and vision to be shared internally with ease. I have used InDesign to create layout templates into which the text will be plugged. This project includes many of the skills that I have developed both throughout this course and through my work with the student newspaper and has been instrumental in the success of my internship. To me, it is a great representation of the success I have seen both in this course and in all areas of my time at Capital University.