Flitt 1

Morgan Flitt
Professor Rieman
UWRT 1103
22 September 2014
Individual Analysis
In this paper, I was attempting to describe the group dynamic and process that
occurred throughout the entirety of making these three different genres. I hope the
writing is professional in nature, but still comes across as relatable rather than
unapproachable. I feel as though the discussions in each paragraph are similar and I
hope that they are not similar enough that it seems repetitive and I would like a second
opinion on that. I struggled with finding an appropriate introduction and conclusion and
want to make sure that I was able to add to the paper rather than distract from it with
those two components. I would love to know if those are even a necessary component of
the paper as a whole. I think I did well at being honest in evaluating our group and
process and I think that the paper reflects the group dynamic well. If there are ways to
make it more entertaining without losing the professional nature, I would like to consider
those as well. After peer workshopping, I feel as though I have a much stronger paper.
My peers helped me with what I needed to expand on and what might be better to leave
out. For the most part, I took all the constructive feedback given and used it, except for a
few tips of organizational feedback, which I chose to keep the same because after the
corrections I think that helps with the flow enough. I am glad I had their help and opinion
to improve the paper.

Flitt 2
The challenge of presenting a habit of mind that was very familiar to most eighth
and ninth graders without losing their attention with the format, but still attempting to
provide them with valuable tips relevant to their life, was no easy one. For quite some
time, I was disbelieving that my group and I would be able to rise to the challenge and
actually produce anything that would fulfill our purpose. There was quite a bit of
frustration in attempting to come up with any ideas, but once we started to have more
creative and out-of-the-box thinking, the challenge seemed much less difficult to
overcome. Eventually, my group and I found three ideas, which were a twitter page, a
game show, and a personality quiz, that we saw as worthwhile, relevant, but still
informative and it is my hope that we have made products that reflect that vision.
This process involved an extensive amount of practice in rhetorical knowledge.
Of course my group was attempting to produce quality presentations for our habit of
mind, but if we had just been focusing on the product without considering the context we
were presenting it in, our final product would not have been effective enough. It was
certain that we were practicing rhetorical knowledge, when every single idea that was
brought up we considered the ways that it would or would not appeal to our audience.
Often times the ideas were not dynamic and engaging enough to be executed, so we
scratched those ideas immediately and continued to try and brainstorm. Many of the
common formats for presentations were too academic in nature to be appealing, such as
writing to-do lists on how to be responsible or recording a lecture on what responsibility
means in college, so we stepped outside those more academic genres and worked our
content to more appealing genres.

Flitt 3
To begin with, we read more about our habit of mind, responsibility, in order to
gain a larger insight into what exactly we were attempting to analyze. We thought
critically about the different ways that responsibility applied in numerous facets of life;
with school, jobs, family and friends for instance. We knew that we wanted to include a
broader definition of responsibility than just the basic one provided, so much of our
thinking was about what formats would facilitate that process best. Once we decided on
our three genres, a twitter page, a personality quiz, and a game show, we explored the
different ways we could approach the specific genre, especially by seeing other examples
of what already existed in that genre. I specifically worked with the game show genre, so
I tried to analyze which questions would be most applicable to high schoolers and college
students so the comparisons would be most effective. I then had to decide the best format
to collect this data, which ended up being an online survey that I sent to college students.
After thinking about the best way to present this, I thought a colorful and animated
PowerPoint might be best, as the games I played in school with power points always
caught my attention the most. It was through critical analysis of these pre-existing
documents within the genre as well as experimentation on our own that allowed our
product to become shaped by both the pre-existing content as well as our own creativity
and nuances.
The writing process for this project was certainly a challenge. Attempting to write
a personality quiz that was both entertaining and effective was hard to do without
seeming like it was trying too hard to approach the audience at their level. After a few
questions and responses that had to be scratched because they didnt serve the purpose of
approaching our audience in the best manner, we began to get into more of a frame of

Flitt 4
mind that made the writing easier. The twitter page and the game show presentation were
less problematic and we found some existing pieces that helped guide our writing in
those. As far as writing our genre analysis, this came easy as we each had worked in one
genre in particular and we wrote an analysis for the genre we each had the experience
with. Then we collectively edited and reworked the papers in order to achieve the best
and most cohesive final product. It was a very supportive and collaborative environment
that seemed to work well in pulling on each of our strengths, which made the final
products that much more effective.
Conventions were certainly considered throughout this project, as it was
important to ensure that we were creating a product that was appropriate for both the
genre and the audiences. I learned that sometimes the conventions present in a genre are
not always clear-cut, such as in the game show format that we choose to do. There were
not obvious rules or conventions for this genre, other than making sure it was more
lighthearted and making sure it was easy to read and entertaining. The questions had to be
relevant to both college students and high schoolers and had to be brief enough that they
were concise and easy to compare. The genre does not lend itself to long drawn out
questions and comparisons, otherwise the entertainment aspect of the game show is lost.
The conventions found in the personality quiz were much more clearly defined. There
were certainly guidelines we needed to follow, such as making sure the questions related
well to the answers and that there was interesting results at the end with helpful tips, that
the conventions of the genre enforced on our group in this setting. Twitter is a much more
informal setting, so the conventions only include having short and sweet writing and
often including other technology in the tweets.

Flitt 5
There were numerous different environments we worked in within throughout this
project. Personally, I completed much of this work in my dorm room, with my roommate
working as well. I did both the genre analysis and the individual assignment in this
manner and it seems effective. For some of the information gathering, my group and I sat
together as well as when we created our genres and I found the more collaborative
environment helpful in that case. I am glad that we did our writing individually and then
came back together to discuss our results and edit together. We wrote on social media, on
a personality quiz, and on the quiz show so most of our environments we were
composing on were digital. The engagement in each of these different environments was
interesting; the Internet allows for quite a bit more creative execution of ideas than
normal pen and paper. Making a twitter page was much more difficult than making a
speech or word document, because of the brevity that it required. Composing a
PowerPoint for the quiz show gave quite a bit of creativity, we had to think about what
would keep visual appeal as well as what would best convey the content. Lastly,
composing the personality quiz was a remarkably different format than I had ever used
before and trying to think about all the different meanings of the questions and the results
was a lengthy process. The website we used to compose it helped tremendously as it
guided the process along though. As a group, we composed mostly individually but then
displayed the products to each other and critiqued and edited them. Most of our
communication occurred in person, but was supplemented with any text conversations
that were needed if any of us needed some guidance or assistance. This worked extremely
well and I always felt we were unified and supportive throughout this creation process.

Flitt 6
The process of creating these genres was one that was unique and unlike anything
I had experienced before. I found that as the project went on, I was able to get a better
idea of what was necessary and what would be ideal for the project, such as defining and
performing within conventions of a genre, or marketing and composing assignments
particularly to the demographic that will be receiving the assignments. My group and I
wanted to work to produce the best products we could and we certainly attempted to do
the work in order to achieve these results. The practice of numerous skills, such a
rhetorical analysis, critical thinking, and composing in multiple environments, occurred
more than I thought it would and it was helpful that we got a chance to put these skills
into use in a way that may be actually beneficial to another group of students.