Required Unit 1 Reading
AW Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4
Due Dates
January 25: Media Literacy Reflective Moments
January 28: First Draft
January 30: Conference Draft
February 1: Peer Review
February 8: Final Project
Goals of this Project
Our first project in ENC1102 is designed to explore and reflect on ways writing, research, and information can influence change in our world. You’ll share your ideas about how beliefs, thoughts, feelings, and/or actions have been influenced by writing. By connecting a few different stories and experiences, you will start to identify patterns and draw conclusions about the power of media literacy in your world.
What you’ll need to do
By the time you start planning this project, you’ve already begun reflecting on media literacy in your world. In the Introductory Discussion, you’ve talked about the writing and research you’ve done in previous classes. You’ve also taken the Online Reasoning Assessments to see how you critically evaluate online media and how that compares to other students from the SHEG study.
In this project, you’ll need to come up with 3-4 short reflective moments. These moments could tell the story of a time when…
- you struggled with media literacy
- you tried to help others who had poor media literacy
- you changed your perspective based on research
- you took action because of something you saw online
- etc
After sharing your reflections, take some time to develop your own position about media literacy in your world. What have these experiences, together, demonstrated to you about the action you can take as a student, writer, and researcher during this semester? This action could be small, such as setting personal goals; medium-sized, such as improving media literacy within your family; or large-scale, such as an argument about media literacy in your own community.
Your rhetorical situation
For every writing project, you’ll analyze your rhetorical situation as discussed in AW Chapter 3, particularly pages 54-55, by reflecting on the writer, reader, text, and medium for the work you are doing.
As you’ve already noticed, what you’re asked to do for this project doesn’t exactly sound like a traditional essay. You’ll have to make decisions about how to piece together your reflections and transition into your larger argument that builds on those stories.
Obviously, you will be making your own decisions about your role as a writer. Your reader, the intended audience for this project is internal to the class — your instructor is obviously part of your audience, and so are your classmates since we will all be learning from each other all semester. For the text, these assignment guidelines do have some requirements for the content: you must have the 3-4 reflective moments and your position about media literacy. You will make your own decision about form, and you will have total freedom for your medium.
Requirements and Scoring Criteria
In order to successfully complete this assignment your essay will need to meet these requirements. Here’s how they will break down in the final score.
For each requirement:
A = Extraordinary work, more than fulfills the guidelines
B = Clearly above average work, more than meets the guidelines
C = Average work, solidly meets the guidelines
D = Below average work, serious attempt to fulfill requirements but does not fully meet the guidelines
F = Substantially below average work
| Reflections – 40% Students are required to:include 3-4 reflective moments that tell stories related to the topic of research, information, and/or media literacymake meaningful connections between course concepts and their prior learning and personal livesshare clear, specific and detailed stories that readers can bring readers into the moment |
| Position about media literacy – 30% Students are required to:explain what these experiences, together, have demonstrated to you about the action you can take as a student, writer, and researcher during this semesterinclude a clear, easy-to-understand statement of their positiondevelop their position with sufficient explanation and detaildemonstrate a meaningful connection to the reflections |
| Rhetorical awareness 30% Students are required to:choose a medium for their project that is appropriate for their purpose, audience, and messageappeal to logos through meaningful transitions between each part and a logical connection between your stories, your argument, and your conclusionsappeal to ethos by coming across as someone who is informed, willing to learn, open-minded, and understanding of other points of viewappeal to pathos with stories that are interesting to readerssubmit a project that is polished, edited, and audience-readycompose in a voice that is appropriate for the audience and medium |