This particular lesson is part of a midterm research paper project. The research paper assignment allows students to study the career field in which they are interested. After this lesson, students begin research for their own papers. The goals of this lesson are for students to understand how to find and use academic search engines/data bases, become familiar with the campus research data base, and recognize how writers utilize sources in their writing. This lesson is presented in PowerPoint to allow students to absorb information in short, easy-to-digest pieces; the PowerPoint activities are set up to be interactive and rhetorical.
This syllabus and assignment framework is ideal for a first-year introductory composition course that focuses on strategies for critical literary exploration, generating ideas for research, and planning and organizing research material. The course focuses on developing research plans, analyzing sources, properly incorporating source material, and written presentation of students' research.
For this project, students work with a campus group, organization, department, or entity to design an infographic flyer (to print) or social media picture (to post online) with information about the entities' services and to promote students to join the organization or use the services.
Students will compose a website (blog, informational site, personal portfolio, or something else) on a topic of their choice that they will research. In addition to students' writing, their website must include a video and an infographic to help convey their message to their audience.
The following three lesson plans take place soon before and lead up to a larger composition assignment where students work in small groups to design a Google Site website on a topic geared for high school students. This project would be best suited for a FYC or FYW course as students learn some of the basic rhetorical conventions—including audience awareness and the act of collaborative writing. These lesson plans prepare students for a future of digital collaboration and digital literacy where they’ll think critically and creatively about digital work. The expectation is that students can carry these skills into other courses and beyond college.
Lesson Plan 1: Collaborative Writing
The collaborative writing approach promotes many useful learning skills such as greater participation, increased sense of ownership and empowerment, higher levels of engagement, greater interest and effort, a shift from students as passive recipients to students as active coauthors, and a stronger relationship between students and faculty[1]. In the final Composition Assignment (taking place after these three lesson plans), students work in small groups (collaborate) to write and construct a website. During this particular lesson, not only will students get practice collaborating before the Composition Assignment, but they will practice this communication life skill by learning to set objectives within a group, co-plan a document, communicate, compromise, and problem-solve with peers.
Lesson Plan 2: Visual Graphics In this second lesson plan, students learn the rhetorical conventions between visual/audio graphics and written content. This multimodal composition lesson promotes technology skills; digital composing is an important skill in the midst of technology and social media. Through this lesson's genre awareness, students have opportunity to understand what makes an effective and a weak infographic. By creating their own infographic on a topic of interest to the students, they’re able to practice and apply rhetorical concepts that they discover during critique. I believe offering students hands-on experiences (like creating their own infographic) will help them metacognitively apply rhetorical principles (like audience awareness) and make these principles more memorable for projects outside of the class. Within the scope of the Composition Assignment, this lesson plan prepares students to create an infographic, video, and Google Slide presentation to include on their final Composition Assignment website by coaching students on audience awareness, design, and organization.
Lesson Plan 3: Online Readers, Website Home Page, and Web Writing Online readers are a unique audience, and this lesson informs students how to write for these readers and also how to create an effective website Home page. The activity following the lesson is a chance for students to again practice genre awareness and genre critique as they design a website Home page. As with all the lesson plan activities, students must reflect on their choices and processes in an attempt for them to better understand their methods and choices in relevance to learning. Like the other lesson plans, this third lesson is meant to teach students transferable skills—writing for the web, webpage organization, and online audience awareness. Again, these are strategies and habits of mind needed for the Composition Assignment and can be used beyond the class.