the course blog for composition 302 at Colorado State University
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Information & Advocacy Campaign

Overview

Your final project will be an Information and Advocacy (I&A) campaign composed in groups. The I&A campaign asks you to decide on an issue that you want to increase awareness about on campus, and to design a campaign that will allow you to inform people and encourage them to take some form of action on the issue. Like the poster project, the issue can be a local issue such as pedestrian safety on campus or a national or international issue such as voter registration or the conflict in Darfur. In order to move people to action, your campaign must be informative and persuasive in nature. The action for which you are advocating could be anything from signing a petition to attending a rally, protest, or other event, to changing a behavior (e.g., recycling more) or an attitude, or to performing an action (e.g., planting a vegetable garden).

Project components

  • Each group will conduct research on your issue and compile a paper-based annotated bibliography and research summary. The research must include both primary and secondary research. (see below for details)
  • In addition to the group annotated bibliography each group member will also submit a list of the sources s/he personally found and reviewed for the project. Along with the list you will turn in a narrative describing your research process. (see below for details)
  • After completing the research phase of the project, each group will submit a campaign design plan and a set of storyboards for the planned website. (see below for details)
  • Each group will design a website to communicate your message to the campus community. (see below for details)
  • In addition to the website, each group will create a piece of audio related to the topic. The audio could be a public service announcement that might be played on the campus radio station, an audio interview with someone knowledgeable about your topic, or an audio essay. (see below for details)
  • Each group must also design and carry out a plan to advertise or promote the website. The promotional materials could take the form of posters, brochures, flyers, a public display or performance, a Facebook group, etc. The only requirements for the promotional materials is that they creatively encourage people to visit the website and that they address all members of your target audience. (see below for details)
  • Finally, each group will turn in a project analysis paper at the end of the project. (see below for details)


Project Stages

At each of the project stages below, each group member will turn in a Group Evaluation form (see Project Resources section for the form). The purpose of this form is for you to evaluate your contributions to the project along with the contributions of each of your group members. Only I will see these forms. The purpose is to provide me with a means for tracking the collaborative efforts of each group and to assist in solving group problems should that be necessary. You will upload your completed forms to the appropriate folder in the Writing Studio dropbox.

Please use your Writing Studio group space to draft and share your materials. This way I can easily track your progress and provide feedback if requested.

Topics and Research Questions
Due: at the end of class, Thursday, April 8
During class your group will decide on a topic/issue and the action you want your audience to take. Next you will write up four or five research questions. The questions will guide your research in the next step of the project and should be designed to help you gather the information you will need to effectively persuade your audience to take action on your issue. Each group member will take a research question and find sources that will answer that question (see the next project stage). At the end of class you will turn in a typed sheet outlining your issue, action, and research questions including who will be researching the answer to each question.

Annotated Bibliography & Research Summary
Due: Thursday, April 22 (Hard copy with a digital copy in your group file folder)
The annotated bibliography (AB) for the I&A Campaign project will include at least 20 (25 for groups of five) scholarly or professional sources (composed by experts on the topic) secondary sources (print and/or electronic), and the annotations should be evaluative. Your bibliography should include both web and library research and not rely solely on what is easily available online through a Google search. Each annotation (200 words minimum) should begin with a summary of the source and end with a discussion of why the source is useful for your project. The AB should be formatted according to American Psychological Association (APA) style. See the links below in “Project Resources” for more information about composing annotated bibliographies and APA style.

In order to compile your 20 (or 25) sources, each group member should contribute five annotated sources. In order for me to evaluate the depth of your research, along with the group annotated bibliography and research summary each group member will turn in a list (formatted as an APA bibliography page) of at least ten sources that s/he read and considered for the project. This list will include the five sources that made it into the group AB and at least five that didn’t make the cut. For the ones that didn’t make it into the group AB, you must summarize the source (a basic annotation) and explain why you decided that the source was not useful. Your list should be preceded by a 1-2 page (double-spaced) discussion of your research process. It should explain how the you conducted your research and how and why you chose the sources listed in the AB. Be as detailed as possible: restate your assigned research question, and explain how you went about finding sources that would answer that question. What search engines (Google, Google Scholar, Yahoo, etc) did you use? What library databases? What were your search terms? How long did it take you to find your sources? Did you ask a librarian for help and why or why not? What was the most challenging part of the research process?

An AB is a list of sources on a particular topic or subject that also includes a summary of each source. The sources included are usually secondary sources: books and articles (both print and electronic)  and websites that present the research and arguments of others. Annotated bibliographies serve many purposes. Often organizations within an academic field will publish ABs that summarize all the essential work composed in the field. For example, The Bedford Bibliography for Teachers of Writing, published periodically so as to stay current, does this sort of work.

The annotations (summaries) included in ABs can be strictly descriptive or they can be evaluative. The Bedford Bibliography provides descriptive annotations that only summarize the content of each source; it does not evaluate the sources’ usefulness for professional and student scholars. In some respects, that fact that the authors of an AB thought a source was important enough to include is an indication that they consider it to be useful. However, some ABs also evaluate the usefulness of each source within the annotation itself. For example, if you are a beginning student in sociology it would be helpful if an AB of sociology books and articles evaluated each one’s appropriateness for readers new to the field.

Your research summary should be written in narrative style and will introduce the annotated bibliography. It should restate the group’s research questions and detail the answers you found to each question through conducting your research.  The research summary should also explain the information you gathered through conducting primary research. Your primary research will help you better understand the relationship between your topic and the CSU campus community. Primary research is information or data that you gather yourself. For example, if your topic were underage drinking, you might conduct a survey or interviews of students to find out their attitudes about the issue or to gather statistical data how many students engage in underage drinking. You could also attend meetings of a campus organization that is engaged in work related to your topic. Interviewing professionals on campus who study or provide services related to your topic is another option for primary research. Depending on your topic you might discover other opportunities/options.

Design Plans and Storyboards (Hard copy with a digital copy of the design plan in your group file folder)
Due: Tuesday, April 27
The second step in developing your campaign is to write-up a design plan. Your plan should be 3 pages, double-spaced, and include:

  • A statement of purpose (including: purpose, audience, context). In your discussion of purpose, explain why it is important for the target audience to learn more about the issue and to take the action you are advocating. Explain who your target audience is—undergraduates, all students, faculty, staff, all of the above?—and why. Finally, consider the context in which you will be presenting your argument. For example, if your topic is CSU’s budget shortfall for next year, you will need to consider all the news reports that have preceded your website and the popular reactions to them. In short, you will need to know what your audience already knows and thinks about your topic and take that into consideration when designing your campaign.
  • An analysis of the mediums and arrangements for your website and promotional materials and how they will work together to address your audience, purpose, and context. Be as detailed as possible and refer to your website storyboards.
  • A work plan with project goals and due dates. Please indicate what each group member will contribute to each of the three campaign parts: the website, the audio piece, and the promotional materials.

Final Website, Audio Piece, Promotional Materials, & Project Analysis
Due: Thursday, May 6
The website should be uploaded to the domain created for your group. The site should include at least 4 pages, and a visual design executed using an external CSS stylesheet. The site should use a visually consistent, rhetorically sound design (remember your CRAP principles and Patricia Sullivan’s explanation of safe versus experimental visual rhetoric), exhibit multimodality in its design, cite sources in a consistent manner modeled on APA style (but adapted for the web as is appropriate for your site), and provide information in support of an argument that leads your audience to a clearly defined action.

The audio piece should be included as part of your website. See the audio component page for details on the audio portion of the project.

The promotion materials must creatively encourage people to visit the website and address all members of your target audience. You must turn in a hard copy of your print materials as well as include a digital copy in your group file folder (clearly labelled “final version”). You must provide evidence that you have actually distributed the materials (photographs or video work well). If your materials include an event or performance, please provide photographs or video.

The project analysis is a three-page, double-spaced document that details the process the group went through to create the website, sound component, and  promotional materials and a rhetorical analysis of how effective the final texts are. A rhetorical analysis critiques how effectively the texts address purpose, audience, context through their choice of medium(s) and arrangement(s). When discussing your website and promotional materials, make sure to discuss the rhetorical reasoning behind your visual designs as well as an analysis of the textual information presented; make sure to discuss the CRAP principles, image choices, and use of color. See the audio component page for details on how to analyze the audio piece. Please turn in a hard copy of the analysis and provide a digital copy in your group folder.


Project Resources

Project Paperwork
Storyboards (PDF)
Group Evaluation form (Word)

APA Style & Annotated Bibliography Help
APA Style from the Purdue OWL: This is a detailed 12-section explaination of the basics of APA style.
 UIUC Writers’ Workshop APA guide: This site provides examples of how to format various types of sources in APA style when writing a bibliography or citing sources within the text of a research paper.
 Annotated Bibliography information from the Purdue OWL: This site provides an explanation of what an annotation is, how to write one, and how to format it. Examples are provided.
 Writing Center at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill: This handout provides important information about when you need to cite sources in a research paper in order to avoid plagiarizing.