This page describes the objectives, project details, recommended approaches, hints and tips, submission guidelines, and evaluation standards for the Editing Exploratory project.
The Editing Exploratory (EE) is an exploration of professional/scholarly issue related to language, design, and communication. The Editing Exploratory project challenges you to conduct research into your topic of choice, and to craft a well-reasoned argument.
Document type(s): memo, article
Document length(s): 150 words (memo), 2000 to 2500 words (article)
Project value: 250 points (50, draft; 200 final submission)
Evaluation rubric: _RPW435_Eval_EditingExploratory.pdf
The Editing Exploratory results in an article that offers insight into an issue of relevance to your professional development goals in the realm of writing, editing, language, design, and communication. Key to your success is joining and making a contribution to a conversation. That requires you to develop some knowledge of the professional and scholarly discourse about topics directly or closely related to your own.
Your final project submission will include the following elements.
A memo of transmittal introduces the accompanying document to its audience(s). You will craft such a memo with each submission for the project. Your memos should be addressed from you to me, and should introduce the accompanying project. Your memos should incorporate the following content elements.
The article should construct an argument that contributes to an existing conversation of professional or scholarly relevance to you. Because articles might take many forms, many approaches, and address a variety of audiences, the specific details will vary.
However, your article should incorporate all of the following content and design elements.
Recommended tool(s): Adobe InDesign
This section offers guidance for how to interpret the project, and for how to proceed with your work on it. Therefore, as you work, consider the following strategic recommendations:
The goal of any article, whether professional or scholarly, should be to contribute to a conversation. Good articles do this. Lower quality articles never quite get there. Participating in a conversation requires you to read and be aware of the contributions of others, and to develop a sense for yourself of the issues, the stakes, and the potential movements within the discussion of your topic.
Study articles connected to yours to observe how they are organized, developed, and other details about they way they are presented.
This section is designed to help you anticipate and avoid problems as you work on this project. Therefore, as you work, consider the following hints and tips:
Always strive for high levels of professionalism and consistency in your work. Keep in mind that writers who struggle at all to assemble an argument often see some deterioration in their grammatical correctness and stylistic consistency. This may happen with your article if this kind of writing is relatively new to you, or if your draft is slow to come together.
Although you should focus on the argument, explanations, and supporting details more initially, be sure to leave yourself time to attend to the details of grammar and expression prior to each submission.
The revisions and refinements you make from the draft to the final submission may help you understand your design process, and therefore your professional development in more-sophisticated ways. Archive your drafts of projects throughout your coursework, so you are able to examine your growth and maturation.
Read and attend carefully to these submission guidelines. Failure to do so may result in delays in receiving feedback on the draft of your project, or in points lost on the final evaluation of your project.
Create a project folder inside your shared class folder on Dropbox.com. Remember, I can only view files that you place inside the class folder. Until you place files in that space, you have not in practice submitted them.
However, do not share your project folder with me. I will not accept that invitation to view its contents. As long as you place your project files in the folder you created and shared in response to the Week 1 discussions, you are set for the semester.
Name the folder Article.
Make sure the files listed below are available to me in the project folder by the description and draft deadlines. Model your filenames on the listed examples:
Make sure the files listed below are available to me in the project folder by the final deadline. Model your filenames on the listed examples:
Note that the Feedback file is one you receive from me in response to your draft submission. Move it into your project folder when you assemble your final submission.
This section describes the standards by which your draft and final submissions will be evaluated.
There are 50 possible points each for the description and video draft. You will earn points according to the following standard.
There are 100 possible points for the final project. You will earn points according to the standard described on the policies page (40% content development, 20% design execution, and 20% professionalism & attention to detail, and 20% impact of revision; see Policies). The specific areas of emphasis for this project are drawn from the description and discussion of the project, and are detailed in the evaluation rubric (_RPW435_Eval_EditingExploratory.pdf).
Remember that I will only post the point values for projects on the Grades page in SVSU Canvas. I will post the details relevant to that evaluation in your class folder in a project-specific file.
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