Creative writing is about art
Academic writing is about subject matter
Technical writing is about instructions
Scientific writing is about physical reality as it is understood by scientists
Journalism is (supposed to be) writing about social reality
Propaganda is writing about pseudo reality for political power
Workplace writing is about relationship-based problem solving
The expression "workplace-based writing and research" refers to writing processes geared toward solving real problems for real people. To write in this context requires learning as much as you can about the problem and how the relevant people experience it before you start looking for and testing the efficacy of various solutions, using feedback from representatives of the problem suffers. If you have ever filled out a customer survey you've volunteered data for workplace-based research, data that can provide insight into how you think and what you want. This information is used to improve customer service, evaluate employee performances, and establish a relationship with you. If you have spent any time on an app you have been passively providing the providers with data they can use to get a much more vivid sense of who you are, how you behave, what you think, and what you want. With this kind of data, a company (or an individual) can address you directly, target you as it were. Rather than just showing you a product, they can show you one they have reason to believe you will be interested in and they can tailor the pitch for you specifically.
This class is about learning how to tailor a solution for a real audience. Given our time and resource constraints, we won't be able to go deeply into the process, but you will learn more than enough to figure out if you like and wish to pursue this kind of work.
A grade of C or better in English 1101 and 1102.
We meet every Monday (except when we honor MLK, January 20). On any given Monday, we will discuss the previous week's readings and assignment(s). Then I will give you a quick overview of what you are to do with the rest of the week and you will come back on the following Monday to discuss what you did and what you learned. This class is discussion and project based. There are no tests and there is no final examination.
There is one big project broken down into several parts. You can do this on your own, with others in the class, or we might try to do it as a class.
This website.
Brainstorm a list of problems worth solving, as many as you can think of. It doesn't matter how big or how small. More is better.
Think about the various worlds you inhabit -- where you live, GSU, an organizations you belong to -- and what frustrates you about each. Talk with everyone you know. What's grinding their gears?
Label each of the problems on your list -- deterministic, stochastic, complex, wicked, procedural, technical -- and talk about what you would need to know about each one to come up with possible, testable solutions.
Think about the various kinds of people involved in each of the problems on your list -- suffers, buyers, impeders, competitors, investors -- and how each type contributes to both the problem and the solution. People who have a problem and people who sell a solution to it are not always the same people. There are also people who profit from the problem and so might get in the way of a solution.
Think about the context (the physical space perhaps) in which the problem is experienced and identify which ones you have access to.
Identify the one researchable, potentially solvable problem whose context and population you have access to. You need to be able to survey and interview and perhaps observe them (with their knowledge, of course.)
Deliverable: Turn in your initial list, with each problem labeled by type (deterministic, probabilistic, etc), context and population. Identify and describe in greater detail the problem you wish to solve, the relevant population and how you have access to it, the context in which they experience the problem, the nature of the solution you think you could provide, and what makes you think it might work.
Criteria of evaluation: A thoughtful list and a promising choice for further research. If you don't have this by now the rest of the class might be a miserable experience.
Deliverable: A 3 to 4 page paper with the following headings.
Now that you have one workable problem with access to a representative sample of the relevant population, and a research agenda, it's time to start gathering data. What do you need your informants to tell you? About the problem, the experience of it, the current workarounds or existing solutions. You need to simplify without over simplifying. What questions can follow-up interviews answer?
Gather data -- Survey and or interview relevant people. You need to know what the problem is, what it's like to suffer with it (user experience), and how it might be solved as well as workarounds and failed solutions. Your experience of the problem is relevant, but you need to see beyond your own perspective.
Deliverables: the questions, the answers, the transcripts: the data
Criteria of evaluation: leave no reasonable question unanswered
Create personas
Description: Segment your audience -- if the problem is suffered in different ways -- may not be relevant
Deliverable: 2 or 3 or more different user-types or an explanation of why all of your potential users as the same
Criteria of evaluation: leave no one out.
Create a prototype
Description: Design and build a prototype solution you can test, preferably on potential buyers
Deliverable: Keep a screen shot or a working copy to include in your progress report.
Test the prototype
Description: Ask people to use the prototype, assess (surveys, interviews, observations) its efficacy and ease of use
Refine
Description: redesign the prototype to fix the problems you discovered
Deliverable: A progress report, 3 - 4 pages, in which you describe and explain what you've done, what you've learned, and how you've improved the prototype as a result.
Criteria of evaluation: leave no reasonable question unanswered
Assignment 1 10% of your final grade.
Assignment 2 20%
Assignment 3 20%
Assignment 4 30%
Assignment 5 20%
The letter scale used for major assignments are below.
A+ 4.3 C+ 2.3
A 4.0 C 2.0
A- 3.7 C- 1.7
B+ 3.3 D 1.0
B 3.0 F 0
B- 2.7
George Pullman
According to the GSU student handbook
This section is intended as a brief on motivation theory in general rather than as an effort to motivate you to do well in this class. Ultimately motivation comes from within, so if you want to do well, you will need to self-motivate. From a rhetorical perspective, if you need to motivate long-term behavioral change, in yourself or someone else, the information below will prove useful.
If you are going to succeed at learning something that takes time and effort to learn (the guitar, long distance running, Go or Chess, rhetoric or philosophy or a second or third language), where time is measured either in months of intense effort or years of sustained, high-level effort, you need 7 things: Desire, conviction, persistence, opportunity, sacrifice, a coach, and a plan.
1) Desire: you have to want it. Typically desire comes from identity and identification. If you think you were born to run marathons or read Homer in the original, success will be a more natural path because you will be affirming your identity by pursuing your goal. You will practice for hours on your own because doing so makes you feel more yourself than anything else does. In addition to feeling like a butterfly at larval stage, you need to have a vivid image of what kind of butterfly you desire to become. You need to identify with someone who already is: a hero, a mentor, a close family member. If you have no role model, you won't have a clear sense of how to be what it is you want to become, and thus your learning will lack focus down range. So get a role model. If you don't know one personally, imagine you do while you look around for a real one. Your imaginary role model might be a famous person who you want to meet and maybe even compete with some day.
2) Sacrifice: If you have a casual interest in something and you meet with immediate success, you may imagine you are "naturally" good at it and since being good at something is pleasant, you will likely continue, thinking that you have found your way to be. Early success, however, can be misleading. When you don't understand how something is done it looks easier than it is. Novices often confuse luck with skill and mistake a success for talent. The transition from novice to expert takes a long time, even for the gifted. Inevitably joy becomes work. Performance plateaus exist. Once you cease to improve, once you experience your first loss or setback, you have to decide whether to embrace the pain and frustration and the fear of failure or cut your losses and move on. You are more likely to embrace the pain if you can't imagine alternative ways of being. Thus, oddly enough, a lack of imagination, a one-track mind, can be crucial to success. But tunnel vision doesn't guarantee success. For every success there are many couldbes and wannabes toiling forever on the precipice. I think this existential dilemma, should I stay or should I go, is why so many people are content with good enough. To become great so often means giving up too much while risking getting nothing in return.
3) Conviction: you have to want to succeed, but you also have to believe you can succeed. Identity is critical here as well. If your identity is wrapped up in the pursuit of success, and your identity isn't fragile, you will focus intensely and test yourself without fear or hesitation because you fervently believe you will succeed in the end. A role model who seems to have come from circumstances like your own helps. "They did it; so can I." This is (partially) why entering the family business is a time honored form of education. And why poverty is so often inherited.
4) Persistence: for every person who succeeds at something difficult there are many who showed equal promise and desire who failed. You have to overcome performance plateaus, adversity, boredom, and compelling distractions. Don't confuse smart with quick. Learn to embrace tedium, frustration. Learn to question each apparent accomplishment and then raise the bar. Never settle. Never rest. Keep putting yourself out there. Fall, get up, fall again.
5) Opportunity: Among those who don't succeed are also the merely unlucky. Luck plays a far greater role in success than we care to believe. It isn't enough to be good; you need the opportunity to show someone whose attention matters how good you might get given the necessary resources and support. As someone once said, "no one remembers your name just for working hard."
6) A plan: low initial bar, measurable outcomes, near-term incremental goals on an unbounded path. If you wake up one day and your jeans don't fit and you say, I'm going to get fit, chances are you won't because the goal is vague (what's fit really mean?) and you don't have a plan (what do you do to get fit?). Even if you set a specific goal, lose 5 pounds, you still need a plan, a path to the goal. You will succeed if as you suck in your tummy and pull at your jeans you say, "Today I'm going to walk up three flights of stairs." If you do, and the next day you say, "I'm going to make a healthy low-call lunch and eat that instead of going out," and you also walk up three flights of stairs, you are on your way. Fewer calories, a few more flights, day by day. Drop a few pounds; get a bit stronger (5 flights of stairs). Once your jeans fit, set a new measurable goal that will help keep your jeans fitting.
7) A coach: timely, vivid feedback. A good coach won't let you fail but won't let you luxuriate in success either. He or she will always be encouraging and correcting you. Eventually you may internalize a restlessness, a deeply felt need for continual improvement. For high achievers, good is never good enough. Happy high achievers are inspired by that drive. Miserable high achievers are plagued by it. Focus on the process of improvement and let the outcome be what it will be.
This syllabus represents only a plan. Deviations may be necessary.