Major Assignment: Group Project—, you will form into small groups (2-4 writers) in order to redesign and rewrite a website for a local business.To ensure fair grade assessment, each group member will also hand in an individual group evaluation memo. This memo will be designed to provide me with your individual evaluations and ratings of each team member’s contributions.
MA: Website Redesign Memo
As part of your professional work, you will most likely encounter workplace situations that will be collaborative; that is, they will require you to work with a team of professionals to produce the desired result. For this assignment, you will work as part of a collaborative group (2-4 writers) to redesign and rewrite a website for a small business to make the site more usable and clearer for visitors.
Imagine you work for one of the small local businesses listed below.
http://www.quadcinema.com/
http://www.ifccenter.com/
http://www.thecoffeebardc.com/
http://www.allentheatre.com/
http://www.boswell.indiebound.com/
http://www.greenlightbookstore.com/
Your team’s task is to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the current website and improve on the site’s design and writing. Begin with the home page and move through the site, examining what works well about the site and what does not. Think about how well the site works for a visitor. Here are some questions to consider:
• What visual elements are there to draw you in?
• Are there any visuals that do not effectively connect with you as a visitor to the site?
• What links are there?
• Are those links clearly labeled?
• Do the links work?
• Are there topics you would expect to have links for that are not represented (such as a link to a menu at a restaurant or a set of directions for finding the business)?
• How easy is the home page to navigate?
• Is the writing clear and appropriate for the audience (the website’s visitors)?
• Does the writing meet the expectations of professional business writing we are working on this semester in ENGL 202D?
Project Components
The project will include four components:
Daily Assignment:
1. An informal proposal memo to your instructor (worked on in class and uploaded to ANGEL): Identify the company and its website and explain who will be in charge of each major section of the redesign.
Major Assignment:
2. a cover memo to your instructor explaining how you considered the rhetorical situation for each piece of the website. (hard copy and uploaded to ANGEL)
3. a memo (Extended) to your boss, explaining your recommendations for redesigning the website in outline form. (hard copy and uploaded to ANGEL)
4. an individual group evaluation memo from each member of the group (uploaded to ANGEL)
5. Presentation that explains your concepts and shows us original content side by side with revisions and the rational for each revision.
Remember, the group project/Oral presentation is worth 250 points, or 25% of your overall semester grade.
DA: Informal Proposal Memo
In class, your group will meet and discuss what you want to do for your project. Compose a group memo proposing your project to your instructor. Explain which website you will redesign and what you see as the major flaws that will need to be fixed in your revision.
Assign primary responsibility for each major webpage to one group member. Each major webpage should have several elements (text, visuals, links to other pages, etc.) for the group member to work on. If some webpages are simpler, one group member may take two while another member only addresses one. Try to divide labor fairly.
This memo is a daily assignment and informal, so it does not need to meet the same requirements as your formal Proposal assignment for the Analytical Report, but the same general proposal principles apply.
MA: Cover Memo to your instructor
Include a cover memo to me with the final memo to your boss. Like the cover memo for the LME Packet, you (as a group) will explain the details of the writing choices you made for this project. Address the following questions and any other significant aspects of writing your document.
• What was your specific rhetorical situation? Remind me about the details you laid out in your group proposal memo and include additional details that you developed along the way.
• How did the group alter the plan that was laid out in the initial informal proposal memo? (For instance, did people change tasks along the way, some group members taking on more responsibility than they first expected to?)
• Identify the three points of the rhetorical situation and explain how the group analyzed it for this document and address the needs of the situation?
Memo (Extended)
Each team (as a group) will write an extended memo to your boss, explaining what changes you suggest for the site. Include visuals, such as photos from the website and/or screenshots, where appropriate. You should set up your memo like an outline of the presentation.
Include:
• What elements of site are addressed
• Why the original elements are bad
• What the revisions look like
• Why the revisions matter
• How they will make the site better
• Who will be better served by the new content
• What is the overall benefit of these changes
*The bulk of your persuasion should come from the presentation.
Presentation
Elements of past assignments come into play here. You want to persuade your boss to make the changes you suggest. You want to present the bad news that some aspects of the site are not as effective as they could be. You want to have “you”-attitude in how you address a superior in your company. Your offerings should include specific revisions for website content, examples, and rationale for all changes. You are presenting the new elements of the site, why they are superior to the old elements and why the boss should accept them as logical for the company.
All of the elements from your Memo Outline should be explained by the members of your group during the presentation. Standard presentation etiquette should be observed.
• One person speaks at a time
• Other group members are silent when someone is speaking
• No electronic devices should be visable except for equipment used for presentation
• Speaker should be visable, speak clearly and audibly
• Speakers should know when it is their turn to speak
• Nervous speakers should prepare note cards to use durring the presentation
• Group should assign presentation tasks AHEAD of time- who will change slides or images on screen at what time. Also determine what your signal will be for moving to the next image.
Group Evaluation Memo
Each team member will write an individual memo that evaluates the team project. The memo should be an honest assessment of the individual’s and his or her teammates’ work on the group project. In the memo, you will assess the project as a whole, but you will focus on evaluating your performance and contributions to the team and the performance and contributions of your teammates. Upload the project evaluation memo to ANGEL on the day the projects are due or by the following class meeting.
Note: These evaluation memos are strictly confidential.
The project evaluation memo will contain three sections:
• Introduction
• Rating of Each Team Member’s Participation
• Conclusion
Introduction
In the introduction, set the context for the rest of the memo: introduce your team, your project, and the purpose of the memo.
Rating of Each Team Member’s Participation
Next, you will evaluate and then rate the contribution of each member, including yourself. In one or two paragraphs, analyzing the performance and contributions of each individual. Be sure to provide specific reasons to justify your evaluations. Identify the specific tasks assigned to the individual and assess their success in meeting those responsibilities—did the individual meet their deadlines, submit the quality work required, handle changes and challenges effectively, and so on? If the member took on additional tasks and made other contributions, note those as well.
After analyzing the performance of each member, assign a participant rating on a scale of 0-100. All members should receive a participant rating of 100 unless they failed to perform assigned tasks, performed assigned tasks inadequately, repeatedly failed to attend group meetings, missed deadlines, and/or did not contribute positively to the team project. This number reflects the percentage of effort the individual invested in the team project.
o If an individual’s effort was 90% of the other group members, the number you should give him or her is a 90.
o 100 should represent an average, active group member who contributed positively to the group.
o 0 should represent a member who was inactive in the group and who did not contribute at all towards the group project.
Conclusion
In the conclusion, provide a summary or closing statement about your assessment of the project and your contributions to it. Then relate the lessons learned to future investigations and reports that you may undertake in your career.
Grading Process
Your instructor will use the project evaluations to determine the final grade assigned to each team member for the group report project. Grades will be assigned through the following process:
1. The instructor will assign a letter grade to the group project.
2. Then, the instructor will use the group evaluation memos to assign individual grades to the different members. For each team member, the instructor will average the participant ratings from the project evaluation memos. The instructor will then multiply the points awarded for the project grade by the individual’s participant rating to determine that member’s individual project grade.
Consequently, those team members who receive poor evaluations/participant ratings will have their grade lowered by their average participant rating. For instance, if the team received 190 points for the project, and one team member receives an average participant rating of 90%, that student will receive 171 points (190 x 0.90 = 171 points).
Note: Your instructor reserves the right to disregard and / or modify unsubstantiated or overly critical evaluations.
Since the individual evaluation memos are integral in determining individual grades, anyone who does not complete an evaluation memo will have his or her final report grade lowered by 10% (20 points).
Grading Criteria
The following is a list of the criteria categories from which your group project will be evaluated:
• Rhetorical Situation (Audience, Purpose, and Context)
• Content / Support
• Organization / Structure/ Visual Design
• Style (Cohesion, Concision, Readability, and Usability)
• Basic Clarity, Grammar, and Mechanics
• Standard presentation etiqutte observed
Last Completed Projects
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