More Research Discussion

Announcements

• Patricia Hill Collins (linked to a video)
  March 30th at 7:00pm
  McKnight Hall--Cone Center

Project Links

Links to the various types of final project you may do are on the Assignments Page at the bottom. Don't forget that your project proposals are due--printed out--next class, Monday, April 4th.

Please have your Library Hunt assignment done before you turn in your proposal. Make sure the link to the library hunt is obvious and on your homepage. If your link is wrong on the Classmates Webpages page, today is a good day (at the end of class) to let me know.

Brief Overview on Oral Presentations

We will discuss the content of and appropriate delivery for your final oral presentation in a couple weeks. In fact, you have a workshop on April 25th. Right now I just want to point you to the requirements to give you a heads up on the final oral presentation.

Final Project Proposals

Check out your proposal requirements for your final projects.

Chapter 8: Reports and Other Such Fun

Chapter 8 basically stresses the need to understand audience and purpose for particular types of reports. Of course, reports are industry specific, so we need to be careful about generalizing. However, there are important components of the chapter that can be generalized as effective types of technical communication.

Some questions

• What attributes make the report "Medical Malpractice" (Appendix C) pages 324-339 an effective report for the busy executive?

• What attributes make the report "Indoor Air Quality" on pages 150-153 an effective report for the consumer?

• How is the information arranged in the report from Laura Anne Ranford on pages 182-185, and what might we say about the assumed audience because of that arrangement?

Definitions

• UNCC has access to the Oxford English Dictionary. When you're on campus, just go to www.oed.com, and you'll be ready to search for words. If you're off campus, you can go through the Atkins Library Database to sign in.

• I want you to get into pairs for this next activity. Using the idea of an expanded definition (described below), I want you to define a word I give you.

• Create a "term-class-features-etymology" table for the word.

  • term: the item, idea, subject, etc.
  • class: the group under which the term falls
  • features: distinguishing characteristics
  • etymology: word history

See below:

-or-

This is a webpage requirement, so only one of you has to host it, but your partner(s) has to have a link to it. Use the Internet to define the word, but make sure you properly cite where your information comes from--even if it's just linking the phrase to the source.

Terms (I'll assign)

• capitalism

• artificial

• index

• anorexia

• coronary

• modem

• bionic

• chemotherapy

• mafia

• Boolean logic

• marsh

• classic

• oil

• nuclear fission

• nuclear fusion

Future Work

Next class (4/04) your project proposals are due, and we'll start our rhetorical history and ethics discussions. There are only 3 more weeks of content classes left, so we're almost finished. In addition to Chapters 3 and 11 in Tebeaux and Dragga, I'll have a few short readings for you online, so be on the lookout for them.

Several of you let me know on the midterm that you're comfortable with researching at Atkins Library, but many others are not. Don't worry, technology has greatly improved the research experience. The greatest difficulty is sifting through the vast amount of material.