I used the following assignment in my WRTG 1150 class, as a way of introducing rhetorical awareness and the importance of structure and clarity.
You can see some of their final projects on the Student Projects: Instructions Articles category on DigitalStudents.net
INSTRUCTIONS PROJECT
Description
Chances are, when you’ve wanted to know how to do something, you’ve been able to find instructions online. Even in the early days of the internet, users enthusiastically shared instructions on how to do a variety of tasks and refined and improved their instructions in response to feedback from other users. Today the process of sharing instructions is made easier than ever through a variety of web sites devoted to allowing users to help other users. For your Instructions project, you will contribute your own set of instructions to two of these web sites: eHow and SlideShare.
As you probably know from experience, poorly written instructions are frustrating. But one of the main reasons they’re poorly written is that the author didn’t pay enough attention to understanding the target audience or the situations that would bring that audience to the instructions. The author may not have thought deeply enough about who would be using the instructions and how, what they would already know how to do, what terms they would need defined, what kind of problems they might encounter, and so on. In other words, the authors didn’t pay attention to the rhetorical situation for the instructions. Another reason we sometimes find instructions frustrating is that they’re simply not written or organized clearly. The author may use overly complex sentences, vague language, or an inconsistent framework for presenting each step. In other words, the writing is not reader-friendly.
Because writing effective instructions requires an awareness of the rhetorical situation as well as clear and well-organized writing, instructions make a good first project for our writing class. And because you will be writing your instructions using digital tools and publishing them in a social media environment, the assignment fits well within our theme of digital literacy.
Topics
Choose a relatively simple task appropriate to an audience of college students so that your friends and classmates can serve as your user testers. Consider tasks that you know how to do relatively well so that you can offer readers an appropriate level of background and detail as well as troubleshooting tips.
The task should meet these criteria:
- it should work best in written format as opposed to video
- it should be appropriate to the step-by-step format of eHow, rather than being a collection of non-sequential tips
- it should be appropriately narrow in scope
- it should fit into one of the following eHow categories: computers, internet, or education
- it may be a task college students do relating to course work or for fun
We will brainstorm topic ideas in class.
Process
We will work on this project by following the stages of the writing process: reading, brainstorming, drafting, peer reviewing, revising, and publishing. We will start by doing rhetorical analyses of instructions posted by others, paying particular attention to factors such as how the author establishes his or her credibility on the topic, how the information is organized and presented, and how well the author anticipates the needs and concerns of target readers. Then we will look more closely at the features common to instructions on two web sites: eHow and SlideShare, including elements like introductions, difficulty level ratings, tips and warnings, and so on. Next we will brainstorm topics and begin developing drafts that contain relevant features. You will get feedback on your drafts by sharing them with classmates and friends who will test out your instructions, and you will use this feedback to further revise and develop your instructions.
Final Product
You will prepare two final versions of your instructions: one written out in step by step format for publication on eHow.com and another in presentation slide format for publication on SlideShare.net You will also write a rhetorical analysis of your instructions that discusses the strategies you used to appeal to ethos, pathos, and logos.
To submit the final version, you will post your rhetorical analysis along with links to your eHow article and SlideShare presentation to CULearn. See the instructions on the relevant calendar entry for more details.