Writing Project 2 Assignment

305WI: Theory and Practice of Composition
Unit 2: Writing and Designing About a Problem

Due Date: October 29, 2019 by 11:59pm on Canvas
Length: Fact Sheet (2 pages, front/back); Poster (1 page, 18 x 27 inches, portrait or landscape)
Task
Research a wicked problem (an issue that requires a large group of people to change their
mindsets and behavior to solve the problem, such as climate change). The problem can be
related to race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, class, citizenship, education, or politics. In this
way, even communities that seem neutral are implicated in perpetuating, and being affected
by, institutional social concerns.
Describe the problem in two informative texts for different rhetorical situations -- a fact sheet
and a poster. Both discuss the same problem and give the exact same information in both
genres. If the first assignment demonstrates the value of your community because lessons can
be learned from it, this second one sets the foundation for why others should care about how
what happens within a community impacts others.
Here are some questions to help guide your project:
● What wicked problems exist in my community that can impact others outside the
community?
● How much information-gathering will put together a complete picture of the problem?
● How can I give enough information that audience’s care about the problem within the
limited formats of each genre?
● What are the best locations on and off campus can I place these documents to engage
my audience?
● What are the challenges of gathering data or information?
● What visual grammar and design language will guide my production of these texts?
Purpose
The assignment helps you identify the affordances and limitations of smaller and shorter texts
that can have high-impact. The assignment also asks you to think deeply about how document
design and form and genre shape how you compose and how others see and understand (or
don’t) information.Finally, you’ll have to make careful rhetorical choices as you do research.
Information literacy is more challenging than ever despite the ubiquity of digital technologies.
How do you win the attention of someone in an age where everything competes for people’s
attention? How does information stick in the minds of others through design?
Audience
Based on your goals for the project, the audience will vary. Consider yourself sounding the
alarm on an issue that requires action and behavior change, and you’ve selected informative
texts to spread around a specific location -- UMKC library, for example.
Genre and Format

Overall, your fact sheet and poster should consider the following features:
● Self-contained documents that should not refer to previous documents.
● Cite references for text, photos, illustrations and charts in a separate bibliography
● Find ways to simplify complex ideas and transform jargon into English(es)
● Write in the present tense and as active as possible
● For the poster, have an engaging message and image
● For the fact sheet, a design scheme that holds attention but delivers facts clearly
Interactive Components and Timeline

All writing is a rhetorical and social activity, and it often entails an embodied and cognitive
process. This assignment, then, requires you to engage in your own writing process and develop
your own writing habits. Expect to share your draft throughout the entire unit. Below you will
find small assignments and their due dates that build up to the final product and your portfolio:
Activity Due Date
Writer Habits Journal entries Throughout unit
Waypoint 1: Wicked Problem Statement October 1
Waypoint 2: Sketches/Doodles/Grammars October 10
Rough Draft 1 October 22
Rough Draft 2 October 24/25
Process Letter October 29
Portfolio October 29
Evaluative Criteria
Demonstrate how you understand some concepts in composition and expository writing by
reflecting back on your composing process. Integrate the theories you’ve read into what you
understand about your own writing habits -- the choices you make to produce different texts
as well as where, when, and how you make these choices and your emotions in response to the
texts you make. I will read and respond to your process letters. Like an editor, I make
suggestions on how you might revise your project to achieve your goals for the piece.

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305WI: Theory and Practice of Composition

Unit 2: Writing and Designing About a Problem

Here are some questions to help guide your project:

Genre and Format

Interactive Components and Timeline

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