Lesson for Week 13: Day 1
13.1
Write a blog entry on your research topic and your progress. Read about progress reports and activity reports in The Handbook of Technical Writing and continue working on your paper.
Progress Reports are documents used to manage projects. As the proposal and technical brief looked forward into the project, the progress report looks back to work completed and forward to work scheduled. Whereas the proposal and tech brief focus on the shape of the finished project first and talked about how to achieve that end (telos) secondarily, the progress report simply summarizes the project's nature and goal as a reminder and focuses primarily on the process of achieving the desired end. Put another way, the proposal focuses on the telos; the progress report focuses on the process of the work.
Progress reports follow a predictable structure and usually appear as emails or memos:
Introduction
Work Scheduled (Inclusive dates for next period)
Conclusion
Here's an example of a progress report to look at. A progress report not only helps you manage a project, it also gives you a chance to show your supervisors that you are a reliable worker capable of managing projects and solving problems.
I'm sorry to violently shift topics in a single lesson. We needed to talk about progress reports because one is due for next time, but we also need to talk about media and venues because I would like you to consider the possibility of turning this assignment (the GMO persuasive paper) into something other than a typical paper. Given the change in technology in the past decade, the change in publication methods, and the change in peoples' ways of finding information, it is worth considering whether your argument might better meet the needs of your intended audience if you were to create an oral presentation supported by a poster or, perhaps, a PowerPoint presentation (be careful here: PowerPoint can be deadly). Perhaps you would be more effective in reaching and communicating your intended audience if you created a website.
Paper as a medium has certain advantages. It looks like it was made to last, and that can sometimes create the appearance of authority, especially if the document design is good. It has the advantage of being portable, requiring no electronic hook up. It has the advantage of being easy to scan forward and back. Memory often works by putting things in places. Because things stay where they are placed on a page, it is easier to locate select passages on paper than in an electronic text. Paper is also easier to read and often reveals typos and other errors that we miss in electronic texts. The big problem is paper texts are not widely accessible for rapid dispersal--publishing and distribution are relatively slow processes.
Speech has several advantages, most notably the power of immediate feed back and the multiple channels of information transfer (oral, visual) and the richness of those channels. People often feel that they get more from face-to-face oral communication than from texts, which cannot respond or adapt to the audience on the fly. The disadvantages are obvious--you have to be in the presence of the speaker when the speech is being given to reap the full benefits of the medium. The other great disadvantage is that oral communication is ephemeral; once it passes, it is gone.
Electronic versions of paper texts or oral speeches overcome some of the disadvantages of these media, most notably making paper texts more widely available for rapid distribution and extending the life of oral speech through recording. However, these media lose the characteristics of portablility and spatial orientation on the page (paper) and the advantage of immediate feedback in oral communication. Furthermore, because these are highly mediated contexts (there is more "in-between" the source and the receiver) there is more opportunity for the richness of the message to diminish.
Hyper media is media that uses the principles of hypertext. Hypertext, by general agreement, is any medium that allows the writer to embed links in the text that may be clicked in order to presence another text. Scholar books try to accomplish something of this by placing footnotes at the bottom of pages. Some philosophy or theology books will have perhaps as little as one quarter page of primary text with three quarters of the page made up of discursive footnotes. A hyper text version of the same material would show only the primary text embedded with clickable links that that would bring the discursive footnotes to the screen, perhaps on top of the existing text, perhaps replacing it, perhaps alongside it in a sized window. The dream of hypertext visionaries was to make all information readily accessible at a click so that the writer and reader could connect primary and secondary sources, relevant and parallel sources, rapidly and universally.
Hybrid media of several sorts attempt to combine the advantages of separate media. Some work better than other. Multi-media is a term we usually reserve for presentations that stimulate our attention at several points. For instance, a web site that has motion, sound, and text allows the reader to experience the information visually and orally, spatially and temporally. Nevertheless, as this hybrid approaches film in its intensity, it also progressively relegates the reader to a passive receiver of stimulation, making the interatction more unidirectional. For an effective use of multi-media in an advocacy website, see The Meatrix.
Another hybrid is the now upbiquitous PowerPoint presentation. Theoretically these presentations "supplement" the oral by providing visual stimulation. The problem is that in most cases the oral channel is far richer than the visual representation on the screen and the auditors' attention is invariably riveted on the low density information on the screen, thereby reducing the hearer's engagement. Instead of look at the facial expressions of the speaker, the auditor gazes at a screent hat usually would take less than 10 seconds to read. Coversely, the speaker tends to reduce the talk to the bulleted points being shown on the screen. In this case the richness of expression and informationis reduced to the equivalent of an outline. Unless this hybrid is used carefully, it can actually greatly reduce the effectiveness of communication. For a more detailed debate about Power Point see Tufte's "Power Point is Evil" and Byrne's "Learning to Love PowerPoint" in Wired Magazine. Here is a Power Point Slide Show created by Susan Olson, a student in the class. I have shifted it to a web presentation. It is a sophisticated slideshow, much more in the line of creative Power Point.
A third variety of hybrid is the poster session. A poster session features a visual display that might be set up on a table in a room with several other posters. The "speaker" stands near the poster and waits for the people who are walking among the posters to show an interest in the poster. The speaker then tries to engage the "audience" in conversation that leads to a summary of the information contained on the poster.
Parallel media differ from hybrids in that the same information is presented in different media for different audiences in different venues. The same information may appear on the web as a web page, making it widely available and readily accessible. It may appear in a paper copy or PDF version of a paper copy to accommodate the need for extended discussion that is often difficult to achieve on a web page. The content might be reduced to brochure that has the URL of the website printed on it. The brochure serves as a teaser that leads the reader to a fuller treatment on the web. The same information may be presented as a speech for special audiences to maximize the power of the oral medium.
Continue work on your GMO paper and send me a progress report. Consider the medium and venue for your GMO paper. If you decide to change your paper to adopt a different medium or venue, tell me about it in your progress report.