DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.
DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

 

 

The study was conducted in a 300-level elective Publishing and Project Management course offered in the Professional Writing and Rhetoric (PWR) curriculum in the Department of English at Elon University. The course was capped at 20 students, and since the course was an elective, enrollment was open to all students who had completed the first year writing requirement.

 

 

Participants

Thirteen students enrolled in the Fall 2009 course, and 12 agreed to participate in the study.  The majority of the students were English majors with a focus in PWR in addition to three communications majors. Most were juniors and seniors, while two were sophomores. The class was fairly evenly divided along gender lines. Data reported in this analysis is drawn specifically from the nine students majoring in PWR as a simple measure of control since most of these students had been introduced to rhetorical audience analysis through the major coursework before this experience.

 

 

Client Project

The Elon University Belk Library served as the semester-long client for this course. The Library wanted to explore an ongoing series of mini-instructional videos to assist in library orientation and instruction and to overcome students’ general reticence in asking questions of the librarians. Thus the students had to navigate their Library client audience while also considering the ultimate video audience – other students.

During the first half of the semester, the students met with the librarians to understand their project and conducted extensive research with the student population about the videos and recommended content. Using this data, students worked in competitive teams to present proposals for pilot videos to the Library. Finally, after the librarians expressed their preferences based on the proposals, the students implemented the Library’s pilot video series.

 


Methods

I collected the majority of my data from regularly scheduled coursework for the class:

I also kept instructor notes about important milestones during the project. No work was analyzed until after grades had been submitted for the semester.
DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.
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