Proposal blog assignment

 

English 002-4 Proposal blog[1]

Timeline for Proposal Blog

By November 20, be ready to brainstorm your proposal with a peer review group

By November 29, bring in a draft of your proposal to your peer review groups and turn it in on Canvas. Make sure you include your process memo (see syllabus for description).

By December 6, turn in your proposal blog on Canvas, on WordPress, and as a hard copy in class. Make sure you attach your final memo, describing your process of writing and revising your blog post. Also attach the copies of your proposal that your peers have reviewed.

Final Blog post due December 6 on Canvas, on WordPress, and in class (1000-1600 words), 15% of grade

Throughout your time at Westmont and in your future life, you will need to be able to identify problems and write and articulate proposals, whether a proposal for a business innovation, a proposal for a change to your neighborhood housing association, or a proposal to improve life through better regulations or practices in your city. The list could go on. That’s where you come in.

Identify a contemporary problem or issue specific to Westmont or Santa Barbara that you’d like to propose a change, an alternative, or an improvement to.  Consider the following outline and questions as you develop your argument:

Your audience is a local one, either people at Westmont, or in Montecito, Santa Barbara and environs? Make sure you tailor your proposal to the specific audience you want to reach.

In your blog post, present the issue or problem (this may involve parts of a causal argument, as described in Chapter 11 of Everything’s an Argument). Explain why this deserves attention. What is at stake? Why should the audience care? (See page 279 EAA) You may want to post photos or link to other websites that illustrate the program.

Make your claim. Give the specifics. What do you propose to do to solve or intervene in this problem? Why should your audience believe you? How will this solve the problem or address the need? (See page 281-286 EAA)

What problems might you face with your proposed plan? Why is this better than other alternatives? Will it solve the problem without causing even bigger ones? How might you overcome any problems that may arise?  Is it practical? How will you convince your audience that the action you propose will work?  (See pages 286-287 EAA)

Make sure you incorporate any research that helps pose your problem and answers these questions. Research may include interviews with students, staff, and professors and investigation into Santa Barbara or Westmont laws and policies. If you interview people, print out a consent form and make sure they agree to be quoted in your blog post.

See Chapter 12 in Everything’s an Argument for more examples about how to craft a proposal.

What I look for in blog posts:

• Well researched and accurate.
• Well written
• Well designed and illustrated with photos and videos, where appropriate.
• Sources fully acknowledged (in the captions for photos) and in-text citations and a works cited section for the information sources.
• Free of grammatical errors

Notes on creating blog posts

• I will send you an invitation to contribute.
• When you receive the invitation, follow the link and create an account.
• Once you are in WordPress, you will see a rectangle in the top right-hand corner of the screen that says “Write.” Click on that and you will be taken to the page where you can compose your blog post.
• Remember that this is a public blog that anyone can read. As such, it needs to be as professional and “correctly-presented” as possible. This gives honour to those people you are featuring and also presents Westmont College in a good light. This will do you credit when future employers etc. google your name and will demonstrate that you have some experience writing and creating blog posts.
• Make sure you properly cite all of your sources.
• To ensure that you have written this in your own words, I will ask you to copy the text of your blog post and paste it into this assignment on Canvas, to run it through Turn-it-in technology. I will grade the blog post that is posted on the blog but will also check Canvas to ensure that the posts are plagiarism free.

Some comments on blog formatting:

• Titles should give the basic gist of your proposal without being too long.
• Please include a “Works Cited” section. Generally a Works Cited section is not needed in a blog post, as long as the blogger links back to their sources in the body of the text, but since this is an academic assignment, list all of your sources at the bottom of the post.
• Please link back to your online sources through in-text citations throughout the body of the post and in your “Works Cited” section. (If you got the information from an “offline” “hard copy” book, then you don’t need to link to it, but you do need to provide an in-text citation and an entry in the “Works Cited” section.) To link to your sources, highlight a word or a phrase (in this case the in-text citation); then click on the icon at the bottom of your edit screen that looks like a chain-link. This will bring up a box that allows you to paste in the URL for your source. Once you click ok, the link will appear. Anyone curious about your information can be taken directly to the source.
• Photos/Videos. The beauty of a blog post, as opposed to a hard copy of a paper, is not only that you can link back directly to your sources, but that you can also use audio-visual information. Pictures are great in blog posts. If you took the photo, you may caption it with your name or “my photo.” If you found the photo online, make sure you caption it with the photographer/ painter/creator and link back to the website where you found it. Once you upload the photo, click on the photo in the edit screen and it should show you a menu that will allow you to adjust the photo to right or left or centre alignment, shrink or grow the picture, and to add a caption (the conversation bubble). Make sure you link back to your source. If this were a popular for-profit website, I would also ask you to look for “open-source” copyright free images, but as this is an educational, non-profit site, I think it is fine that you use copyrighted images as long as you acknowledge and link back to your source. If we get any complaints from copyright holders, we will revise that policy. I don’t expect any complaints if you properly cite and link back to your sources. For every post, set a “featured image” that will appear on the home page. To do this, click on the “Featured Image” option on the right side of your image screen. It will take you to the image library for the blog, where you should choose one of the images you have uploaded.
• The blog post is also a great place to display videos. Usually in WordPress, all you need to do to embed the video (at least if it is from YouTube or Vimeo) is to paste the URL of the video directly into the edit box. It should then automatically turn into an embedded video. If you have any problems with that, check with me.

 

[1] Some language in this prompt borrowed from Everything’s an Argument, Chapter 12, p. 290