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Introduction to the Infographic Project
In this project, we’ll explore writing for the purpose of teaching, explaining, and illustrating as well as multimodal composition--that is, writing that incorporates visual and/or multimedia elements. We’ll also engage more deeply with strategies for independent college-level research and with strategies to anticipate audience needs in this more complex rhetorical situation.
To "start with the ending," here is a preview of the Guidelines and Learning and Assessment Criteria for the final Infographic Project:
InfographicProjectGuidelines.pdfWriting to Illustrate, Teach, or Explain
The rhetorical situation of writing to illustrate, teach, or explain is distinctive for a few different reasons.
1. The distance in knowledge between author/teacher and audience. If you are writing to explain, chances are that you know more about the topic--often, much more!--than the audience you are teaching. There's an information gap that you've got to evaluate and bridge.
2. The distance in interest between author/teacher and audience. Besides knowing more about the topic you are explaining, there's a good chance you also CARE more about the topic as well. There's a reason you became well-informed: you had a specific interest, experience, or motivation. Your learning audience may not share all that: they might need to be convinced WHY they should bother to learn all this.
3. The fact that college-level teaching learning is just really complex. At this level of thinking and writing, we deal often with multiple perspectives, ambiguities, different forms and streams of evidence: knowledge that is under construction, so to speak, versus knowledge we can all easily agree on.
Class Discussion
You've had so far in your life a lot of teaching--and probably your fair share of bad teaching. What are some things that bad teachers do? Be as specific as you can.
On the other hand, what strategies do you see as critical to good teaching--teaching that actually works?
Finally, how can these insights be applied to writing that intends to teach? What might you avoid as "bad," and incorporate as "good"?
Topic Brainstorming
You may already have ideas for topics that you might enjoy explaining to others in a visual form. But if not, this Interest Inventory Worksheet from Lindsey Wilson College's Writing Center might be a quick way to gather a wide range of ideas.
Topic Proposal and Rhetorical Analysis Assignment
Topic Proposal and Rhetorical Analysis Guidelines.pdfResearch Fundamentals
Google (or Siri or Perplexity or ChatGPT...) is so immediately and constantly at our fingertips that it is easy to never get acquainted with your college library or librarians...but at least at COD, that would be a major mistake.
We have a world-class library, fully accessible digitally and remotely, with an entire staff of specialists ready to help: including ways to dramatically improve your Google (or Siri or Perplexity or ChatGPT) experiences.
For the next lesson, click the link or box below to access the COD Library's module on Research Fundamentals. Both the center panel with the green circle chart and the blue boxes under "Home" on the right offer an index to six total content areas, from "Develop a Research Plan" through to "Put It Together."
Research Fundamentals Self-Check Quiz
Take notes using following Self-Check Quiz as you examine the modules:
ResearchFundamentalsSelf-Check.pdfResearch Source Types and Levels
Hopefully “Research Fundamentals” offered a refresher on what makes for a quality research source for college use, but to dig a little deeper, review Source Types and Levels as I’ve outlined them in this set of slides:
ResearchSourceTypesandLevels.pptxDiscuss with your peers and instructor: what mix of source types and levels might make the most sense for composing an Infographic on your particular topic--and why?
Documenting Research Sources
Once you’ve found 3 sources that represent the best of your research, you need to provide standardized college-level documentation of those sources. In this course, we’ll work with MLA (Modern Language Association) style, used most often in the Liberal Arts.
The point here is to include enough detail that your own readers can easily re-trace your steps to look at your sources in the original, if they’d like to. But that means you have to keep very good track of your source details and locations: for web sources in particular, MLA requires that you note your “date of access” (the date you personally found the source), which can be tricky to remember if you wait too long!
Evaluating Research Sources
After providing the Works Cited Entry for your source, use what you learned from Research Fundamentals to draft one paragraph per source in which you evaluate that source’s audience, authority, accuracy, coverage, currency, and objectivity.
Though hopefully you selected sources that represent mostly positives in these areas, it is perfectly OK to identify weaknesses: no single source is perfect. In the end, it is the sum of all the parts that demonstrates research quality.
Multimodal Composition and the Infographic Genre
Multimodal composition refers to any form of writing that includes elements beyond text. Powerpoint or GoogleSlides presentations; collages, memes, and social media postings; videos and animations; and speeches, podcasts, and voiceovers: these are all examples.
To become more familiar with multimodal composition in general and the infographic genre in particular, review the following two OER textbook chapters:
An-Introduction-to-and-and-Strategies-for-Multimodal-Composing.pdf12LaflenDataStories.pdfAnalyzing an Infographic
Infographics are pretty much everywhere in both the digital and physical worlds, but here are a few particularly notable sources for browsing many examples at once:
Settle on a single infographic that interests you, then evaluate that infographic using the following guidelines. Analyzing an example in detail is often the best way to truly understand how an unfamiliar genre works.
AnalyzingInfographic.pdfComposing an Infographic
Remember those project guidelines at the top of this page? Here they are again--it's time to try composing your own infographic, teaching the topic you chose and researched to a less-familiar audience.
InfographicProjectGuidelines.pdfThough there are a variety of digital options for infographic drafting, I suggest working with a free account on Canva. Among other things, Canva has well-designed video tutorials for using its tools and templates: https://www.canva.com/designschool/tutorials/.
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