“Deciding on our Final Project” Discussion Prompt

We’ve been talking a lot in the last couple of weeks about digital ecologies and how dynamic they can be. As I can vouch for personally, the speed at which new information on a development proliferates and crises arise sometimes necessitates a quick response. This can draw on insights with which one is still grappling and may not have had time to reflect on at length.

So, for our course final project, I’m going to challenge us to write a short manifesto (~500wds) together in a relatively short period of time, as a mode of “rapid response” to something that we see happening around us related to the course. In this kind of rapid response project, people with an array of different skills and backgrounds who otherwise have a common interest come together to create something together that intervenes in a thoughtful way.

A manifesto, in particular, is a genre in which a community might represent their beliefs around a given topic or issue. It describes the group’s commitments in terms of the values and motivations that they have in common. It also recommends how others might put these commitments, somehow, into action.

The final week or so of our course will be entirely devoted to this project. The first step in writing a manifesto together will be to figure out what issue we find important. Given what you’ve learned in our course, what has stood out to you the most? What issue or framework might you want to see written about and advocated for at this particular moment? Who would it be written for? I’ll look for patterns among your responses to choose a topic and audience that might best synthesize and represent the interests of our class community, create a Google doc and we’ll work from there.

I’d also like you to please indicate what role you think you might best take. I very purposely have not pre-defined roles here, since the reality of these situations often requires us to figure out how we can contribute as the form of what we’re creating takes shape. Do you find yourself at your best when synthesizing and distilling information? Might you brainstorm or draft notes that might become text? Do you most enjoy generating prose? Are you someone who likes to comment on ideas to develop them more? Are you someone who might be a good style editor to polish the document once it is written? It doesn’t have to be just one of these. Once you’ve responded, I’ll assign folks roles.

Our timeline will be as follows:

  • by Monday, August 10th, 11:59PM: please respond to this post. I’ll leave it open for any stragglers, but please do try to get in your thoughts before this deadline.
  • by Tuesday, August 11th, 11:59PM: I’ll have picked a topic and have roles assigned, as well as created a document where we can work
  • by Friday, August 15th, 11:59 PM: We will aim to have a first draft completed
  • by Monday, August 17th, 11:59 PM: We will aim to have comments and edits be due
  • by Tuesday, August 18th, 11:59 PM: We will aim to have those changes implemented

Please remember that you absolutely do NOT have to be participating in each of these steps. That would be horribly draining and not very efficient. The idea of something like this is to distribute work so no one is expected to take on too much. Please take this timeline into account when telling me what you’d most like to do.

Also, I want to take a moment to assure you that you will get credit (an A) for this assignment from good-faith participation. Please don’t be worried about “failing” at whatever task you choose: your grade will not depend whatsoever on what we wind up producing.

“Final Project Chat” Discussion Prompt

It seems to me like the overarching topic here is that we collectively feel a need to somehow reassert our agency in digital spaces. I think this could involve the amplification or suppression of certain voices or behaviors, as well as avoiding doing either inadvertently or without due diligence. Awareness of bias seems integral to that. It can be something we do as moderators of our communities, or participants. But I want to hear your words here. I will facilitate and intervene with comments, thoughts and questions to prod you as necessary.

Based on what you’ve said so far, the audience could be quite broad for this: perhaps users entering digital communities who are of an age where civic responsibility is important? Remember that as a manifesto, this will represent our motivations, values, and recommendations as a class. The genre is slightly different from a guide, research report, or a set of recommendations. We are establishing what we have in common and what we think we believe about these issues. In that process, we’ll articulate what we’ve learned, perhaps learning from each other.

I don’t have a particular venue in mind for this. I am happy to post it on my personal academic blog with credit to all involved. As it develops, maybe we’ll have a different idea of someplace it could live.

I’ve made a Google Doc for a drafting space. This should also be accessible from “Collaborations” in the left sidebar on Canvas. (Please do let me know if you have accessing this, since I’m personally new to Canvas integration with Google Drive.)

Please feel free to communicate with one another here as well, whether to refer to things in the document or ask each other or me questions. Each group has a separate thread. I ask that you please keep conversation about the project on here or Google Drive as much as possible, as opposed to private back channels, so everyone can be involved, and also so I can participate. I’ll be posting starting instructions for your groups here for each role when the time comes.

Some Notes to Get you Started

Brainstorming & Initial Drafting group

A good place to start might be to skim a manifesto or two and think of them as models for what yours might look like.

Here’s one, which precipitated the establishment of HASTAC, a professional organization of which I’m a member. This is much longer than you will write, but note the ark: they establish some exigence, describe their positionality with respect to it, and break down the way they think about a common concept that they hold (in this case, a field of study imagined in a new way) in a bulleted list. Can you locate these moves?

Here’s another. This one is written by a Professor in our English department with a colleague at another institution on the topic of Twitter Ethics (scroll down to the manifesto itself, past the longer exposition). Notice that it also breaks down values in a list (this one enumerated), but finds its context a little bit differently.

Here’s yet another, which establishes a particular community, an (at the time) emergent field called Digital Humanities. (This manifesto has newer versions — but those are longer, and I don’t want you to get into their weeds.) Note that it finds its exigence in an event, and then works to chart out its communities’ bounds.

So, maybe you want to describe our course context as the entry point? Maybe there’s a particular event mentioned in our readings that might be a narrative entry point for your audience? Maybe you want to start with conceptual questions that lead the reader into that course context. Maybe it’s framed by a particular event or development that happened recently and seems urgent. Any or all of these could work, and the choice and order is up to you!

While putting in some structural elements at first may help the document take shape, there is no need, by the way, to write a formal outline. You might just start drafting and outline as the need arises. Please read this brief chapter by Kristin Milligan, from the collection Bad Ideas About Writing, challenging the idea that “Formal Outlines are Always Useful.” Feel free to ask any questions below.

Once a first full draft seems to have formed, I ask that you write up a (very) brief “author’s note” for your commenters, who include me and your classmates, that directs your peer reviewers’ attention to some key concerns that may have come up as you were drafting, or where you’d especially like feedback. While peer reviewers can still comment on anything, this can be helpful to someone who doesn’t know quite where to begin, and it helps you to get the feedback you need most. If you can’t figure out what the draft might need, perhaps try the reverse outline that Milligan suggests.

Commenting/Review group

To prepare for your reviewer role, please read this brief chapter by Richard Straub, on “Responding—Really Responding—to Other Students’ Writing.” Feel free to ask any questions below. More soon.

Editing/Polish Group

To prepare for your editing role, please read this brief chapter by Monique Dufour and Jennifer Ahern-Dodson, from the collection Bad Ideas About Writing, challenging the idea that “Good Writers Always Follow My Rules.” Please also read this even shorter section by Paul Matsuda in Naming What We Know, Threshold Concepts in Writing Studies, on how “Writing Involves the Negotiation of Language Differences.” Feel free to ask any questions below. More soon.