Project One: Introductory Synthesis Essay (Group)
Overview: This assignment invites you to work with a group of other students, formed around academic majors or disciplines, to develop ONE essay. The essay will be focused on the major itself and on how to succeed in your major. (If you don’t have a major yet, you’ll work with one you would like to explore.) To gather information for the essay, groups will conduct interviews and collaborate to determine purpose, audience, and thesis for the essay. Your individual contributions to the essay will be kept in your Writer’s Notebook and submitted with the essay on the due date. The group’s final product will be similar to a magazine or website article in that it will integrate visuals with text. We will publish our work in a class eZine on the web!
Assignment Guidelines: This assignment invites you to work with a group of three or four other students, formed around academic majors or disciplines, to develop ONE essay. The essay will be focused on the major itself –its academic program, internships, research methods, student organizations, professional organizations and publications, career options, related occupations, typical employers, possible specializations, and strategies for student success.
If you have not yet decided on a major – no problem! Just pick one you are interested in exploring.
Perhaps you’ve already learned quite a bit about your major through your own reading, experience, observations, or an assignment in your U110 class. No problem! Your group will discuss what you already know about your major and list the questions to which you’d like to have the answers.
Step 1: Finding an Interviewee
To discover the answers to your questions, and thus to gather information for the essay, you will choose to interview either
- a professor in your academic field (or one you are considering),
- a professional (outside academia) whose career required a degree in the field,
- an IUPUI student currently at the junior or senior level in your major, or
- a leader of a student organization related to your major.
For help finding an interviewee, you can visit the office of your program or department and ask the administrator for suggestions. To locate departments, visit http://www.iupui.edu/academic/schoolsdepts.htm
If your major has a campus organization (e.g., Physical Education Student Organization), that’s a good place to start. To find out more about campus student organizations, visit http://www.life.iupui.edu/groups/alllist.asp
Step 2: Developing an Interview Guide
Your group will brainstorm interview questions together based on what you would most like to find out about the major. For example, if you already know quite a bit about jobs in the field, but know very little about the undergraduate program, internships, research opportunities, or related campus organizations, you will want to target those areas in your interviews.
Step 3: Conducting the Interview
For help setting up and conducting the interview, view this PowerPoint presentation:
Field Research: Conducting an Interviewby Purdue University
Step 4: Summarizing the Interview
You will follow up by summarizing your interview (individually) and posting the summary on Oncourse for the rest of the group to read. At the top, your summary should include the interviewee’s name, occupation, and place of employment, and your name as the interviewer. Your group members need this information in order to effectively integrate interview information into their writing. For help creating an effective summary, follow these guidelines:
On the Works Cited page, list all interviewees referenced in the paper by last name -- in alphabetical order -- following this model:
Last name, first name. Personal interview. September 8, 2006.
Within the text of the summary and the essay, attribute information to the interviewees in your sentences, not parenthetically. Introduce your interviewees with a signal phrase. Here are some examples:
According to Susanmarie Harrington, Chair of the English Department at IUPUI, English majors have several options..........Harrington also pointed out that.....Harrington goes on to say that......
Step 5: Synthesizing Your Findings
Your group will draft one essay using the group’s compiled interview findings. You will meet to find common themes among the interviewees’ responses, and from those themes, you will decide on a main idea, a purpose, and an audience for your article. Using a grid will help you synthesize all the information. Here's one you can use: grid Class discussions will also help you through this process.
Step 6: Writing about Your Writing (The Writer’s Statement)
After you have drafted the essay, you will construct a Writers’ Statement together explaining your process, individual contributions, and group process, as well as a discussion of purpose, audience, and thesis.
Step 7: As you work on this essay, you will gather visuals (images or other visual elements you will combine with your text: photographs, advertisements, graphs, newspaper stories, cartoons, etc.) that you think will effectively engage your audience and help you achieve your purpose. After you have revised your essay based on peer and instructor feedback, you will try strategies for arranging, designing, and producing an innovative visual version of your essay, one that persuades viewers that your message is reasonable, accurate, and true. You will work on form as you make decisions about layout, design, typography, style, and captions. The paper you produce will be similar to a magazine or website article in that it will integrate visuals with text.
Step 8. The eZine . We will create a class eZine (electronic magazine, available on the web) with your group articles, targeting future incoming freshmen and others interested in the major. Professor David Sabol, Course Coordinator for U110, will invite his students to read your work and to offer you feedback via email. Once the pieces are finished and final revisions made, we’ll go “live,” and the eZine will be available on the Web as a resource for University College and all IUPUI students.
Accountability : Your individual contributions to the essay will be kept in your Writer’s Notebook. These pages will be submitted with the essay on the due date, and points will be added to the gradebook based on the amount and strength of your contributions.
Preparing to Create an Ezine: Incorporating Images
Sample Ezine article (visual text)
Sample Ezine article (visual text)
Dispelling the Myths of Choosing a Major
What Can I Do With This Major?
The Difference Between High School and College
Exploring Career Fields with Monster
Academic Disciplines As Ways of Knowing (.pdf) by Kent Wicker
Wikipedia's List of Academic Disciplines