CS 3604: Assignment 5 (Proposal to your Workgroup)

Fall 2002, Dr. Rosson

Due dates: 10/18 (5-A, planning document); 11/1 (5-B, first draft); 11/8 (5-c, peer review); 11/20 (5-D, final draft)

Approximate size: 8 pages (approx. 2000 words); 2 pages for planning document (5-A)

Learning objective:
To help you get experience with a more extensive form of writing that you will encounter as a CS professional.

Audience:
Your workgroup on the job as a CS professional, including your boss

The Task (What to do):
You are to develop a proposal to your workgroup based on the following scenario:

Your small company builds Web sites for new high-tech firms. One of your clients does state-of-the-art biomedical research and has recently been looking into cloning of living animals with at least the possibility down the road of looking at human embryo cloning. You should take a stand on one of these positions (it doesn't have to be one that reflects your personal beliefs to make a good writing assignment):

a) You are concerned about the ethical issues involved and don't want to just go along with it as part of your business, without at least expressing your concern and trying to convince others in your company of your position. Do some research on the topic (the web is good for this, but don't plagiarize). State the case and make readers aware of the dangers. Formulate a plan of action for your company and try to sell the idea in this proposal.

b) You are not concerned about ethical issues involved because you are sure that your client company will do no harm. But you are aware that some others in your organization are concerned and you are writing this proposal to allay their concerns. Show why it is not an issue to be concerned about. Formulate a plan of action for your company to allay fears in the general public and try to sell the idea in this proposal.

This proposal will be developed through four phases -- a planning document, a first draft, a review of a peer's proposal, and a final draft:

1. Assignment 5-A, a planning document for your proposal. This part of the assigment is designed to focus you on the process of writing, rather than the writing itself. You should begin to work on the proposal, taking notes as you work. These notes will then be written up and handed in. Describe how you are (or plan to be) approaching the topic, doing outlining, gathering input material, taking notes, etc. Include the fact that you will be doing a first draft and a final draft, with a peer review in between. Describe any other drafts or iterations you plan.

   Deliverables for 5-A (stapled together in this order, please):

   • Grading form on top, with name and date filled out. This form need not be signed by you or any proofreaders.
   • A write-up (good writing here, too) of approximately two pages (approximately 500 words total) that describes how you are (or will be) approaching the process of writing your 8-page proposal.
     

2. Assignment 5-B, final draft to hand in for grading. Write a first draft of your proposal based on the scenario above. Pretend you are working as a CS professional and this issue has come up in your work environment. You have discussed it with your boss and he or she is concerned and has asked you to write a proposal to your workgroup to do something about it. You have three objectives in writing the proposal:
   • To raise awareness of the topic and relevant issues: Tell about the problems and establish the importance to your workgroup
   • To educate: This part should be general and cover the breadth of possibilities. Motivate and make the case.
   • To urge a specific action within your workgroup setting: Make a plea to your workgroup.

   Write a good, solid first draft of the assignment, using your best professional writing. Ask two proofreaders to review/proof the draft, writing comments and suggestions in red pen. Encourage the proofreaders to critique your work in detail and write lots of red marks on the draft (not just give it a once-over and make only a few general comments). Improve your draft based on these comments.

   Deliverables for 5-B: This part of the assignment requires you to hand in two (identical) copies of your proposal. One copy will have the grading form attached, the second will not have this grading form attached. Failure to hand in two copies will result in a 10-point deduction from the paper grade for this draft and will probably delay our ability to grade it for you. Thus there will be two packages:

   Package 1 (stapled together in this order, please):
   

   • Grading form on top, with name, date, and number of words filled out, signed by yourself and your two proofreaders.
   • One copy of the first draft of your proposal
   • Two copies of an earlier version marked up by your proofreaders

   Package 2 (stapled separately):
   

   • A second copy of the first draft, without cover sheet or proofreader marks, for us to give to another student who will do a peer review of your paper. Please make sure your name is on the top page of this first draft.

   Note about timing of Assignment 5b: If the first draft is handed in late, it will mean that your peer reviewer will be late starting his/her peer review. This means you might get the peer review returned to you late, meaning you have even less time to complete the final draft.

3. Assignment 5-c, peer review of another student's draft proposal. Your first draft will be randomly assigned a peer reviewer from the class. This part of the assignment is your peer review of the proposal assigned to you. The peer review should include:
   • Detailed mark-up in the text itself
   • High-level comments about the overall style, content, and readability, documented via a peer grading form

   Detailed corrections and other suggested changes should be marked up in the text using the simple editing techniques (e.g., for insertion and deletion) that we used in class and that you receive on your other writing assignments. Mark it up by hand and write insertions and explanatory comments in the margins.

   Your high level comments about the overall style, content, and readability should be separate from the text. Your suggestions should be constructive and helpful (i.e., understandable in terms of directions for revising the writing. Consult our course material about doing a peer review. Another useful set of questions, originating from the Department of English, Virginia Tech, may be helpful.

   Use the peer grading form to convey your comments back to the author; this contains the same categories that we will use for grading the assignment. The peer review form is different only in that it ignores numeric grades, because the purpose of a peer review is to provide constructive feedback. Use this form to write specific comments and suggestions with respect to each evaluation criterion.

   Deliverables for 5-c (stapled together in this order, please):
   

   • The form used to grade your peer review by instructor/GTA
   • The peer grading form you completed to "grade" your peer's proposal; this should include your suggestions related to each of the evaluation criteria
   • Your copy of your peer's assignment, marked up with editing suggestions specific to pieces of text, along with explanatory comments as needed

4. Assignment 5-D, final draft of the workgroup proposal. This part of the assignment represents the iteration of your writing. In a one-semester course like this, we have to compress the process from what it would be in the real world, where it is not uncommon for a journal article, for example, to undergo 20 iterations over a period of six months! A proposal like this would surely benefit from at least a half-dozen thorough iterations. But this review-based revision will at least follow the spirit of that sort of iterative writing.

   Deliverables for 5-D (in this order, please):
   

   • The grading form, filled out with your name, date, and number of words. There is no need for additional proofreaders for this final draft.
   • Your final draft of this proposal assignment, revised per the peer review.
   • A one-page "review response" statement by you, giving the specifics of how you responded to the points of the peer review.
   • Your first draft of this assignment, the copy graded by us. (We want to be able to see any marks we made on it).
   • The peer review of your first draft of this assignment. You should attach it just as it was delivered to you, with the form for grading the peer review on the top, followed by the actual review, and the marked-up copy of your first draft.

   Note: You can staple the first 4 items together, or clip them together with a good spring clip (not just a regular paper clip, which comes off easily). However, please be certain to clip (not staple) the last component (the peer review) to the rest. We will need to remove this portion and hand it back to the peer reviewer.