Instructions: This first page is devoted to all the instructional videos regarding completing each part of unit one (including a welcome video and unit overview) as well as a friendly reminder. Pages 2 through 4 focus on written instructions for each part of the assignment with required lengths, additional details / things to include, etc. Pages 5 and 6 show the rubric for each assignment. (above and beyond is where to aim for)
Please also use the unit calendar for all the required readings for course success. The Anderson Readings are where some readings are while others are linked. Do not worry about the readings from Justin as there is no easy way for them to be accessed as it is basically locked through my Canvas account.
Friendly Reminder:
Find 2-3 job ads that you want to write towards in Unit 1 for your chosen job. I am a creative
writing major, so you may want to choose a job in that field OR you can choose a job in a
field that you are in / are most comfortable with / have the most experience in.
Video Links (in chronological order per the schedule):
Welcome Video:
Formal Assignment 1 Overview:
Audience Analysis:
Bios:
CVs:
Cover Letters:
Content/Experience Portfolios:
Formal Assignment Sheet 1 – The Professionalization Portfolio Project
This unit is dedicated to producing pre-workplace professional genres (bios, resumes, application letters, content portfolios). Part of the work of this unit will be to begin to understand the conventions of writing in the professions and to consider the ways in which workplace writing has very different purposes, values, and audiences than the academic writing with which you’re likely more familiar.
At the end of this unit, you’re final “deliverable” or product will be well-written, well-designed, well-considered portfolio of common workplace genres.
Products/Deliverables:
| Assignment |
| Introductory Bio or “About” |
| Audience Analysis |
| CV/Resume |
| Application Letter/Statement of Purpose |
| Content Portfolio |
| Unit Work Reflection |
- Bios, or “About”
The Introductory Bio assignment will function as a professional bio that you will include with your application materials for your ideal job. To be able to write an effective bio, you will be expected to select a profession and situate yourself within it. I am going to ask everyone to choose the future career that you desire after graduation. If you are planning on attending graduate school, you will construct a bio directed towards that goal instead.
Take a few moments to construct a brief, professional but appropriately personal bio. That is, it should focus on you as a professional but provide just enough personal details that we get to know you a bit as a person rather than just a name on the screen. When you get done, you should have 1-2 paragraphs, or approximately 150-200 well-crafted words. The bios should also include an appropriate and professional picture of yourself. This assignment will be graded (with your full professionalization portfolio) for professional balance as well as style and correctness. Bios these days are often found on “About” tabs on individual websites, or in the main area under a profile pic on LinkedIn.
- The Audience Analysis
For this task, like the Bio, you will be expected to identify a real world employer that you would ideally like to work for in your future. Remember, working within the “media industry” (for example) is a field or professional area, not a specific employer. A specific employer would be Getty Images or The Stranger, etc. To drive your work in this unit you’ll want to find a specific job ad for a specific employer. You’ll include the text to this job ad in the Audience Analysis assignment. Common places to look for jobs include Indeed.com and LinkedIn. If you know better job sites that are industry specific, go for it.
If you intend to pursue graduate school after undergraduate, your focus in the “Audience Analysis” will be to consider the program you plan on applying to as you finish your time at WWU. So, to that end, you’ll research not only the school (e.g., U of Washington) but also the Department (e.g., Department of Computer Science) and the specific program (e.g., M.S. in Human Computer Interaction/HCI). You’ll be conducting your audience analysis on the school, department and program. Adapt the Audience Analysis portions (pgs. 68-80) for this purpose.
In chapter 3 (Anderson), the section titled “How to Create a Profile of Your Reader” (starting on pg. 68), you are given detailed steps for understanding your audience for written documents within professional settings. For the rest of the job materials you create for this unit, you will be expected to write an audience analysis and letter of application for your future employer. The point of analyzing your future employer as an audience is so that your resume and letter of application are tailored very specifically to them; thus, the audience analysis should be completed before the resume and letter of application.
For the Audience Analysis, you will be expected to locate a website for the employer of the job ad you selected and study the organization. You will need to do an audience analysis write-up that accounts for all the relevant guidelines listed from pg. 68-80 for your future employer. You should attempt to explore your potential employer’s purpose (what they do and why), who else they work with and for (clients?), any company hierarchies (who’s the president? how many layers of management are there?), any company values (diversity, family, the environment, etc.), and any other information that will help you to make yourself a better candidate. The audience analysis should be 2-3 pages in length. Please include as a citation the website, the job ad and any other resources you use to help construct your audience analysis.
- CV
Using Chapter 2 (Anderson), especially pages 23-45, construct a resume for your job application you are putting together for the employer you analyzed. Focus first on prioritizing your experiences and education and organizing in a manner appropriate for your audience. Second, consider the document in terms of design. The resume should be 1-2 pages. The organizational strategy you use to structure your CV should be in tune with what you discovered in the audience analysis of your organization. In other words, your arrangement should connect with the organization’s persona and values. I would encourage you to use a template for CV creation; however, don’t trust the template blindly. Be sure that the sections/parts are relevant and ordered in a way that makes sense for your materials . . . and if a part of a template doesn’t fit who you are, cut it.
- Letter of Application
The next job application document you will need to create will be a 1-2 page letter of application for a specific job for the employer you have researched. See pages 46-51 in chapter 2 of Anderson for more on application letters. For the application letter, you will need to use the research you have conducted about your audience as well as your personal and work experiences.
The goal of the application letter is to describe and characterize your most relevant experiences and explain why and how they are relevant to your audience (the potential employer). Try to avoid empty descriptions like: Working at McDonalds was an important learning experience. The characterization “an important learning experience” doesn’t actually explain anything useful about it. Rather, try to capture what about the work experience did matter. For example: Working at McDonalds taught me the fundamentals of service work: being efficient, timely, and friendly. The second description is more specific, precise, and tells the reader exactly what the writer got out of the experience.
The application letter you write for this course will provide a model you can use in the future with some modification/tweaking based on its potential audience. In other words, this letter might get you a job . . . so do a great job here and you will need to do less work later.
If you are developing materials for graduate school, you’ll want to explore what kind of document the grad school application process requires. Typically, this is a “Statement of Purpose” or an “Intellectual History Statement” or even a “Cover Letter.” You’ll be working on composing this document for this assignment . . . it is a strange genre, so spend some time really working through this piece to make your draft as successful as it can be before it actually counts.
- The Content Portfolio
The Content Portfolio component of this assignment is dissimilar from the rest of the Professionalization Unit as it asks you to collect work that you’ve already completed that seems relevant for the job that you’re pursuing. An essential component of most job candidate profiles these days are relevant examples of the work they’ve completed as a student and neophyte employee. This is especially true in knowledge workers positions that require individuals to produce things, be they physical or digital in nature.
In addition to specific artifacts, the content portfolio might also be a collection of experiences that highlight you as a job candidate. These experiences require narrative contextualization (as do the aforementioned artifacts) that tell a story about who you are and how your experiences have enriched you as a person (and, implicitly, how that enrichment can benefit your potential employer).
In industries such as graphic design or software development, artifacts are easy to come by; however, some industries don’t lend themselves as easily to demonstrating discrete creations/achievements. If your chosen area falls into one of these professions it will be crucial that you do a thorough job explaining how your experiences have created someone that an organization would like to hire.
At this stage, the content portfolio can be artifacts/experiences and text without too much adornment. As we progress into the final unit of the term on user experience and web authoring, the content portfolio will play a central role in how you craft a digital persona; as such, collecting as much material as possible for the Content Portfolio in Unit 1 will make the work you do in Unit 3 considerably easier.
Your Content Portfolio can take a myriad of forms; however, it needs to be digitized and collected into a single digital document.
- Final Portfolio & Reflection
For your final Professionalization Portfolio Task, you will create a digital portfolio of your work for this class. Your portfolio should include the following things:
- A Table of Contents
- A Brief Introduction to You, Your Job, Your Employer and Your Experience in Unit 1
- Professional Bio
- Audience Analysis
- CV
- Cover Letter/Letter of Application
- Content Portfolio
- Conclusion: your reflections (see questions below)
In addition to each of the above documents, I will expect each set of materials to be accompanied by a brief (1-2 paragraph) thoughtful reflection on what you learned from each of these activities. For these reflections, you might use the following questions to inspire you:
- What were some of the challenges of this specific task?
- What did I learn about professional writing from this task?
- What seemed surprising about the process of writing this task?
- Why was writing this valuable to me?
- What did I learn about my future career from this task?
- What were the activities, lessons, readings, etc. that helped me the most with this particular task? Why and how?
Unit 1 Grading Rubric:
| Assignment Title | Above and Beyond | Good | Needs Improvement | Comments |
| Bio | Bio effectively balances the personal and the professional. Bio lacks any grammatical mistakes and meets the needs & interests of professionals in your future profession. | Bio is mostly balanced and provides some detail of the personal in addition to the professional. Bio contains few grammatical issues. | Bio is strictly professional or bland in a way that prevents your reader from knowing anything about you. Bio contains multiple grammatical issues. | |
| Audience Analysis | Analysis addresses all 6 requirements: employer purpose, employer clients/collaborators, company hierarchies/distance, job orientation (group vs. individual), company values, and readers / stakeholders. Analysis is free of grammatical issues. | Analysis addresses 4 or 5 of the 6 requirements. Analysis contains a few grammatical issues. | Analysis addresses 3 or fewer of the 6 requirements. Analysis contains multiple grammatical issues. | |
| CV | The CV is easy to read (no grammar mistakes, clear organization, intentionally designed). The CV tells a story. The CV emphasizes accomplishments, not responsibilities The CV avoids overused clichés. | The CV is mostly easy to read but may contain some grammatical issues or design inconsistencies. The CV tells something of a story. The CV mostly emphasizes accomplishments but also discusses responsibilities at length. The CV may or may not contain a cliché or two. | The CV is not easy to read (undifferentiated content sections, poor design, grammar issues). The CV lacks a story. The CV emphasizes responsibilities not accomplishments. The CV over relies on clichés. | |
| Cover Letter | Your cover letter is properly formatted according to Anderson. It employs a discernable strategy that tells a compelling story while also moving the reader logically through a history of accomplishments. Your cover letter is “stylish” inasmuch as tone, word choice and grammatical person match the ethos of the job advertisement. | Your cover letter is mostly correctly formatted. It is logically organized but fails to tell a compelling story or fails to highlight accomplishments, not responsibilities. The style, tone and ethos of the letter doesn’t match the employer’s ethos as demonstrated in the job advertisement. | Your cover letter contains formatting errors and multiple grammatical issues. It fails to tell a story. The style, tone and ethos of the letter isn’t considered in light of the ethos of the employer. | |
| Content Portfolio | Your content portfolio contains three artifacts or experiences that are expertly scaffolded through an effective use/description of story, process, role, challenge(s), and growth. Each artifact is clearly demarcated with a title, overview, role statement, process description and takeaway. | Your portfolio contains 2-3 artifacts or experiences that tell a story. Your process in each artifact/experience is discussed but may not be super clear. Your role may or may not be discussed. Your portfolio entries contain some of the requirements (title, overview, results, role summary, tools/techniques). | Your portfolio contains 2 or fewer artifacts/experiences. Your process is unclear and the “story” aspect of the entries isn’t immediately apparent. Your entries lack any organization that lets your reader know a title, overview, process or role that you played in the artifact. | |
| Final Reflection | Your final reflection is thorough, thoughtful and soundly composed. It contains no grammatical errors and provides the instructor with clear opinion about this assignment. | Your final reflection contains some valuable insights but contains errors. | Your final reflection fails to show your engagement with the assignment or your challenges/successes throughout Unit 1. |
