Networked Rhetoric: Fall 2012

Proposal Presentation Assignment
Assignment: Overview
This assignment asks you to translate your written proposal into an interesting and well-delivered 3 minute presentation that
1. clearly conveys to the audience your research topic and how youwill pursue it; and,
2. persuades them of your ability to productively and successfully research this topic
Due:
  • Presentation Materials due: Sunday, October 7, by 11:59pm
  • Presentations will be held during class on Monday, October 8 and Wednesday, October 10
Presentation format:3 minute presentation utilizing multimedia of some form.
Submission Format: Electronic posting to your Student portfolio on the Ning under a discussion entitled“Proposal Presentation” of all materials for both the draft and the revision. These include your notes, your revised script, your slides, your reflective memo and any images or links you plan to use during your presentation.
Grading: This assignment is worth 5% of the overall class grade.
Recommended Envision reading: Chapter 9

Assignment Goals:

This assignment has several interrelated goals:

  1. To help you put into practice presentation and oral rhetoric skills.
  2. To allow you to experiment with changing the mode of delivery of a text and to understand the need for effective translation of argument to accommodate the shift in medium.
  3. To encourage you to narrow topics, engage with sources, and formulate and articulate a working hypothesis or refine a research question.

Assignment Details

  • Length: The presentation should be 3 minutes in length. This time limit will be enforced: presentations that are over 30 seconds too short or too long will be docked a half of a grade (from a B+ to a B/B+). Please practice your presentation to insure that you adhere to the time limit – keep in mind, you can practice your presentation 5 times just in 15 minutes!
  • Structure: None of these presentations should be improvised or adlibbed – they should show careful attention to structure and design, just as with any written text.
  • Beginnings and endings. Be sure to think carefully about how you open and close your presentation – you want to open in a way that captures your audience’s attention, and close in a way that draws things together and makes a final, favorable impression on your audience (i.e., avoid ending by saying, “and that’s basically it”).
  • Thesis. While you don’t need to have refined your research project’s argument at this point, your presentation itself needs a thesis or through-line to pull it together. This can be as simple as the implicit argument “This is a cool topic, and though I anticipate some obstacles, I have a good plan for researching it,” however you’ll need to personalize and customize this basic formula to make it more representative of your individual approach. The different aspects of the presentation should build to reinforce and develop this underlying thesis.
  • Development. While you can certainly use the same structure that you use for your written proposal, that strategy may result in a less interesting presentation. Most people, forinstance, do not include a timeline in their presentation; in addition, many people try to find interesting ways to talk about the potential sources they might use instead of just listing them. Most successful proposal presentations center on at least one visual or example. You can use this example (whether it be an image, an article, a story you tell, etc.) as the foundation to discussion your topic, your sources, and your expectations about the project. In general, though, your presentation should have a sense that its components were arranged in a deliberate way, for a deliberate purpose, and there should be smooth transitions between the different sections.
  • Content: In composing your presentation, be sure to touch on theseelements:
  • Topic. By the time your presentation is over, your audience should have a clear understanding of what your research topic is as well as any hypothesis or research questions that you have formulated.
  • Methodology & Sources. You should provide your audience with a sense of your methodology, especially any unique approaches to your research. This does not necessarily mean listing your methods or sources as you did in your written proposal; think about ways to integrate reference to your methodology smoothly into your presentation. In particular, you you must incorporate reference to at least 1 source into your presentation. Try to avoid just listing the titles of books/articles: while technically this would “count” as referring to sources, it is somewhat inelegant. For instance, you could refer to sources the way that you would in a paper (i.e. “The 2008 PEW study on Internet and Students indicates …”; “One person I’ve interviewed, Professor Clifford Nass of the Stanford Communications Department, suggested…”). Overall, use the sources to give your audience a sense of how you are building your argument based on primary and/or secondary research. Examples of the sources you might present might include a scholarly article, a key book, an interview or a popular article offering a useful perspective on your topic.
  • Ethos: You need to convince your audience (through content, research, and your own delivery) of your ethos as a researcher on this topic.
  • Tone & Style: Your tone and style should be appropriate for your topic. Your approach can be personable or formal, depending on your individual preference and the nature of your project as a whole. For instance, it might be appropriate to use a less formal style for a project on Facebook, but you wouldn’t want to use humor or colloquialism as much in a presentation about Waterboarding or other human rights violations.
  • Media: All students should use some sort of multimedia to support their oral argument. This can be Keynote, PowerPoint, or Prezi slides or, alternately, it could simply consist of a series of image links, a video file, or live browsing of the internet. Just make sure that you use your multimedia purposefully. Also, beware of lengthy video files that might take up too much time in your presentation.
  • Rhetorical Strategies. For this presentation, please consider how you can utilize rhetorical strategies effectively to make your own argument more persuasive. How much do you want to involve pathos, logos, or ethos, and at which points in the presentation do you want to deploy them? How does your particular rhetorical situation affect your choices? How do you need to adjust your argument to take into account the kairos of your presentation or the relative familiarity of your audience to your topic?

Composing your Draft: Script and Slides

Like any text for PWR 2, your presentation will involve a process of drafting, peer review, revision, and final submission.

You must produce a written draft of your script. It does not need to be a complete transcription of your oral delivery, but it needs to be detailed and contain annotations about your slides and your delivery of the material.

As you draft your presentation, be sure to

  • Think about the rhetorical situation of your presentation: you’ll need to attend to your audience – making your point AND keeping their interest – as well as to your text and to your own ethos as a presenter and researcher.
  • Think about how you can use the rhetorical appeals most effectively to reach your audience.
  • Lastly, remember that you are going to be delivering an 8 minute formal presentation on this topic later in the quarter, so don’t use up all your snazzy delivery ideas in your first presentation. Think strategically about what would work best in a short presentation to introduce your ideas to your classmates, and what would work best in a longer, more developed exploration of your research argument.

I will offer optional group conferences on the 6th or 7th for practicing your drafted presentation.

Revising the Presentation Draft & Writing the Cover Memo

Once you have finished revising your script and your slides and rehearsing your presentation, you should write your reflective memo. Your memo is a space to reflect on the rhetorical decisions you made in drafting and revising your presentation and should include

  • A reflection on how you used different the rhetorical strategies in your presentation -- pathos, ethos, logos, kairos; the canons of rhetoric; the rhetorical situation. (You do not need to touch on all the rhetorical terms – only those that seem most relevant.)
  • What you took into account while revising your presentation
  • Reference to the feedback you received as well as any additional OCT or HWC appointments (these are optional for this assignment) you had to prepare for this assignment and to what extent those appointments influenced your revision
  • A list of works cited of copyrighted materials (text or image) that you included or cited in your presentation. (MLA format not required for this works cited)

The tone of the reflective memo can be informal -- but the content should be clear, well-thought out, and use specific language and example where possible. You should post your memo in yourstudent Portfolio, under the "Proposal Presentation" thread, along with your script and any multimedia you intend to use (PowerPoint slides, URLs, image files, etc.) by 11:59pm on Sunday, October 7th.

Presentations will be held onMonday, October 8 & Wednesday, October 10during class. All revised materials, regardless of when you are presenting, must be posted by 11:59pm on Sunday, October 7. These include your notes, your revised script, your slides, your reflective memo and any images or links you plan to use during your presentation.

The presentation order will sent out via e-mail and posted on the Ning by 6am on Monday the 8th.

Technological Considerations

A few notes on technology in relation to these presentations:

  • Try out your tech. It is in your best interest to try out all technology for your presentations ahead of time to make sure there are no bugs. That means you should show up for class early on the day you’re presenting.
  • Slide file size and storage. All slides should be uploaded to your Proposal Presentation thread on the Ning. Be sure to compress your images if you are using PowerPoint to reduce your file size. You should also bring your presentation on a flash drive and/or e-mail them to yourself to be safe.
  • For Apple Users. By default, Apple saves images in a way that is not readable by PCs (as .tiff files). So, if you are designing your presentation on an Apple, please be sure to do one of the following:
  • Change the default so that images are saved as .jpg or .gif files OR
  • Plan to use your own Apple laptop with a VGA cable rather than one of the classroom PCs. If you plan to use your own laptop, you will need to be sure that you have the proper adapter for the VGA cable.

Evaluation Criteria

Your presentation will be graded on

  • How clearly you convey and develop your topic
  • To what extent you establish your ethos as a researcher on this topic
  • How you integrate reference to your methodology and at least a single source into your presentation
  • Effective structure, with attention to introduction, conclusion, transitions, and the effective development of an underlying thesis statement
  • Strategic selection, integration, and use of media to support your oral argument
  • Appropriate tone and style for the topic
  • Effective implementation of rhetorical appeals
  • Powerful and rhetorical delivery of your ideas

Warning: Presentation grades will be docked a half of a grade (from a B+ to a B/B+) for each increment of 30 seconds that they are above or below 3 minutes– so practice to get your timing right! Also, failing to post yourreflective memo or your revised script to the Ning will also result in a half of a grade deduction (for each item forgotten). Missing your presentation time will result in a full grade deduction (from a B to a B-).

This presentation is worth 5% of your overall grade for the class.

Further Resources

There are many resources available to you that might be of use to you as you work on your proposal presentation:

  • Envision chapter 9
  • Sample presentations linked under the Assignments Overview link on the Ning under the Proposal Presentation header.
  • The Oral Communication Program: It is suggested that you make an appointment with an OCT through the online scheduler at
  • The Writing Center: Although the OCTs are the most trained in oral presentation skills, many of the tutors in the writing center teach PWR 2 and so could give you feedback on your presentation as well. Make an appointment online at for a meeting with one of the following tutors (these are the ones who teach PWR 2 – please note that some tutors are Digital Media Consultants, meaning they have particular expertise in working with slides and multimedia):

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Networked Rhetoric: Fall 2012

  • Shay Brawn
  • Kim Savelson
  • Kevin DiPirro
  • Julia Bleakney
  • Susan Wyle
  • Gabrielle Moyer
  • Carolyn Ross (Digital Media Consultant)
  • Arturo Heredia
  • John Peterson
  • Patti Hanlon-Baker
  • John Lee
  • Kimberly Moekle
  • Donna Hunter
  • Sohui Lee
  • Alyssa O’Brien (Digital Media Consultant)

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Networked Rhetoric: Fall 2012

  • Contact me by e-mail (alfano@) or twitter (@christinepwr2) if you have any questions.

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