This workshop offers an opportunity to practice document-level editing strategies. More specifically, this workshop challenges you to assess and prioritize strategies for revising an existing document to make it more logical, more effective, and to better meet the needs and expectations of its audience members.
This workshop requires you to recommend revisions to an existing document that is poorly written and poorly designed. You may work alone or with up to 2 partners to complete the assignment. If you work with others, each of you will submit your own summary report.
The workshop has 3 stages.
You may complete this workshop independently or in collaboration with up to 2 classmates. If you choose to work with others, you may work in person, through a video conferencing tool such as Microsoft Teams.
Retrieve the working document for the workshop from SVSU Canvas (see Workshop Support). The document is a resumé (Wigman_Resume). I recommend that you print the document so you can annotate it as you work. However, this is not required.
Before you begin assessing the resumé, reflect upon who the audiences are for that genre of documents. How many different audience categories can you think of for resumés? What are the expectations of each audience category? There may be several potential audiences for these documents. The most obvious, of course, is a hiring manager for a prospective employer. To identify other audiences, you will need to think about the contexts beyond job seeking within which you might be required to share a resumé.
Your challenge here is straightforward. Examine the resumé I have provided for the workshop and recommend revisions to it. More specifically, recommend revisions that would make the resumé more effective at serving its purpose(s).
Begin with a general question: What has the author done so far to meet the needs and expectations of audiences? Identify any strategies the author uses that you think are successful. Identify content that you think is presented well. Are there content areas that have promise for representing the candidate well in an employment search, but that you think could be more effective? Identify as many content areas as you can that you would argue could be improved, and discuss the changes you would make to improve those trouble spots.
Think about design as well. Does the visual logic support the organization of the content on the page? Does the resumé look professional? What recommendations might you offer the author to present content more effectively and more professionally?
Once you have compiled your notes and recommendations for the author, craft your summary report. That report should include the following sections and details.
Under Content, list and explain revisions that would improve the information provided and the organization of that information.
Under Design, list and explain revisions that would improve the visual logic and professionalism of the document.
Think about design as you construct your report. Write your report directly in the Canvas Discussion forum designated for the workshop. Doing so limits your design choices, but still highlights the need to use basic design principles to make your content more accessible to readers.
Present your report in 4 separate sections that correspond to the report description above. Within sections, separate individual ideas/discussion points into their own paragraphs or list entries. Signal the beginning of each discussion section with an appropriate heading.
Post your summary report to the forum dedicated to this workshop on Canvas Discussions.
Note: I provide some visual guidance in the discussion forum for determining how long your report should be. However, the real standard you seek to meet here is that of sufficient appropriate detail. In general, summary reports ask you to provide enough detail to demonstrate to peers and to me that you understood the activity on which you report, and that you completed the workshop as described. If your report is too brief, or if it lacks concrete, specific detail, expect to earn fewer than 50 points for your submission.
This section describes the standards by which your work will be evaluated for this workshop. Attend carefully to these details. If you do so, you will earn full credit for the workshop.
There are 50 possible points for this workshop. I will award points according to this standard.
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