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.
Your work on this assignment will result in a summary report that includes your recommendations on how to best refine and revise a resumé document that I provide.
For the complete details about how to submit your work, see Submission Requirements.
The primary focus of this workshop experience is to connect user needs and expectations for a specific document with strategies for refining and revising that document to meet those needs and expectations.
This workshop directly supports your professional development in 2 specific areas: assisting colleagues with writing and design (what we often categorize as peer review), and refining strategies for improving your own writing and design.
Both learning pathways challenge you to reflect on the purpose(s) served by specific information genres (in this case a resumé) to better understand what audience members need or expect from those genres. Both learning pathways challenge you to consider how to systematically assess documents to make them more effective at meeting their purpose(s).
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 4 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 or 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 do anything else, read the doc. Consider your first impressions. Is this a well-crafted document? Based on your first impression, do you think the designer represents himself well, or not?
Before you begin assessing the resumé, reflect upon who you think these documents are meant to serve and how. Novice designers often forget to consider audience. They just as often fail to consider what the designers of documents are trying to achieve with the documents they create. For this first part of the workshop, you'll consider both questions.
How do resumés serve their creators? Be specific. When you create a resumé, what purpose(s) does it serve? What are your needs and expectations in creating a resumé?
Hint. The purpose of a resumé is never to secure you a job. Companies do not hire on the basis of a resumé alone. Not good companies, anyway. A good resumé helps you get an interview in the specific context of job seeking. What does the document have to do to accomplish that goal? What other purposes and contexts do resumés serve?
List as many different audience categories as you can for resumés. Identify each category with a name or title. For each audience category, list as many specific expectations as you can of resumés. There are 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.
Hint. You should be able to identify at least 3 different audience categories. Consider that not all audiences are human. With that thought in mind, can you list more than 3 audience categories?
Now that you have a better sense of the audience(s) and purpose(s) of resumés, examine the resumé I have provided for the workshop to determine how effective you think it is at meeting the needs and expectations of its various audiences. As you assess its strengths and weaknesses, begin to consider how you would improve it. More specifically, list the revisions you'd recommend to the author to 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.
Craft your summary report in the forum dedicated to this workshop on Canvas Discussions. Do not create a separate document for this report. Compose it in the forum.
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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