Instructions Project

Project Summary:

The Instructions Project asks students to produce two sets of clear, concise instructions documenting one legitimate, non-trivial item or process for two distinct audience groups. Professional writers are often tasked with producing such instructions, and despite common assumptions, helpful, audience-focused instructions are quite challenging to produce.

Topic choice for instruction sets is wide open, and past subjects include creating histograms with Microsoft Excel, constructing a tournament-grade horseshoe court, using successful online play strategies in Call of Duty: World at War, cooking jambalaya, connecting smartphones to the campus wireless network, etc. The main stipulation is that the item or process selected must be non-trivial and of genuine utility to the student's defined audiences.

Instruction sets may be in any appropriate format (printed, online, audio, etc.), and all final instruction sets should be delivered in their actual format. Like all issues of design, format choice should be guided by the work's audience, context, and purpose. All instruction sets must contain some multimedia elements that are not written text, such as images, figures, video, audio, etc. Perhaps the most important aspect of this project is that a student's two instruction sets should be qualitatively different to address the needs, values, and expectations of the two distinct corresponding audiences. Although some overlap is expected, instruction sets should be markedly different, and one set should not be a cut-down version of the other.

Instructor's Note: It is likely that some of the items or processes students select will have existing instructions. Students should not replicate existing work, nor borrow extensively from existing materials (although students can of course drawn strategies from them). If instructions already exist for a topic, a good idea is to shift the audience, context, and/or purpose. Such changes lead to different choices of medium, strategies, and arrangement. These shifts make a student's instruction sets distinct documents.

Project Sequence and Grading:

1. Relevant Instruction Set Analysis (10% of project grade—due Monday 8/31)
   Students will locate existing relevant instruction sets and analyze them using the rhetorical elements established in Compose, Design, Advocate (audience, context, purpose, medium, strategies, arrangement). Excellent analyses will provide thorough, insightful, well-supported information about the instruction sets in each category.
   
   
   
   
2. Design Plans (10% of project grade—draft due Friday 9/4, final due Monday 9/14)
   Students will construct two design plans (one for each instruction set) based on the rhetorical elements identified in CDA that articulate the goals of the corresponding instruction set and how it will accomplish them. Design plans help guide the design process, but they are not static recipes. They are evolving documents that shift to accommodate changes encountered during project development. Because of this, students will turn in final, revised design plans with their completed instruction sets. Excellent design plans will account thoroughly for all of the rhetorical elements established in CDA and present a coherent narrative rather than a collection of disconnected parts. Excellent design plans also will reflect the corresponding finished instruction set, and be in a finished, polished format suitable for an professional reader, including appropriate grammar and mechanics.
   
   
   
   
3. Rough Drafts and Usability Tests (10% of project grade—due Wednesday 9/9)
   Students will provide their classmates and the instructor with drafts of their instruction sets and usability tests to perform on them. Because of this, instruction set drafts should be as complete as possible so that the information drawn from usability testing will be maximally beneficial. Excellent usability tests will be thorough, complete, professional, and in keeping with the information on usability testing found in Technical Communication Today and the "Usability" Instructor Blog.
   
   
   
   
4. Final Instruction Sets (60% of project grade—due Monday 9/14)
   (The class-produced Final Instruction Set Rubric is here.)
   Students will complete two separate instruction sets documenting the same item or process for two distinct audiences. Instruction sets should take into account information drawn from readings as well as that discovered through analysis, drafting, and usability testing. Excellent instruction sets will be qualitatively different to appeal to the needs, values, and expectations of the two separate audience groups, but both sets will be clear, concise, helpful, and user-centered. Excellent instruction sets will incorporate non-written elements and be of sufficient length to cover all necessary information for a non-trivial subject. Excellent instruction sets will be delivered in their intended format and of professional quality appropriate for an authentic production context.
   
   
   
   
5. Postmortem (10% of project grade—due Monday 9/14)
   (The postmortem form is available here.)
   Students will produce a reflective postmortem that provides insight into their process of creation. Works that document how a person's time and energy have been allocated during a project are ubiquitous in professional settings. Excellent postmortems will account thoroughly for all sections of the postmortem form, thereby providing valuable insight into project development, successes, challenges, and lessons learned. Excellent postmortems will be in a finished, polished format, including appropriate grammar and mechanics, such that the postmortem could be given as-is to a professional superior.