Midterm review

As stated on the Assignments page, the midterm exam has both an in-class and a take-home component. The in-class portion covers class terms, concepts, and readings. You will complete the in-class portion over two class meetings. The take-home portion asks you to create a multimedia text in response to a prompt. You have a calendar week to complete the take-home portion outside of class.

The in-class component will be done in class on Wednesday, Mar. 19, and Friday, Mar. 21. You will be given the take-home component when you turn in your in-class exam on Friday, Mar. 21. The take-home component will be due on Friday, Mar. 28. The two components will be combined to form your overall midterm grade.

• be able to analyze a work thoroughly using our rhetorical elements:
  • sense of purpose
  • audience
  • context
  • strategies
  • medium
  • arrangement
  • testing
• be thoroughly familiar with all the course texts, including:
  • Beyond Words excerpt 1
  • Beyond Words excerpt 2
  • Compose, Design, Advocate excerpt 1
  • Compose, Design, Advocate excerpt 2
  • This American Life "Mapping" episode
  • Rolling Stone's "Rock List: Twenty-Five Favorite Album Covers"
  • AOL Music Canada's "Best. Album Covers. Ever."
  • Rate Your Music's "The 100 Worst Album Covers EVER"
  • Idolator's The Worst Album Cover of the Year contest
  • Patrick Duffy's "Designing an Album Cover"
  • Marvin's Corner's "Technical Critiques Of Professional Disc Designs"
  • Copyright Navigator (particularly the "protection" tree)
  Pay particular attention to vocabulary terms (particularly those in boldface), bullet lists, diagrams, procedures, etc.



• be able to discuss the goals and functioning of the CD packages and promotional materials posted to the class blog. Example question:

  Select any two commercial promotional materials from those posted to the class blog. Using our rhetorical elements as a guide, compare and contrast them. Put the promotional materials in conversation, showing connections between their goals or strategies, and illuminating their differences.




• be able to analyze multimedia texts in the classroom using our rhetorical elements and other appropriate class concepts (two sample texts for analysis are attached at the bottom of this page)