Summary:The Instructions Project asks each student to produce two distinct sets of clear, concise instructions covering nontrivial topics of genuine utility. Professional writers are often tasked with producing such documents, and despite common assumptions, producing helpful, user-centered instructions is quite challenging. A main goal for this project is for students to explore how different audiences, contexts, and purposes manifest in instruction sets that vary in form and function. For this project students will create:
Instruction sets must cover different topics and be designed to fit authentic contexts and target defined audiences. (Students needn't necessarily be the instruction sets' primary audience, although they will constitute the testing pool.) All instruction sets must include non-textual elements, such as tables, graphs, graphics, or multimedia content. Topic and format choice for instruction sets is open; students have covered subjects including creating histograms with Microsoft Excel, constructing a tournament-grade horseshoe court, using successful strategies in the online game League of Legends, cooking jambalaya, and connecting smartphones to the campus wireless network. Formats have ranged from small printed package inserts to online tutorial videos. All final instruction sets should be delivered in their intended format. For example, if you design a poster, you should turn in an actual printed poster. It is very likely that some of the topics students select will have existing instructions. This is fine, but students should not simply replicate others' work, nor borrow extensively from existing materials (although students of course can glean strategies from them). Deliverables:
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