It is through public awareness campaigns that organizations attempt to influence public behavior and understanding. Public awareness campaigns alert particular audiences (not just the general public) to issues or problems that the organizations undertaking the campaigns think should be of concern to those audiences, such as teen pregnancy to teens, or “see something, say something” to commuters, or, in the most successful such campaign, “seatbelts save lives” to drivers and passengers.

For this assignment, you will take the research and writing you did for your Argument Essay and combine it with the work of you fellow group members to create a public awareness campaign. You will use the knowledge and tactics you developed in the Argument Essays to inform the public about the issue and, if appropriate, suggest actions.

The primary vehicle for your campaign will be a web site that your group will create on CUNY Academic Commons. Each of you will contribute different material to the web site and create different elements on the site (see below). These different elements will represent different ways of reaching your target audience; you can think of them as genres. You will adapt the information and strategies from your Argument Essays to these different genres to reach your audience in new ways.

Due Dates:
11/8 – Upload Outline, Gannt Chart and Group Contract to Blackboard.
11/8,10,15 – Group Conferences (sign up here)
11/17 – Post link to Draft Campaign for Peer Review to Blackboard
11/17 – Peer Review of Public Awareness Campaigns
11/22 – Additional 200-word response and 2-sentence description
11/29, 12/1, 12/6 – Final Group Presentations of Public Awareness Campaigns
12/8 – Post Reflection/Evaluation of Group project by 11:59 PM.

Group Work:
Since this is a group project, the grading is slightly different. You will receive a group grade on the project as a whole, which will serve as a base grade for your individual score. Your group members will be evaluating the effort you put into this project and I will keep those evaluations in mind when assigning individual grades at the end of this unit. You will be creating a Gannt chart (timeline of due dates plus duration of activity and who is in charge of that activity) and writing a group contract for this project. If you do not hold up your end of the contract (ie, you do not communicate, you miss group meetings, you skip class when I give group time to work, you do not do the work you agreed to do, etc.), you will lose points in your grade or I will have to remove you from your group.

Preparing for your Campaign:

Group Contract:
The way you write your group contract and the specifics of that contract are up to you. All group members must negotiate reasonable terms for the contract and sign the contract, indicating agreement. The group contract should take at least the following into consideration:

• What grade are you aiming for?
• What will the group’s primary method of communication be? (Text, email, phone calls, Blackboard Collaborate Ultra, Zoom, WhatsApp, etc.) DO NOT use Snapchat as those messages are not permanent.
• How quickly can group members respond to communication? Take into consideration the communication methods you have chosen and other obligations you might have outside of this project such as work or family obligations. Also consider if you’d like communication time to remain the same over the weekends vs. weekdays.
• What means will the group use primarily to work collaboratively outside of class during this time of social distancing. Will you use Blackboard or Zoom or GoogleMeet or Skype to simulate face-to-face meetings? Will the group use Google Docs or Cloud-based Microsoft Word to edit documents collaboratively? Will the editing process be synchronous or asynchronous?

Outline
You will need to prepare an outline of your campaign. The outline should contain:
1. a mission statement for your campaign
2. a description of the audience
3. a description of what you would like to have your audience do in response to your campaign
4. a description of how you plan to reach your audience
5. a list of the elements you plan to include on your group’s web site
6. justifications for how these elements will best help you reach your intended audience.

Timeline/Gannt Chart:
Commonly used in project management, a Gantt chart, is one of the most popular and useful ways of showing activities (tasks or events) displayed against time. Your Gannt Chart is how you will make sure that your group members are participating equally and how you will evaluate your fellow group members when the project is completed. On the left of the chart is a list of the activities to be completed and along the top is a suitable time scale. Each activity is represented by a bar; the position and length of the bar reflects the start date, duration and end date of the activity. This allows you to see at a glance:

• What the various activities are and who will be working on them
• When each activity begins and ends
• How long each activity is scheduled to last
• Where activities overlap with other activities, and by how much
• The start and end date of the whole project

You can find a template online, or create your own.
Here is an example of a hypothetical Gannt chart for an assignment like this one, and
Here are directions for creating a Gannt Chart in Microsoft Excel

In preparing the Gannt Chart, think about your own work schedules and needs in the coming weeks. Work together to figure out how you can all contribute equally within your different schedules. Realize that not all of you have to do everything; you can each rely on your teammates to do their fair share as you know they are relying on you to do yours. LOOK AT THE CLASS SCHEDULE FOR COMMON DUE DATES AND STEPS IN THIS PROJECT. Not only should you include the major due dates but there are some smaller steps that I have asked you to complete that you should include on the chart. And, again, you should create the chart to accommodate your own individual needs and working habits. This is the map of your next few weeks as a group.

Contents of the Campaign:

Four Different Elements:
Although your medium for reaching your audience will be the web site that your group will create on CUNY Academic Commons, your site will need to have different elements that appeal to your audience in different ways. You can assign different group members to create these elements or you can work on them together—that is up to you. Your site must include at least four different elements.

Creating the Web Site:
I will devote at least part of one class to reviewing web site creation. It generally works best if one member of your group creates the site initially and then immediately gives everyone else in the group Administrator status. This will allow everyone to make changes to the site from the beginning. Although you may want to assign one person to ensure the consistency and workability of the site as a whole, everyone should be able to work on it.

Elements of the Site:

An Infographic:
The Infographic is a graphical narrative that tells the story of the topic with a combination of pictures, data, text, and a narrative arc. Successful infographics generally have the following characteristics:

1. Topic: The infographic is specific in nature and is intended to inform or convince the viewer.
2. Type: The type of infographic chosen (i.e., timeline, informational, etc.) highly supports the content being presented.
3. Objects:  The objects included in the infographic are repeated to support various data points and to make it easier for the viewer to understand the infographic through repetition
4. Data Vis: The data visualization formats chosen make the data presented easy for the viewer to understand the information. Presented in a narrative fashion.
5. Layout: The layout of the infographic follows a narrative with a conclusion that draws the information together at the end.
6. Accessibility: Was this designed with the sight impaired in mind? Are the colors too pale? Is there a clear contrast between the colors to make it easy to read?

A Multimedia Presentation:
The multimedia presentation can be a personal story or a narrative about the topic that relates to and enhances the audience’s understanding of the issue. It can be a video, a slideshow with text or voice, a Successful multimedia presentations have the following characteristics:

1. Story: a Clear introduction to the issue, explains the parts of the problem, and concludes with a solution or ask.  
   1. Design: Visual images are related to the issue. Tools are properly used.
   2. Type: Tool/program best displays the type of narrative that is used.
   3. Layout: Font and Images or audio are clear and legible.

Six or more blog posts:
The blog posts are a “deeper dive” into the issues surrounding the public awareness campaign and thematically are tied to the infographic so that individual items on the infographic are analyzed or described. A successful blog campaign has the following characteristics:

1. Topics: Solutions, Consequences, individual narrative
   1. Clarity: Reader understands the importance of the topic.
   2. Design: Visually appealing with accessibility in mind.  
   3. Rhetorical Design: Audience, purpose, and tone are aligned.

Social Media Handles: Twitter, Instagram
Create a real Twitter or Instagram or Facebook account (or use some other platform) and post images and text aimed at your audience.

Other Genres Appropriate for the Topic, the Campaign, and the Presenters:
See my List of Genres for ideas about other ways of getting your message across to your audience. Depending on the size of your group, the capacities of your web site, the purpose of your campaign, and your own interests, you may want to experiment with one or more of these other genres (or even others not included on the list). There is a way to include most of these genres in some way on your site.

A Final Note:
As described on the Home Page of our Course Site, helping you develop your skills at working together on writing projects is a major goal of this course. Acknowledging and drawing upon “your and others’ range of linguistic differences,” as the course description puts it, really will help you develop rhetorical sensibility. It is very important, therefore, that you stay in touch with the other members of your group and work together with them to complete your projects. Not responding to emails or texts, not showing up for online meetings, and not completing your chosen tasks will result in problems not only for yourself but for everyone in your group. Likewise, if each member makes an effort to help make sure all of the other members are involved and included, scheduling meetings when everyone can be there, for example, the chances will diminish for any one member to be left out. Most of us lead complicated lives, but that is only more of a reason to work together and help each other.

	Score	Weight	Weighted Total
Campaign presents reliable, documented data		15.00%	0
Web Site is clean, clear, easy to navigate		15.00%	0
Campaign conveys a strong message and solutions		15.00%	0
Web Site employs multiple genres and media		15.00%	0
Final Presentation		20.00%	0
Individual student contribution		20.00%	0
Grade		100.00%	0