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You will find times in the workplace (and certainly here at college) when you have to do a lot of writing in very little time. Today’s #TuesdayTutorial provides advice on how to structure your time and get a piece of writing done under a deadline.

The Lynda.com video Writing Under a Deadline (33m 38s) includes tips that will help you begin, write, and finish a project on time. You will hear advice on establishing a timeline, organizing your ideas, staying focused, and polishing your work before you submit it. Even if your time is tight now at the end of the semester, it’s worth investing some time in this video:

Note: This video has closed captioning, so it does not need a transcript.

You’ll determine the course grade you deserve by returning to the syllabus and requirements page on this site. First, remember that your grades in this course are based 100% on the labor you actively contributed to building and supporting the writing community and the labor you put into completing all the activities and projects in the course. In your final exam, you will present the details on what you have done and avoid making excuses or telling “sob stories.”

Remember that the Grades in Canvas are only a summary of the work that you completed (or did not complete). Your grade is based on your work as outlined on the requirements page.

To Earn a B

You must have completed the following activities in order to earn a B or higher in this course:

• Create five assigned major projects. You must have a complete on each of the following:
  • Professional Bio
  • Analysis of Writing in Your Field
  • Short Proposal
  • Progress Report
  • Genre Analysis Report
• Track your work in the course in a Labor Log. You must have a complete on Labor Logs for each of the following dates:
  • 01/019
  • 01/26
  • 02/02
  • 02/09
  • 02/16
  • 02/23
  • 03/02
  • 03/16
  • 03/23
  • 03/30
  • 04/06
  • 04/13
  • 04/20
  • 04/27
• Share at least one new or revised draft (with framing notes) a week with your writing group.
• Provide formative feedback weekly on the drafts that are submitted by the members of your writing group. You must have a complete on each of the following discussions:
  • Group Feedback on Professional Bios
  • Group Feedback on Analysis of Writing Projects
  • Group Feedback on Short Proposals
  • Group Feedback on Progress Reports
  • Group Feedback on Genre Analysis Reports
• Evaluate your labor in the course in a performance review, which serves as your final exam (uploaded as an Assignment in Canvas).

To Earn a Grade Lower than a B

If you did not complete all of the activities in the section above, your grade will be lower than a B. Discuss the required work that you did complete, explaining how much of it you completed. You can also refer to any work that you did beyond the basic requirements.

In your final exam, tell me what grade you deserve in the course (B-, C+, D, etc.), using the information from your performance evaluation to support your argument.

To Earn a Grade Higher than a B

You must have taken an ongoing leadership role by helping to share new ideas with the class and significantly adding support to the writing community.

Your contributions may have been supportive actions that you designed yourself (with feedback from me) or actions that came from a list of possible suggestions.

Be sure to talk about consistency. Your argument is stronger if you demonstrate that you consistently worked toward your goal during the entire term, rather than waiting until the last minute.

Grades higher than a B are based on the value of those contributions to demonstrating your leadership and adding support to the writing community. They are not based on the number of contributions you make..

 FAQ for Grades in the Course

Today’s #TuesdayTutorial looks at the kind of correspondence most people enjoy working on: Writing An Effective Good-News Message (1m21s). Good-news messages are usually easy to write. At worst, your reader may be neutral about the information that you are sharing. In many situations, your reader may be pleased or even overjoyed, which makes your job as the writer simpler.

Even though they are easier, good-news messages do require a specific organization. Most importantly, you want to be sure that you don’t bury your good news. Put it right up front!

Watch today’s video to learn about the organization of a good-news message, all in just a bit over one minute:

Note: This video has closed captioning, so it does not need a transcript.

In your Genre Analysis Report, you can use whatever bibliographical format you are most familiar with. Here are some tools if you are unsure how to make correct citations:

• EasyBib online citation builder creates MLA-format for free.
• Citation Machine creates MLA, APA, and Chicago citations (as well as others) for free.
• Cite This For Me creates several styles, including IEEE, for free.

You can also watch the Lynda.com information on Citing Sources in research papers for more specific examples of citations.

Note: This video has closed captioning, so it does not need a transcript.

You can find a treasure trove of tutorial videos that will help you apply for a job or internship on the Lynda.com site. You will find courses on LinkedIn, on improving your resume, and on conducting a job search.

I’ve created a Lynda.com playlist of Job Application Resources, from which you can choose a course or video that will help you with your job application process. Overall, there are 12 courses, consisting of 287 videos. You would need 16h 37m to watch them all. Of course, I don’t expect you to do that. Instead pick and choose whatever will help you.

One of the videos I like focuses on Tips for college grads and early career (3m23s), which discusses issues such as what to do if you do not have any work experience and how to use formatting to pad out your resume without padding too much.

Note: This video has closed captioning, so it does not need a transcript.

Lynda.com Login Help

Lynda.com videos are free to Virginia Tech students with your VT.EDU login. Start at the VT.EDU login page to access these resources.

On Monday, you will submit an internal progress report. It’s similar to the kind of progress report that you might give to your manager or co-workers to let them know what’s happening with a project.

You also need to know about how to write external progress reports, which will go to clients or stakeholders outside your organization. While the general purpose is the same as that for an internal progress report, the audience is quite different.

The Lynda.com video Using in-progress reports to communicate with clients (4m 23s) will walk you through the key features and the important characteristics of this kind of progress report.

Note: This video has closed captioning, so it does not need a transcript.

Lynda.com Login Help

Lynda.com videos are free to Virginia Tech students with your VT.EDU login. Start at the VT.EDU login page to access these resources.

I’m sure you have done many research projects during your time as a student. Starting back in elementary school, you were asked to find outside sources and use them to create a project about your topic. Essentially that is your task for the Genre Analysis Report.

To review what goes into conducting research, watch the Lynda.com video on Conducting Research to Collect Information.

After you watch the video, share a source that you have found and describe what you found in it. Read through the other comments to avoid repeating anyone else. You can also look at others’ comments for sources that you might add to your project.

Note: This video has closed captioning, so it does not need a transcript.

How To Fill Out Form I-765

Type or print legibly in black ink. If extra space is needed to complete any item, attach a continuation sheet, write your name and Alien Registration Number (A-Number) (if any), at the top of each sheet of paper, indicate the Part and item number to which your answer refers, and date and sign each sheet. Answer all questions fully and accurately. State that an item is not applicable with “N/A.” If the answer is none, write “None.”

—From Instructions for Application for Employment Authorization,
Department of Homeland Security

You can read through the information, but it could be better with the right formatting. Compare the paragraph version above to this revision, which uses numbered lists:

How To Fill Out Form I-765

1. Type or print legibly in black ink.
2. If extra space is needed to complete any item
   1. Attach a continuation sheet
   2. Write your name and Alien Registration Number (A-Number) (if any), at the top of each sheet of paper
   3. Indicate the Part and item number to which your answer refers,
   4. Date and sign each sheet.
3. Answer all questions fully and accurately. State that an item is not applicable with “N/A.” If the answer is none, write “None.”

It should be immediately obvious that the version with the lists is easier to read. It provides a structure that works well with the F-shaped reading pattern.

I have two resources that you should read to learn more about using lists:

1. Read all four pages of Grammar Girl’s Formatting Vertical Lists (or listen to the podcast). The information will tell you when to use a colon with a list, whether to capitalize list items. how to use other punctuation, and why list items should be parallel.
2. Read Bulleted & Numbered Lists from the University of Minnesota’s Accessible U. This resource will tell you how to format your lists so that they work well with screenreaders and other assistive technologies.

For your comment on this #TuesdayTutorial, find a short passage from your short proposal that would benefit from being revised as a list. Show us your before and after versions in a comment.

Lynda.com Login Help

Lynda.com videos are free to Virginia Tech students with your VT.EDU login. Start at the VT.EDU login page to access these resources.

For your #TuesdayTutorial, I’m sharing a series of videos on Lynda.com that goes over the different parts that make up a proposal. Altogether, the videos will take 28m53s of your time. The videos include information all of the following sections:

• Overview of proposal parts (4m40s)
• Prefatory parts (5m28s)
• Body parts (5m7s)
• Ending parts (4m31s)
• Appended parts (4m22s)
• Visuals (4m45s)

Log in to see the video series. A preview is below:

Writing a Proposal by Judy Steiner-Williams

Comments?

In the midterm evaluation, some class members said that the comments on the Daily Discussion Posts were often redundant. To help make the comments more original, I am adding some specific questions that you can respond to.

After watching the videos in the series, read through the comments to see what others have already said. It’s your responsibility to add something new to the discussion. Think of comments like class discussion: You wouldn’t repeat what others in class said in a classroom, so don’t repeat ideas in our online discussion. Aim to say something new.

Here are some discussion starters to inspire your comments:

• What one piece of advice from the videos stood out to you as good (or bad) advice, and why?
• If you have written or used a proposal in an internship or job, how did the proposal in the workplace compare to the advice in the videos?
• Choose one of the sections of a proposal and a specific audience of readers. Tell us how you would customize the section for that specific audience. For example, what would you include in the prefatory parts if your readers were potential new clients who were unfamiliar with how your company works?
• An elevator pitch is a short, oral kind of proposal. If you only had one to two minutes to persuade someone to follow your recommendation, which part of a proposal would you include, and why?
• What parts would you leave out of your elevator pitch proposal, and why?
• Visit the Search page on the U.S. Grants website. Find a grant that relates to your career field, and compare the information on the sections required for the grant to those described in the videos. If you notice differences, talk about why the changes are there. Be sure to include a link to the grant you are discussing.

In addition to these specific questions, feel free to comment on anything else you noticed about the videos, just as you have in the past. You can also reply directly to someone else’s comments.

Lynda.com Login Help

Lynda.com videos are free to Virginia Tech students with your VT.EDU login. Start at the VT.EDU login page to access these resources.

The Discussion posts this week provide more information about proposals. Some of the information, like today’s tutorial, include information that expands beyond the basic details you need to write your short proposal for this class. Since you are likely to write more than one kind of proposal once you enter the workforce, the thorough details in this video are sure to come in handy

This week’s #Tuesday Tutorial, the Lynda.com video Overview of Business Proposals (5m25s), introduces the four different types of proposals and goes on to discuss common proposal characteristics such as document structure, the necessary length, and audience needs.

As you watch the video, consider how the information relates to the short proposal that you will write. Since you will write about different kind of writing and for different reasons, how can you apply the information the video shares? If you have experience writing proposals in the workplace or elsewhere, how does your experience match the information in the video?

Note: This video has closed captioning, so it does not need a transcript.