Blog Response #8

ENG 301

3/16/15

Word Count: 763

Introduction

            When composing a technical document, it is necessary to make persuasive claims and support them in an effective way. It is important to include appropriate facts as well as describing what these facts might mean for your argument. My group’s job as communicators is to convince our “supervisors” to agree with our particular viewpoint surrounding the Institute for Humanities Research.

Description

            My team’s central idea for our practical proposal is that our selected institute needs to be more involved in social media. This would be a great way to engage with the public, especially undergraduate Arizona State University students, who are not currently involved in- or even aware that it exists- the Institute for Humanities Research. We thought that it would be a good idea to create an awareness campaign and use flyers as a way to promote new forms of the institute’s social media, such as Instagram, and Twitter. “In planning a persuasive document, you need to work within the constraints that shape your environment on the job” (Markel 185). This means that it is vital that my team takes into account any time, financial, personnel, or even informational constraints that we might face in our argument. For instance, we will need to consider what the current flyer designs might look like, how they can be improved, how costly it is to print them, where the best spots to place them on campus might be, when and even how long we would plan on leaving these flyers up.

            However, before we suggest this awareness campaign, we first need to decide where in our presentation we would want to present our claim. “In most cases, the best place to state your claim is at the start of the argument. Them provide the evidence and, if appropriate, the reasoning. Sometimes, however, is it more effective to place the claim after the evidence and the reasoning” (Markel 192). What is the best way to approach this? I feel as though this decision could make or break our argument; we want to make sure that we receive a desirable reaction from our audience, so I think that the order of our presentation is critical. I suppose we will have to wait to take a look at all of our collective data before we come to any conclusions.

            Secondly, in order for my group to be able to convince our audience that the future benefits will outweigh any current costs, we need to focus on three important things. It is essential that we show our audience that 1. We understand their needs, 2. We have already figured out what our overall plan is and that we will be able to do it, and 3. We are professional and are committed to fulfilling our promises (Markel 445). We will be able to support these with a thoroughly written, structural proposal, closely similar to the one provided to us an example in class. This report will include a memo, title page, an abstract, table of contents, executive summary, introduction, our research methods, the results, a conclusion, and of course any and all references used to support our argument. The summary- which covers the major elements of the proposal- is perhaps the most crucial section of this report, because it might be the only thing the readers study in their initial review of the proposal (Markel 449).

Conclusion

            Since our data will ultimately make or break our claim, we really need to make sure that it reflects what our central idea is. Instead of simply using online articles relating to our institute, we want to also find sources that support the idea that participating in social media will be beneficial to it. From a randomized survey we conducted, we determined that very few undergraduate ASU students have ever even heard about the Institute for Humanities Research, which I found to be surprising since there are so many students that attend this university. The vast majority of college students check through various types of social media on a daily basis; what better way to reach out to and connect with such a large group of people than to promote yourself somewhere they coexist so consistently? Although the Institute for Humanities Research does have a Facebook page already, I believe that this organization would really benefit from branching out and creating accounts with Instagram, Twitter or any similar sites.  By including these account names on flyers posted around campus for everyone to see, I think that more students will become aware that this institute even exists.