5220 Home | Introduction | Syllabus | E-mail Class Alias | E-mail Craig Stroupe

Guidelines for Writing the Self Commentaries

This is your chance to explain to me, your professor, the many ways that your project demonstrates your grasp of the ideas and techniques we've learned, as well as your degree of sensitivity and insight.

Nature and Format of the Self Commentary

Write a two-to-three-paged (double-spaced) commentary on your project. Try to specify and reflect on the principles or techniques of rhetoric and design you used. Claim credit for anything you see, even retrospectively, whether you were aware of using technique in your process or not. In this sense, your commentary may be partly a work of fiction, but, like all good fictions, it should lie convincingly to tell a greater truth.

Terms and Ideas

Use and underline terms and ideas from the readings to describe these principles and techniques (you might even use these terms as the headings of sections within the commentary). If you use terms from other classes you've had, underline them as well, and define them in a glossary at the end of the commentary.

Other People in Your Process

This commentary is a particularly good opportunity to recount and reflect upon your creative process, including other people whom you depended on or worked with. Indeed, working on Web pages or other public documents usually entails much more cooperation and collaboration than conventional papers or other genres of print or academic culture, and so these social, interpersonal or professional lessons you learned about working with clients or other collaborators is very valuable to document in this commentary.

Models

Be sure to mention and describe any models of good design or writing that you kept in mind as you worked on your site. These might be examples from our readings, class discussions, the work of your classmates, or previous projects of your own.