Here are the main CWPA goals I think I have accomplished:
- Focus on a purpose -- For each assignment, I found a purpose to focus on. For example my first hyper-essay was focused on disabilities and social media and my ethnographic documentary was focused on how the Emory men's cross country team uses media.
- Respond to the needs of different audiences-- My work was available to anyone in the world.
- Adopt appropriate voice, tone, and level of formality-- Each assignment type required a different voice, tone, and level of formality. For example, my blog posts and documentary interviews were more informal, but my hyper-essays and documentary analysis was formal. I tried to keep the tone of my essays and documentary mostly objective, but my blog posts were more subjective with my personal opinion voiced clearly.
- Write in several genres-- Many of the assignments were different genres. For example, writing the script and questions for my ethnographic documentary was different than writing my hyper-essays, but I was able to successfully do both.
- Use writing and reading for inquiry, learning, thinking, and communicating-- I learned a lot and explored topics in depth through reading and writing. I was also able to communicate my analysis through my writing.
- Understand a writing assignment as a series of tasks, including finding, evaluating, analyzing, and synthesizing appropriate primary and secondary sources-- In my hyper-essays and documentary I was particularly strong at synthesizing primary and secondary sources and evaluating and analyzing them. In those pieces of work I took sources we read in class, sources I found by performing my own research, personal opinion, and interviews with subjects to create arguments.
- Integrate their own ideas with those of others-- I demonstrated this in all assignments for this class, by adding in my personal experiences and opinions. For example, in my hyper-essays there were pages dedicated to my personal experiences, and in all of my work in general I took ideas from sources and integrated that with my own thoughts and analysis.
- Be aware that it usually takes multiple drafts to create and complete a successful text-- For my hyper-essays I wrote a first draft and then went back to re-write information and add new information to improve my writing and the arguments I was trying to make.
- Learn to critique their own and others' works-- During class, I worked with my classmates to help them brainstorm ideas and edit their work and also reflected on my own work.
- Use a variety of technologies to address a range of audiences-- I definitely did this, as this was a huge focus of the class. For example, the blog posts were one type of technology and so were the multiple websites I created and the documentary.
- Learn common formats for different kinds of texts-- I learned about blogging, creating websites, and how to format a script for a movie.
- Control such surface features as syntax, grammar, punctuation, and spelling-- I focused on these writing features and proof-read my published work carefully to make sure that everything was written clearly and correctly.