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Assignment 3: Climate Content – Creation (Individual)

In this course, thinking with stories and imagery is a way of thinking about how to structure information so that people respond to it in the ways you intend, whether that means translating scientific data so that audiences understand its meaning, writing about global warming in way that mobilizes people to change behaviour or governments to action, or drawing on traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) to produce impactful policy recommendations, for example. For this assignment, working with your genre of choice, you will produce climate-related content relevant to your interests as a climate leader that utilizes the principles of storytelling for your target audience. This will occur in three stages, with a topic proposal, a peer review of the topic proposal, and a subsequent paper.

Instructions:

  1. Develop a short topic proposal (~300 words) that draws on any issue you are interested in writing or producing content about. To do this:
    1. This assignment is quite open in terms of what you may write about, but I encourage you to select something that is of interest to you either personally or professionally with respect to climate change. That can be anything from a specific policy you might see as being compelling, a question that has arisen out of your experiences with your Tiny Ecology project, or something that connects to the kind of climate leadership or engagement you seek to do through this program, for example. Consider this an opportunity to build your communication portfolio. If you are uncertain feel free to contact me, and especially to discuss this with each other.
    2. Pick your audience(s); outline the best strategies for communicating with this audience (or these audiences). Who do you hope to reach and what are some of the best mediums/media and practices to do  so? Allow this to inform your content creation.
    3. Note: It may be that it makes sense for you to reverse the steps in (b) and (c) above. Depending on your own orientation to the climate crisis, the priority may be to address particularly people first, and then determine what problem you are interested in unpacking for them. This is totally fine!
    4. If you have interest in doing a different format from a text-based paper, include that as part of your topic proposal and explain why it’s a better fit for your purposes.
    5. Include your learning goals for feedback on your proposal: what insights from a fellow peer reviewer would be helpful for you in developing your work? What are you not interested in? You will be provided a partner for the review process prior to the deadline.
    6. Once you’ve received your feedback, incorporate what is useful or helpful to you into your paper.
  2. Develop a research paper: Produce a 1,500-2,000 word research paper on your topic, targeting your specific audience.
  3. Use the currently accepted APA formatting.
  4. Must be submitted by 11:55 PM on Friday of week 8 (see schedule for exact date).

Requirements:

  • Submit topic proposal to forum in Moodle specifically for this assignment by July 11, which will go through a peer-editing process in groups of 2-3 students.
  • The peer-editing will not be graded but is an opportunity to continue to learn and reflect on the communication process; this should be complete by July 18 at the latest in order to give yourselves enough time to incorporate the feedback.
  • Use multiple sources from at least two different genres, disciplines, or worldviews.
  • Submit through Moodle (i.e., not necessary to post to blog).
  • Use the currently accepted APA formatting.
  • Complete and submit by July 28.

Assessment Criteria:

  1. Alignment between audience and content style (genre, form etc.) (learning outcomes 5.1, 5.2, 5.3)
  2. Effective use of established principles of communication (learning outcomes 5.1, 5.2)
  3. Effective integration of multiple worldviews and research (learning outcome 2.3, 3.3)
  4. Clear and concise writing; grammatically correct (learning outcome 2.2)
  5. Use of APA formatting (learning outcome 2.2)

Relevant Resource: MACAL Academic Paper Assessment Rubric

Weight: 25%

Submit Proposal: to the Proposals & Peer Review for Assignment 3 Forum in Moodle.
Submit Research paper: to Assignment 3: Climate Content – Creation (Individual) in Moodle.