Senior Design Rhetorical Analysis

1. Senior Design Rhetorical Analysis

2. Audience: Who are you writing for? What is their knowledge level? What background knowledge will your audience need? Purpose: What information are you conveying? Why are you writing the document? How will your audience use your document? How will you meet their needs? Context/Situation: In what setting (Where) will your audience use the document? In what media should the document be prepared? Conducting a Needs Analysis: Who? What? Where? When? How?

3. Putting it all Together: After Gathering The Data

4. PROCESS • Consider how the less-familiar process is like your area of expertise: Inventing a System vs. Writing About a System Solar Sun Tracker (charging station to maximize energy collection) Solar Wind Power Station (data acquisition and instrumentation of wind-solar power station) Maximum Power Pointer Tracker (circuit that maintains constant system voltage) Trailer Hitch Assistant (dash-mounted system to improve safety for the driver) DisTek Project for Data Acquisition and Instrumentation Senior Design WRITING: Process & Product Essentials

5. Planning, Pre-writing: Noting your decisions about purpose, audience; Sketching out the architecture of your project (content and order); Making a map you can rely on PROCESS

9. THESIS • I. Main Idea • A. • B. • 1. • 2. • a. • b.

10. Creativity, foresight, audience awareness Casual, low-stress NOT Critical scrutiny, proofreading, grades PROCESS

11. Drafting: Shaping; Expanding; Ordering; Connecting Use Headings as Your Draft-Shaper 1. Introduction 1.1 Orient the reader to the topic 1.2 State your Purpose 2. Background: 1.1 Establish the Problem 1.2 Define terms, name names, and contextualize your document (what you did and why) 3. Discussion: Shape depends on purpose & context: are you explaining your system? Instructing someone how to use it? Arguing for its adoption? 4. Conclusion: Show how all the pieces fit together; Make recommendations PROCESS

12. PRODUCT: Introduction HOOK/ CONTEXT PURPOSE STATEMENT

13. • Fully-developed paragraphs with easy to identify topic statements • Connectors between each paragraph and back to the purpose you expressed in the intro PRODUCT: discussion DISCUSSION (most of your work gets done here)

14. Conclusion reasserts most important points without repeating them; Summarizes what it all means; Suggests a course of action for the reader PRODUCT: conclusion

15. Revising: Revisiting the document to make big-picture improvements in focus, content, organization, visual design, and connections • See handout PROCESS

16. Proofreading: Slow, focused, disciplined re-reading from hard copies, not computer screens PROCESS

17. “As long as there is an unbroken connection from source to load and back again as shown here, electrons will be pushed from the negative terminal of the source, through the load, and then back to the positive terminal of the source. . . the electrons are always moving in the same direction through the circuit”(http://www.play-hookey.com/) Senior Design WRITING: Process & Product Essentials

18. SHORT CIRCUIT a usually accidental low-resistance connection between two points in an electric circuit, resulting in either excessive current flow that often causes damage or, in a new shorter circuit, that draws current away from the original pathways and components; a disrupted electric circuit resulting from this (http://www.yourdictionary.com/short-circuit) Senior Design WRITING: Process & Product Essentials

19. “The purpose of the senior design course is to bridge the gap between academic theory and real world practice.” —Course Syllabus

20. Title: version 1 Digital Camcorders version 2 Which Camcorder is Most Reliable Out of 12? version 3 Technical Benchmark Testing of 12 Digital Camcorders (example from http://jerz.setonhill.edu/writing/technical/reports reports3.htm) examples