Statement of Goals and Choices

The Specifics:

Length: 4-5 pages double-spaced (or around 1000-1200 words)
Draft: Include a draft version of the SOGC along with each major project draft. The draft may be shorter and include choices-in-progress—steps you’re planning to take but are still working out in revision.

One of the central goals of this course is to prompt you to think more critically and specifically about the choices you make when composing. In this vein, as a part of each major project (interactivity, remediation, and transmedia advocacy) you will complete a Statement of Goals and Choices.

The SOGC is based on the work of Jody Shipka, who states that it challenges you to “demonstrate rhetorical awareness and communicative flexibility by describing how those choices impacted, positively or otherwise, the meanings [your] texts are able to make” (118).

A successful SOGC draws on specific features of your final project, rather than general genre or topic choices. Beyond explaining why you chose to create a video essay, for instance, your SOGC should outline why you made particular design choices over others. For the example of the video essay, you could explain why you chose to depict your face at some points, and focus on images with narration at others, and how you balanced those two visual and aural approaches.

The SOGC is not a narrative of what you did, but rather a rationale breaking down why you did what you did. Some of your composition choices may be unintentional, or may come about as a result of other choices. In these cases, consider what effect your unintentional choices have on the final project, drawing on our practice of multimodal analysis.

For each SOGC, you should answer the following questions:

What, specifically, is this piece trying to accomplish—above and beyond satisfying the basic requirements outlined in the prompt? In other words, what work does, or might, this piece do? For whom? In what contexts? You should also articulate the theoretical grounding behind your goals and focus for this project, drawing on the theoretical readings from the course. Discuss how your work is grounded in the arguments of at least two readings from that unit of the course. For instance, explain how your project is in conversation with or builds on the ideas from those texts. Your response should clearly show how your goals and choices are informed by these readings, rather than treating the readings as discussions that are separate from your work.
What specific choices did you make to accomplish the goal(s) you outlined in your response above? Consider the rhetorical principles, methods, materials and technologies (everything from pen and paper to Photoshop) that you chose in your process. Include choices that you might not have consciously made, such as those that were made for you when you opted to work with certain genres, materials and technologies. Speak to how those choices work to accomplish to your central goal(s) for the project, providing a rationale and analysis for each choice that you focus on.
Why did you end up pursuing this plan as opposed to the others you came up with? How did the various choices listed above allow you to accomplish things that other sets or combinations of choices would not have? Discuss how your alternate plan or choices would have led to a different set of affordances and constraints.

Include your SOGC on your website, either as a link or separate page. Since I will read this text first, consider how you’re using this writing to justify your choices and argue for your particular approach to the challenge of the prompt. When giving feedback on your drafts and final projects, I will consider both how the SOGC helps me understand your choices as a writer, as well as how detailed and specific your SOGC is as a text.

As there are many possible avenues to take in these major projects, many of which I haven’t thought of, and the SOGC is your chance to illustrate your composition process and the thought that went into this piece. The more specific the better here—think of this as a piece of argumentative writing where you are backing up claims with evidence from your own work. In general it is better to outline fewer choices in more detail and depth rather than explaining more choices on just a surface level.