These discussion threads are going to get long!
- Step 1: By Wednesday, please return to the thread you were responding to last week. (Use CTRL F for your name if you need to!) At this point in the week, I just want you to be mechanical: list out the required components and document sections for a proposal responding to your RFP. If your RFP is not specific about document structure (many government grants simply request a “Project Narrative”), use our course readings to suggest specific document sections or components you may need.
- Step 2: By Friday, please edit your post from Wednesday. Add notes about where you will address the rhetorical moves that Connor and Upton described. For each of the seven moves below, please provide a short description of how you’ll address it in your proposal. (If you don’t have a description of that yet, this is a good time to state you’re still thinking about it.)
- Territory
- Gap
- Goal
- Means
- Competence Claim
- Importance Claim
- Benefits
Hey, if you and at least one other peer are working in response to a single RFP, this is a good time to communicate with each other. I won’t stop you from collaborating on a proposal, particularly as some government grants can be extremely large projects (both in writing the proposal and following up on the grant project).
Process
Please note that I intentionally weight discussion boards towards simple participation, rather than making some number of discussion points. I want you to engage with each other, but I don’t want to force it. To that end, our course discussion board is going to be … weird.
Whenever you post, please write at the top of your post “Discussion X-Y,” where X is the discussion number and Y is the step number (1 or 2). That’s what I’ll use as a signal for which assignment you’re doing, if any (or if you’re just responding to a peer for funsies).
This is going to make a pretty giant mess when it comes to grading, so I’ll try to give feedback as quickly as possible, but getting the points in the book will be another matter entirely.
Grading
Discussion boards in this class are all worth 5 points. The first post is worth 2, and it is graded on whether or not it was completed on time. The second post is worth 3 points, split between the quality of your response and the timeliness of it.
Step 1: You’ll get 2 points if you post your initial outline by Wednesday night. (Obligatory wiggle room statement: I’ll start checking Thursday morning, but your peers might be looking sooner.)
Step 2: You’ll get 2 points if you cover all seven moves (territory, gap, goal, means, competence, importance, benefits) in your response, and if your response is up by Friday night. You get 1 point just for attempting this step.
