Assignment Descriptions

For this final major assignment, you will produce a 2-3 minute Audio Story on a key detail, person, place, animal, event, community that you have uncovered during the course of the class. The goal of the story is to engage a general audience of listeners with a feature of environmental justice in Atlanta, which they might not otherwise know or care about.

Assignment Goals

Because each Audio Story will share a key detail, person, etc. through an audio tool of your choice and then develop the audio project through invention, drafting, peer review, and revision, the project meets all four of the course learning goals: Rhetoric, Multimodality, Process, and Collaboration.

Assignment Checklist

  • 2-3 minute, Audio Story (Podcast) in a tool of your choice
  • Employ sound queues and musical tracks as needed to direct audience attention; use sound cues to signal transitions and remember to announce yourselves before you speak
  • Submit a 200-300 word Introduction that explains the the topic of your audio story and what audiences can expect when they listen
  • Audio Story Context: open with a strong Lead; anecdote, strange quote, conflicting data, etc. &  set the scene—where does the “story” you are telling take place?
  • Evidence: include evidence to support and develop your through-line or claim—cite the evidence and/or link out to it from your article? So What?: either throughout or in the conclusion, connect your article to the website’s larger problem/solution, e.g. how does your feature story redress the public communications problem you explore throughout?

Tools

The following are some audio tool suggestions:

  • Audacity: Audacity is a free, open source digital audio editor and recording computer software application, available for Windows, OS X, Linux
  • Anchor: “Create, distribute, and monetize your podcast–all for free” by Spotify
  • GarageBand: GarageBand is a line of digital audio workstations for macOS, iPadOS, and iOS devices that allows users to create music or podcasts
  • Adobe Audition: Adobe Audition is a digital audio workstation developed by Adobe Inc. featuring both a multitrack, non-destructive mix/edit environment and a destructive-approach waveform editing view.

Assessment

The Audio Story is worth 20% of your total grade and will be assessed in context of the feedback chart and as follows:
1. Rhetorical Awareness: Does the Audio Story address the situation (and assignment) completely and/or with unexpected insight? Does the Audio Story profile an easily overlooked topic in environmental justice and/or our class community partners for a general audience? (20%)?
2. Stance: Does the Podcast articulate a unifying argument/sophisticated position by examining a local area/partner/development project, describing its problems, and investigating how those problems are being addressed? (20%)
3. Development of Ideas: Does the Audio Story develop the claim/goal by illustrating the key concepts through a mix of interviews, source material, citations, sound, and music? (20%)
4. Organization: Does the Podcast sustain the claim throughout?  Do the Podcasters announce transitions from segment to segment, from one speaker to the next, and/or from one piece of evidence/analysis to the next? Have the Podcasters adapted typical organizational patterns of podcasts? Is there a conclusion? (20%)
5. Process: Does the final draft demonstrate planning, revision, and collaboration? (10%)
6. Conventions/Design for Medium: Do the individual introductions meet grammar, mechanics style, and syntax conventions with few or no errors? Does the Podcast persuade with seamless integration of features and content and with innovative use of affordances? (10%)