Assignment Prompt and Rhetorical Rationale

By clicking the “Assignment Prompt” button above, you’ll download a document that outlines the prompt for the Remediation/Remix Project.



This project, due at the end of the five-week unit, asks students to respond to a real world exigence(s) by creating a remediation or remix. 



This major assignment is the second in a sequence of four.  It follows the first assignment, the Keyword Project, which asks students to create a print text that provides an understanding of a key term in the field of rhetoric and composition for the audience of first-year Editing, Writing, and Media (EWM) majors.



As noted at the bottom of the prompt, students have the opportunity to create an alternative assignment whose content relates to the material covered during this unit (e.g., a case study on an instance of remediation or remix).  However, students rarely take advantage of this opportunity, as they prefer to create, and enjoy creating, their own remediations and remixes.

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To the right, you’ll find the Rhetorical Rationale that accompanies and is due with the Remediation/Remix Project.

By clicking the “Rhetorical Rationale” button above, you’ll download a document that outlines the purpose of and questions to consider when writing the Rhetorical Rationale.



For each of the four major assignments in the course, students complete a Rhetorical Rationale that accompanies their project.

These rationales, which I rely on to assess major assignments, provide students the opportunity to articulate their composing process and to clarify and elaborate on specific portions of their project.  More importantly, these rationales are a space for students to defend and justify their rhetorical strategies and approach, to explain why they created the project they did and how it’s rhetorically appropriate and informed considering their rhetorical situation.



The “Rhetorical Rationale” document includes questions keyed toward the assessment criteria for the Remediation/Remix Project, which is worth 200 points (20% of the student’s overall grade in the course).  As a class, we discuss and develop the criteria together, including how much each criterion is worth.  This way, students have a clearer understanding of how their project will be assessed, as they play a role in determining what should be valued most in the evaluation of their work.

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To the left, you’ll find the prompt for the Remediation/Remix Project.