Lesson by Amanda Bales
Description (for Instructors)
This revision/redesign activity develops students’ business design skills, revision acumen, and genre analysis. In it, students are provided a sample SWOT report that fails to adhere to many design principles of a business document. Students then apply their understanding of rhetorically effective and formally normative business document design to revise the sample report. Students are asked, however, not to alter any content within the document; this exercise focuses only on design elements, thereby teaching students how to engage in element-specific revision.
Though this workshop currently relates to the SWOT Report, it can be applied to any design-focused writing assignment in your BTW series.
Students submit their re-designed SWOT Report as a Word document to a submission tool on the Course Management System (CMS) of your choice.
Explanation (for Students)
1.) Read the sample SWOT report: Download, read, and critically analyze the following Word file: Design Activity SWOT Report.docx. Consider the current design of the sample report and how well this design adheres to principles in business document design.
2.) Read the text: Read the Purdue Online Writing Lab’s article “HATS: A Design Procedure for Routine Business Documents.”
3.) Redesign the SWOT report: Using “HATS,” redesign the sample SWOT report so that it more directly adheres to the design principles of a business document. You may add whatever design elements you think necessary, as long as the content of the document is not altered. Please note that, though many programs other than MS Word offer interesting design options, please only use MS Word to complete this assignment.
4.) Submit the redesign: Submit your redesigned SWOT report to the corresponding submission tool. Only the following file formats will be accepted: .doc, .docx, .pdf.