Interrelationships of Units 1-4 | English 307: Business Writing | Kimme Hea

Understanding the Interrelationships of Units 1 - 4

In a semester-long, multicomponent project, you will explore various business writing situations. To begin the process, you will draft a scannable résumé and collect three job advertisements for positions of interest to you. Then, you will use these materials to develop a "Professional Inventory." Through this analysis, you will locate specific skills that can strengthen your résumé, and through your collaborative work with a peer team and client, you will further develop those skills. After creating your "Professional Inventory," you and your team will draft a project proposal directed to your client. This document will outline the specifics of a university- or community-based consulting project. After feedback from your client, you and your team will work to complete the deliverable(s) as you have defined them in your proposal. Finally, you will individually compose a reflective report about your experiences in this project.

Throughout the four units of this project, you should strive toward two equally important goals: 1) the establishment of a deeper understanding of your field and your future place in that field and 2) the development of a project that is needed by your client. These goals will guide your creation of the final deliverable for this project--a reflective report explaining your expectations and assumptions at the beginning of this project, your goals for the client consultation, and your understanding of your own role as a writer and consultant during this project. This report will be further defined by your own agenda for this project. In other words, as this semester-long project unfolds, I expect us to engage and redefine its boundaries to meet your individual needs.

Keep in mind that the project asks each of you to reflect critically on your perceptions of professionalism, writing, and consultancy and your commitment to being a professional in your chosen field. Through class discussions, student-student and student-teacher dialogues, and student-client interactions, we can share our experiences with this project and enrich our understandings of the ways that writing both affects and reflects professional relationships.

What is my role(s) as a professional in this project?
Business writing situations require a range of understandings, skills, and competencies. This course offers you guidelines for approaching writing situations and responding to them. Any writing course, however, cannot offer you templates and documents that will be appropriate to all writing situations. Instead, we will develop ways of analyzing a writing situation with the hope that such analysis can provide you with a strong foundation for future projects.

When I discuss ways of analyzing a writing situation, I will refer to terms such as context, situation, purpose, audience, role of the author, and research among others. At any point in our development of an analytical framework, you should feel free to ask questions. Those questions provide learning opportunities for all of us in the course. Because members of the class come from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds expect to explain your field and its standards--don't assume that all students have similar backgrounds or even terminologies for aspects of their writing and researching processes.

Despite your disciplinary background, however, one common assumption of this course is that writing can impact organizations and the people affiliated with those organizations. Your responsibility, then, is to understand writing's impact both ethically and culturally; in other words, you, as a professional who writes, will affect your workplace and its constituencies in ways that you might not yet imagine.

How do the components of this project fit together?
To make this semester-long project more manageable, it is broken down into the following units:

Unit 1: Job Analysis Materials 15% (individual)
Unit 2: Client Research & Proposal 25% (collaborative)
Unit 3: Deliverable Production & Product 25% (collaborative)
Unit 4: Reflective Report & Evaluations 10% (individual with collaborative email)

During Unit 1, you will develop a scannable résumé, seek out three job advertisements for jobs that appeal to you, and complete a professional inventory. This inventory is designed to identify issues, areas, and skills that you would like to develop as a professional in your field. Concurrent with your development of these deliverables, you will be considering possible clients and/or making client contacts ideally looking for a non-for-profit or not-for-profit organization. This unit stresses contextual analysis and asks you to develop your web research skills. Additionally, you will gain a deeper understanding of documents as heuristic tools rather than as static products.

In Unit 2, after completing unit 1 and individually identifying areas of your skills that need improvement, you will determine the best type of client for you. Based upon leads developed by me, you will be placed in a peer team. Your team will work as consultants with that client. Your goal is to develop a deliverable for your client tailored to its needs. To begin the client-consultant relationship, you will be creating an email of inquiry. This formal email will introduce your team, request time for field research meetings, and help to establish client-consultant rapport. From field research into your client's communication needs, your team will develop a proposal that outlines the details of a writing project and denotes the contractual agreement between you and your client. Another important consideration of this project is learning to build consulting relationships where you and the client are both stakeholders in the project. This unit will enhance your field research abilities and help to develop your consulting skills. You will work closely to identify and understand your clients needs and translate those needs into an acceptable proposal.

As part of Unit 3, you and your team will request feedback on the proposal and make any revision to the project plan as needed. Then, your team will complete the deliverable(s) for the client. Along the way, you will receive feedback from your peers, me, and your client. Additionally, you will deliver an oral progress report about your work with your client. This unit will challenge you to set and meet goals and present material to others.

Then, with Unit 4, you will draft a reflective essay about your experiences as a consultant during this project. One final collaborative component of this project will be an email of thank you addressed to your client. You also will evaluate your own and team members' performance during units 2 and 3. This unit is the most significant of the project--you will analyze your own project development and reflect on how the project has shaped your understanding of writing and your place as a professional.

How can I learn more about client-consultant relationships?
Please review these online documents that discuss consultant-client relationships:

Professional Writing Resource Archive on Client-Consultant Relationships
by Amy Kimme Hea's Spring 2001 English 306 class
http://www.u.arizona.edu/~kimmehea/pwarchive/Consulting.htm

Developing Better Client-Consultant Relationships
by JRC Training Solutions
http://www.jrctrainingsolutions.com/freebie2.htm