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Those of you who subscribe to XM satellite radio may have come across Bob Dylan's weekly radio show Theme Time Radio. Recently comic artist Jamie Hernandez created an imaginative promotional poster for the show.

Boing Boing reader Simon Nielsen took Hernandez's poster one step futher and made a short movie tribute using Hernandez's artwork and the audio from Ellen Barkin's evocative voiceovers that open each episode of Theme Time Radio Hour. Nielsen writes:

When I teach writing, I like to occasionally give my students imitation exercises to point out the features of a particular text. Robot Chicken, Seth Green’s stop-motion-animation show, has provided a pretty funny video example of this practice (my favorite touch is when they bleep out the bad language). It would be interesting to assign this type of video exercise for students to familiarize them with video conventions.

See the video here.

Notes for the Instructor: This version of the proposal argument focuses on a realistic choice of topic that demonstrates the "think globally, act locally" principle. The goal is to encourage students to write their proposals as if their audience is made up of people with the power to solve the problem. Some student samples are included below. Instead of writing a traditional essay to make their proposals, students will create websites to explain and argue their claims. To implement this assignment, the instructor will need to relate this prompt to the content of the course (by specifying what type of prompt is appropriate) and determine exactly what format the website should take (that is, how many pages it should include, what type of layout is to be preferred, and what sort of content is appropriate).

Assignment Description: Creating a website that makes a proposal argument

Category: Individual project

Goals: For this project, you will construct a proposal argument on a controversial issue of your choice. Your central claim must make a proposal, and it must be arguable. Additionally, you are to make your argument as though you are writing for an audience with the power to solve the problem. A proposal argument answers the question, "What should we do?," although you might argue against a proposed course of action instead. The final product will be a website designed and written to make this argument.

Building a Proposal Argument:

• Does something at UT or in your hometown need to change?
• Does a group that you belong to need to figure out how to get more members?
• Has someone proposed a solution that you think won't solve a problem?

After you've identified a problem, you'll want to think about a solution. Is it something we can live with? Or do we need to address it immediately? You'll need to consider a variety of solutions, including steps that might already have been taken.

Once you've examined several options, you'll want to propose the solution that you think is best and give good reasons. Things you should take into consideration:

• Would it be a good idea to do nothing? Why or why not?
• Does your proposal do the best job of correcting the problem?
• Is your solution feasible--is it doable, practical, and affordable?

Finding a Topic:

• Consider the topic of your earlier papers and find a proposal angle on it. If we understand the causes of binge drinking, what can we do at UT to address those causes and solve the problem? If the Top Ten Percent law has bad effects, what can we do to solve the problems the law creates?

Developing Your Content

• To write an effective proposal, you'll need an effective problem statement. You have to argue to establish (or deny) the existence of a problem, its significance, and its major causes.
• You'll also need to make it clear that you are arguing for a particular solution (even if that solution is not opting for one that someone else has suggested). You will argue that a solution will or will not reduce or eliminate a problem and that the solution will or will not be desirable, affordable, and feasible to implement.
• Remember that your solution doesn't have to solve the world's problems. Your proposal should solve your problem, but don't get carried away with the idea that your solution might solve all problems.
• You'll need to have fair consideration of alternative positions on the problem and on the solution, with responses in the form of concession and rebuttal.

Choosing an Audience

For this project you will choose the best audience for your proposal. This audience might be an individual or group with the authority to enact your proposal. (You may need to do some research to determine who this is.) Or, you might choose an audience that is indirectly involved with the actual decision making. For example, you could aim to persuade a relevant group to attend a particular event or write their own letters to an authority suggesting a particular course of action. Be sure to construct the website so that this specific audience will find it persuasive. Along these lines, you'll need to organize your website to reach this audience and choose appropriate appeals, style, and tone. You will also need to think carefully about the kind of content (images, charts and graphs, links to other pages, etc.) that will strengthen your proposal.

Choosing a Format:

Your choice of audience will determine your writing style and the format of your web site. For example, your web site proposal might include links to other pages and an introductory page encouraging your audience to visit the site.

To creat multiple pages within your web site, you will want to try breaking your argument into sections with clear headings and subheadings. Likewise, you might experiment with using bulleted lists, tables, and charts as appropriate.

Grading:

• Demonstrated ability to construct a proposal argument.
• Choice of a significant and arguable claim.
• Demonstrated ability to use well-chosen, fair and sufficient appeals to ethos, logos and pathos to support your claims (including appropriate graphics)
• Serious consideration of alternative solutions, with appropriate use of concessions and rebuttals.
• Effective and fair use of other authors as allies or as opponents.
• Confident but civil advocacy of your own position.
• Proper use, citation, and documentation of source material.
• Effective organization to create a clear line of argument.
• Clear and precise sentence-level rhetoric (grammar and style).

Student Samples
Brown Paper Towels by Yumiko Nakajima
FAC Building Renovation Issues by Sundew Shin

Notes for the Instructor: This proposal assignment offers visually-oriented alternatives to the traditional essay and gives students the opportunity to create a web site, a short film, or a PowerPoint presentation. Attached are two examples of PowerPoint presentations, a rough draft and a final draft that has been revised for aesthetic and persuasive appeal. To implement this assignment, the instructor will need to specify a more exact prompt and the specific guidelines necessary to complete the project (for example, the length of a short film [recommended: 5–10 minutes] or PowerPoint presentation [recommended: 20 minutes]), the number and type of sources to be used (the assignment currently requires a minimum of five), the grading specifications, and the due dates.

Assignment Description: Creating a proposal argument

Category: Individual project

Goals: This project is designed give students practice in producing visual proposal arguments; to lead them to demonstrate facility with the tools of visual rhetoric; and to think critically and carefully about the relationship between aesthetics and arguments, or between visual rhetoric and persuasion. Students will research a specific proposal and create a web site, a PowerPoint Presentation, or a short film as the medium for presenting their proposal argument. The objective is to present a well thought-out proposal that offers a viable solution to an issue that interests you, and that identifies a specific plan of action for your reader.

Tasks:

• Choose a controversial or debatable issue that is related to the material and topics of the course and that is as narrowly and clearly defined as possible.
• Identify a target audience that is affected by this problem and plan to structure your argument to reach this audience.
• Design a web site, create a short film, or design and present a PowerPoint presentation that posits a strong argument for your proposal.
• Student progress on this project will be measured in three stages: with a topic proposal, a rough draft, and a final draft.

Guidelines:

• Your project should consist of two primary components:
• A description of the situation, and what makes it a problem.
• A detailed discussion of your proposed solution to this problem. This should act as a “call to action” for your audience. You should discuss not only the reasons for your proposal, but also how it would be put into action, including both the costs (financial and/or personal) and benefits of implementing your proposal. Discuss what (if anything) has already been done about this issue, and why these solutions have been less than satisfactory.
• Your project should show that you’ve taken the time to do careful and thorough research, and investigated all relevant aspects of this issue. Some topics will require more research than others, depending on what is available and how concretely your problem can be measured, but all papers and projects should have a minimum of five sources.
• For web sites: In addition to having text in the web site itself, please cut and paste the text of your site and paste it into a word document that you also submit with your rough draft and final project; this textual component should be roughly 4-5 pages long, double-spaced (not counting the bibliography).

Topic Proposals: Your topic proposal should include the following:

• Your topic
• Some discussion of why the reader should care about this issue
• Your proposed “solution”
• Some examples of what else has been done about this problem
• Costs and benefits of your solution
• A brief description of the format your final project will take (web site, short film, or PowerPoint presentation).

Rough Draft: Your web site or short film should be fairly well fleshed out, and although they may not have all of the content you plan to incorporate into the final product, they should be close to the completed stage. If you elect to do a PowerPoint presentation, you should have all of your slides set up (even if you plan to revise them), and you should also have a Word document summarizing what you plan to say about each slide.

Grading: These projects will be graded for their visual as well as textual content; the visual component and presentation will account for 25% of your assignment grade, and the textual component will account for the remaining 75%. Be sure to include a bibliography (yes, even for short films).