Erin Workman
Writing Assessment and Response
in the Age of Digital Technologies
Statement of Goals and Choices
In "Negotiating Rhetorical, Material, Methodological, and Technological Difference: Evaluating Multimodal Designs," Jody Shipka describes an assignment that she calls the "statement of goals and choices" (SOGC). Students write these texts to accompany the multimodal projects they complete, detailing the choices that they made through their composing processes and why they made those choices, how they negotiated the affordances and constraints of media and genres, and what their work is ultimately intended to accomplish. (For examples, see Shipka's gallery of student projects.) Shipka explains that this assignment deepens a student's reflection by focusing her attention specifically on choices and negotiations that she made over the composing process.
To the right you can see some of the questions Shipka models for use in an SOGC assignment.
What, specifically, is this composition trying to accomplish—above and beyond satisfying the basic requirements outlined in the assignment? In other words, what work does, or might, this composition do? For whom? In what contexts?
What specific rhetorical, material, methodological, and technological choices did you make in service of accomplishing the goal(s) articulated above? Catalog, as well, choices that you might not have consciously made, those that were made for you when you opted to work with certain genres, materials, and technologies.
Who and what played a role in accomplishing these goals?