PierceHacker: Analytical Report

Our Rhetorical Situation:

For students seeking an Associate of Arts, Pierce college has defined infomation competencey as one of the core abilities outcomes:

Graduates will be able to seek, find, evaluate and use information and employ information technology to engage in lifelong learning.

The PierceHacker Project seeks to become a open-access resource that supports students attainment this core ability.

Key questions driving the PierceHacker Project:

• What information technologies are critical for 21st Century college students to learn to utilize?
• What information technologies are Pierce College students currently being asked to use in relation to their learning? How do we both support these existing expectations and support the use of new and (potentially) important, but under-utilized or under-explored information technologies?
• Specifically, the PierceHacker Project has an initial goal of providing open-access learning resources to support Pierce students in developing information competency. What resources/tutorials/lessons would be the most beneficial for PierceHacker to publish?
• Beyond the initial goal of providing open-access resources, how else might PierceHacker support the development of 21st Century information competency at Pierce College? What might be some future directions of the project?

Your Task

Write a report for leadership of the PierceHacker Project that offers recommendations for ways the Project might proceed in best meeting its goal of supporting the development of information competency at Pierce College.

Your report should attempt to help PierceHacker answer its key questions by doing the following:

• Introduce the issue/problem of information competency Pierce College.
• Develop criteria for possible solutions.
• Evaluate multiple solutions using criteria.
• Recommend best solutions.

Contents of Report

• cover page
• title page
• letter/memo of transmittal
• table of contents
• executive summary
• at least two visuals
• bibliography
• appendices

Length of Report

Lengths will vary, and the general answer in regards to how long a piece of writing should be is that it needs to be long enough to accomplish its goals. That said, my sense is that these reports, given the various compoenents and design elements will somewhere between 5 - 10 pages.

##Criteria for Success/Evaluation

When we offer feedback and commentary on reports, we’ll use these general categories to guide our discussion.

Content

Report provides a focused answer to the key questions driving the PierceHacker Project by offering analyzed criteria for solutions and recommendations for solutions based this criteria. Proposals or arguments are supported by relavant research that includes, but is not limited to, the survey data we will have generated as a class. Analysis is complete.

Organization

Report takes a clear and intentional organization strategies that supports the purposes of the analysis.

Readability and Design

Report is readable and navigatable by employing effective headings, subheadings, lists, and other design elements. Report is accessibily designed and can be effectively read by a screenreader and other assistive technologies.

Style

Tone of report is appropriately formal. Writing is mostly free of sentence of level errors that might distract a reader. Report is detailed, but concise.

Visuals

The report utilizes visuals. Visuals are incororately seemlessly into and support the analysis.

Sample Analytic Reports

This assignment is modeled after Leslie Robertson Mateer’s version for PSU. For genre reference, you can find some sample student reports at that site.