Week Four | 5/18–5/22
Final Project: Step #4 | Further Research & Discussion
Final Project: Step #5 | Designing the Project
As you figure out the crux of your project, you’ll need to do more research, reading, and discussion. At some point, that will lead into the actual Final Project design.
You should continue to use the skills outlined for your research paper and the resources of the iLC, but you can also create new information in this step — through interviews, reflections, surveys, and so on.
This is also when you would paint, record, and otherwise create the raw materials of an alternative project. If you are still doing a TED-inspired talk, you’ll write a script. A script is also required for a video essay.
In other words, this step is when the most essential design decisions are made: What are you building? How do you plan that? What resources do you need?
Then you build the project itself. You’ll need models, feedback from peers and teachers, help from people stuck with you in quarantine, and so on. This is the week put the project together.
This is probably the most time-intensive step, and you are especially encouraged to lean again on the “stuff of growth” — the collaborative energy and efforts of your peers. Use Zoom, Skype, etc, to talk things out. Share documents. Do whatever it takes to make this collaborative.
Note: Like every step of a process like this, you will be more successful if you fold this step into the previous week’s work and extend the design process into the next two weeks. You don’t necessarily stop designing the project on Friday!
The default form of this project is still a “talk” based on the format of TED Talks:
- TED: Ideas Worth Spreading | The main site for official TED Talks.
- How to Open and Close a TED Talk | Akash Karia’s guide.
Your project, if it emulates a TED Talk, should be 8–10 minutes long. If you think you might benefit from more structure, you can also do an Ignite presentation:
These presentations use exactly 20 slides that advance automatically every 15 seconds. If your presentation uses this format, it will be exactly five minutes long.
Ignite is a much more performative structure, since it eliminates any extemporaneous elements. Use their site to find examples and guides.
There are other models for presentations, of course, and you can use those. You can, as mentioned a few times already, create a video essay. There is a form and function to that kind of artifact, too, and you can look to the models from Week Two for examples.
This doesn’t have to be a presentation, of course! Your project can be an essay. It can be a paper with multimedia elements embedded. It could be a website. It could be an album of original music. It could be a personal journal, or just your meta-commentary on a personal journal.
Really, there are very few limitations to what the project is. The key is that you have to research it, design it, and filter that all back through a clear purpose. It can’t just be a link to your DeviantArt profile. It can’t just be a copy of a research paper you’ve already written this semester.
Think of it like this: If you do a talk, TED-inspired or Ignite-inspired, you must get approval of a written script as part of these steps — that is, you must submit a typed artifact that details your presentation in full. It may be verbatim, or written word-for-word, or organized by salient points and comments. It must be precise, however, and you must follow it when you present.
All projects need a similar “script” at this stage. For what that means, you’ll have to collaborate and think divergently.
Ask questions below!