Poster Assignment Evaluation

These are the questions that I will ask myself as I give your posters advisory grades. These are the only elements that I will base your grades on:

Rhetorical Appropriateness

• Are your message, purpose, forum, and audience ultimately compatible? Does the rhetorical situation you address offer you a reasonable chance of success? Is the purpose of your poster one that is realistic in light of the Michigan Tech audience that you are addressig? Is it realistic in light of the limitations of the poster as a medium?
• Have you presented an argument that is timely and relevant to your audience? Have you presented an argument with realistic aims in light of its audience?
• Do you pose your argument in a way that is convincing to the audience using modes of persuasion that are familiar and effective to them?
• Ultimately, is your argument likely to be effective in the face of its intended audience?

Overall Poster Design

• Does your poster present an overall design that is appropriate for its audience and its purpose?
• Is your poster likely to be visually appealing to its intended audience? Is the poster readable? Is the poster understandable?
• Does it use an overall visual style that augments and accentuates the main visual argument?
• Do the design elements combine to lead the readers eyes in a direction that reveals the information in a logical, compelling order and helps convey your message?
• As a whole, does the design of your poster help it to achieve its purpose?

Visual Persuasiveness

• Does your poster display a sophisticated visual argument?
• Does your poster use the visual as more than just an attention-getting device?
• Does your poster use the visual as more than just an illustration in service to another argument?
• Can your visual argument stand more or less on its own, or does it depend too much on text to make it complete and to make its point? Do the visual and the textual compliment and reinforce each other, or does one dominate?
• Is your visual argument compelling and effective, without being visually too complex?
• Do you use elements of visual design such as color, alignment, typography, etc. in the service of your overall argument?
• As a whole, is the visual argument likely to be effective toward acheiving your purpose?

Self-Awareness

• Does your self-reflexive essay indicate that you are aware of the rhetorical choices that you made and the reasoning behind those choices?
• Do you know your audience? Are you able to make and support predictions about how your audience will approach and react to your poster?
• Do you know where to place the poster to reach your intended audience?
• Is the reasoning behind your rhetorical choices sound? Have you acted consistently with this reasoning?
• Are you able to selectively use the suggestions of others to improve your poster? Similarly, are you able to turn a critical eye to your own work and revise accordingly?
• Are you aware of the limitations of the medium of the poster, and can you articulate strategies for working with or around them?
• Are you aware of the production limitations of your poster? Have you articulated a vision of what the poster would look like if you had more resources available to you?

For next Monday, in addition to your final poster draft, please bring a 750–1000 word self-reflective essay explaining the rhetorical choices that you made while creating your poster, including a justification of why you made them. The audience that you are addressing in this essay is me. You can use the above outline as a guide for what to look at in this essay, but once again, this is not about jockeying for a grade. Rather, I need you to explain your decisions in order that I can determine how and why they meet the criteria of "appropriateness" that I've outlined above.

Do not merely summarize or explain what you did in the poster—you need to show me the reasons why you did what you did, as well as provide support for those reasons. Although you should explain the production shortcomings of the poster (that is, what you would do if you had the resources to make a professional, production-quality poster), do not spend much time in this essay describing the poster itself. Instead, concentrate on the things that will tell me more about the rhetorical appropriateness of you poster and your self-awareness its designer.