Group Project
English 500

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In English 500 you will do two major projects, the Group Project and the Term Paper. The paper is a traditional critical paper which includes no graphics. It demonstrates that you can write effectively in the traditional academic manner.

However, the world is changing, and what is expected of teachers, technical writers, and others attempting to present their ideas to the public is changing as well. Often, people are asked to work in groups rather than as individuals, and to present their work in a new way. Graphics, color, video, sound bites--these are the wave of the future whether we approve or not. Hence the group project for this course.

Students will work in groups of three, decided by lottery. One of Chaucer’s lesser works will be assigned to your group: you will be required to introduce it and explain to the class, who will have read but not researched it, what it is--a dream vision, a beast fable, an elegy, what?--and then critique it from an appropriate analytical viewpoint. As the instructor will base lecture references and quiz and examination questions on your work, you have a major responsibility to contribute to the content of this course.

Along with your topic, you will also receive the date that your presentation is due. How you present your project on that day is up to you, but you must have the equivalent of a twenty-minute oral presentation, which is also the equivalent of a ten-page double-spaced paper.

However, you are not to turn in an ordinary paper--you will do that for the Term Paper later in the course. This assignment requires considerably more imagination. The group project is a presentation. It requires words, but it also requires graphics: pictures, charts, maps, video, slides, a Power Point presentation, animation--whatever will heighten interest in your topic. If you are presenting orally, show-and-tell with costumes, implements, etc. is also acceptable--or photographs of these items may be part of either other method of presentation.

Here are the three methods of presentation from which you may choose, listed from hardest to easiest:

A paper with graphics. Your group will write a paper about your topic, illustrating it with pictures, charts, maps, and other appropriate graphic material. It is your responsibility to prepare a copy for every member of the class. This is the hardest method because it eliminates sound entirely and makes the use of color difficult and expensive. It also eliminates the most effective use of the personalities of group members.

An oral presentation. One, two, or all three members present the group's project in approximately twenty minutes. All audio-visual aids are your responsibility--check out availability in advance. You may use audio, video, slides, handouts, charts, maps--whatever you need. This method provides the widest range of possibilities. You may demonstrate a dance, sing a Gregorian chant, draw charts on the board--whatever it takes. While this is almost certain to be a popular option, because it’s fun, it is not the easiest.

A website. Not only is this the easiest option, but it is also the one most likely to enhance your marketability in the future! I suggest that you build your site at Geocities or one of the other sites on the WorldWideWeb that offer free websites, rather than on the Murray State Server (Geocities' file manager/editor is superior to MSU's upload/download system). When you are ready to search for a job, you can claim HTML as one of your skills. After you graduate, your Geocities or similar site will stay put on the WWW as an example of your skills.

HTML is the easiest way of building something impressive ever invented! If you do not already have a favorite HTML program, I recommend the free program Arachnophilia. If anyone in your group is already web-savvy, that person will tell you how astonishingly easy it is to find and import or link to material you need, to use color, animation, and even sound files on your site. However, you must have original content! A site that is nothing but imported material and links to other sites will not fare well. As with all of these projects, you have the responsibility to provide the class with solid information about your topic. Just as if you were writing a paper, you will have to think through content, organization, and yes, mechanics. Website text full of mechanical errors is not impressive, and a site that cannot be negotiated easily is a disaster. In fact, designing a website is a great way to learn to organize your thoughts!

So there are your choices. Meet with your partners and decide on both an approach to your topic and a method of presentation. The Group Project is one-fourth of your grade for the course. It's worth putting forth some effort to do it right.

Here is something I don’t want to say, because it ought to be self-evident. Nevertheless, I am forced to mention it by a bad experience with one recent set of group projects, because, by the luck of the draw, the first group in a particular class provided a perfect example of what not to do. They chose an oral presentation because it seemed easy, and then did not prepare. They did not practice reading the passages they chose and therefore stumbled all over themselves, they did not search for appropriate graphics but instead--for a university-level course--drew stick figures. Content was nothing but retelling plots the class had already read--no analysis.

I am prevented by privacy rules from telling students in front of the entire class that they have done a terrible job (I write out my critique and hand it to only the participants). Apparently either the rest of the class couldn’t tell, or they decided that if I didn’t say it was dreadful that first project must have been good enough. Most other groups lived down to the low standard set by the first presenters. Three other groups, however, had the pride in their own work to do a fine job, living up to their own high standards. I hope all of you will take pride in your work, too. Ideally, there won’t be any bad examples to emulate.

You will find links to many websites with information on Chaucer and the medieval period on the class website. Click on “English 500.” If you cannot reach my MSU website, try going directly to Chaucer page.

This page created with Arachnophilia.

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