Engineering 100-980
Tech Comm Assignment #3
Contents
Purpose
The purpose of Tech Comm Assignment #3 is for you to practice selecting and integrating visuals into your writing. You will also practice effective paragraphing skills and, if using visuals you didn’t create yourself, citation skills.
Task
Your task is to find one figure and one table, write captions for each, write one paragraph for each, and integrate each into your document. You will turn in one document that has two visuals and, at least, two paragraphs.
Your visuals must be effectively formatted, e.g. reduce cognitive load by having a caption, following best practices discussed in lecture and discussion, having a citation if necessary.
The paragraphs that you write must make a claim and use evidence to support that claim. I recommend writing each paragraph about what you did in lab to get the particular visual. Remember to include an introduction for each visual within your paragraph and before the visual. I encourage you to use the PEEL method to make sure your paragraphs are structured correctly.
Your visuals must be effectively integrated into your document.
Here are some hints to keep you from doing extra work and to help you earn the highest possible grade:
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Your figure and table can be from lab. In fact, I encourage you to make use of, say, a calibration curve and a table of raw data!
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Have the visual slide deck and the integrating evidence slide deck open while working
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If you’re unsure about IEEE citations even with the integrating evidence slide deck open, then click the links to Purdue OWL citation guides.
Criteria for Success
I’ll grade your document out of twenty points. Criteria for success include:
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Visual formatting: is each table and figure formatted so information is clear to audience, is each table and figure captioned, do captions announce and orient, do captions attempt to explain, is each table and figure cited if necessary
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Integration of visuals: are visuals introduced, are visuals placed within document, are visuals explained in text
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Organization and paragraphing: is document organized to reduce cognitive load for audience, do paragraphs have clear topic sentences, do paragraphs support topic sentences with appropriate body/evidence sentences,
Your final score will be the average of all three criteria scores and correspond to the table below.
| Full Competency—Work requires few to no revisions | 20 points |
| Moderate Competency—Work requires only lower-order revision to improve clarity | 18 points |
| Some Competency—Work requires significant revision for its argument to be convincing to the audience | 16 points |
| Little Competency—Work requires higher-order revision because it has missed the mark in a key way | 14 points |
| No evidence provided—Partial submissions may receive some points based on completeness | 0-14 points |