WEPO

Sarah Dreilich, Kirsten Kennedy, Julia Knowlton, Ian Swaby, Felicity Warner

Introduction
For those of us who feel you have many talents or interests, and often find
yourselves drawn to multiple fields, the answer to your problem may lie in FSUs Editing,
Writing, and Media (EWM) major. EWM, especially through its Writing and Editing in Print
and Online (WEPO) class, offers the opportunity to work within a wide range of media
not just writing and also provides students with a chance to practice switching between
those media within the same project. This focus on various forms of communication reflects
one of the concepts most central to the philosophy behind EWM: the convergence of
media. Throughout the dynamic selection of courses the major has to offer, students explore
a wide variety of different areasessentially everything comprising communication in the
modern world. This includes both print forms such as books, newspapers and fliers, and
online ones such as blogs, social media and wikis. The goal is to turn out students who are
proficient in many different areas and are well prepared to work in today's increasingly
technological society.
WEPO is structured around a website that contains all of the classs homework
assignments, readings, and announcements, as well as any other course content that the
professor may want students to have access to. Therefore, an initial basic knowledge of
digital media is required. This aspect of the course allows students to keep up and stay
organized despite the fast pace of the class. In order that readers can gain a better
understanding of WEPO, the following quote from WEPO Professor, Jason Custers
syllabus describes the course from his point of view: The course will introduce you to the
principles of composing and editing as they are enacted across different media
environments Students will create works in a variety of print, screen, and network media,
and you will learn how to edit those works appropriately per the media in which they
appear.
In WEPO, students study the most effective methods for disseminating a message
depending on the message and on what sort of genre they intend to compose it in. Students
contribute to a course blog where they discuss scholarly articles covering various philosophyheavy topics in the world of media and communications, stating their opinions on the
authors theories and formulating their own theories to either support or contradict the
original ones. As with most EWM courses, group discussion is key; students spend a
significant amount of class time in small groups, bouncing ideas off of each other and
presenting their findings. There is also plenty of discussion of the practical aspects of
composing; as students move closer to the main projects, they learn about a variety of
websites and their affordances. They may compose case studies about different concepts,
such as design and multimedia theory.
Our world is dependent on multimedia technology and the Internet. The projects of
WEPO serve the purpose of teaching students how to create both print and digital texts, and
provides them with a strong understanding of writing and editing. WEPO projects can differ
between instructors, but are usually comprised of a key-word project written for the
audience of a first-year EWM major, a remix/remediation project, a viral ad campaign, and a
digital final portfolio. In addition to each project, a rhetorical rationale is required, which

serves to explain the projects rhetorical objective, audience awareness, genre design and
arrangement, and includes citations and a reflection on the project.
Going into WEPO, one may be unprepared for the vast array of media the course
will cover. In the initial class period, students are sometimes required to submit their own
personal definition of composing. In WEPO students will create multiple projects by
composing in multiple genres such as: print, for a screen, and for a network. A students
concept of writing may begin as something like, The use of text to convey information and
ideas, but by the end of the course, he or she will have found that a definition that once
seemed adequate offers plenty of room for expansion.

Composing in Print
Case Studies
Sarah Dreilich

If you google the definition of case study, the first and most common listing you
would find is a published report about a person, group, or situation that has been studied
over time." A very broad, scientific definition. The majority of professions that use case
studies are related to psychology, anthropology, sociology, and political science, as they are
often used to scientifically and quantitatively study the behavior of specific groups of people.
At first, with this knowledge, I was very confused when asked to compose a case study
in one of my English classes. I didnt understand how case studies applied to my studies as
an English student or what purpose I would use them for. Stripped down, this definition
states that a case studys fundamental purpose is to analyze something: perhaps a person or
group of people. In the case of English students, this refers to something more like a
theory, poem, or piece of literature. Instead of using a case study to collect facts and data, we
turn case studies into stories, in which we present a contextually rich idea or situation
through a specific perspective, in order to communicate certain themes and ideas.
In this guide, I hope to first help you understand what exactly case studies are, where
they come from, why they are important, and how to compose them. More importantly, I
want to help you find ways that case studies will personally apply to you as an English
student, and to assist you in properly composing case studies for the classes you will take
within the EWM major.
I composed my first case study in WEPO, and will use that experience as the basis
for applying the above information to an example text. At some point in WEPO, you
will use a case study to extend and apply a theory that you read about or discussed in class
to a text of your choosing, in order to better develop your understanding of both entities.
No matter what theoretical perspective you choose, there are certain elements that must be
included in every case study. There are five basic components of a case study research
design:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

A study's questions.
A study's propositions (if any).
A study's units of analysis.
The logic linking of the data to the propositions.
The criteria for interpreting the findings.

Assuming you will be using a case study in the context of applying a theoretical lens
to a text, it may be helpful to edit some of the wording of these elements:

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

A study's questions (the criteria of the assignment)

A study's propositions (if any)
The text
The theory
The principles of the theory

Incorporating all five of these components is important, but more important is how
well you define your theoretical lens to the text, how well you apply it to the text, and the
thoroughness of your analysis. Achieving these goals is made easier by directly pulling from
the theorys principles and the text.
For my project, I chose to examine a handwritten manuscript by Emily Dickinson,
The Sea Said Come to the Brook, through the lens of Anne Wysocki, whose theory
revolved around the visuality of texts. I did my best to provide the reader with enough
context before delving into the specifics:
Emily Dickinson, before anonymously publishing her poems before a patriarchal society, empowered
herself by personally keeping the original copies in the form of hand-written manuscripts, which she would
share with no one other than her friends and family. Though the form of these entries is simply constructed, if
examined through the lens of Anne Wysocki, one will find that it is actually made up of a multitude of visual
elements, which should be analyzed, and that give the reader certain expectations as to what kind of text
they are reading. Wysockis definition of writing and visuality is extremely extensive, as she believes all page
and screen-based texts are visual, and is therefore effective in guiding the reader through both complex and
seemingly simple texts such as these manuscript pages. When analyzing a text, Wysocki tells the reader to
look at the page/screen itself, what is on the page, define what helps readers make connections among parts of
a multi-pages text, and what contains the page/screen -- all things I can follow to explore Dickinsons
pages.
While I did focus on providing enough context to my audience, there is a certain
amount of information I can assume they already know, such as who Emily Dickinson is as a
poet and other information like the definition of a manuscript, or some basic terms referring
to design. These assumptions allow me to delve straight into the text, highlighting the
importance of the manuscript rather than biographical information about Emily Dickinson
or an in-depth analysis of Wysockis argument. Determining the amount of context you
provide is important in balancing the relationship you have with your readers. I hope my
example helps demonstrate that most importantly, although context is also significant, that
the purpose of a case study, in the realm of English, is to illustrate. Rather than focusing on
proper introductions and sounding academic, turn your case study into a story, illustrating
the sensory, mental, and conceptual experiences you personally had while engaging with the
text.

Rhetorical Term
Julia Knowlton
One of the projects you will be assigned in WEPO is a key term composition
assignment. For this project, I was instructed to choose a key term in rhetoric and create any
form of text in print, and use the text to teach the term to a first year EWM student. We
were able to chose any genre of text, however, the genre needed to represent the term and
audience accordingly. An official definition of the term, a definition created in your own
words, and critiques and examples of term, needs to be included in the text.

The purpose of this project is to teach your selected term to other students, but it is
also an opportunity to select a term you are unfamiliar with and teach yourself. WEPO was
the first course I took for the EWM major, so I was unfamiliar with virtually all terms. This
project was a great opportunity for me to explore all rhetorical terms and chose the one that
was the best fit for my text. I chose the five canons of rhetoric, but more specifically
arrangement and style. With permission from my professor, I focused on two terms. I then
decided to create a six-sided brochure, like an informational brochure you would read for a
business. The genre of your text needs to correlate with your term and your audience. I
chose a brochure because it provided the perfect format to organize all components of the
project. A brochure is a text that is easy to read and follow, which fits my audience of first
year EWM students. The reason I chose both arrangement and style for my terms is because
they are two elements that need to be considered when designing a brochure and I could use
my text to demonstrate that.
A print genre means that the text is meant to be viewed in print. Although I created
my brochure digitally, it is still considered a print genre because it is meant to be viewed in
print. If I were to use the website Tumblr to create my text, and then print out a screen grab
of the website, that would be an example of a text that can be put into print, but is not
meant to be viewed that way.
This project encourages you to express your creativity by composing a project that
allows you to present the key term in any print genre that you chose. For my brochure I used
visual aids to explain my terms. When I gave definitions and examples of my terms I
formatted the brochure to act as actual examples of what I was saying. In order for you text
to make sense and be a credible sample for your term, you need to make sure all content,
layout and style elements youve chosen are appropriate for the genre youve chosen.

Composing for a Screen

Blogs for Projects in WEPO
Felicity Warner

Within WEPO, blogs are extremely useful tools that students can use in creating
projects, creating platforms for work, or even for creating a full on portfolio for the class.
Blogs are inherently flexible and are easy to personalize to build any specific purpose you are
aiming to fulfill, especially when constructing a project for the WEPO class. These purposes
could be trying to reach a targeted audience, or maybe vocalizing a specific message. No
matter your purpose, blogs can play a highly beneficial role in the projects within WEPO.
In most cases, blogs are used to be dynamic platforms that constantly update and
change within the context and environment they thrive in. Essentially, blogs are generally
used to add new material to stay current and up to date. Students in WEPO can use blogs in
this way to create a project that is current and dynamic, but can also use it for much more
within the many projects of this class. Students can also use blogs to effectively present their
works, or even use it to create a much more clean platform that can organize work into
categories or pages.
One project in particular the remix and remediation project may be the best
subject for using a blog to efficiently showcase work. I personally used a Tumblr blog, a form
of microblogging, to organize and present my entire project in one space. For my project
when I took WEPO in the Fall of 2015, I used Photoshop to edit Instagram posts to have
pictures that were posted from famous women in history. For example, I would Photoshop
the username of an Instagram post to be paintergirlfrida to represent Frida Kahlo in a

funny and modern way. I then uploaded a picture of her (or a painting from decades ago)
and captioned it #selfie #selfportrait #magicalrealism to represent what she might have
said if shed had an Instagram. I took screenshots of these edits and uploaded them as photo
files to my Tumblr, adding short captions to explain them.

Figure 2.1
Tumblr did an amazing job of showcasing my photos in a clean and organized way.
With Tumblr, I could add a small description to the home page that not only welcomes users
to the page, but also helps to explain what exactly the project is, what the purpose is, and
what the goal is. This is extremely beneficial for giving your viewers, classmates, and
professors a good look at to your goal/purpose of the project youre being graded on. Also,
if I wanted to, I could have added different pages and organized them according to date,
type of photo, or anything else that distinguished the pieces. You could also make different
links embedded within the blog that could lead you to a historical page of information on
the women, for example. There are a multitude of possibilities when using a blog for WEPO
that can help you present your projects more efficiently and creatively.

Blogging: An Alternative to Essays

Kirsten Kennedy

As EWM majors we do our fair share of writing essays, but there comes a time when
an alternative to the normal is refreshing, and blogs offer us a change. Blogging offers the
perfect platform for our generation to compose in. In The Influence of Classroom Blogging on
Elementary Student Writing, Ewa McGrail and Anne Davis state that much scholarly literary
work is focused on the use of blogs in educational settings for secondary and college
students. They found studies that have supported the value of blogs for reflection, classroom
dialogue and social networking. Blogging is one of many social media platforms that

students work in. Social media has become a place for approval as well as a way to connect
to people all over the world. We no longer live in the circles that surround us; we have
friends that are across oceans. We are a generation no longer of one-to-many, instead we
work many-to-many (Kilian, Hennings, & Langner, 2012). McGrail and Davis state that
student bloggers became mindful of and connected to the audience, exercised agency in a
community of bloggers, and learned to take ownership of the writing process and the
writers craft.
In short, we are meticulous with what we show others, and how we are perceived.
Whats nice about blogs is that they are open to the public, which means that you can receive
feedback from a variety of people.. Blogs are meant to be regularly updated thus you are
constantly writing therefore growth is inevitable; as long as you take the time to reflect on
your work, you can only better your writing. Most importantly, it offers a place for writers to
develop and refine their ideas. Personal blogging is a place to share ideas and personal
interest, and while this a valued within the classroom, there is more that can be done
academically with blog writing such as teaching students to be aware of their audience.
Academic blogging allows for questioning, reflection, and critical thinking. We become more
aware that we are blogging for an audience that goes beyond our teacher, which forces us to
take ownership of our ideas. When questioned by others we have to become responsible for
what was said. It is one thing to read comments from a teacher on your paper but when
working in a public space receiving comments from fellow students, it makes us think more
about why we worded a sentence the way we did or what we were trying to get at with a
certain statement. We reflect on it in that moment and find a need to fix the problem.
Blogging in the classroom fosters collaboration as well as develops relationships between
students and the audience in a deeper way than a traditional essay can.

Composing for a Network

Viral Ad Campaign
Julia Knowlton

Another project you will be assigned in WEPO is the creation of a viral ad campaign
within a group of three or four students. The objective was to create a viral campaign on an
issue of our choosing, and for an audience of FSU students and/or administration. My
group and I had to create a collection of texts that raised awareness about our issue. The
texts needed to be networked together, where they were able to stand individually, but also
work together as a part of our larger campaign. We also needed to create a name and a logo,
which would serve as a connection between all our texts.
My groups viral campaign was called Safe and Sound Seminoles. The issue we
chose to address and promote was student mental health at Florida State University. Our
mission was to inform the students of FSU on the resources available to them and
encourage the use of those resources.
With the campaign you will need to consider why your chosen issue will be relevant
to your audience and how you can inspire them to take action in response to it. We chose
the issue of mental health because a couple weeks before the project was assigned a shooting
took place on campus at Strozier Library. The shooter was a Florida State graduate and at
the time of the shooting was suffering from mental health struggles. We felt this was an
appropriate time touch on the subject of mental health as it was very relevant to our
audience of FSU students, and they were the ones affected by the incident. It was also the

perfect opportunity to inspire and encourage students to utilize the services available to them
at the University.
After, we chose our cause and designated our audience, we needed to create our
series of networked texts. For our campaign all our texts were digital; we were able to
digitally construct and share our texts by using Google Drive. Google Drive is a great tool
for working on a group project; all members have access and the ability to contribute to one
collaborative text. We chose to use a Google Doc for the official text because it can be easily
shared and accessed, which are desired qualities to reach our audience of college students.
Our campaigns official text, included our mission, cause, mental health statistics on college
campuses, and information on all counseling available at Florida State. Also included on the
Google Doc, were hyperlinks to our three social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, and
YouTube. It is important that you make sure all links between texts are working properly
before posting.
We created a page on Facebook, which contained our campaigns mission and causes,
as well as a link to our Google Doc and two other social media Platforms. Almost every
student at Florida State has a Facebook account and surf the site multiple times a day; so using
that platform was the perfect and quickest way to reach our targeted audience. We invited all
our Facebook friends to like our page. When someone likes a page on Facebook it shows
up on their newsfeed, where others can see the page. We also encouraged people to share
the page, which also served as a great way to gain more attention and reach more students.
The page also contained updated posts about student mental health statistics, and phone
numbers for all FSU counseling offices.
The Twitter account gave us the ability to reach students who might not have or use
Facebook. It was also a great platform to constantly share, or tweet, our statistics and
counseling information. Twitter allows tweets to be retweeted, which gave us the opportunity
to gain the attention of others who were not following our account. We created the hashtag
#safeandsoundseminoles. to connect all our tweets with our campaign. The Twitter page
also contained links to all our social medias and the Google Doc.
Our Youtube account contained all of our campaigns content, but it also served a
greater purpose. In addition to our digital texts, we created a campaign video, which was
posted on the Youtube page. The video took viewers on a tour of FSUs campus and was
accompanied by a remix of the song Safe and Sound, which was used to hopefully cause
the audience to remember the name of our campaign. As the visual tour plays, the video
constantly flashes information about our cause on the screen. The video was a great way to
gain more attention because it was different than just reading our texts through the Google
doc or our social media. It presented our texts in a way that our audiences can be entertained
as well as informed. The Youtube page itself contained our campaigns content and contained
all social media links, just as our other platforms did.
All of our texts gave us the opportunity to raise awareness about our issue and
influence our audience through multiple outlets. They were extremely successful in engaging
our audience. It is essential to network your texts by using similar design aspects, re-posting
content, and linking all texts. As I stated, all our platforms contained the campaigns
information and purpose, and links to access all platforms. It is important that your texts
work together as a part of your larger campaign, and make it clear to the audience that they
are for the same campaign. Another way we connected our texts was with our name and
logo. We used Photoshop to create our logo. There are multiple types of design software
available to students in FSU libraries and digital studios to create your logo. The use of a

logo is the easiest way to connect all of your campaigns texts; it allows the audience to easily
recognize the campaign.

Figure 2.2: Safe and Sound Seminoles Logo

Your viral ad campaign should be about an issue your group is passionate about.
You must identify your audience and purpose, and create a series of networked texts, which
make sense for the audience, and that will inspire a response to your campaigns issue.

Digital Portfolio
Ian Swaby

As we neared the end of WEPO, just one task remained: creating our digital
portfolios. The portfolios were the culmination of everything we had practiced in class. They
would take what we had learned about writing, media, and theory, and wrap it up into one
neat, aesthetically appealing package. Potential students should know that WEPO isn't so
much a course about writing and editing in print and online, as it is one about creating the
tools we need to become hirable and find our ideal writing and editing jobs.
Since this was a class dealing largely with multimedia, it was appropriate that our
portfolios had to be created online. For the project we had the option to pick from different
website builder software creators, and I chose Wix. The program was fairly easy to use
because X, Y, Z It was fairly easy to learn how to use the system. The challenge was
producing a visually interesting site. There were five different pages we had to design:
"about, "my resume, "my projects, and "contact. I crafted each of these pages somewhat
differently, using colors that created a strong contrast with those of the other pages. I felt
that this would reflect the idea of the topical variation within the EWM major. For the
"about" page, I used a background featuring a sunny sky, shown in a yellowish color, with
mountains bordering the bottom. For the "resume" page, I used a parchment background.
For the "my projects" page, I employed a black background with faint streaks of dark blue,
to give the feeling of the dimmed lights to direct the focus onto the projects. For the
"contact" page, I used what appeared to be a blurred photo of lights glistening in the water,
because a bright image seemed to be an appropriate association to create here, and it made
the right contrast with the other pages.
For the main page, I decided to do something a little different from many other Wix
sites; instead of keeping the links to the other pages as a header at the top, I scattered the
links across the background on the home page and placed each one inside a large inkblot. I

employed a zoom effect on the individual inkblots so that it would seem they were appearing
as the page opened.
Finally, I gathered up all the content I created in class and put it into the "projects"
page. I used videos, blog posts, and papers from WEPO, as well as a video from rhetoric
class and PowerPoint slideshows from yet another class. I wanted someone to truly get a
sense of everything I had done at just a glance, so beside each item I put an appealing image.
If the item was a PowerPoint, I took a screenshot of one of the slides and placed it next to
the download button for the project. If the item was a case study about a book, I placed the
book's cover next to the download button.
Once the website was finished, I had the rewarding product that showcased
everything I had created in the WEPO class and other classes, but also as a useful tool.
EWM isn't just learning about writing and editing, but it is also about how to market yourself
and find real world experience.
Works Cited
Grove, Tim. HISTORY BYTES: To Blog or Not to Blog. History News 63.3 (2008): 56.
Web.
Kilian, T., Hennings, N., & Langner, S. (2012). Do Millennials read books or blogs?
Introducing a media usage typology of the internet generation. Journal of Consumer
Marketing, 114-124.
McGrail, Ewa, and Anne Davis. "The Influence of Classroom Blogging on Elementary
Student Writing." Journal of Research in Childhood Education 25.4 (2011): 415-37. Print.
"Writing@CSU." Guide: Case Studies. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Apr. 2016.