Write Stripes

In the collaborative project, we will be targeting college students, with a special emphasis on juniors and seniors. Not only is it easier to find subjects to survey for information, but it will be interesting to learn more about how our age group views health care reform. Also, college students often know few actual facts about our current health care situation. The main reason for this is the fact that most are not worried about paying hundreds of thousands of dollars on one medical procedure without insurance or ensuring that they have full coverage for themselves and their family through their employer. However, it is important for them to understand that one day it will be them, not their parents, who will be forced to question how their health care system is set up. By showing them how expensive medical care still is with insurance, how much money is taken out of a pay check for insurance, that people do not get all medical care for free without insurance (Medicare / Medicaid), how much medical bills actually are without insurance, and how many jobs don't offer insurance coverage. Juniors and seniors, especially, will benefit from this knowledge as they will soon be entering the workforce. Also, students in health related majors should be made aware of how the heath care system affects them. Doctors, nurses, pharmacists, those working for insurance corporations, and other medical professionals will be affected by any changes to the system. So, they should have a special interest in the politics dictating their careers. To fulfill these goals, we will need to use interesting facts and statistics, attention-grabbing images and slogans, empathetic stories, and many other techniques.

From discussing Health Care Reform with my roommates, I know that there are several “gaps” in what our audience (college students) knows about this issue. Most students understand that there is a problem, but they don’t know the actual issues involved. They have limited knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of our current system, primarily because most students have not had to deal with health insurance, etc. To them, it is something they automatically receive from their parents. However, we want to ensure that they have sufficient knowledge since one day they will have to deal with health care issues in one way or another. Other information that students don’t know includes who is proposing which plans to fix heath care in upcoming elections, why we need change, how drastically health care does and will affect them, if the career path they are on will include jobs with health care benefits, what plans are currently being used effectively worldwide, just how expensive health care is, and what these plans have to offer (both good and bad). In addition, the one plan they do know is the national health care model. Yet, even with this knowledge, their understanding of what exactly a national health care plan would involve is limited. Either they are strongly against it or all for such change, with few facts to go by. Candice and I are also going to survey a larger group to gain more information about the gaps in the information our audience knows about Health Care Reform.

There is much that people don't know about the issue of stem cell research. It seems that the scientific element of the debate makes it very confusing to many. Most people don't realize that there are places to get stem cells other than just from abortions. Also people are very unsure about exactly how the funding for the research works. I think that with more information on these issues, students would be much more knowledgeable about stem cells and much more equipped to vote effectively on the issue.

After conducting a small question and answer session with my friends and roommates, I've realized that the issue of oil companies and the economy are foreign topics to many young people on Clemson's campus. Though this is one issue that directly effects the students, they are not aware of how much a change in gas prices can effect there everyday lives. They did not know about the alternative fuel sources available and how much revenue the oil companies are gaining as the price on gasoline rises. After being informed about some of the information I've researched, they admitted that this would be one issue they would be interested in learning more about. Also, they see this issue as being something of importance to be discussed during the next election.

For health care reform, we are targeting Clemson students. We chose Clemson students because they seem like the easiest audience to speak to from our point of view. Within Clemson students we will directly appeal to Juniors and Seniors because they will be entering the workforce the soonest. We will appeal to Juniors and Seniors by showing them how much money is taken out of a pay check, how much medical bills actually are without insurance, and even how expensive medical care is with insurance. We will also use statistics to show how many jobs don't offer insurance coverage. Targeting students will force us to use lots of attention grabbing methods, since students seem uninterested in health care reform.

After talking with a few college students about current oil consumption, prices, and alternative energy sources, I feel that a majority of them at least have some knowledge about the issues at hand, especially the ones who own cars and have to pay for gas every week. These students really feel the pinch of rising gas prices, but I don’t think they know how much gas prices affect the rest of the economy in the US and the world. Also, I feel that they may have heard about alternative energy sources, but they don’t know which ones we should be using or why we are not using them yet. Basically, I feel that their knowledge is very general and could be greatly improved from a good presentation that grabbed their interest in a way they had never seen before, which is what we will strive to do with our project.

Many people do not know a lot about the issue of oil companies. They mainly just know how much gas costs them once they get to the gas pump. People are not aware that gas prices are affecting many other things in the economy like food prices. The food is shipped to all of the places and therefore uses gas to get there which increases prices. Also, people do not know about the alternative energy that is available and what is being researched. These are just a few of the "gaps" in people's knowledge of oil companies.

do we need to submit an electronic copy of some sort for project 1 or do we only need to hand in a hard copy?

The task you've been asked to do (as per the scenario) suggests the investigative report format, but that is not to say you should follow the models exactly (or even that that particular format is the only possible "right" way. Hope that helps.

I just wanted to make sure that it was the format on pages 284 & 285 of the handbook that we are supposed to be following. There are a number of memo formats, but I know the project directions mentioned the investigative report.
Thanks,
Meredith

Yes, please do follow memo format (with the headings) and do double space.

Oh, and single or double-spaced?

Since our report is going to be in the memo format, do you want us to put the "memo" heading on the top of the page? I'm assuming that you want the To:/From:/Date:/Subject: on there as well?

When I asked several different people to tell me some things they knew about stem cells or some things they would like to know, here are some of the answers I got:

1) What is a stem cell? The majority of people that I asked didn't even know what a stem cell was.
2) Why are they such a big deal? What do they do? I think it’s important to explain what stem cells are being used for and what kinds of things they can help with.
3) What is the big debate with them? I know they are cells and they can help paralysis or something, but why is that a big deal?

People generally knew very, very little about stem cells. Even if they do kind of have an idea what they are, they don't know the full scope of where they come from or what they can be used for. Explaining the laws and some of the ethical issues surrounding stem cells are going to be important, but I think from just asking around it seems like our group needs to stick to the basics and do a really thorough job of explaining what these things are and what that could mean to them.

Public Health Care Reform: Candice and Meredith

We plan on making our issue appealing by targeting upperclassmen. Upperclassmen will be the ones getting jobs and being faced with health care decisions. Juniors and Seniors feel the repercussions of a flawed healthcare system more than Freshman and Sophomores. We will make our media presentations short and easy to follow. We will appeal to the fact that health care makes a significant difference in the lives of millions of Americans that are now without insurance. We will try to make college students see that this is an important issue to them even if they aren't affected by it right now.

Courtney Royster, Sam Joyner, Kandace West

To get people interested in our voting issue, we will use brochures, posters, and a facebook message. The brochures will provide detailed information to people. The brochures will be available near the posters so that when people see the posters and want more information, it will be available to them. The posters will provide tid bits of information so that it will stimulate interest in the people that see them. We will also send a facebook message to Clemson students. People will be more likely to read a facebook message than an email. We will include information that will get the people thinking about how the issue of oil companies applies to them.

Net Neutrality:
People our age know about the internet, how to use it, and basically how it works. They understand how websites could potentially be discriminated against, yet they do not know that much about net neutrality itself in the fact that they understand the technology and that discrimination could happen, they just don’t realize that it’s an issue now. The main gap we need to cross is that students need to know that net neutrality is an issue now and explain why it is an issue now. They understand how it could potentially affect them, they just need to know that it is an issue and affects them right now. To present the information we need to keep information short and to the point, add catchy attention grabbing headlines, and provide resources for those who want to read more on their own. Adding visuals, audio, and graphics to keep people’s attention will help reach the target audience as well. One possible attention grabbing idea would be to create satire (i.e. Jon Stewart) to catch people’s attention and warn them of the issue that currently affects them. The problem is to grab students attention so that they will feel how the issue is currently affecting them. Creating information in this fashion through websites, flyers, or posters would potentially grab students' attention.

- Katie, Russell, Andrew

Gaps in Public Health Care:
1.Who is involved
2.What is wrong
3.Different plans of action and who supports them
4. How it works in other countries
College age students don't really know about public health care reform because they don't have to deal with health care costs, their parents do. Parents take care of health insurance, so teens don't really know what the problems and issues are.

Ali and Michaela -

We plan on appealing to our audience by informing them that the decisions made by our country in the coming election have the potential to completely change the face of America. College Age Students in South Carolina can signifcantly impact the future of this country and they will be around to see and experience the change. We'd like to put this on the front of the information we distribute and hopefully the enormity of the situation with attract the reader. We even may use pictures to include different immigrant groups that could make up a greater percentage of the population in a few years. We also will address the taxes issue becuase in a few years our tax money will be used by the government. College kids are stingy and this information will definitely draw their attention.

Heather, Charles, Nicole--> Stem Cells

Our audience is going to be Clemson students. We all agreed that one of the main issues in presenting the highly technical and confusing information available about stem cell research is to keep the explanations short and use really simple language that anyone can understand. We also think its important to break the information into sections that are clearly labeled and easy to scan through. That would make it really easy to pick up a brochure or glance through a website and read what interests you about the topic instead of seeing a mass of information. Another important part of attracting the audience is going to be presenting the information about stem cells in a way that is relevant to the reader. People will be much more likely to read through our information if they can clearly see how it affects them or could affect them sometime in the future. Using lots of diagrams and pictures can help us explain technical things like harvesting stem cells and how exactly they work and what they do. Along with that, it would be cool to highlight interesting facts just to make them pop out. We also need to put it in a format that can be produced extremely cheaply or free so we don't have to charge anything for the information.

In my informal survey of some friends I found that they generally know very little about the stem cell debate. Most vaguely (if at all know) what stem cells are, and none knew how stem cells are created. The legal issue and the actual law can be better understood by some, but there were also many people who really did not understand the new law at all. The moral implications of stem cell research are also understood by some but not anywhere near the majority of individuals. Many of the implications of stem cell research are known but the details are fairly shaky. Overall, there is much knowledge which still needs to be understood about the stem cell research debate before one can , especially involving the actual logistics of stem cell research.

The gaps in what people know about immigration are all of the crazy issues with taxes and what cost our country and the immigrants are sharing. Also people don't know how much the immigrants provide to our work force and what impact they have on our economy. People also are probably a bit confused about the current debates of what politicans would like to enforce in terms of the future of the illegal immigrants.

For the collaborative project I would love to learn about immigration, healthcare reform, and welfare reform.

In discussions with other students about net neutrality, it became apparent that a large proportion of the students were unfamiliar that the issue even existed. Based on the name, people thought it involved government interference in the internet in the form of spying or limiting content. The students seemed to have a slightly better grasp of the underlying concepts such as bandwidth and how information travels from servers to end users.

As initially discouraging as the lack of awareness of the issue was, at least the students knew the fundamental ideas. This should allow us to focus more exclusively on the issue and not on the complexities of the internet.

Three issues that are interesting to me in the upcoming election are:
healthcare reform
immigrant issues
stem-cell research
(and many more)

When comes to issues about immigration, amnesty, and border security, I think that a high percentage of Americans know less than they should. I definitely feel I am part of this group. We hear and read about these issues in the news, but do not always listen carefully to the whole story or research it enough. Some gaps in people's knowledge include not being clear on who is accepted as a legal immigrant, the steps to becoming one, and the reasons why some immigrants are granted amnesty before others. Other information like how many people immigrate illegally each year, the rate at which illegal immigrants are entering the country, and the security systems at our borders is also little known by some. Some people may not realize the effect that immigrants have on our workforce, productivity, and economy. Many people may not know what our country would be like without immigrants. This project will be a great learning experience for my group and me.

I was surprised by the type of technical writing done in my field. The owner of Coffee Underground spent a lot of time telling me about the amount of writing that goes into a business plan and the amount of writing done in communication with her team of employees. These two are quite different, but she appears to have to extensive writing in both situations. She also talked about the communication among local business owners. Apparently there is a huge sense of community among the small business world and there are organizations, meetings, etc to help grow the community. This calls for lots of writing that I never really thought about!

The range of technical writing in my field is pretty limited to very specific tasks. However, if I do branch out of this small business ownership thing into the big competitive business industry, I probably will have lots of reports to write to higher ups in my department. Also, becuase I am in Marketing, I probably will have lots of written and verbal communication with other companies.

The writing that gets done in my field mostly occurs at the beginning with business plans and credit applications. Also, there is lots of communication to buyers and quite a bit to other owners of coffee shops! I don't anticipate having to do much technical writing honestly. I do anticipate much technical communication though! It is extremely important in independently owned small businesses to have excellent communication amongst employees. In future years, as the use of internet grows, it is very possible that writing will become more prevalent amongst employees because of its accessibility. So, depending on our culture when I finally get there, I definitely may have to do a bit of writing!