I asked my students to choose an aspect of systemic racism to research. They managed and annotated their sources with Power Notes.They distilled their research into class presentations which used all five WOVEN modes of communication. While the research presentation challenged them to diagnose a problem, their next project asked them to propose a solution.
Drawing on abolitionist David Walker, who circulated his Appeal as a written pamphlet to reach a broad audience of enslaved and free blacks, as a model, my students created “digital pamphlets” or websites offering solutions to the issues they had researched. For many of them, it was the first website they had ever created. The goal of this project was for them to practice employing the WOVEN modes, as well as ethos, logos, and pathos to maximize persuasiveness. They had to make websites that would be easy to navigate, informative, and persuade the audience to take concrete action.
Here are some samples:
Mohamed Ghanem on employment discrimination in engineering
Nicholas Lopez on gentrification in Atlanta
Michael Nguyen on the plight of the Uyghurs in China
Oliver Hvidsten on discrimination in education
Mina Zakhary on government surveillance
Audrey Olenski on gentrification in Portland
Ciarra Ortiz on disparities in health outcomes for black women
Douglas Dillman on Islamaphobia in Catalonia
Calvin Sringam on racial disparities in education
Tynan Purdy on gerrymandering
Adam Bartnicki on voter suppression
To see more work from this semester check out the Ivan Allen Digital Archives Exhibit