Brief Overview: In this activity, students are asked to come up with a brief plan for a public awareness campaign based on an assigned topic and two genres. As part of this, they are asked to pick a specific issue that relates to their topic, select a narrow audience to reach, and decide which of the two genres they are given would best reach that audience.

 

Note: This activity was adapted from one developed by Cherin Russell. Changes I have made include adding in the question-and-answer component and giving the students two genres to select from to assist their learning about how different genres may be more effective at reaching different audiences.

 

Learning Objectives: This assignment takes place in a unit where the final project consists of students composing a public awareness campaign and creating three genres to communicate their message. The goal of this assignment is to give students a chance to practice the work they will be doing on their actual campaigns while learning the importance of narrowing their topic and audience as well as how different genres will be more or less effective depending on that topic/audience. By Completing this activity, students will:

 

• Gain practice in meeting the formal requirements of the public awareness campaign assignment

• Understand the importance of narrowing their audience and message

• Begin to think through how to select genres that best fit their audience and purpose

 

Assignment Length: For a 20-person class, this assignment should take roughly twenty minutes.

 

Required Materials: No outside materials are necessary for the students to complete this activity.

 

Skills Necessary: The expectation is that the teacher will have already introduced the public awareness campaign assignment, so students should understand this activity is practice for their final assignment. It is helpful if, in the same class, the teacher presents students with the process of how to plan their campaigns as follows:

1. Consider what your ethos is as a writer: what issues are important to them and their communities?

2. Within these issues, what is a specific topic that you want to make people more aware of?

3. Who are the stakeholders when it comes to this topic? Who is impacted by this topic? Who has the power to address this topic? Which would you want to target?

4. What genres would most effectively speak to your chosen audience(s)

 

Access and Adaptability: This assignment should be accessible to most students, though the teacher should obviously make adjustments if the activity might be difficult for particular student(s) in class. The activity length might be lengthened, for example, for students who require more time to work on projects.

 

Teacher Preparation: Prior to class, the teacher should prepare cards on which are written a general topic and two genres, one a physical media genre and one a digital media genre.

In the past, I have used topics like

• The Environment

• Homelessness

• Voting

• The University

• AI

Genre pairings I have used include:

• A Television Commercial/A Twitter Thread

• A Billboard/An Instagram Post

• A Radio Advertisement/An Online Petition

• A Letter/A YouTube Video

• A Sandwich Board/An Infographic

 

The teacher may, of course, select different topics or sets of genres that may be more relevant to their class.

 

Enough cards should be prepared so that there will be one available for every group of 3-4 students in class, so a class of 20 students would require 5 or 6 cards.

 

Student Preparation: No prior preparation is necessary.

 

Class Assignment: Before beginning the activity, it is helpful for the teacher to reiterate the nature of the public awareness campaign assignment and how students are expected to select an issue, decide what audiences are stakeholders for that issue, and what genres would most effectively reach those audiences.

 

The students will then be broken up into groups of 3-4. The teacher will then give each group a card on which is written a general topic and two genres. The teacher will then ask the students to come up with a brief idea for a campaign that speaks to a specific issue within this topic and select one of the genres for this campaign. As part of this, each group will be asked to respond to the following questions (It is especially helpful if the teacher writes these down or projects them so the students can refer to them as they work):

 

1. What is your purpose for this campaign?What are you trying to get done? What effect are you trying to create?

2. Who are the potential audiences for this issue? Who is affected by the issue or who has the power to do something about the issue? What audience would you want to target for your campaign?

3. How is the genre you picked effective (or possibly ineffective) at conveying your purpose and/or reaching your selected audience? Why did you select this genre over the other one?

 

After about 10 minutes, the teacher will reconvene the class to share their responses. Each group will be asked to share their campaign ideas and their responses to the three questions. The teacher may choose to write the student responses down on the whiteboard to help show that their contributions are appreciated.

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The teacher should pay close attention to the students’ ideas and ask follow-up questions, especially when it comes to narrowing audiences or campaign purposes.

As an example of how the teacher might follow-up on a student response, many students will initially say the audience for their project could be anyone, so it is useful for the teacher to on the one hand affirm that the audience could be anyone but ask how selecting a more specific group they want to target could make their campaign more effective, emphasizing how different genres are not equally effective for different audiences.

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Additionally, if a group has difficulty answering some of the questions, the teacher might ask several questions to help them formulate ideas and responses.

The teacher will conclude this activity by reiterating the importance of narrowing topics, audiences, and genres, and how this is the same work students will be expected to do on their projects.