Project lead: Dr. Tisha Turk (Director of Academic Support for Writing & Speaking)
Vivero Fellow (2024-2025): Rowan M
I’d like to take the Grinnell Guide to Writing, Research, and Speaking (GG) online. The original project is “online” in the sense that it exists as a PDF that can be downloaded, but this format is both difficult for students to navigate and, importantly, difficult to update. And it has some accessibility problems as well.
In recent years, some of the Writing Mentors have written new material for the GG and revised existing material, and actually incorporating that material into the text has proved difficult (not least because I’m the only one with access to the master document, and the only time I have to actually make revisions is during the summer when I’m supposed to be off appointment).
So the project, as I currently imagine it, would have at least five parts:
- Identify possible tools/platforms/etc.; there are lots of ways to make the GG available electronically, and I don’t assume that the options I know about are necessarily the best or most accessible or most aesthetically appealing ones.
- Figure out a new, non-linear structure for the GG, in consultation with me.
- Set up whichever platform we settle on and plug in the revised contents (some old stuff, some new stuff). Separating content and style is critical so that content and style can be updated separately in the future; the lack of a CSS equivalent in the current GG is part of what’s made it such a pain to update.
- Set up hyperlinks to make it easier to hop around among sections. (This is something that all the Writing Mentors who’ve worked on revising the GG have suggested, and I think they’re right.)
- Create or compile documentation to allow future Writing Mentors and WRT 301 students to continue updating the GG so that it can truly be a living document.
