• Project proposal: April 3
• Progress report: April 10
• Appointment with Dr. Day: Week of April 17
• Project with final report: April 24

• To give you practice in completing technical writing projects in collaborative groups
• To give you practice in consulting with a client with real-world needs
• To give you experience with writing and editing practical documents

As the syllabus indicates, you will be doing a "client project" in the next few weeks.  You will form groups of up to four to offer your writing or editorial services to a client.  Working for free, you will revise an existing document or create a new document.  The document could be a proposal, article, report, brochure, newsletter, web page, instructions, manual, or whatever your client needs.

Finding a project might seem difficult, but most clients will be happy to see you, will have work that needs to be done but no time to do it, and will want to help you with your education.

Suggestions for finding clients:

• Consider working for a business or organization with which you already have some contact.  You probably have quite a large number of casual dealings with small businesses, not-for-profit organizations, NIU departments, community groups, and the like.  They’re all potential clients.
• Talk to receptionists and secretaries.  They’re often the key
• Make a good impression, even when the contact is casual.  Remember, whatever you’re "selling," the first thing you sell is yourself.  Dress nicely.  Stand up straight.  Speak up.  Be polite.
• Make suggestions.  Sometimes potential clients will need time to think of a good project.  You can speed up the process by saying, "We can do brochures, pamphlets, instructions, training guides . . . ."
• Don’t press for an answer on the spot.  That usually forces a potential client to say no.  But do follow up cold calls in a couple of days.  Politely inquire whether the potential client has found something for you to do.
• Start now!  You need to have a project proposal memo ready for me on April 3.

In a one page memo to me, include the following:

• A header with your names, the subject, and the date
• A short introduction describing the client, purpose, audience, and subject of the project
• Based on your client's needs, identify in as much detail as you can what the focus and objectives of your project will be
• Identify (generally) the research sources/methods you plan to use to complete this project. For example, do you anticipate conducting interviews? surfing the web? doing usability studies? sending out a survey? relying on journal articles and other research in print?
• A second paragraph (which could contain a bulleted or numbered list)
• Identify a plan of action for completing this project
• Indicate how the tasks will be divided among group members
• Rough out a time line for accomplishing the tasks you have identified at this point

In a one page memo to me, include the following

• A header with your names, the subject, and the date
• A short introduction describing the client, purpose, audience, and subject of the project, including
• A brief (a few sentences) overview of your project
• The sources that you checked in the library or on the Internet, and/ or information from interviews and questionnaires
• The first section of the body of your progress report, "Work Completed," will indicate the actual amount of work done through April 10. Be very specific here; in addition to indicating who did what, include:
• Meeting and subjects discussed with clients
• Names of databases checked people interviewed or surveyed
• Number of articles looked up
• Amount of writing completed
• The next section, "Work Remaining," will indicate all tasks still left to be done--both big and small
• List the tasks in the order you intend to complete them with an indication of who will do them
• Indicate the deadlines that the you will use to keep the remainder of the project on schedule
• The final section, "Assessment of Progress" should be your candid evaluation of the progress to date:
• Are you expecting to find more sources, or have you already decided on a definitive set of sources?
• What difficulties have you experienced during the research and webbing?
• What remedies have you taken to overcome those difficulties?
• How well is your group working together and what can you do to improve its work?

In a one page memo to me, include the following

• A header with your names, the subject, and the date
• A short introduction of the client and project, including
• A brief overview of what you accomplished in this project, including the methods you used
• A description of special features of the final document that indicate that you have applied what you have learned in this class
• A second paragraph summing up what you learned about technical writing
• by working with a client and
• by working collaboratively