WRA 453 Grant & Proposal Writing

1. WRA 453Grant & Proposal Writing Fall 2005 Bill Hart-Davidson hartdav2@msu.edu Session 14: Proposing as a social act; PIP, or proposal microstructure

2. 10/25/01 – 10/26/01 P f2f Template for target document f2f E E E E E E P E E E E E E E E First draft of target document 11/07/01 – 11/08/01 f2f 12/20/01 – 1/29/02 P Final draft sent 2/01/02 f2f P 2/20/02 Communication Event Models Proposing activity can be seen as transactional, intersubjective exchange of information, thoughts, and speech among participants. Chains of communicative events. One approach: Visualize the chains

3. How & Why do we build them? How: Units used to construct visualizations are communication events, taken from diaries Why: Distributed processes of work can be presented in intelligible ways to foster both formal inquiry (e.g. research) and informal reasoning about practice …for example…

4. CEMs for Two Student Teams These teams were writing a proposal for a new technical product. Their task was to show that their design was state-of-the-art.

5. ph f2f f2f f2f f2f f2f f2f ph ph f2f f2f f2f ph New horizontal line for each event that did not include all team members Sort = Coordination The distance team was working with people out of the loop early on…what if they had known here?

6. E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E E Paradigmatic Dimension P f2f f2f P Paradigmatic How do proposals get started at SpaceCo? f2f f2f f2f Syntagmatic Dimension f2f P CAUTION The diagrams here and on the next slide are mocked up, not models of real data Syntagmatic How does a project that begins with a “strategy meeting” proceed?

7. CIWC ‘04 report ICTC ‘05 report E-mail WC request CIWC Fall report LCT Spreadsheet E E E E E E E E E E E E E E f2f Going deeper… Each is a site of mediated activity too P f2f f2f P P f2f P

8. Studying Proposing Activity, sources Prior, P., & Shipka,J. (2002).“Chronotopic laminations: Tracing the contours of literate activity.” In Bazerman, C. & Russel, D. Writing selves/writing societies: Research from activity perspectives. http://wac.colostate.edu/books/selves_societies/index.cfm Faigley, L. (1986). “Nonacademic writing: The social perspective.” In L. Odell & D. Goswami (Eds.) Writing in nonacademic settings. Gunnarson, B.L. (1997) “The Writing process from a sociolinguistic viewpoint.” Written Communication 14.2. Dourish, P. (2001). “Process descriptions as organizational accounting devices: The dual-use of workflow technologies.” SIGGROUP ’01. ACM. Suchman, Lucy. (1984). Plans & situated actions: The problem of human-machine communication. Cambridge UP.

9. PIP : A fractal organization scheme for proposing Persuade Inform Persuade

10. Try it: proposing an activity To ensure that our visualizations are usable, we will invite two expert reviewers from the field of information visualization to comment and give feedback on the design. Paul Dourish & Barbara Mirel are two leading researchers in the areas of information visualizationa and computer-supported cooperative work. Both have agreed to support this project by serving as reviewers. We believe that with the help of Mirel & Dourish, our visualization tool can be integrated into the work practice of proposal writers who have not previously used self-analytic tools to improve their performance. Persuade Inform Persuade

11. Scaled up: PIP for methods slot Line of Argument: Here is a methodological approach that has been shown to be sound in these previous studies/projects. Line of Argument: We are using the methodological approach, adapting for our specific project in these ways. Line of Argument: Based on our pilot study and previous published work, here are the positive outcomes we expect that match with the goals stated in the RFP. (e.g. replicability, validity, etc.) Persuade Inform Persuade

12. Scaled down: PIP elevator speech Some colleagues of mine and I are working on a way to improve proposal writing success by visualizing the proposing process. We depict proposing process as chains of communication events rather than tasks. Task-based visualizations are not detailed enough, we find, because knowledge work tasks are themselves made up of communication events - sometimes many of them! Persuade Inform Persuade

13. Your PIP practice Using the PIP structure can be a helpful, ready-to-hand strategy for all parts of the proposing process. Try it for yourself! Persuade Inform Persuade Draft an elevator speech for your P2 project using the PIP structure. Post it to your project page Not only will this earn you credit for an in class exercise when you post it to your project page, you might also find yourself using it for real when talking to someone about project 2!

14. Martine Rife, RA for the WIDE research center, will discuss her recent proposing work. Her presentation will serve as an excellent example of the reflective approach I am encouraging you to take with Project 2. Next Time: Guest Speaker!