INFORMATION & OVERVIEW Short Professional Report Project (PRP)
Notes (from the Professor)
This isn’t a project where I assign you to do a couple of stale old exercises from the back of an overpriced textbook.
This is a project that requires you to understand what’s being asked of you. It requires you to do some reading, thinking, and engage in purposeful decision-making about your content. After you engage in some of that pre-writing, you can focus on professional writing style (especially clarity, conciseness, and consistency/parallelism) and document design (for readability, usability, and professionalism).
My advice—or perhaps my warning—is to start early. Wrap your brain around the project now (and ask questions now). Start reading (for potential sources), and start making some notes about your content.
While the length requirement is “short” (1 or 2 pages), don’t let the size of the thing fool you. Preparing and planning for a short text takes more work than it does for a long text because you have to be purposeful about what to include (i.e., you can’t just BS for a bunch of pages). And, as you already learned in the BCP, writing clearly and concisely takes a lot of time (you can’t just BS a bunch of big words and long sentences).
Advice . . . and expectations . . . and warnings?
- as you begin, think about the report as a whole (not as a collection of parts)
- consider what the audience already knows, needs to know, wants to know
- be flexible enough to expand or contract your scope in whatever way enables you to create an informative, interesting, readable document
- scope = the breadth and depth of your topical (or content) coverage
- you may write a report that’s 30% pandemic-related and 70% general; or 50% pandemic related and 50% general; etc.
- you may write a report that’s 30% on your (broad) career field and 70% on a specific set of job titles or functions; or 0% on your (broad) career field and 100% on your specific job title or function; etc.
- you may be able to make those decisions totally on your own; or you may be pushed and/or limited by what’s available/credible/interesting/audience appropriate; etc.
- scope = the breadth and depth of your topical (or content) coverage
The Right Approach
You should approach this project as a member of your discipline and future member of your profession. You should already know much of what the report asks for from your experiences as a student in your field. I recommend first using the outline of required content to make some notes about what you already know about your field. Then, do some additional reading and research, filling in gaps in your knowledge with information from outside sources.
After you’ve taken notes, see what sort of information you have and make decisions about how that information is best presented to readers (certain types of information might be better presented in non-narrative form such as lists, tables, or other graphics). After you’ve made those decisions, then sit down to write and design your draft.
The Wrong Approach
Speaking from experience, sometimes there are a few students who take the wrong approach to this project. Those students immediately start Googling—they copy and paste discriptions, job titles, and salary ranges—and piece together parts of sources to make “Frankenstein-style” sentences and paragraphs.
This approach makes for an incoherent, disorganized, rambling document (not written so much as assembled). This approach also often results in plagiarism (sometimes unintentional, but that doesn’t matter). Don’t do it. I’m telling you… it’s a risk with this project. Avoid it at all costs.
Project Objectives & Goals
| identify relevant discussions in your career field |
employ professional research and report writing skills |
employ professional design for readability and usability |
prepare for the job market and your career field |
| learn and communicate market & career knowledge |
demonstrate summary, paraphrase, citation, and documentation proficiency |
gain genre skills to demonstrate abilities |
prepare to write job search documents |
The Context
The Client: FAU Career Center
The FAU Career Center is looking to prepare FAU students (recent graduates and the graduating classes of 2021 and 2022) for success on the job market and their career fields/professions in light of the pandemic.
The pandemic has drastically changed job markets in a number of fields—it has effected employment rates, changed what employers are likely to value in potential employees, and changed the way employers hire.
The pandemic has also changed the way people work in a number of fields and professions—it has effected workplace environments, communication, roles and responsibilities, and skills employees need to perform their jobs effectively (perhaps some unexpected skills that have become valuable in these changing times).
The Career Center has hired you to and write something up that will be useful to recent and future graduates in your major.
The Writer: You
The Career Center has hired you because you’re a member of your discipline—you already know something about your career field, discipline, and future profession. They’ve also hired you because you’re someone likely to go on the job market soon, and so you’re likely to be interested and invested in information that might help you better understand the job market, hiring practices, and the skills, abilities, knowledges, and strengths that will make someone a valuable employee who is well-prepared to do their job well.
The Deliverable: Brief Report
The Career Center wants something brief that includes the most relevant, most useful information for recent and future graduates. They want information on changes to the job market (both changes that have already happened and predictions for the future, if any), changes to hiring practices (or likely practices), and information on what skills, knowledges, and abilities job seekers can work on in order to make them attractive potential employees ready to do their jobs well.
Certainly, whatever you write up should be professional—it should be clear, concise, and easy to read and understand. They’d also like something engaging—students and recent graduates aren’t likely to want to read long, boring, dry writing.
The Career Center wants credible information, so it should reflect some research and reading. In other words, not only should it reflect your understanding of your field, discipline, and future profession (or future career field), but it should also be informed. Because it’s a professional document, it should rely on credible information within the context of the situation, and it should be ethical in how it attributes that research it includes.
It should be 1 or 2 pages (so it can be emailed as an attachment and printed for distribution in the career center).
On “Report” as Genre
Yes, what the Career Center is asking for—and what you’ll produce—is a report.
When you hear “report,” you’re probably thinking of a high school style research report written in MLA format, or maybe a book report.
Sure, those are reports, but they’re academic reports—they’re high school or college academic reports. Academic reports are usually written for the teacher (kinda), and written so that you can demonstrate something—to prove your comprehension of content or ability to:
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But out in the real world, your boss will never ask you to research and write a report on George Washington or a researched argumentative report about U.S. motives for entering WWII.
Out in the real world—in your career—you will never be asked to write a research report that is formatted according to MLA guidelines. Your reports probably won’t be double spaced; they aren’t likely to require proper MLA citation style; they won’t have an academic heading with your name, professor name, course title, and date in the upper left corner of the first page. While your reports may have cover pages, they’re more likely to have a photograph, title, and business logo than your name, date, and title all in capital letters.
In the real world, reports are a broad, diverse genre. While some reports share common features, as a broad genre, reports are incredibly diverse. Reports can be written as any one of a variety of types or subgenres; be written be for a variety of audiences and purposes; and be written and designed in a variety of formats.
There are very few “universal” guidelines. Instead, writers must make a number of decisions about content, scope, detail, research, organization, style, and too many other choices, variables, and approaches to mention here.
Part of your task in writing this report is making those decisions.
I expect that there will be a wide variety of styles and approaches, in part, because you all come from a bunch of different career fields; because you have different interests; you’ll find different resources and different information—there is no one way to do this.
Deliverable Requirements
Successful deliverables (the finished product; the brief report) must meet the following criteria, organized by area:
Content Requirements
- provide relevant information in a coherent narrative; (reports should not simply list information about the subject OR drone on and on in academic college-writing style essay)
- give the reader a clear picture and a solid understanding of the subject of the document
Professional Writing & Style Requirements
- be professionally written—be clear, concise, correct, parallel (where appropriate), and logically organized—and adhere to conventions of effective business communication
- employ appropriate divisions of content, headings, subheadings, and visual elements to aid organization
Research Sources, Citation, & Documentation Requirements
- include ethical in-text citations and documentation for paraphrase and summary (and quotations, but only if they’re absolutely necessary—and, spoiler alert, quotations aren’t necessary… you should summarize or paraphrase instead) for at least 5 sources
- sources should be credible within the context of this professional report project
- sources should be at least 1,000 words (yes, you can use video or multimedia as sources—just email me first!)
Length & Format Requirements
- be 1 or 2 pages in length with the following additional format/design parameters
- body text single (or near single) spaced, with additional space between paragraphs
- body text between 8-12 points
- page margins 1″ or less
- be professionally designed for readability and usability, with headings and subheadings, as needed (more below in “Document Design Expectations”)
Document Design Expectations
You must format and design your report according to the conventions (rules) of professional documents. This means your paper should be single spaced, in block paragraphs (space between paragraphs, no indentation), in readable font, and may use headings, bullets, font sizes, and font styles (bold, etc.), and/or graphics as appropriate. Your document should be professionally designed, readable, and usable; headings and subheadings are encouraged.
You must design and format your own report. You are not permitted to use a template of any kind—you must design it yourself. Please know that you may be asked to provide source files and/or assets if you design/write your project in Publisher, InDesign, or other desktop publishing application (or if you’re suspected of using a template).
Also, please know that excellent professional design doesn’t require desktop publishing applications. I do almost all of my document design in Word. (I’ll may post examples at some point). Good document design in Word may require Googling to figure things out—there’s no trick to it (and that’s how I do it… if I can’t figure out how to do something I want to do in Word, I Google it to find answers, watch tutorials, etc. If you’re not great in Word, know that you may need to spend some extra time figuring out how to do things you want to do. Be prepared to Google, read instructions, watch tutorials, and deal with the sometimes-frustrating process of learning new things).
Plagiarism (Intentional or Unintentional)
If you plagiarize—intentionally or unintentionally—you will get a 0% on the project, an F in the class, and a notation of academic dishonesty on your academic transcript. I will check for plagiarism. If you’re caught, there is no excuse—I don’t accept “I didn’t know,” or “I thought it was okay,” or “I wasn’t sure what to do,” or “I did it accidentally.” If you are caught, there is no discussion, no “another chance,” no “do it over,” no “make up work,” or “extra credit.” With that said, if you are unsure about whether what you are doing is plagiarism, or too close to the line, or not sure how to cite… please ask! I’m happy to let you know how to work with source material, let you know if what you’re doing is okay, etc. But if you turn in something plagiarized for me to grade? There’s no discussion at that point.
(Honestly, I’m sorry to go on so long about plagiarism… but once or twice a year, a student in one of my sections of ENC 3213 plagiarizes something and no matter how much I warn, it seems like one or two students do it anyway. Please don’t. It’s a waste of time—for you and for me.)
Career Research Report Qs & As
Q: For this project, are you wanting us to use any specific reference method such as MLA, APA, or Chicago Style?
A. According to Rules of Thumb for Business Writers,
Ordinarily you won’t need to use the complex system required for documentation in college research papers. However, you will still need to identify the sources of quotations, facts, and someone else’s original ideas.
What’a above applies to this project—you’re not required to use a specific style, but you are required to include citations and documentation. I recommend footnotes for citation. For documentation, you can simply use the standard info (title or article or part of website, title of website, author if available; and URL), as long as you make your documentation entries as parallel as possible.
If you’re more comfortable with a particular style, you can certainly use one—it’s just not required.
Q: I don’t know what I’m supposed to do for this project. What am I supposed to do?
A. Part of what this project is asking you to do is to figure out what you’re supposed to do.
When you’re in your first job in your career field, you’re not going to be given a bunch of guidelines and parameters. You won’t be given templates or examples. You’ll have to figure it out.
That’s kind of what you’re asked to do now. While you have some parameters, guidelines, and a whole lot of resources, it’s your job to figure out the rest.
Figuring it out will require you to think rhetorically, to plan, to read/research, and to write. All of that will require you to examine the range of possible options available to you, and to make conscious choices about what you’ll write and how you’ll write.
Q: Can you give me an example?
A. No. I don’t have an example of this project written by someone in your major/someone with your career goals.
And, I don’t intend to write one.
Whenever I’ve written an example of something that I intend to be an example of one way of doing something, most students just use the example as a template and fill in their own information. I don’t want that.
I want you to figure out what this thing can/should look like, what information to include, how to write and design, etc.
Let me put in a different way.
When you’re in your career, and your boss asks you to write something up to update her on the team’s progress towards meeting mid-year goals, would you ask her for an example? Perhaps something written by a former employee? Would you ask her to write an example for you?
I hope not.
Q: How many sources do I need?
A. You need to provide in-text citations and documentation for 5 or more different sources.
Q: What’s the difference between citation and documentation?
A. Citation is acknowledgment of a source in the body of a text or within a graphic representation of data. Documentation is providing bibliographic information that allows a reader to locate your source and specific text or data used. References are individual entries in bibliography, works cited, or list of references. Please see Research Integration, Citation, & Documentation.
Q: Do I need scholarly sources… like from journals or databases through the FAU online library holdings?
What kind of sources can I use?
A. You don’t need to scholarly/journal/library sources. You can use credible popular (or non-scholarly) sources.
Your sources should be credible—from publications, professional organizations, or similar—and at least 1,000 words. For example, this article, “How Google’s New Career Certificates Could Disrupt the College Degree” would be a good source for me (a professional/technical writer, professor of prof/tech writing).
Q: How many quotes do I need to include?
A. None. Most professional reports don’t use quotations. Please see “do you really need quotation?”.
Q: What do we need to cite?
A. From the notes on “What Needs Citation and Documentation?”:
- quotation; when you reproduce a phrase, sentence, or sentences from a source word for word; you must indicate a direct quotation with quotation marks
- paraphrase; when you put an idea or passage from a source into your own words; paraphrase is usually more concise than in the original
- summary; when you put a source’s main idea(s) into your own words, including only the main point(s)
- facts or statistics; when you include facts or statistics (numerical or otherwise) gathered from a source
Q: For citation, should we use parenthetical citation, natural language citation, or footnotes?
A. To write ethically (and to fulfill minimum requirements for this project), you can use any form of citation, as long as you’re consistent. If you’re using parenthetical citation, then all of your citations should be parenthetical. If you’re using footnotes, then all of your citations should be footnotes.
With that said, professional writing values ethicality, but it also values clarity and conciseness. For that reason, in my own professional writing, I usually use footnote style citation. As Rules of Thumb for Business Writers suggest, “Footnotes are the least intrusive method of referring to sources…”