Centre For Teaching & Learning Appointment

Today I took my proposal (not a full draft, but just what I had written) into the Centre for Teaching and Learning to get someone to look it over and let me know how I was going/how to improve my writing. This was extremely helpful as we have not had any workshops or lectures informing us how to write a design proposal and have just been left to figure it out for ourselves, so it was great to receive some guidance. I saw Martha, who had no problems with the content or style of what I had written so far, but had lots of advise for how to craft my proposal so that by the time the reader gets to my methodologies they have no questions/can find no holes in my research and believe that the method I have chosen is entirely justified.


Notes From Chat With Martha:

• Talk about the issue in a New Zealand context more often through out the writing - always link/bring it back to NZ
• Make it clear how are you using the research of the incident and case study
• Make it clearer how tourists fit into the target audience right at the start, identify what if any the differences between tourists and other urban-dwelling motorists would be and how you would approach/address this
• Establish in the ERU section what the issue is you are trying to address and what the extent of the problem is in NZ
• Explain how part of the problem is that people don’t realise it’s a problem and it’s not something that is being promoted in any way by the Transport Agency or measured by Statistics NZ
• Position your proposal within the gap in research in NZ - explain the gap and use it to justify why my research is important (talking about how there’s no statistics, no recording of accidents etc). From here maybe talk about my own findings with my survey?
• Establishing in the ERU section that there’s a voice not being heard will make it flow into the social change section better
• Link storytelling back to the issue, sharing stories can expose problems to people that they might not have realised were issues, can foster empathy for a particular scenario etc
• Maybe swap the Influencing Social Change and Empathy Through Storytelling sections
• Make sure the order flows and makes sense - you’re building the case
• Flow: This is the issue (ERU) -- Here’s how attention can be drawn to it (Influencing Change) -- This is one technique to address it (Empathy/Storytelling) -- This is how this can be used in road safety campaigns...
• The lit review is leading a reader on a journey that makes them arrive at your methodology thinking that it is the logical solution
• Think of the flow/reader journey like a funnel, starting off broad and narrowing down until you get to your method
• (In terms of Influencing Social Change and Empathy Through Storytelling section swapping) acknowledging that there are multiple avenues that you could take, but this is the route you are taking/you think is best
• Rephrase the paragraph of my own opinion into third person, for example: “While the research focuses on horse riders, by drawing harness horse drivers and other instances of horse-human teams on the road... an all encompassing term ‘Equine Road Users’ can be applied” 
• In the Road Safety Campaign section, talk about the different types of campaigns that exist and their pros and cons/how they are designed and utilised so that the reader understands why you have decided on a social media campaign (over say; a tv ad)
• "In New Zealand there has been a recent trend shifting towards a humorous approach for safety campaigns."
• Link your design decisions back to the theory - your research justifies your approach