One of the first assignments for the composition digital garden curriculum I am developing is a proposal project in which students present and “defend” their design choices. As an English 101 Composition teacher I do not necessarily require a defense of design choices. But this is a course to prepare students for real-world scenarios academically and professionally. (I trust that you know what you ae doing! I think you have a design and plan and that it is all going to work out and make sense. This is not the way people approach judging projects in the world. So we are creating proposals and explaining our designs to be prepared to defend our ideas in the future when necessary.)

Particularly since I have chosen an artistic design and eclectic theories to help inform the themes of the project it is easy to discern why I may need to defend those aesthetic choices and design ideas. (For example “The Perfected Mess” is one of the themes/theories I have chosen as I created the visuals.) Students are really just creating a journal in composition class and learning the process of making a digital garden. There isn’t a way to fail the proposal in my class.

The assignment will help ground and organize student ideas for design and themes which they may not have included from the beginning without prompting and wished they had later on. The proposal is therefore an organizational tool for cohesion.