For this topic, I am using a community service based pedagogy which has elicited a spirited response to the project. My class is working collaboratively; it is important for each student to keep a detailed task list of her/his individual contributions to the project. Be sure to encourage students to tell you if any member of their group is not pulling her/his weight.

We have split into groups of four (for the most part) and are tackling issues including: parking at USF, hiring discrimination, domestic violence, health insurance, and the electoral college. The project consists of four steps: identifying the social injustice, educating themselves then their audiences about the injustice, persuading their target audience to agree that the injustice is indeed just that, and motivating their audience to act. Their final goal is to motivate a specific audience to act on a specific social injustice.

Essays are written in a variety of formats depending on their audience. For example, one of my hiring discrimination groups is going to present their findings as a formal program propsal to Fox 13 News; They want the station to run an investigative report on the issue. The parking at USF group's essay a letter to the student government president; they want garages built on top of lots to create many more spaces. Each group's target audience determines their format. These projects will be distributed to their audiences in hopes of affecting change.--VivianTaylor

For the project on social injustice I had my students free write on a topic that made them angry for ten minutes or to make a list of several topics. They then exchanged papers and then read each others. They then proceeded to free write for another ten minutes on the topic they found interesting in their partner’s paper.--MarieHendry