Week 8: AP Solutions and Taking Stock of the Class

I. Solutions for the Advocacy Project

Global Solutions and Grassroots Solutions

Certain laws and regulations have already been implemented throughout the world to help alleviate pigs' suffering in factory farms and the usage of factory farms. The banning of gestation crates in farms has been enforced in several states in the United States, including California, Arizona, Ohio, Maine, Michigan, Oregon, and Rhode Island. Some states are currently in the transition of phase of completely eliminating the crates from the state, something that Florida has already accomplished.

Farm Sanctuary has implemented a federal petition to improve the state of factory farming and for now have advocated the stopping of slaughtering sick pigs. Though stopping factory farming altogether is quite impossible, grassroots or local solutions can be done. The demand for meat will continue to drive the slaughtering of pigs for consumption. However, by using social media in this time period, it is possible to significantly reduce the demand for pork by utilizing platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Posts, images, and videos displaying the horrors that pigs have to face in their time at factory farmings or seeing proof that pigs are not just products for human consumption, but beings with actual feelings and moods. The every day person can easily retweet or share a post about pigs because social media is so prevalent and readily available. Using social media will not only be a communication platform, but as Clay Shirkey states "increasingly more [of] a site of coordination." By gathering a group of like minded individuals from all over the world, it is very possible to initiate a movement that can grow into something very large. In my personal experience, I found that Instagram and following others of the same mindset really helped our own organization. Although our main method of appeal was pathos, it significantly improved our message and reaching out to people from different places in the world.

II. Taking Stock of the Class Thus Far

Habits of Mind

Throughout this quarter, I have significantly improved my own methods of communicating and engaging in the academic world. One habit of min that I have developed was creativity. Using the social media platforms to initiate a new movement was very difficult. I had never used such tools before and I had to utilize my experiences from other methods of communication and apply it to this part of the course. For instance, using hashtags were a key part of Instagram and Twitter. I did not know what the typical hashtag was supposed to focus on or even look like. In order to create effective hashtags, I used my skills in coming up with key search words for research projects and came up with catchy phrases in order to help create an effective hashtag for our campaign. I also had to become more original in my Instagram posts so that it would attract more followers. This entailed finding suitable pictures for posting on this website; I discovered the trends in this website and applied it to my own posts.

Another habit of mind that I developed was metacognition. In the social media campaign, we had to post three things but also write about the posts separately on another assignment and review each member in our groups' assignments. I had to stop and think about whether my posts were actually worth posting by analyzing the rhetorical appeals that I used and platform for that particular post. Reviewing the other members' posts helped me to better my own posting.

Primary Learning Objectives for writing, reading, and critical analysis:

Rhetorical Knowledge

From writing scholarly historical literature reviews from posting on Twitter, I have developed a better sense of what is more appropriate tone for certain audiences. The HCP forced me to think in a more critical manner by researching the academic backgrounds of professors and important researchers in the scientific field. I realized that their level of understanding and communication were very advanced. Thus, I learned to develop a more complex thesis and controlling idea and learned how to navigate through difficult pieces of texts, such as long and tedious lab write ups while extracting useful bits of information and summarizing these ideas in a formal tone to help prove my own argument.

Abilities to Compose in Multiple Environments

This course required literally no handwritten material throughout the course. Although I am already use to electronically writing essays and such, utilizing more modern platforms to communicate a message was certainly a novelty to me. For instance, Twitter was a website that allowed one to post words, pictures, and links to other information in a very limited and concise manner. This conciseness helped me reach the objective of composing in different environments as I had to be very succinct and direct in all forms of communcation. I had to realize what was the most important information at hand and utilize the social media sites to create an effective message. Using a website to compose an idea was a novel experience as well. Multiple tabs under a website organized certain thoughts and desires in one area, which allowed for a neat flow of ideas and eventually helped our audience to do what our ultimate goal was. In our campaign, we created a site that had tabs defining a problem, showing the effects of that problem, and finally convincing the audience to take action on the problem by signing a petition.