Airbag Case Assignment

In the Handouts Folder, see the Airbag Case Scenario for your project scenario, and the Customer Complaint Letter and Vanguard Motors' Response Letter for the correspondence that has generated the case. These letters are real, as is the issue to which you are responding, though the names have of course been changed.

Deliverables (Required Products)

The following are the documents required of you by your supervisor:
  • Memo of Understanding.
    Brief memo to your supervisor, Barbara Jones, giving your initial plan of the changes that should be made to the letter.This is just a note letting the boss know what you plan to do. A routine, informal, message that is nonetheless very important. Take some time to demonstrate that you have carefully read and analyzed the documents and the task given to you.

  • Revised Customer Response Letter.
    This is the form letter sent out by your company in response to airbag questions and it represents you, your immediate supervisor, and the company. The letter should be revised according to the goals listed in the Airbag Case document (roughly, instructions, regulations, company representation), exemplified or specified according to your own rationale, which will be explained in:

  • Memo Explaining/Justifying Changes to your supervisor
    This is your chance to fully explain the development of your rationale. As you might imagine, the why in this case is as important as the what. Furthermore, good intentions are not always obvious in the final versions of documents. Therefore, a memo explaining what the goals/ideas are behind the final version serve a valuable purpose in documenting purposes and strategies. In some workplaces/jobs this kind of documentation will be commonplace, while others won't have you do it at all, but of course expect that you have/know it all on demand.

In addition to the above required documents, you may include in your portfolio of documents whatever you think helps me to fully see the understanding you have brought to the case. For instance, you might want to include your notes on the original documents, etc.

How Should You Format Your Documents?

Both documents are company correspondence; therefore you should use the current company standards regarding formatting. Your letter should be one page -- while the case mentions figures, our goal is to handle the rhetorical problems textually in one page. Your initial memo should be one page, the final memo no more than three, and should follow the format exemplified in this document (memo heading, single spacing within paragraphs, double spacing between paragraphs, bolded headings within the memo, etc.).

Project Schedule

Following our discussion of rhetorical problem analysis, instructions and chunking, you will have time to work on your first draft. E-mail it to me and bring a draft to class for peer review on Thursday.

 

Some Relevant Links: