Sean McNicholl: Oral Presentation Reflection

Response:
The aim of this assignment was to develop my ability in multimodality through the creation
of an oral presentation. I believe that in this regard I grew the most and rather enjoyed
creating a podcast for the assignment. I started off by listening to three different podcasts of
varying genre type and noting down what was similar about them, what was different as well
as their strength’s and weaknesses. I then proceeded to adapt these conventions into my own
project. I selected an intro/outro track that the listener could identify, I brought on a guest
speaker who participated in the discussion equally as well as having a general relaxed tone
throughout the podcast. Instead of adhering purely to the draft script, I opted instead to use
prompts myself in order to have a more genuine response to the required analysis. Overall, I
believe that I have found a genre that I would be interested in revisiting in the future.
Reflection Questions:

1. What were the main intellectual goals of the assignment? Please situate these
goals in terms of the course theme and in terms of the communication strategies
you were to learn or practice:

The main goals of this assignment were to: develop my ability to produce an oral
presentation which utilizes rhetorical analysis on a chosen meme that is related to
my research paper, improve my scientific knowledge on climate change and to
also improve my multimodal abilities.

2. What is your argument or purpose? How did you make the argument or purpose
visible and persuasive in your artifact?

My purpose was to argue how effective of a job the meme did in convincing the
audience to change/act in regard to climate change. I did this through analysing
the purpose of the author as well as if the meme was humourful, convincing and
represented the science well. Although, I could have made these questions more
explicit to my audience by alternating questions with my guest.

3. Who is the intended audience for your artifact; why is this an appropriate
audience? How is your choice of audience reflected in your artifact?

The intended audience for my artifact was specifically my English 1101 Professor
as well as my classmates, as well as potentially other GT staff. This audience was
appropriate due to the calm and relaxed nature of the podcast. The goal of the
assignment was to create more a ‘discussion’ on the meme rather than produce a
strict academic artifact. Therefore, I try not to use to much jargon in regard to the
content of cloud seeding while having enough idea development suitable for a
college student.

4. What are the defining features of the genre or media that you are using in this
project? How do you make use of these features?
 One of the defining features of the genre is the use of a guest speaker. I decided
early on to have one of my roommates who had taken an environmental science
lab previously at tech to come on and join me. The benefit of this feature is a new
voice allows for the listener to stay engaged as a new fresh voice alternate. In
addition, an introductory theme song was used at the start and end of the podcast
to signal such events.

5. If you had more time for revision, what would you change and why?

I would like to have outlined a structure to the audience for the podcast, so they
were able to understand where we were going with the analysis. I also would have
incorporated a section on explaining the science behind the meme as I assumed
the audience would have also read my research paper which may not have been
the case. Finally, I would have liked to have used a microphone rather than my
phone to record the audio as it picked up my attempts to move it closer to
whomever was speaking.