Adam Youngs

Professor Panthee
WRT 205
02 February 2024
Collaborative Writing
My group and I decided that the best argument to have in terms of technology, was to

speak about the harmful nature of misinformation. We bounced around a couple of ideas to make

our argument on, AI, plagiarism, and digital literacy, but eventually landed on the topic of

misinformation. The article that solidified our decision to write about misinformation was the

piece by Tawna Azar, speaking about Wikipedia. All of us were so invested in the topic and

realized how much misinformation we had given to us in modern media. As spoken in our

presentation, misinformation is the crux of modern writing. Whenever a student is writing a

paper, a professional is writing a report, or a professor is trying to foster an environment of

accurate and critical research, there is the possibility for misinformation the undermine what they

have done. We chose to direct it at both students and professors as these two are the ones who

encounter misinformation the most. The more in-depth reason for why we chose the professor

and students is because they are supposed to be the liaisons between knowledge and the written

report. The part that I enjoyed the most to teach those in the class was the fact that some of the

sources that we all use for writings, can be full of misinformation and lacking the truth. The

importance in revealing this for all my classmates is that for some research/argumentative

reports, it can be so easy to use misinformation in an official report causing the reputation of

both the student and paper will be tainted.

The genre that we decided to use was a simple PowerPoint presentation. The reason we

decided to use this very basic and well-known genre, is because with a topic so complicated that

is misinformation, we want there to be a very simple way to look at it. In addition to the

simplicity that PowerPoint offers, the ability for us to mix in both design and words into the
same project, really brings forward the point in which we were trying to make. Some research

can easily be manipulated for one to pay attention more. We used a quote from myself on our

presentation to show that anyone can say anything. The way we demonstrated this was the quote

that we used, had little relevance of the actual topic of misinformation, but we worded and cut

out part of it in such a way, that it was able to sneak by everyone without a single question being

asked about its legitimacy, proving the foundation on what misinformation sits on. The group

project was different than the individual reports, as this was a compilation of all of our ideas,

rather than a singular thought. When we were doing the journal entries, we would all have a

separate opinion for each matter, but for the group segment, we all came to a consensus on what

we wanted to argue and agreed, for the most part, on what we wanted to bring forward. The skills

and knowledge that I learned from this group project differed from what I usually get out of a

group project. Rather than the normal, informational knowledge, and group learning, I learned

how to communicate effectively through email with my group members. Sometimes in a group

project, it is difficult to communicate if there is no exchange of information, and yet this time, I

was able to find their information and speak to them easily. It also showed me the importance of

a rough draft and how from the beginning, planning is the most useful tool for any presentation.

The actual information that I learned from the readings and journals was extremely interesting. I

never knew how much misinformation was present in media, and how reported and known it was

that it was there. The research process that I tried was new as well, as I used a more “flash

reading” style, where I skimmed the pages and only picked up on the vocabulary words. I was

able to read through much more content, and in turn, grasp a deeper understanding of what I was

reading, I believe this information and these skills will translate into my next assignment(s) and

especially in the composing assignments that will be coming up.