Workplan for Advocacy Project:
In the modern college environment aside from some physical textbooks that students need to purchase, most course content is distributed to students via Canvas. These PDF’s can either appear as a nonselectiable picture or as a copyable paragraph of text that can be copied. When writing essays, in general, students would agree that the latter kind of PDF is superior. It allows for easier highlighting of text, an easier insertion of notes, defining of words, and it results in a superior classroom experience for the students.

For my project, I will attempt to get the use of automatic text recognition for PDF’s used/mandated as a classroom teaching aids or supplemental texts.

End of week 1: 4-9-18
Have all basic research done and perhaps call/email a few officials.
End of week 2: 4-16-18
setup/conduct interviews regarding my idea and pitch it to important people.
End of week 3: 4-23-18
Finalize the project, wrapt up any loose ends. Write papers/make a Powerpoint presentation.

Most likely to go wrong:
The worse thing that could go wrong for me would be to fail to get support from the faculty at the College of Liberal Arts. Without support from the faculty, I have no project.

Limit the effectiveness of your project:
This project will at maximum benefit only affect a few hundred students. In each course (at least for RCL) the readings change by about 20% each year. This means without upkeep within a few years the situation will be back where it started.

Contingency Plan:
I will raise awareness for the use of automatic text recognition for PDF’s used as classroom teaching aids or supplemental texts.

End of week 1: 4-9-18
Have all basic research done and perhaps call/email a few officials.
End of week 2: 4-16-18
setup/conduct interviews regarding my idea and pitch it to important people.
End of week 3: 4-23-18
Finalize the project, wrapt up any loose ends

What is the problem or harm you’re addressing?
Online Privacy laws. Basically, how companies get your data, how they can store it, and what they can do with it.
What are the key causes?
A user should have direct access to what companies gather about them, have full discloser regarding what has been gathered, and in general maintain in control of what they have shared online.
What policy are you recommending?
Why should this be done?
More data is shared than ever before online. Without this
Why might someone oppose this policy?
Companies see data mining as a valuable research and marketing tool any company that seeks to benefit from a user’s data may oppose having their access to it restricted.

I went to the deliberation “We Are… Free to Speak or Are We?” in Frasure Street Commons. The event’s attendance was high, but the quality of the discussion was in my opinion lacking.

Troubles:
The troubles began with the group’s discussion guide; It was more of a discussion packet. Altogether, the guide totaled over three double-sided pages. The amount of information was unnecessary, and it bogged down conversation throughout the deliberation because in between approaches the group gave the audience time to read the guide. They halted all conversation three times this way over the course of the night.

A deliberation is supposed to have set topics and approaches, but the discussion needs to have some variety to generate new responses to the issue at hand. The leaders of this group seemed like they had planned out a set track of discussion for the group to follow. For a deliberation about free speech, the conversation was limited in what they wanted us to speak about.

Overall the use of questions and quality of discussion was rather poor. Every time the conversation went the slightest bit off that track, a group member would ask a question that brought it straight back to the set plan of discussion. Throughout the deliberation, conversation didn’t occur between participants. As soon as someone was done speaking one of the leaders would interrupt and ask a pointed question that tried to made one point or another. This back and forth between leaders participants created an unhealthy environment that stifled participation instead of promoting it. It didn’t help that the questions were usually playing “Devil’s Advocate” and attacking the previous response. The leaders would constantly ask “So, where would you draw the line as to what is free speech?” They almost never got a response. The point of the whole deliberation should be a start to a discussion on free speech. Nobody is going to be able to tell the group leaders what Penn State’s policy should be as a single response.

The approaches were as follows: Pros, Cons, Policy at Penn State. None of these topics are approaches. As the whole deliberation was supposed to be about policy at Penn State, no approach seemed different from another. The conversation never changed, it was merely handed off to a different group of people who continued the same discussion from before. Becuase the topic never changed by the end of the conversation people seemed tired of the topic.

Positives:
Even though the discussion guide was far too large to be useful as a handy reference during the deliberation it was well researched and provided a large number of relevant facts. It would be a convenient source to have about free speech even after the deliberation was over. The group also included a works cited page at the end of the packet they handed out.

In defense of the deliberation leaders, freedom of speech is a hard topic to discuss. Nobody in America wants to be seen as “against freedom.” Thus any discussion of what should and shouldn’t be allowed will be hard. I think I have made it clear that there was room for improvement at the deliberation I attended, but it wasn’t objectively bad.