Tips for assignment #1

Both Kayode and I as lecturers assessed your ideas for Assignment #1 this week. Some pointers for refining your ideas:

1. Analyse your broader topics to see what are the more relevant, immediate and/or interesting issues that arise out of it. Once you hit on one that probably is relevant to your audience, immediate AND interesting, you've probably got a good story idea.
2. Use the mapping technique (see graphic) to help you think through a broader topic. You'll think of sources to speak to, who may give you insights into the real story on the event/in the industry. You may also hit upon an unexplored side issue you can focus on.
   
3. Summary sentences need to make sense on their own. You shouldn't have to explain what the summary sentence means.
4. Start getting specific about your sources; you need job titles, names, descriptions of the kind of experiences the source should have.
5. Keep asking yourself questions: it's the only way you will get better at analysing and thinking through an idea.