How to Write Proposals for Creative Assignments

Proposals for Creative Assignments can be helpfully constructed as failure standards. Failure standards are a real-world use of the falsification concept from experimental science, where a theory becomes ranked as scientific only when it is capable of being falsified in a replicable experiment.

So, for your assignment proposals, if you chose to adopt this valuable format, you would list (in either essay or point form) the full set of criteria by which your project can be gauged to have failed. for example "Our project will have failed if:"

• the project does not advance an academic thesis.
• the project does not have [some measurable degree of] quality
• the project does not identifiably incorporate material from relevent scholarship
• the project fails to relate directly to some number of the primary course texts
• the project fails to represent and demonstrate advanced understanding of the central ideas of the course
• &c, &c.

This effectively prevents creativity from being substituted by open license.

Additionally, proposals are accompanied by a concise justification of the academic validity of the project being proposed.

An effective proposal describes (nb. look up the etymology of this word in the OED) three components of a project:

1. Area
2. Range
3. Structure

The Area is the specific subject of your project: e-mail writing, for instance. Range delimits the specific aspect of your subject: courtesy and professional manner in e-mail, say. And Structure outlines the manner in which the project will formed.

Two pages is a reasonable length for a proposal of this type, four pages at most.