Meeting Minutes Assignment - Writing for the Workplace

Length: two to three pages, single-spaced, use headings for sections

Connecting Objectives: Writing for Audience

and Document Design

Minute-Taking in the Workplace

Once you begin your career in the workplace, you will, more than likely, attend meetings. In
those meetings, minutes are kept as a record of the meeting agenda and its discussions, as well
as any actions and/or decisions made. Your workplace may have someone who regularly takes
minutes, such as an administrative assistant or other designated person, or, minute-taking may
be a shared responsibility, in which case you need to know how to take minutes and share them
with colleagues. That said, at some point during the semester, each person in class will take
minutes for one of our face-to-face meetings, not only to give you the opportunity to build this
skill, but to also apply some of the early concepts we cover in class (i.e. document design).

Instructions
Instructions on how to take minutes are included in our course syllabus and there are quality
examples of past minutes, and a minutes document template, within our Sakai course area
under RESOURCES > EXAMPLE MINUTES.

The Four Step Process

1. Communicating the Agenda: W

hen we get close to the class session where you will
take minutes, I will send you an email to your Ithaca College email account with the
agenda for the session. I will then post the same agenda as an announcement in our
Sakai area. I also will remind you about taking minutes the class session before your
session.
2. Preparing the Minutes GDoc: U
se the agenda that I send you as a starting outline for
your minutes document. You must create a Google Document (GDoc) that is viewable
and comment-able by anyone with the link. I have created an overview video on how to
create such a GDoc since you will create other such documents for the course. N
ote: I
use GDocs for our class minutes assignment so that comments, questions and further
content can be added to the minutes for future class work.
3. Taking Minutes: Bring a laptop (or be prepared to login to a classroom computer) to
class and arrive a little earlier to get setup. During class, do not record everything that is
said, verbatim. Instead, follow the agenda outline and make note of the big take-away
ideas/concepts and activities that we went through in class, as well as any
announcements, reminders of assignments, or changes in due dates, etc..
4. Submitting the Completed Minutes: O
nce you have completed the minutes, submit
your GDoc file to this Sakai assignment. Remember: always make sure that you have
set the
Share Permissions in the GDoc so that anyone with the link can view the file and
comment upon it. I will then copy the link to the Sakai Announcement that contains the
agenda for the class session for everyone.