Image: T. Smith, 2009. With consent.
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Assignment purposes
- Develop a professional website with content that fills the Project goals
- Learn more about the capacities and limitations of technology by contrasting WordPress Blogs with Google Sites
- Continue to learn how to structure online information
- Professional research skills: recruitment and interviewing
- Journalistic writing techniques
Length & Content Requirements
- Total of 2000 words minimum, plus submitted ethics paperwork
- Write at least 2 separate journalistic articles, 500-1500 words long each.
- Option 1: 1 interviewee featured per article
- Option 2: 2 thematically focused articles, one or both including material from both interviewees
- Include approx. 150-300 words of direct quotation for every 750 words
COMS 463 Ethical Research Every student is responsible for conducting interviews according to the course's approved ethics guidelines posted on this site.
Grade penalties will be applied for not following ethics guidelines or submitting insufficient paperwork.
- Recruit early, widely, and strategically. If replies do not come in in the first 4 business days, send a reminder, and/or use another form of media or face to face for recruitment. If your interviews have not been arranged by March 5th, contact your EC and Carmen for assistance and prepare to substitute the interview with another appropriate research method/source approved by Dr. Smith
- Cite at least 2 supporting textual sources (or websites) that are relevant;
- Include at least 1 appropriate, ethically obtained and properly cited image on a page.
This just covers the content. See the quality criteria below.
Editorial Coordinators
Total of 2000 words minimum, just like regular team members. However, ECs do not conduct interviews and write journalistic articles for this assignment.
Instead, the EC creates and manages a Google Site for Project Management (in
some ways similar to the Course Management area of this website) that
functions as a project
management intranet among his/her group members and the instructional
team.
Project tracking communication
- 200 w
minimum progress reports between March 5 and end of term,
to be posted before Friday midnight of each week when posted on the course calendar. Make them comprehensible to the instructional
team by writing most of the explanatory content in complete sentences. Use bullets, charts
and visuals where it is helpful.
- Check and update your team's to-do lists or GANTT/ Time trackers (whatever your team uses) on a weekly basis to keep tabs on the project's progress.
NOTE: The interview research progress tracking role has been removed from EC responsibilities as of Jan. 28. Carmen will perform this function in order to focus ECs' time on other matters.
Editorial guidance for the final public Team Website
This planning will ideally enable the process to flow more smoothly. The following should be ready for the flurry of team website editing and content management after the Individual Website deadline.
- Guidelines and processes for the team's final website design phase. Include coordination for internal selection of the best content, proofreading and reviewing of each other's pages, colors and bolding, any standards for image placement and size, etc.
- Website style guide -- supplement the U of C and 463 style guides with whatever team-specific guidelines you think are necessary for your team to create a final site with a consistent, high quality style (look ahead to the end of Redish's textbook).
ECs have a different deadline
The EC's individual website (their team management website) is not considered complete / submitted until the Friday following the public presentation because it will be in use until then.
Resources & Special grading criteria
- Lectures
and instructional team members. Blackboard Discussion may have a Q&A thread
for this assignment.
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Consider with a critical and appreciative eye some samples of U of C interview-based journalism on service learning such as Enriched Volunteering by Jen Myers, 2008; Learning Curves by Jen Myers, 2007 -- how would an article be similar or different if authored for a student site on community service-learning?
- Rhetoric should be appropriate to our project's specific partners and public audiences
- Redish textbook -- quality of design, layout, organization, etc.
- Format, length, appendices, etc. -- please refer to the Style Guide page
- See the Grading Rubric for general grade level requirements.
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Although it might seem simpler for you to post journalistic interview articles directly to your Team's Final Website (where most of your work may eventually end up), this individual assignment enables every student to learn Google Sites features and constraints as site owners/administrators. After "handing in" your blog work, applying principles from Redish & Surma to your own Google Sites builds your expertise and gives you the creative freedom to have intelligent input into the design of your team's final website. You also have to stop editing your individual google site after the individual website deadline so that it can be submitted & graded as individual work. A degree of accountability for your individual communication would not be possible if your journalistic work were posted only on the team's website where it may be further edited by team members by the end of term.
ECs, today I simplified your area of the assignment description. It had a few distracting elements and redundancies. Hopefully it is clearer now.