Online Communities and Crowds (Winter 2022)/Community advising assignments

Overview
Undergraduate students in the course will be required to complete two Community Advising assignments (CA1 and CA2, for short). For each assignment, you are invited to serve as an expert advisor to the leaders and members of an online community or crowd and to provide evidence-based insights into how to better address a specific challenge they face.

CA1: 1500-1800 words For CA1, the teaching team will select the community/crowd as well as the challenge. In elaborating your recommendations to address the challenge, we expect you to draw on sources and evidence provided as part of the course (readings, lecture, section materials, etc.). You may, but absolutely do not need to draw on additional sources.

CA2: 2000-2250 words For CA2, you will select your own community/crowd and challenge. We encourage you to choose a community/crowd of which you are a member/leader and where you could, even if only in theory, deliver your recommendations to other members/leaders and have some chance of seeing the recommendations debated/adopted. For CA2 we expect you to draw on sources and evidence provided as part of the course (again) as well as any additional materials you deem relevant/useful. Please note that we require you to meet with a member of the teaching team to discuss your plan and to secure written (email or chat is fine) approval of your chosen community/crowd and challenge at least two weeks before CA2 is due.


 * CA1 announced: February 2
 * CA1 due: February 9
 * CA2 topic proposal: February 9-March 2
 * CA2 due: March 16

CA1: Participation gaps on English Wikipedia
Leaders and community members affiliated with the Wikimedia Foundation, the organization that supports a number of communities and projects, have contacted you seeking recommendations for steps they can take to overcome participation and contribution "gaps" in the English language edition of Wikipedia. They define a "gap" in this context as any aspect of the Wikipedia ecosystem—for example the contributor community—that exhibits stark imbalance or inequities along a salient dimension—for example age, gender, race, socioeconomic status, or digital skills level. Prior research suggests that all of these factors shape who edits Wikipedia. Prior attempts to overcome these gaps have met with limited success...until now.

Your job is to produce a report (1500-1800 words long) drawing on materials from this class advising these leaders about how they ought to understand this challenge (participation gaps) and how they might make progress towards overcoming it.

A warning: if all you say boils down to, "You need to convince more different kinds of people to edit Wikipedia" or "You should make it easier to edit Wikipedia," we won't be very impressed. Better insights will draw on intelligent reflections on the themes and materials of this course to make more concrete, specific, and sophisticated recommendations that carefully consider potential drawbacks and unintended consequences.

Please note: You do not need to draw on resources beyond the course materials (readings, lectures, assignments, sections, etc.) in producing your report. However, you may feel free to do so.

Format, style, and submission
The format of these reports is up to you. If you want to use graphs, illustrations, bullet points, tables, or section headings, do so. But whatever their format, your papers should feature clear, readable, correct, and persuasive prose. Citations should be consistently and properly formatted (Kate Turabian’s "Manual for Writers", available in the library, is a reliable guide as are various online resources for standard style guides such as the 7th edition of American Psychological Association style). Remember, you are trying to look good in front of your clients.

All written assignments should be submitted as a PDF via Canvas.

Please include your name somewhere (prominent!) in the document that you submit as well as your last name at the beginning of the filename (e.g., "Shaw-occ-ca1.pdf").

Assessment rubric for CA1 and CA2
The teaching team will evaluate both CA1 and CA2 along the following dimensions and criteria, which overlap a great deal with Aaron's general assessment rubric for written work. Keep in mind, these dimensions and criteria don't correspond to specific point values or anything like that. They also tend to escalate in terms of difficulty. An exceptional paper does all of these things exceptionally; a very good paper does all of these things well; a good paper does most of these things well; etc.

Clarity & style: Is the paper readable and clear? Is it free of errors? Is the writing logically organized and coherent? Are sources appropriately cited/documented?

Quality of analysis: Does the paper provide clear, original, and well-supported arguments and interpretation? Does it identify and analyze the challenge(s) facing the community/crowd effectively? Where possible/reasonable, does the analysis draw on relevant evidence to support its claims and recommendations?

Scope: Does the argument adapt a suitable scope given the length constraints of the assignment? Does it provide a thorough and focused analysis of the key issues at hand? Is there an appropriate balance between high-level generalities and specific details?

Quality of insight: Does the paper propose a clear strategy, design, and/or actions in response to the challenge? Do the proposed strategy, design, and/or actions seem compelling and worth adopting given the evidence presented? Do the proposed strategies, designs, and/or actions reflect a creative and sophisticated synthesis of available evidence, relevant course materials, and other resources the author has chosen to draw upon?