Editing Building Successful Online Communities (Fall 2016) (section)

=== Project 2: Report on building/improving an online community ===

For the final assignment, I want you to take what you've learned in the class and apply it to a real online community in a consultant/client model. I'm going to ask everybody to work with a real organization in one of the two situations:

# Designing a new online community.
# Improving or expanding an existing community.

My strong preference will be for every student to work on these projects alone. That said, if there's a very compelling reason for 2 or more students to work in a group, I'm willing to discuss it.

==== Community Identification and Signed MOU====
;Maximum Length: 750 words (~3 pages double spaced)
;Deliverables: 
:* Signed copy of MOU (Turn in to me in class)
:* Community identification essay (Turn in to Canvas)
;Due Dates:
:* Monday November 7

In this assignment, you should identify and the community you will be working with for your final project. In the essay part of this assignment, I am asking you to write several paragraphs explaining which community you will be working with and why you think it will be an appropriate site for applying the course material. If relevant or possible, it might be useful to also provide a link to any existing community or to the organization.

I am hoping that each of you will pick a community that you are intellectually interested and invested in. If you want to the community something you are involved in your personal and professional life, that's ideal.  Although I'm encouraging you to connect to your work lives, you should also keep in mind that you will be presenting this publicly to the class. If you don't know of such a community, Molly Schachter should be able to help connect you to businesses that are interested in advice on growing, improving, or starting an online community.

Second, I want to make sure that the organizations you are going to be working with are on board. As a result, I'm asking you all to bring a signed copy of the [[:File:MOU-online communities-2016-fall.pdf|course memorandum of understanding]] in. You should read that document as soon as possible to get a sense of what you'll be asking organizations to agree to.

You will be successful in this assignment if you identify a community and clearly explain why you think it would be a useful community to study using the concepts we have covered in the class. I will give you feedback on these write-ups and will let you each know if I think you have identified a project that might be too ambitious, too trivial, too broad, too narrow, etc.

==== Final Projects: Report and Presentation ====
;Presentation Date: December 12 at 3:30pm
;Paper Due Date: December 17 at 11:59pm
;Maximum paper length: 4500 words (~18 pages)
;Deliverables: Turn in in Canvas

For your final project, I expect students to build on the community identification assignment and to complete a report. I expect every student to produce a written report that will be shared with the client organization. I also expect each student to prepare a formal presentation that they give during the final class session:

* A short presentation to the class (length TBD)
* A final report that is not more than 4,500 words

I will invite representative of client organizations that are interested to visit the final class to hear presentations. If clients cannot attend, I expect that students will give their presentation at another time after the final presentation that is convenient to the client organization.

Each report should include the description of the community you have identified (you are welcome to borrow from your Community Identification assignment), and a description of how you would use the course concepts to change and improve the community.

Once again, your report will be evaluated on the degree to which it provides useful, informed, and actionable advice to the client organization and on the degree to which you engage with the course material. Please make sure you do the following things:

# Provide detailed, concrete, and actionable advice to the client organization. For example, what are they doing right? What should they change?
# Justify your recommendations in terms of the theories and principles we've covered and include references for your readers who won't have your background. Why should your recommendations be taken seriously?
# Remember that you don't have to take everything taught in the course for granted. What is unique or different about the client organization that causes you to have to think and read beyond the course material we've covered? What are the big open questions and risks they will be facing?

You will be evaluated on the degree to which you have demonstrated that you understand and have engaged with the course material and not on specifics of your community or the content of your advice.

A successful project will provide good advice that a client would be happy to have paid 1a consultant for, tell a compelling story, be clearly written, and will engage with, and improve upon, the course material to teach an audience that includes not only the client but me, your classmates, and students taking this class in future years on how to take advantage of online communities more effectively. The very best papers will give us all a new understanding of some aspect of course material and change the way I teach some portion of this course in the future.