Online Communities and Crowds (Spring 2025)/Community advising report

Community Advising Report

Overview

As a final project for the course, you will be required to complete a Community Advising Report. For this report, the goal is to take what you have learned in the class and apply it to an online community or crowd that you have observed or participated in. You are invited to serve as an expert adviser to the community or crowd and to provide evidence-based insights into how to better address a specific challenge they face.

Unlike with the Wikipedia Advising Report, you will select your own community/crowd and challenge. You are encouraged 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 or adopted. You are expected to draw on sources and evidence from the course as well as any additional materials you deem relevant/useful. Please note that you are required to submit a proposal explaining the setting and topic of your planned report and to secure written approval of this proposal.

A note of encouragement and caution: Interesting, more complex problems often elicit more interesting, complex advice. While you can choose something kind of straightforward and obvious and say the obvious thing (e.g., "Wikipedia should make it less confusing for newcomers"), this probably won't be very compelling or engaging and will likely result in a less insightful report. Better reports will tackle meaningful problems, marshall interesting insights, and draw on intelligent reflections and analysis to provide more concrete, specific, and sophisticated recommendations that carefully consider potential drawbacks and unintended consequences.

Proposal (Due May 23, 5pm)

Submit proposal as PDF via Canvas

300 words (max)

Due May 23, 5pm

For the proposal, you should identify a community you are interested in and the challenge you hope to address in your advising report. I encourage you to choose a community in which you are a member or 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 or adopted. I expect you to draw on sources and evidence from the course and any additional materials you deem relevant or useful.

Please write 1-2 paragraphs explaining what community you want to study, why you care about it, and the specific challenge you think the community is facing or could be facing. If relevant or possible, it might be useful to provide (a) link(s).

I encourage you to pick a community that you are committed to and invested in through your personal, academic, or professional life. You should also remember that you will be presenting this project to the class. 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, if you identify a challenge that the community is facing, and if you outline why you think the conceptual tools taught in the class will give you an angle on this challenge.

You will receive feedback on the proposal that 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.

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 report 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 and provide a compelling, readable artifact that will persuade your audience to adopt your recommendations.

Your finished report 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-report.pdf").

Assessment rubric for Community Advising Reports

Your report will be assessed 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 report 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?