You must complete all major assignments to pass this course. Regardless of other graded work, failure to turn in all assignments on time will result in a failing grade. If you do not submit all materials for each project, you will not pass the class. I am particularly twitchy about work you do that involves your fellow students.

All late work will receive 60% unless arrangements are made well (a week or more) in advance and will not receive instructor feedback.

Late “Feedback” assignments will not be accepted. Our class will be run on an intensive write, review, revision, resubmit cycle. Drafts you submit are just as important to your reviewers learning as they are to you. As such, it really is quite impossible to submit a late “review” assignment because it disrupts your peer reviewers workflows. As such, I can not accept “submission” or “review” assignments submitted late.

Please make sure to post links well in advance of due date time due to technical issues. Double check by refreshing pages to make sure work has been submitted. Learning management systems are very bad at stopping an upload half way through so checking is a must. If you do not know how to, please familiarize yourself with how to share documents in Google Docs.

GPA Percentage

Assignments

Note that these are just brief overviews—full‐length assignments and examples will be provided in class. All written assignments, with the exception of peer feedback, can be revised and resubmitted with revision cover letter that clearly outlines changes between drafts as well as strategic choices in drafting process within two weeks for a new grade.

Assignment 1 | Landscape and Discourse Community Analysis Report | 100 points

Landscape analysis, or competitive analysis, is a type of informational analysis of potential competitors in order to see how to create the space for your solution or improve your product. The concept focused on finding a cohesive and consistent view of the main organizations and initiatives in user generated area of operations and analyzing chosen key aspects of them. Make the case for an online community to be understood as a discourse community and then analyize what online spaces and solutions already exist to support that community’s work.

Assignment 2 | Visualize an Online Knowledge Network | 100 points

Examine the rhetorical strategies, operations, and dynamics through which knowledge is co-constructed in an online networked community. Discuss what you learned about the opportunities and challenges of mass collaboration from your analysis and support your claims with readings from class. Sketch a site map of a particular collaborative discourse community as well as a wireframe for the site.

Assignment 3 | Propose an Information Architecture for a Knowledge Network | 100 points

Propose an information architecture for a a discourse community knowledge network that has the potential of facilitating and leveraging user-generated content. Build from the situated conversations of a discourse community knowledge network to create documentation that assembles these contributions into a more durable and emergent “view from above” that helps facilitate further user action. Scaffolding user engagement and use skills as information designers to capture and (re)present user exchanges. Articulate that design for multiple audiences, you’ll need to articulate your design for one of three distinct audiences: 1) an academic IA audience 2) an audience of IA professionals 3) an audience of interest to that group/users. These articulations should come from building the situated conversations of a knowledge network you have already analyzed that helps facilitate further user knowledge construction.

Assignment 4 | Participation | 100 points

The online nature of this course means that it will requires active participation, including in-class discussions and assignments that involve intensive use of reading and group work. Discussion questions and informal pass/fail assignments will appear in Moodle. Percentage of completed work will appear as percentage points for participation e.g if 14 of 20 participation activities are submitted you will receive 70 points.

Assignment 5 | Provide Helpful Feedback | 300 points

As part of your class participation, you will share your writing and offer feedback to others that helps them improve their own thinking and their drafts. We’ll spend a good deal of time talking about how to improve in this area, as it is a key leadership skill needed to advance in any knowledge worker career paths.