The Project, In Depth

Individual Posts

• Twice per quarter, students will be responsible for sharing a text, image, image or video related to our course theme, along with an analysis of the object (about 250-300 words). As with the group projects, these should incorporate digital media elements (see below).

• Email a link to your post to the instructor, as well as the rest of the class (classlist is available on Carmen)

Group Assignment

• Once during the quarter, work with a small group of your classmates to locate and post a link to a blog relating to our general course theme.  This featured blog or artifact will be the topic of discussion for one week, and your job will be to help facilitate this discussion.
• NOTE: For this course, we will define a blog as a series of posts on a topic from a single author/website/corporation, NOT a single post on an individual blog. For instance, going to Jezebel.com and looking at all of their commentary on the Old Spice “Man Your Man Could Smell Like” ads could count as a “blog.” However, it would not be adequate to direct the class to a single post on mtv.com on the response to Eminem and Rhianna’s “Love the Way You Lie” and relationship violence.

• Each week, when you are not facilitating the discussion, respond to the featured blog by analyzing it according to a suggested set of prompts (we'll talk about this more in class).

• In facilitating discussion and responding to the featured blog, engage with your classmates about the issues that arise from the discussion, both on the blog and in class. 

• Incorporate digital media elements as part of your research, including hyperlinks to related commentary, images, video, and other multimedia sources-- you could even video blog your comments.

Completing the Assignment:

You will have two roles on our class blog (and you’ll soon find that these roles are not exclusively independent of each other): 

Facilitator:  Once throughout the quarter, you will be assigned to a small group who will be responsible for locating and posting a link to an existing blog that is generally about our course theme.  (Your group should not post a blog that has already been a part of The Blog Project.)

Each post should include:

·       A link to the chosen blog

·       A brief description of why this source was chosen, which may include answers to the following questions:

o   Who authors this blog?

o   How did you find this source? What are others saying about it?

o   How does this source take on the rhetoric of love and romance in pop culture? What is interesting or unique about the source’s point-of-view?

o   What kind of issues would you like class members to keep in mind in their responses to this blog? What specific elements do you find interesting, engaging, offensive, thought-provoking, inspiring, etc?

·       Two original discussion questions to get things started.

·        

Facilitators will also be responsible for a short (about five minute) group presentation on the chosen blog. (Hint: You may incorporate your answers to the questions above.)

This is a group project, meaning that all group members must be involved. I will post a short evaluative survey to Carmen asking for feedback on how the group collaborated to complete the project, which must be completed by all group members the week after they present.

Respondent:  After a featured blog is posted, you (aka, class members who are not facilitators for the week) need to answer a very simple question:  “What’s going on here?”  Using one of the suggested prompts (don't worry, we'll go over these in class) or the facilitating group’s discussion questions, provide an analytical account of how the featured blog works and what it is trying to accomplish.  Then, respond to your classmates about their observations.

The goal is to keep the conversation moving for the week that the featured blog is being discussed. 

Respondents should provide relevant commentary that will give their classmates ideas to think about and respond to (while avoiding short, empty responses like, “I agree with Brandon”).  Also, respondents should gravitate towards those topics and issues they find most compelling; they do not need to respond to every single post by every single classmate every single week.

Facilitators are responsible for keeping the discussion moving throughout the week.  Facilitators should feel free to respond to their classmates and engage in the conversation in the blog comments, but if the conversation slows down or stops, they must find a way to pick it back up again.