For your final project, as we discussed in class, my hope is that you will be able to apply the lessons learned in class to your own professional lives and careers. You will prepare a project plan to incorporate social media/Web 2.0 techniques into your current workplace or towards a cause on which you work or care about. This must include no fewer than five different “Web 2.0″ platforms, including but not limited to social networking, blogging, gaming, Google campaigns, podcasts, vlogs, online viral videos, Wikipedia, and anything else you’ve stumbled across that interests you.
The ideas need not be budget-constrained (i.e. even though games or Facebook widgets can be incredibly expensive to build, you may include them). For each idea, you must outline and include the following characteristics: (1) the tool’s purpose; (2) the intended audience; (3) the social component; and (4) how it fits into your larger strategy. For instance, if you’re building a game, who would you want to play the game, what would the game play be like, and what’s the game’s intended message? If you’re building a Facebook widget, what would it do, what’s the social component that would make people put it onto their Facebook pages, and how does it advance the your workplace or cause, and/or educate people as to your position? If you’re building a Google Adwords campaign, who would you hope to draw into your website, what search terms would the campaign be built around, and what’s the hook/language you’d use to get people to click on your ad?
You must also include a survey of the existing Web 2.0 landscape for your project: Who are your online competitors? Your online friends/allies/potential partners? What are the leading authorities on your topic online? If you choose a cause, what are opponents doing? What’s going on around the world on your topic/cause? What lessons can you draw into your own projects from the successes or failures of allies/competitors?
Your plan should be written in the form of a memo to your boss (in this case, me), outlining each tool and its potential applications. While there is no set page length, I would be very surprised if you could accomplish all of the above in fewer than five pages with normal spacing and font sizes.
Your final project plan must be ready for class on Week 13 (November 28th). That week, you’ll exchange your plan with another student in the class and for the last week in class you’ll prepare a critique of that person’s project plan, including any additional suggestions, challenges, and overlooked potential partners/allies/opponents. Again, there’s no set page length for this, except that I’d again be surprised if you could accomplish this in under a page and a half. On the final class, Week 14 (December 5th), you’ll turn in both your own project paper and your critique of a classmate’s plan.
As the syllabus says, your final project is worth twenty points, i.e. twenty percent of your final grade. The grading will be divided into the following: Fifteen points will be based on your own project and five points will be based on your critique of your classmate’s project. You will be graded on how realistically your plan is outlined, how fully you demonstrate comprehension of the Web 2.0 landscape and its various tools, and how clearly you establish your goals and objectives. Any project plans not turned in on November 28th will be docked three points. Full plans and critiques not turned in on December 5th will also be docked three points, meaning that if you turn in both halves of the project late, you will lose six points off the top. I will deal on a case-by-case basis with those assigned to critique another’s late project.
Please email me if you have questions. We will also discuss this more in class next week. Make sure to put some good thought into how you approach this. Especially for those of you who have been delinquent in blogging and del.icio.us-ing, doing well on the final project will be the difference between an B+ and an A-.