Online Multimedia Capstone Class

Online Multimedia Capstone Class –

Weekly - what to do - by group UPDATED DATE = Winter 2010

Week 1

Whole class:

As a class, you will research, document, acquire and create information on the subject of the term, as described in the ‘’Getting Started’ Documents. You will use the techniques and concepts explored in Gardner’s Changing Minds,to alter the perceptions, actions and behaviors of those using our blog and site.

Your goal is to:

-Increase readership around our topic, site and blog

-Increase understanding among readers of the issues involved.

-Provide the knowledge necessary for the reader/user to initially act in any of the following ways:

• Alter their perception and understanding.
• Increase their desire to act, both individually and through influencing others.
• Increase their ability for individual action to occur (buying decisions, as one example).
• Increase knowledge of individual ways to intervene (contact officials, etc).
• Increase knowledge of participating in group action and politics.
• Provide resources and ideas to help disseminate information to others.

Introductory work - Familiarize with BlackBoard and web tools, Write Bios for yourself in BlackBoard and read what the others write, get to know each other. When writing your bios, follow this guideline – make it positive and professional. Make it the same quality you would when getting to know co-workers at a new job. DO NOT write about personal problems or issues to others in the class. We all have those. Put your best foot forward and practice proactive inquisitive participation! What is the best that you bring to the class environment, that you want others to know about? If you have any external issues of any type which may impact your performance in the class, notify me at so that I can offer suggestions for your success in the class. Begin communicating with each other, Study teams, review prior class projects, and pick which team you want as your primary team and which you want as your secondary team.

REQUIRED:

Read chapter 1, Howard Gardner’s Changing Minds. What does it take to change your own perceptions? What does it take to change someone else’s perceptions?

RECOMMENDED:

Sunstein’s Infotopia Chapter 5, Looking at three ways to use the internet to access many minds.

-Investigate, learn about and begin discussing the terms topic in the discussion area from your own research and knowledge. Get to know your other classmates, however keep the discussions professional and on the topics of the class and your ideas for the class. It can be helpful to share with others professional parts of your background which could be relevant. An example might be “I enjoy photography and own a digital camera; I could take pictures and upload them if needed.” Post this in your biographical area.

-Read about each group and decide which groups are most interesting to you. Choose.

-Read the first chapter of Changing Minds.

-Look at the blog and website references from previous classes. (separate document in getting started files) Think about and discuss amongst yourselves in the discussion area how it could be better. Practice using the threaded conversation portion of the discussion area. Research principles of good blogs online.

-Study the relationships between blogs and sites from previous classes and how they compliment and work with each other.

-During the term, you will act primarily through the lens of your first and second group areas though whole class discussions and decisions still will arise outside of your individual group areas.

-By the end of the week you will be in discussion with those in your group, discussing ideas about what that group can bring to the site, blog, and overall project, and discussing the skills you bring to the class along with the skills you want to develop in the class and use on the project.

WEEK 2

WHOLE CLASS:

REQUIRED:

-Read chapter 2, Howard Gardner’s Changing Minds. How can knowledge of multiple intelligences help you to make a better blog and website?

-Everyone posts at least one paragraph of material on the term's topic, (about it, examples, causes, groups against it, etc. This will be done four times in the term, and each time you will also note what you published on the blog and email a copy for reference to the me at . Publish one entry this week, and plan out when in the term you will post the other three. At the end of the term, everyone will have posted 4 times, for approximately 80 total entries.

-Discuss diversity. What does it mean to you? How can we honor principles of diversity in our work? Where might supporting diversity be problematic in our work? This is for you to discuss and think about in your groups and in the class. Example: How are people excluded from our information on the site and the blog? No web access? Language barriers? Are these real issues? How can these issues be mitigated?

By Team:

Client Liaison/Research (CL/R):

Begin researching and locating information on the term’s topic. Discuss what you find among your group. See if you can find at least one example occurring in real time, in your local community. By the middle of the week begin posting your findings in the class group area. Your main focus will be finding information for the website we will build thought a secondary focus will be using the information for the Blog. Information is secondary for the blog, since everyone will be contributing something to the blog at least 4 times.

Make a MISSION STATEMENT for the class. Inform the instructor and publish in the blog and site. Hold true to that statement all term. The Mission Statement will be about who you want to reach and how you want to alter their thoughts, actions and behaviors. Brainstorm ideas. Begin drawing (on paper and screen) and discussing ideas. Begin experimenting with hardware/software and capture equipment. Begin listing project elements. Attempt to prioritize, count and sequence elements. (Elements are discrete projects with singular intent, like ‘a collection of photos in a slideshow showcasing something’)Continue gathering and begin filtering raw data.

Content Development (CD):

Begin discussing the tone, voice, and style you want to use to communicate on the website. Look at the materials being provided by CL/R. Are they what is needed? Are other topic areas missing? Discuss this among yourselves and others in the class. The final decision will be up to your group for textual content to make points about our topic which are conveyed on the site. What main categories of information do you want to provide? Communicate any needs to CL/R. Coordinate with CR to discuss Layout, and how points will be made or supported with visual imagery, and who will gather or create the visual imagery.

Creative (CR):

Each of you pick two or three websites you admire in terms of layout, navigation and ease of rapid cognitive recognition of content and navigational schema. Pay attention to differences between global navigational structure and localized navigational structure on sub-pages and sections. Share these with each other. Google pages, which we use, require simple design strategy. Look for examples of successful simple strategies. Decide which of the ones you find is the simplest and most effective. Post this in the common area for all to see. Explain your rationale. Begin discussions with CL/R. You will need to work closely with them so that their content will fit your layout and navigation. Their points they wish to make initially dictate your layout and navigational design, but later their content will need to conform to your layout and navigational structure, which needs to be set fairly early and given to technical so they can begin making the pages in your plan work with the navigational strategy. Have one person drive conversation on layout, and another drive conversation on navigational methods; buttons, links, and clickable areas. Before committing to any plan, be sure you have first experimented with the Google pages and have had conversations about what can and can’t be done with technical.

Technical (T):

Start your own separate Google pages site, with a free sign up at Google. Begin experimenting with ways to import content, replicate layout patterns and navigational patterns. Discuss among yourselves if you want to limit yourselves to Google tools or include other techniques. If one of you is a flash expert or knows some other scripting or coding language, experiment with importing it to Google or linking to it from Google. Engage in discussion with CR group about what you think your capabilities will be. If video use is discussed, (interviews, examples, etc) discuss if it will be produced in class or acquired, and whether it will be embedded in the site or a link will go to YouTube or some other video server. Be sure to practice any techniques you plan to use so you are certain they will work on our class site.

Marketing (MA):

Use Google , and begin studying Surveys, under Google documents, in the spreadsheets (Forms) area. Also go to Sitemeter and understand how Sitemeter works by reading the tutorials at their site. ( ) We have a sitemeter installed on our blog. Double click it to access the analytic reporting side. Click on each link, both the left column and the links at the bottom, and study what information they provide. Study the world map and the information available by maximizing the last 100 contacts and clicking on the individual contact dots. Begin discussing what you can do to promote theProject and this terms topic. How can you increase readership? How can you get people more interested in the concepts?. How can we expand that and increase the time spent on the site and blog and the total number of monthly readers? Begin discussing these techniques as this will be the foundation of what will become a marketing plan. Create a practice survey and launch it to the class by the end of the week, with a URL. (The Google tool walks you through these steps). Discuss how to use this tool to create a survey which will be accessible to public readership. Will you put it on the Blog, the site, or both? Will readers be able to see the results, or not? Discuss the implications of the options and arrive at a strategy that you believe will maximize readership, buzz, and growth. Consider finding and reading Guerrilla PR Wired, ‘Waging a successful Publicity Campaign Online, Offline, and Everywhere In Between,’ by Michael Levine. This book is just a suggestion, not a requirement.

Coordination (CO):

Discuss how you want to get involved in the other groups, as participants, observers and message bearers. Develop a Gantt chart, which breaks down the milestones from the syllabus and distributes them across the chart over the ten weeks of the course. Use this extensively in your group, adjusting it as needed. This will be your guide as to whether we are ahead or behind schedule. Use it to determine which groups you need to focus on, week by week. Introduce your group to the other groups and explain to them by week’s end how you will relate to them; as participants, and/or message relayers between groups; and as a guidance group; able to see needs coming up and potential pitfalls across groups and initiating discussions to avoid the potential problems of miscommunication or missing communication. At this stage you are asking questions to determine that each group is in an exploratory phase and is communicating with the Other groups, as needed. Discuss among yourselves, what information does each group need to function most effectively? Do they have it? Examine each group one at a time. How could that group be most effective? Focus first on the objectives of the group then second on how to make suggestions to maximize the talents in that group to best carry out the group objectives.

WEEK 3

WHOLE CLASS:

Determine survey questions to ask and who we are going to survey. Go to Google Documents We have the group email and document area already and create the surveys (A function of ‘Forms’). Pre-surveys to the class for opinions about how it works. Practice with it! Become comfortable using the survey tool, sending URL’s to access the survey, Reading the survey results yourself, sharing the survey results with others via postings, and interpreting the survey results for use during the class. Marketing starts promoting our terms’ topic on the Project blog. Decide amongst yourselves which is the best group to handle each aspect. Some tasks are easily divided some are not so clear. Use critical reasoning and logic to support you decisions, but work with the instructor to break any stalemates.

REQUIRED:

-Read chapter 3, Howard Gardner’s Changing Minds. How does the mind naturally change? Where do resistances lurk? How can his knowledge give you insights into representing our points we want to make so they are better understood and embraced?

RECOMMENDED:

-Cass Sunstein’s Infotopia: In chapter 3, just what does he mean by the statement: “Informational pressures and social influences contribute to the amplification of errors, hidden profiles, cascade effects and group polarization?”

-Since we are talking about what forms thoughts and ideas, go to and sign up to take the free survey and see where you stand against others in terms of liberal vs. conservative, and how these categories relate to morality, thought and why we perceive the world the way we do. How will our audience perceive what we present about the term's topic, from a conservative or a liberal viewpoint? Discuss this. Email me your thoughts and findings on this. .

By Team:

Client Liaison/Research (CL/R):

This week’s goal is refinement. Continue this week gathering materials for our project; post links for others to view and evaluate. Discuss with other groups if they feel the materials need further refinement; it is natural, as more is learned about what is out there on our topic, that we refine decisions about what materials we use or want to use. Other teams should be making requests to CL for their content acquisition needs. Mission statement exists and is in use. Get mission statement ‘buy-in’ from instructor. End user in the public is defined as a demographic and we know how we want to alter their thoughts and/or behaviors. Everyone has a sense of how they plan to contribute to the project.

The official webpage is being assembled, and is publically viewable if you know the URL but we are not publicizing it …yet.

Content Development (CD):

By poring over the materials acquired so far and discussing possibilities with others in the class you are beginning to feel good about points you want to make and what content you want to develop to influence the minds and actions of the sites users. This week you come to agreement with CR about what format, font and styles are used, and how files will be transferred to the CR group or if they will be transferred straight to the T group. This week you develop a nearly complete list of the points you want to make and begin developing content to support those points. You should be talking to the class about what points we want to make as a class, and working with CL to acquire material as raw information - unfiltered, edited or formatted - to start matching those needs.

Creative (CR):

This week you develop two sample layouts in visual form and show the class to get their opinion. By the end of the week you have one layout selected, and have discussed with T how to build interactivity and discussed with CD how to transfer files and make content match up with the layout. You begin working on a Global navigation schema and a color palette to be used throughout the site and to map to the blog. If blog colors are going to change or evolve, be sure T group or someone in CR knows how to change the colors on the blog (codes, in layout).Experiment with color, tone, style and templates for the site, and looking for ways to tie the site and the blog together, visually.

Technical (T):

By now you have made all or nearly all decisions as to what programs and technical aspects you will use on the project. You are having discussions with CR about how many clickable points are on the main page, how many levels there are, and how many total pages. You know how to get from one page to the next, how to link outside the site and how to return to pages you just left or return to the home page. If any specialized programs or techniques - for video, or anything else – are going to be used, you have identified them and have a basic plan for integrating them and are starting to test them to make sure they are viable to work with the site. You assist MA or any other group that needs help on the blog. You work with the class and to develop a name and make sure our site has the name you want, given the infrastructure constraints and site tool requirements. You should split your focus into two areas; the first area looks at the points the class wants to make and makes sure you can deliver, technically, on those points. The second area is to look at the technical aspects you want to implement as a team, and educate the class and CR, about your capabilities.