Assignment 4

This assignment is due Friday, December 1. Your analyses should be posted to your course blog. Please read your colleagues' responses and be prepared to discuss these issues in class on Monday, December 4.

There are two topics for your reflection and analysis in this assignment:

1. We discussed information flow within organizations and the potential for your blogging project to introduce new demands on the organization for the exercise of authority and control of information. Discuss whether and how this potential disruption materialized in the course of your project. How readily did the organization adjust to new channels of information flow? How did this affect your efforts to develop a blog that could operate in support of the organization? How readily and how clearly was authority defined? How important an issue was this for the blogging project? What could you and the organization have done differently to facilitate resolution of these issues?

2. Report on your efforts to help the organization continue the blog after your departure from the project. Does the organization wish to continue the blog? Why? What arrangements have been/need to be made to continue the project? What is the timeline for this and what role will you play in preparing the organization for continued blogging?

Assignment 3

Assignment 3: Planning the Organizational Blog.

This assignment should follow the creation of the organizational blog, or, at the very least, the discussion with the organization about the creation of the organizational blog. The due date for this October 2. By then you should able to answer all the questions that are part of this assignment. As necessary, schedule a meeting with your organization to discuss some of these issues, or make it a point to ask relevant questions at your next already scheduled meeting with your organization. Late submission of this will be allowed in extenuating circumstances.

What is the target audience for your organizational blog? How does that audience contribute to fulfilling the organization’s mission? What does the organization want of the target audience?

Has the organization targeted this audience in the past? If so, how? To what extent were these previous efforts successful? Was the medium of communication appropriate for the target audience (e.g., deaf persons are not likely to listen to the radio)? What problems did previous efforts encounter?

Given your understanding of the organization and your target audience, what possible things can you imaging writing about for the organizational blog? What issues or difficulties in communicating with and motivating the target audience do you anticipate?

In preparing and publishing the organizational blog, you are a representative of the organization. To whom in the organization do you report? Who in the organization approves your postings before they are published? It is crucial that you reach a clear understanding of these issues and procedures with organizational leaders.

Does the organization have a website? What is the address of that website, if they have one? What is (or will be) the address of the organization’s blog that you create(d) for them? Is it (or will it be) on their website or separate and linked to from their website? Which page(s) on their website links to the organization’s blog? Does their website support FTP access? If you chose to have your organization’s blog separate, was it because of organizational reasons (such as that they wanted it to be distinctly separate from their current website) or technological reasons (such as lack of FTP access or server-side scripting support) or some other reason? Which reasons?

Assignment 2

This assignment follows your initial meeting and discussion with your organization; it also provides a set of topics to discuss at that meeting, though we anticipate that discussion will also extend to initial planning of the organizational blog (to be discussed in assignment 3). Your responses to this assignment should be posted to your course blog by Wednesday, September 20.

Describe the organization with which you are working. What is the mission of the organization? What programs or activities does the organization undertake to fulfill its mission? Who benefits from the activities of the organization? What group(s) of people help the organization accomplish its mission?

What is the “community” that the organization serves? What is the organization’s role in that community? How dependent is this community on the organization?

Quiz and Study Guide

The quiz over technical issues will be on Monday, September 18. A study guide for the quiz may be found here.

Questions should be posted as comments on Jarrett's course blog.

Student course blogs

Thank you all for making it through the first few days of class. Student course blogs encountered so far (please leave a comment if there is one that is missing), in order by alphabetical by URL (with numbers preceding letters), are as follows:

• http://290courseblog.blogspot.com/


• http://amybaker290.blogspot.com/


• http://webact290.blogspot.com/(replacing http://andrew-290.blogspot.com/ - update done on September 4, 2006)


• http://bliebersbach290blog.blogspot.com/


• http://generalsnore.blogspot.com/


• http://joshcostello.blogspot.com/


• http://pyrrhicblog.blogspot.com/


• http://webactad.blogspot.com/


• http://zacecholafor290.blogspot.com/


• Addition added on September 4, 2006: http://jarrettaj.blogspot.com/


• Addition added on September 10, 2006: http://funfindingaurl.blogspot.com/

Thank you everyone for creating your course blogs! We look forward to reading your assignments as you will be posting your assignments on your course blogs.

Welcome! (And Assignment 1)

Welcome to Pol/CSIS 290. Professor Chen and I are looking forward to an exciting and challenging semester. More than most courses you will take (or have taken), this course will require you to work independently, seriously, and professionally. Please remember that your work will be visible to the community, and it should reflect positively on you, the University, and the organization with which you are working.

An online copy of the syllabus may be found here. In addition to your work with your organization, the course will require several assignments designed to keep you on track in your work and to encourage analytical reflection on your activities. Your responses to the questions posed in the assignments should be posted to your course blog by the due date. Responses will also be discussed in class. In preparation for that discussion, you are responsible for reading the responses of your colleagues in the course.

Assignment 1: Preparation. Due: 30 August

Beginning immediately, and for the rest of the course, keep a log of the time you spend on course-related activities. Be specific in how you spend your time: meeting with organizational representatives, research, writing, technical issues, etc. Be honest in your reporting – inflated time estimates will quickly become evident. Post your time log to your course blog each week.

Reflect on and address the following questions. Why are you taking this course? Do you have experience with blogging? Have you ever worked with a community organization? What do you hope to learn and accomplish in this course? Do your interests and goals lie more with blogging or with community service?

First post!

This first post is an example of blog creation and usage for a presentation on May 17.