*Our assignments were updated on March 15 to account Penn State’s shift to online curriculum. In addition to eliminating the ethnography exercise, I also changed the overall distribution of grades in order to put a little more emphasis on the ‘final project steps’ assignments. I will be posting information online about those assignments shortly.
Short Papers & Exercises (50%)
All assignments are listed on the course schedule and are visible on the Assignments page on our Canvas website.
- Semiotic Analysis – Due Jan 31
- Response Paper: News Framing – Due Feb 7
- Response Paper: Rhetorical Analysis – Due Feb 14
- Survey Assignment – Due Feb 28
- Interview Write-up – Due Mar 6
Ethnography Exercise – Due Mar 20
Additional Info:
Final Project (40%)
The final assignment in our Communication Research Methods course is what I’m calling the Final Research Plan. It is primarily designed for Communications majors as preparation for their senior research projects (COMM 494), but the skills that will be learned, cultivated, and utilized through the development of their research plan are beneficial for any undergraduate student pursuing a degree in the humanities or social sciences. The assignment is broken down into a number of small parts, in order to help keep everyone on track and make the research process manageable.
The following documents include an overview of the project goals, followed by step-by-step guidelines for developing each specific portion of what will become a polished final document.
Final Project Steps (25% 15%)
Final Project Document (15% 25%)
- Completed Final Research Plan – Due May 7
Participation (10%)
Participating in class is not to be confused with simply showing up and occupying the same space as your fellow students. Participation means coming to class ready to ask questions, discuss weekly reading assignments, and engage in thoughtful, respectful conversation with your peers (and the professor). In short, your participation grade is not a ‘freebie’; it is earned and I do not give A’s as a reward for just paying attention in class – this much is expected of you in any college course.
- Participation includes mandatory attendance and in-class participation on days devoted to interviewing, in-class workshops, library research (a research session w/ Andrew Marshall), and one-on-one meetings.
Practice good netiquette in online discussions
If you don’t know what the term netiquette means, here is a useful primer. In a nutshell, it means that you need to pay attention to the manner in which you engage with people online, particularly if you’re not in the habit of doing so. Whereas face-to-face communication provides us with myriad opportunities to read other people’s body language and nonverbal cues in real time, online communication does not afford us such luxuries. This is compounded by the fact that all of us have spent years inadvertently reading tons of nasty online comments that have partly conditioned us to be more antagonistic and more defensive with our online behaviors. As a writer, you need to recognize how your statements, responses, and arguments can potentially be interpreted by people…and you should make an effort to write accordingly. Do your best to explain yourself, clarify your ideas, make succinct points, and support your positions. As a reader, you should be similarly generous with other people’s writing – give people the benefit of the doubt, don’t assume the worst, and try not to read too much emotion into peoples’ statements simply because they agree or disagree with you.
