Course Project: Group Formation

We hosted a lively discussion in our previous post on the course project.  Our next step is to form project teams so you can begin working together on these exciting ideas.  Read on for the next step ...

Based on the discussion, here are the areas that are seeing a lot of interest:

• Education
  
  A lot of people expressed interest in a project in education.  These include creating a wiki for an anatomy class, a homeschooling wiki, a wiki for writers in the digital age, a wiki on digital media and culture (collecting material from our class), a site exploring the effects of digital literacy in Tibet, and others.
  
• Information Technology
  
  There are a number of people interested in remixing Cathedral and the Bazaar, and others who have a strong interest in making a video about it.
  
• Religion
  
  Several people expressed an interest in making a Mormon Messages video or an LDS wiki or helping the referral center missionaries.
  
• Economics
  
  Some students want to create a wiki on microfinance.
  
• History
  
  Some students want to promote our end-of-semester event.

We need to take this list of expressed interests and form some focused project groups.   Here is the plan:

1. Become a team leader for a project you want to champion.  Your role as leader will be to coordinate group activities and encourage participation, as well as doing some work on the project yourself.
   
   or
   
   Join someone else's team as an active participant.  You should only be a part of one team so that you can dedicate your time to one project.
   
   
2. If you are a team leader, you must have a total of 3 team members to have a viable project.  Use your blog to rally people to your cause.  Post a link in the comments to get the discussion started.  We will also use class tomorrow to help form groups.
   
   If you're having trouble getting a team of 3 members together, then you should try to join someone else's project.
   
   If your team has more than 5 members, divide the project into two parts and appoint a leader to be in charge of each part.
   
   
3. Your project must meet the course project requirements, listed on our original blog post.  To meet the authenticity requirement, you must be sure you are adding value to what has already been done.  Treat this as a literature survey -- find out what others have already done and be sure you're not solving a problem that someone else has already solved.
   
   
4. Once you have three members, create a project web site at Google Sites.  Create pages on the site that (a) describe the project and (b) explain how it meets the course project requirements.  Pay particular attention to existing work -- convince us that you have something of value to add.  List the project participants on the site.
   
   Here is a sample site to show you the organization we're expecting.
   
   
5. Post a link to your project web site in the comments to this post.
   
   
6. Consult with the course instructors to get approval for the project and advice.

Deadline: You should have formed a group and created your Google Site by Friday this week.