Group Project Instructions
Project Must be Submitted to the Discussion Board by:
Wednesday, April 22, 2009 by 11:59 pm
A few steps to help you get started:
Step #1: With your group, decide on a deadline for everyone in your group to have watched/completed the module that corresponds to your group topic. You don’t have to take the test or quiz until the deadline, but if you want to start working on your project early, I would strongly advise you to go ahead and watch this module out of order. This will be the basis of your group’s project decisions.
Step #2: Step up a “fake” email account that anyone in your group can access. You won’t actually be corresponding through this email address, but you’ll need it for Step #3. Make it something generic like your group number “[email protected].” Please use a free service like hotmail, yahoo, live, msn, etc. You do NOT have to provide your real name or any other information when you set up this account.
Step #3: Create a free account at www.weebly.com. You create this account using your group email address. Please share the password with all of your group members so that anyone can access this page. Weebly is a very simple tool for creating your own website. Please don’t let this scare you- it is a friendly site that doesn’t require any programming skills or specialized information. In my opinion, it is easier to use than PowerPoint. If all else fails, I’m available to help with this. You’ll have to pick a name for your website- again, I would suggest something generic like your group number, or your topic title, as opposed to someone’s name, etc. ► ►
The purpose of this project is to allow you to take a deeper look at one of the social psychological topics that you’re interested in. While each of you selected your areas of interest on the class Wiki, you’ll probably need to narrow your search even further. Topics like “race” or “the media” are huge areas to try to explore, so narrowing your focus will make your job much easier. This is why you should review the Module that corresponds to your topic as soon as possible. This will help you start to narrow your focus. You may pick one specific term to explore in depth, or you can pick a concept, or even a few terms—I’m flexible with this part of the assignment as long as 1) you are exploring social psychological topics in greater depth than we were able to cover in class, and 2) your group is happy with the direction of your project. If you find that you are having difficulties with this, you may contact me for assistance.
Through this project, you’ll be able to see what contemporary scholars are saying about your topic, you’ll get to look for examples of your topic in images and videos, and you’ll get to summarize your findings in a nice, neat package which will be presented in your group’s website! So this project will have three phases. Each phase is described below:
Research phase:
To complete this phase, you’ll want to find at least 3 peer-reviewed articles in USF’s electronic reserve database. I’ll post instructions on how to find these articles, but please note that they must be peer-reviewed. You cannot use articles that we have already used in class. For this part of the project, you’ll need to summarize each article, report on the author’s findings, and relate this to what we have learned in class. You may divide these tasks up as your group sees fit, but I would strongly recommend that each article is reviewed by at least 2 people in your group. Sometimes research articles are difficult to read, and it would be unfortunate to misrepresent an article that wasn’t read carefully and lose points as a result.
Image Phase:
For this part of the project, I’d like you to demonstrate that you can SEE the phenomena that you are interested in. I’d like you to find (or take) at least 15 different images that convey the concepts that you are addressing. For each image, you should include a small caption explaining how your image is a representation of your topic. If you take images from the internet, remember to write down the artist and website so that you can give credit (see “Credits Page” below).
Video Phase:
Similar to the image phase, this part of the project will also help you SEE social psychology in action! Find at least 8 videos that exemplify your topic. I would suggest using YouTube (www.youtube.com) for this portion of your project, as it easily integrates with Weebly. For each video, you should include a small caption explaining how your video is a representation of your topic. If you take videos from the internet, remember to write down the artist and website so that you can give credit (see “Credits Page” below).
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Design and Layout: Your website will consist of several pages. Once complete, your page should display the following:
Title Page:
This page should describe your project and list all of your group members’ names
Research Page(s):
Each article that you review should have its own page. On this page, you’ll want to state the title of the article and the author(s). You’ll want to explain what they were interested in, and what their research concluded. Be sure to explain a little bit about HOW the authors did their research and HOW they made their conclusions. Then tell me- was this research consistent with what we learned in class? Was it different? How so? [Pleasse include a separate research page for each article.]
Images and Videos Page(s):
Please feel free to be creative with the design of these pages, but remember to add a caption with each image or video that explains how the image or video exemplifies your topic.
Credits page:
Works cited entries for each of the articles that you used
Credit for the images that you use (title and creator’s name if available and website that you found it on)
Credit for the videos that you use (title of video and creator’s name, and website that you found it on)
Anything else that you use in your project, if not listed above, should still be credited in a similar fashion.