Assignments

Style Guide & References
You are free to use whatever style guide you are most comfortable with for your submitted assignments, just remember to apply it consistently. For the weekly blogging, I do not expect you to formally cite every source you refer to, a simple link in-text is fine.

Weekly Blogging
Think of the weekly blogging as the online equivalent of "class discussion". Since this is a distance ed course, we will be using our blogs to discuss the content of the course. In the interest of clarity, here are a few guidelines to keep in mind as you blog for this course:

• Tell us what you think: please don't summarize the readings for the week in your blog -- instead, tell us what you think about them! I'd like to read your impressions, reactions, and opinions on the readings, rather than a summary of what they covered. Also, while I do expect you to do all the readings, I don't expect you to blog about every article every week. Pick a couple that resonate with you and blog about those.
• Quality not quantity: don’t feel like you need to post 10 times a week; it’s more important for you to spend your time doing the readings, completing the week’s exercises, exploring the case studies, and engaging in a discussion with your classmates (via comments to their blogs). Your blog posts should reflect upon all of these activities, but it makes no difference to me whether it’s all in a single post or if it’s broken up into multiple posts. The choice is yours! Also, I prefer not to provide a word-count requirement for your weekly posts because I find word-counts force artificial limits on such an informal medium. You are free to write as much or as little as you want, but keep in mind that this is a graduate course, so I do expect a certain level of engagement with the readings. Also, if I think you're not on the right track with your blog posts (regarding content and/or length), I'll let you know early on.
• A blog is a blog: those of you who are familiar with blogs are well aware that they tend to be less formal, and that’s fine for this course. I don’t expect you to formulate complete essays, and I certainly don’t expect proper citation (see "Style Guide & References" above). Having said that, if you are uncomfortable with less formal writing, please feel free to use the tone and structure that works for you. The blogging we’re doing in this class is an attempt to get you thinking about and responding to the ideas we’re being introduced to, I am far less concerned with traditional assignment formalities.
• Case studies: as I mentioned in the syllabus, the weekly case studies are intended to provide real-life library examples of the technologies we’re exploring. Spend some time on each of the case studies (beyond the main page) and blog your thoughts & response. Honest evaluations and constructive criticism are encouraged.
• Best practices: as you do the readings for the course and explore the case studies provided, I’d like you to think about “best practices” for the technologies we’re exploring. During our final two weeks, you will be blogging about what you've observed as best practices for the use of social software in libraries, so it’s a good idea to start thinking about them early and continue to flesh them out as we move from topic to topic. Feel free to blog about the best practices you observe from week-to-week as well.
• Feedback: each of you will receive a blogging "progress report" from me early in the term (week 6 — week of June 9). The report is simply intended to provide some helpful feedback on how you’re doing with your blogging and will include a grade for your blogging thus far in the term.
• "Blog Holiday": you will soon come to realize that this is a busy course - there’s a lot to learn, many tools to try, case studies to explore, and articles to read. I realize that you all have lives beyond school, and many of you are working full-time on co-op as well, therefore I’m allowing a 2-week "blog holiday". The blog holiday allows you to take 2 weeks off of blogging/commenting/tagging during term, which means that your grade for this weekly assignment (which accounts for 35% of your final mark) will be based on 11 weeks of blogging/commenting/tagging rather than 13 weeks. As grad students, I’m sure you realize the importance of keeping up with the course content for your own personal edification, so I won’t preach about the difference between not blogging versus not doing the work (sorry, I think I just preached). But I do acknowledge the rigourous pace of the course, which is the reason why I’m offering this 2-week blog holiday. You are free to take your 2 weeks off in succession or split them up over term. For the 2 weeks that you do decide to take off, please put up a post on your blog letting us know that you plan to be off that week.

Tagging
As mentioned in the syllabus, you are encouraged to read related works that you find during the course of your own social media explorations, and tag these readings in del.icio.us (using the tag "lis9763"). When you tag something in del.icio.us, you are given the option to add a description of the item you've added -- it's a good idea to do this. It provides a bit of context and helps the rest of us understand why the item was tagged. The point of the tagging exercise is threefold:

• it gives you the opportunity to use one of the technologies we will be exploring in the course (social bookmarking) and allow you to become familiar with an important and growing trend in the evolution of web 2.0 and social media (tagging and folksonomies).
• you will find, over the course of the term and your readings for this class, that we're dealing with topics that are "hyperlinked" in many ways. When you read an article or blog post for this class, you will probably find yourself following links in those articles/blog posts to other sites and content that will broaden your grasp of the topic. The tagging exercise is an attempt to capture those collective web meanderings and identify members of this class as a "community of interest": by the end of the course, everything tagged with "lis9763" in del.icio.us will become a collection of resources that we can all read and draw upon.
• my hope is that this exercise will get you in the habit of reading within and beyond our professional literature, since this practice should become an important part of your lives as professional librarians.

Group Project
The main deliverables of the group project are a working model or prototype of a library service built using 2.0 tools, and a blog post that explains the service, what software was used to build it, who the target audience is, etc. (there is no particular word-count for the blog post, just make sure that you've communicated all the important aspects of your project). I'm looking for a few things with this assignment: creativity, usefulness of the service, and evidence that you've thought through a particular "problem" and provided a meaningful solution with your prototype. To get you started, here are a few suggestions for projects (these are just ideas and you should not feel limited to choosing one of these):

• a library portal built using RSS and a personalized home page tool like NetVibes or iGoogle
• a subject guide or pathfinder built on RSS tools
• a library website or staff intranet built using wiki software
• a subject guide using a social bookmarking tool
• a social network for kids/teens using online social networking software
• a treasure hunt in Second Life
• a information literacy module in Second Life
• a tour of a library space in Second Life
• a library plugin built using LibX
• a screencast describing the use of a library resource
• a library tour using Flickr
• a library promotional video on YouTube

Final Project
The final project is wide open for possibilities and I encourage you to use your imaginations! Some ideas to get you started (again, these are just ideas, you don't have to choose one of these):

• write an essay on a 2.0 topic or technology of interest to you. The essay can be theoretical or it can explore the use of the tool/technology in libraries, or some combination of the two.
• write a proposal for the implementation of a social software tool in a specific library. If you're on co-op this term, this might be a good assignment to tie into your work.
• perform a needs assessment of a library and write a project proposal with your recommendations for the implementation of social software tools at that library. Again, for those of you on co-op this term, this project might tie in well with the work you're doing at your placement organization.
• build a prototype of a library service for a particular library or user group (see suggestions for the Group Project, above). You may choose to build upon the work done by your group for the Group Project, or you may choose to build something new.
• edit a number of Wikipedia articles and write a paper outlining the experience.
• create a blog for a particular library or user group.

If you choose to write an essay or proposal, your paper should be between 1500-2000 words long. If you decide on one of the other projects, you should have some supporting documentation outlining the project. This documentation can take the form of a submitted paper, a wiki, a blog post, or any other format that makes sense to you. There is no specific word-count for this supporting documentation.

As you can tell, you have a lot of lattitude with this project, so I expect you to have some fun with it! Your Final Project Proposal should outline what you'd like to accomplish with your final project in a single page. Don't put too much work into the Final Project until you've received feedback from me on your Proposal.

Policy on Late Assignments (reproduced from Syllabus)
While I recognize that one of the advantages of distance education is to allow students flexibility in completing the course content, it’s important for students in this course to complete assignments in a timely manner so that our online conversations are productive and topics are tackled as a group. This doesn’t preclude students from blogging about a topic well after that module has been completed, but it’s also important to address the topic when the rest of the class is tackling it. That said, if a student has a valid reason (serious illness, family emergency, etc.) for requesting an extension on an assignment, he/she may contact me. For obvious reasons, extensions will not be granted on the weekly blogging/commenting/tagging assignment and on the Group Analysis & Presentation. Assignments handed in late without permission will be penalized as follows:

• 1-7 days late: 30% reduction in mark
• 8-14 days late: 50% reduction in mark
• more than 14 days late: zero on the assignment

Statement on Plagiarism (reproduced from Syllabus)
Students must write their essays and assignments in their own words. Whenever students take an idea, or a passage from another author, they must acknowledge their debt both by using quotation marks where appropriate and by proper referencing such as footnotes or citations. Plagiarism is a major academic offence (see Scholastic Offence Policy Section 10 in the Faculty of Graduate Studies Academic Calendar at http://www.uwo.ca/grad/calendar.htm).