Description
You must complete two tasks for this activity.
Objectives: To develop proficiency with basic professional journalistic style conventions by collaborating with classmates on crafting a newsworthy final project meeting story package.
1. Post your draft final project meeting story package here as an .rtf, .doc or .docx attachment to a reply message by 11:59 p.m. ET Saturday. Do not post your draft in any other document format. And do not paste it in the message window.
At the same time, you must also upload your draft package as an .rtf, .doc or .docx attachment to your draft final project folder under the Assignments link in the course navbar.
Follow these instructions carefully.
- If you do not post your meeting story here, you may lose up to 10 percent of your final project grade even if you upload it to your draft assignment folder.
- If you do not post your meeting story in your draft assignment folder, you may lose up to 10 percent of your final project grade even if you upload here.
The draft that you post should be polished, not rough. Your classmates are going to critique it, so do yourself proud!
Take note: For this step, your draft final meeting story package must now include the interactive enhancements for online readers required in the assignment instructions. These include:
- Multiple hyperlinks to useful additional information in each story.
- At least one additional enhancement for online readers, such as a Twitter alert teasing the story’s content, suggestions for an interactive Q&A with people featured in the story, a discussion question with the reporter (you!), an audio clip from an interview you did, a video clip from the meeting, etc., which could be included with the package to engage the readers about the story. The overall package should contain multiple embedded hyperlinks in each story plus at least one other interactive, multimedia, or social media enhancement.
Consult the Tipsheet for Using Online & Social Media and for Enhancing Your Final Project for Social Media in the Assignment Handouts folder of the Course Resources for examples of some of the ways you can leverage social media to enhance your story package.
2. You also must thoroughly critique your group mates’ stories.
Deadlines: Post each peer review here and simultaneously upload copies of each peer review to the appropriate assignment folder under Assignments by 11:59 p.m. ET Tuesday.
Your classmates will be depending on you. If you do not post substantive critiques of all available stories posted here by your group mates by the Tuesday deadline (or at least four of them if all five of you post your stories by the deadline), you may lose up to 10 percent of your final project grade.
n.b: You are responsible for critiquing only the stories that your group mates submit by Saturday’s deadline. If anyone submits late, you may critique that story, but you will not be required to. If someone in your group does not submit a draft at all, you are off the hook for that critique.
Here’s how to do your critiques. All steps are required.
Download and save each of your group mate’s stories to your computer. Read each story in its entirety. Then:
- Write two things you like about the story and why. Be thorough and specific about what you like.
- Write a 50- to 100-word overview of your impression of the story, which includes what you thought about it in general, what general advice you have for your classmate, and what the main changes are that you would suggest.
- After *each* paragraph, write as many constructive suggestions as you can think of. Tell your classmate if you see unnecessary words, grammar errors, style errors, confusing sentences, contradictions, anything that’s boring. Point out every error. And, of course, point out everything that you love about the paragraph. Use all the critiques you have received from your instructor on your own stories during the semester as a guide for the kinds of in-depth notes you should make on your classmates’ stories. You must comment on every single paragraph.
- Make sure to answer any questions these groupmates left in the discussion thread.
You will be assessed on the depth and quality of your peer reviews. Make your corrections in another color or in boldface so your classmates can easily see them. Consider using Word’s Comments function. And consider applying some of the other peer review tactics that were introduced in the Try It practice writing exercises earlier in the course. You want to make your comments as constructive as possible; you should expect the same from your group mates.
Follow these steps for every story in your Workgroup. When you are done with each peer review, save it to your computer, then upload the file back here as a Word attachment to your reply messages to each of your group mates.
Your instructor will critique every story as well, either here in your group or in your assignment folder.
Consult the grading rubric in the finalized meeting story package’s assignment folder for more best practices advice. For sample stories by past students on a similar assignment, go here.
Good luck!
