Some notes to keep you on track as the week winds down...
Faux Pas Case
As you're working on those Faux Pas drafts, feel free to brainstorm approaches and share drafts with other people in class. The memo to Nestor is especially hard to do well, and having someone else check your draft for appropriate tone is always a good idea. In addition, seeing how other people are approaching this tricky situation might help you refine your own approach.
Taking a look at the Evaluation criteria on the Evaluation page in the module as well as the peer review worksheets on the Peer Review page might help you evaluate and revise your work as well.
International Project
There is some generic feedback that any team can apply to their Research Design Plan drafts posted in the peer review space for RDP drafts.
Obviously, if anyone is just flat turning in work done in another semester -- in whole or in part -- that's an F for the semester. Checking what's been turned in against the archive of work from previous semesters takes, like, a minute. I'm not really concerned about that.
I am concerned, however, that you may inadvertently be using the wrong version of this project as a model. Imitating or outright copying may save you time, but it will definitely lower your grade because you likely won't be doing the assignment correctly. In this class, to do well on the RDP, you must have a single, clear, focused primary research question, as well as secondary questions that logically grow out of the primary question and drive your research in a focused way. The primary question, the secondary questions, and the research that you do all must be specifically focused on and relevant to Bellcom's business problem relative to your target city.
Progress Reports
I know the book says these should be a 3-5 page report in memo form. Some of you may have that much to say. During the regular semester, people have been working on this projects for weeks -- not days -- before they write the Progress Report. I anticipate most teams will be in the range of 1 full page to 3 pages for this report. If you have only a single page, you're going to have to have a page packed with info. The usual rule of thumb applies: This memo should be as long as it needs to be in order to adequately convey the information your reader needs.Fair warning
As I have been reviewing drafts, I have seen some work that looks somewhat familiar. There are a lot of versions of this assignment floating around campus. Be careful what you choose to model after or borrow from. Don't assume that what got your roommate, friend, neighbor an A last summer is going to get you the same grade this summer.Obviously, if anyone is just flat turning in work done in another semester -- in whole or in part -- that's an F for the semester. Checking what's been turned in against the archive of work from previous semesters takes, like, a minute. I'm not really concerned about that.
I am concerned, however, that you may inadvertently be using the wrong version of this project as a model. Imitating or outright copying may save you time, but it will definitely lower your grade because you likely won't be doing the assignment correctly. In this class, to do well on the RDP, you must have a single, clear, focused primary research question, as well as secondary questions that logically grow out of the primary question and drive your research in a focused way. The primary question, the secondary questions, and the research that you do all must be specifically focused on and relevant to Bellcom's business problem relative to your target city.
Researchers, time to get started
If your team hasn't started doing research, you'll want to hop on that soon. The work you’ve done on the RDP so far should be enough to get you going on the research you need to do in order to pull together the first draft of your Recommendation Report. The feedback I'll give you should help you improve the RDP as a product so you end up with a better product, but you should be able to put your research game plan into action immediately, without waiting for my feedback.
You'll want to be able to pull together a first (probably sketchy!) draft of your final report by the middle of next week.
Job Project
You’ll notice that I’ve created a Peer Review space for your Job Project drafts. You might want to post preliminary ideas or drafts to that space by Sunday.
Your first step for the Job Project is to locate a real job listing or advertisement for a job that you could apply to within the coming year. Your best bet for doing well on this project is to choose your job ad carefully. I know it seems like a job ad that is kind of vague and non-specific feels like a better bet than one that is quite detailed and fleshed out, but it is not. It makes your job as a writer harder and inevitably has a negative impact on your grade.
My advice to you:Stay away from blind ads on places like Monster.com. Check out the job and internship listing through the UNLV Career Services website. If you're in hospitality or gaming, go directly to the employment/jobs pages for the companies you want to work for.
The job listing you choose provides the raw material you use to develop the documents for this project. Again, choose carefully and pick something with more detail not less.
If you're having trouble finding a good job ad or have questions about the ad you've chosen, go ahead and post it to the peer review space. If you have a sketchy first draft - or even an old resume you're thinking about revising -- you can post that, too.
Hang in there everyone, this is the roughest patch in the whole semester.
Dr. S
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