assessment | Networked Media

Students will work in different groups of three or four over the course of the semester to produce three separate wiki entries on the subject wiki, Niki – http://www.mediafactory.org.au/niki/

These entries will be on subjects designated by the tutor in the categories of people, institutions, or ideas.

Each entry must have at least three appropriate references. Keep in mind that peer-reviewed and academic sources are far more valuable and reliable sources of information.

The style of these entries is not to be encyclopedic. The aim is not to simply convey information about the topic, but to interrogate it somehow, examining the key concepts, contexts, and discourses around it.

Each of the wiki entries are to be speculative. This means that you are required to construct an imagined scenario from which to explore your subject. The use of the speculative mode will allow you to engage with the key considerations of your subject by creatively exploring how it would react to the scenario you have created. This will of course require you to have a strong research base to demonstrate that you fully understand you subject. It is recommended that the first wiki entry take the form of an imagined interview.

You are required to submit two of the three wiki entries you produce for assessment. These will be printed out and submitted to the building 9, level 4 drop box on or before 4:30pm on Friday, February 14^th 2014.

In addition, you will be required to submit a 1000 word accompanying essay. This will talk to your experience with the wiki, discussing:

● Why were these two entries were chosen?

● What qualities do you think they have that makes them good?

● What your specific contribution to this entry has been.

● What your experience of writing in the wiki has been like; what was strange, difficult, interesting, surprising?

● In general, when using the wiki, do you think you preferred writing, editing, or gardening?

The work will be assessed according to:

The depth and quality of the discussion and analysis undertaken. (Good work will be expansive, providing a significant quantity of information, but more importantly will contextualise this information to show why and how it is significant.

It will be well researched, which means multiple sources and types
of information will have been used.)

The quality of the entry as writing and media making. (Good work will be creative in its use of the speculative format and how it presents its material. It will be sophisticated, well informed, playful, and expressive of the topic. It will develop or express a ‘persona’ or personality that, while accurate, is not neutral or merely objective.)

The extent to which the entry expresses its ‘place’ within a networked system. (Good work will link out to other sites, pages, or other niki entries. It will use a variety of media text, image, video, sound as appropriate.)

Submission

Print the wiki pages with the URLs included. Attach it to your essay. Submit on paper with the usual cover sheet with your tutor’s name clearly on the cover sheet. The program name is your degree, the course code is COMM2219, the lecturer’s name is Elliot Heatwole.

Blog Assessment (25%)

Due: Week 3, Friday, January 24^th 2014

– 5 blog posts, printed, with URLs included

– 1000 word accompanying essay

Description:

The blog that has been established on www.mediafactory.org.au is yours. It is/can be/has to be used for other subjects throughout your communications degree. For communications students, we intend to keep the blog for life (so you can keep using it after you graduate).

For Networked Media the blog is the key place for you to discuss, note, record, document, discuss, argue about, reflect upon, interrogate, and critique what you do. You should be constantly blogging about your ideas and your engagement with the course. You should also use this as an opportunity to develop an online persona, be that professional or otherwise.

In this subject, the intent is to make contributing to your blog as simple as possible using whatever digital resources you have available, so that it can become part of our everyday network practice.

For this assignment you will curate five blog posts, and write a 1000 word essay to demonstrate how you have used your blog, to date, in networked media.

The five blog posts should provide evidence of how you have:

● engaged with readings

● engaged with ideas raised

● put into practice specific technical skills

● engaged with content outside of Networked Media towards the goal of developing and advancing an online representation of yourself

The essay is to discuss how you have used your blog through the semester. What has been good? Bad? What has surprised you about it? Do you think it has helped you? How? How do you intend to use it for the rest of the semester? Why?

Good work is work that is clear and explicit in how it answers these questions. The emphasis is on critical thinking and writing and not on being a blog fan. If you don’t enjoy it, why? If you do, why? Good work uses more than opinion to make claims (and notice, it makes claims), but also uses evidence. Humanities academic writing is an argument makes evidence based claims. We’re less concerned with the form (essay, song, poem, than with the integrity and quality of these three things).

Submission

Print the five blog posts with the URLs included. Attach it to your essay. Submit on paper with the usual cover sheet with your tutor’s name clearly on the cover sheet. The program name is your degree, the course code is COMM2219, the lecturer’s name is Elliot Heatwole.

Participation Assessment (30%)

Due: Ongoing, January 8^th to February 12^th 2014

– Bi-weekly checklist to be given to your tutor at the start of class

– Students must participate as panelists in two symposiums

Description:

Part 1

A participation diary will be completed, and submitted, at the start of every class. Participation is not the same as attendance, but is a measure of the activities you undertake in addition to attendance that will contribute to your learning in this subject. The majority of this activity, as it happens outside of class time, is not visible to your teacher, but is essential to successfully engaging with the material that networked media involves.

The bi-weekly diary is a simple mechanism to make explicit what you’ve done, outside of class, each week. There will audits to validate these diaries. If all criteria are checked then the student will receive full marks for the assessment.

These diaries are contextual, with several criteria changing every lesson. You can access these in advance via the subject blog (www.mediafactory.org.au/networkedmedia), however you will be given the checklists for the following week at the start of each lesson.

Part 2

Students will be required to participate as panelists in two of the symposium discussions. The starting point for each symposium will be assigned readings for that session.

Preparing to be a panelist requires you to read the relevant materials and consider ‘take away ideas’ and/or key questions , terms, ideas and/or arguments raised by them. (It may be useful to explain some of the more abstract concepts to your own knowledge and experience of networked media and relevant examples).

You will be expected to speak and contribute substantively to the discussion (in effect to help lead it with the other panelist/s and teacher). Your input should demonstrate familiarity with the readings and a sustained attempt to ‘unpack’ useful elements and threads from them in order to speculate on how the reading might assist in our broader understanding of networked media.

The purpose of the exercise is not for you to present a watertight, expert analysis of the reading; rather, you are being asked to do the work here of helping to lead the way in an encounter with materials that will be most likely be unfamiliar to you and your peers. Think of the readings as being like puzzles – you aren’t expected to solve them by yourself but to be a key motivator for the class in terms of finding ways to make sense of what they offer and where they fit within the bigger picture of our understanding of networked media.

Minimise your use of prepared notes. This strategy is a way of keeping the discussion going as a class conversation rather than a one-to-many presentation. The purpose of this exercise is not for you to give a tightly prepared and polished presentation and you will not be graded on this aspect of your participation.

Submission:

Hand your checklist to your tutor at the start of each class.

Semester 2, 2013

Update: have now added copies of the assessments as PDFs if you feel the need to keep a copy of them somewhere (though you could as easily view this page on a Mac in a web browser and choose File, Print, then Save as pdf… from the bottom left of the print dialogue.) I digress.

The assessments, as pdf:

The key assessment tasks for networked media consist of:

your individual blog (25%)
participation (25%)
wiki writing (50%)

BLOGS

Due
End of week six, Friday, August 30th

Description
The blog that has been established on www.mediafactory.org.au is yours. It is/can be/has to be/ used for other subjects through out your media degree. For media students we intend to keep the blog for life (so you can keep using it after you graduate).

For Networked Media the blog is the key place for you to discuss, note, record, document, discuss, argue about, reflect upon, interrogate, critique (can I stop yet?) what you do. Making, reading, classes, things you notice out and about.

In this subject the intent is to make contributing to your blog as simple as possible using whatever digital resources you have available, so that it can become part of our everyday network practice.

For this assignment you will curate five blog posts, attach your blog audit table, and write a short essay to demonstrate how you have used your blog, to date, in networked media. These five posts should provide

evidence of how you have
engaged with readings
engaged with ideas raised
put into practice specific technical skills
written or otherwise documented other stuff (something not specifically from networked media)

Submission
Print the blog posts. Attach them to your essay. Attach your completed blog audit form. Submit (yes, on paper) with the usual cover sheet with your teacher’s name clearly on the cover sheet. The program name is your degree, the course is called Networked Media, the course code is COMM2219, the lecturer name is Adrian Miles, the tutor/marker’s name is the name of your class teacher.

PARTICIPATION

Due
In class weekly

Description
A participation diary will be completed, and submitted, weekly in class. Participation is not the same as attendance, but is a measure of the activities you undertake in addition to attendance that will contribute to your learning in this subject. The majority of this activity, as it happens outside of class time, is not visible to your teacher, but is essential to successfully engaging with the material that networked media involves.

You will receive progressive feedback about your participation mark in weeks 4, 8, and 12.

The weekly diary is a simple mechanism to make explicit what you’ve done, outside of class, each week. There will audits to validate these diaries.

Submission
The participation diary will be completed at the beginning of every class and submitted. The diary will be compiled by your teacher and evaluated three times through the semester.

WIKI WRITING

Due
End of Week 12, Friday October 18

Description
During the course of the semester you will co–write at least four entries (pages) in niki, the networked media speculative wiki. Two of these entries will be about people or institutions, and two will be about ideas. How these will be written will be covered in detail in class. However, each of the wiki entries must contain a minimum of two appropriate references, and conform to the ‘house style’ of niki (an imagined interview). The entries are not to follow Wikipedia’s efforts to be objective and encyclopedic. All main entries will be written in the form of speculative interviews, which you can interpret and invent with, well, quite a lot of creative licence. This is a playful, speculative, imaginary wiki.

For this assignment you will nominate one of these four entries for assessment. Please print this page and include it with your submission (on paper).

The submission should also have a brief essay (maximum of 1500 words) that discusses:

why this entry was chosen of those that you have written
what qualities do you think it has that makes it good?
what your specific contribution to this entry has been
what your experience of writing in the wiki has been like, what was strange, difficult, interesting, surprising?
in general, when using the wiki, do you think you preferred writing, editing, or gardening?

The work will be assessed according to:

The depth and quality of the discussion and analysis undertaken. (Good work will be expansive, it will provide a lot of information, and as importantly, contextualise this information to help show why and how it is significant. It will be well researched, which means multiple sources and types of information will have been used.)

The quality of the entry as writing and media making. (Good work will be creative in its use of the interview format and how it presents its material. It will be sophisticated and well informed, playful, and expressive of the topic. It will develop or express a ‘persona’ or personality that, while accurate, is not neutral or merely objective.)

The extent to which the entry expresses its ‘place’ within a networked system. (Good work will link out to other sites, pages, other niki pages. It will use a variety of media – text, image, video, sound – as appropriate.)

Submission
Print the wiki page. Attach it to your essay. Submit (yes, on paper) with the usual cover sheet with your teacher’s name clearly on the cover sheet. The program name is your degree, the course is called Networked Media, the course code is COMM2219, the lecturer name is Adrian Miles, the tutor/marker’s name is the name of your class teacher.

2015 Summer Semester

Note: Everything below this line relates to previous versions of the course

2014, semester two

Summer Semester 2014

Participation Diaries:

Wiki Assessment (45%)