English 420Y - Business Writing Online

The Final Humane Society Documents.

The Service Learning Project Assessment form has been attached to the Service Learning Project page and the Week 8 calendar page. This completed form is due to your instructor by Friday, August 3rd by email.

I just received comments from the Humane Society on Weber's Service Learning Projects, and posted them under your second draft peer editing posts. The Humane Society put thought and effort into the posts, so please consider them carefully. Some are blunt and may challenge your favorite aspects of the brochure, but remember, the customer is always right. I will send a longer email about the service learning project tomorrow. Keep up all the hard work.

The Clinton County Humane Society sent along a few pictures of the facility that Weber's class is welcome to use in their brochures - though you can also include pictures from the Clinton County Humane Society website and free image sites. The photos are attached below and on the Weber Service Learning Project Page. I apologize for the delay on getting these.

The Service Learning Project seems to off to a good start. Judging from the activity reports the groups are sending, everyone seems to be working hard and making progress. However, we just wanted to give a gentle reminder to produce detailed, quality work blogs and activity reports. Remember, the project description specifies that "These activity reports (250 words each) should briefly and professionally describe work completed and how this work contributed to the goals of the group." Work blogs should be at least 200 words and describe your specific work and how it contributed to the group.

I wanted to provide some notes on the Service Learning Project that may answer questions arising in the groups. First, I can see from my email box that you are actively trying to contact each other, and that you all have very busy schedules that are difficult to coordinate. Email and instant messenger are both good tools, but we have also instituted wiki pages that allow each group to post content that members of the group can read. I see some of you are taking advantage of this, and I recommend all the groups use them to post comments, messages, and files.

Because this project is not built around topics relevant to your majors, I have grouped students randomly based on their position in the Drupal users list. I will email each group to initiate contact between members. The groups are listed below:

We wanted to give a few thoughts at the halfway point of the course. First, thank you to those who have been active in commenting and creating an interesting and effective discussion about the course readings and assignments. We've been especially pleased with the outside research students have done on the JetBlue issue - those sources will greatly inform your Corporate Communication Projects. We'd like to encourage everyone to continue posting quality reading responses and comments. A good way to increase your participation grade is to post more than five quality comments each week.

Quite frankly, we are hesitant to assign group projects to students. We have bad memories from our undergrad days of doing entire group projects by ourselves, and we are skeptical of the ability of students to work together effectively and equally. The challenges of teamwork are only exacerbated by our distance ed course, where group members may never meet face to face. But group work is a reality of the professional workplace, and you will need to be able to work productively in teams to accomplish complex tasks quickly.