On February 16th, we will begin a three week series of assignments designed to familiarize you with the inside workings of Ning, the social network environment used to develop the Virtual560 Network.  This software is being widely adopted by many academic and professional  organizations as a way to integrate the benefits of a social network like Facebook with an organization's communications strategy.

Project: Groups of students will work together to design and implement a Ning-managed social network appropriate for an academic or professional organization.

Graded Assignments

HW7 - Social Network Development Plan -  This assignment will help develop and plan your Social Network project.  Team name, Goals and objectives, Network members, Content areas and tools being used are to be decided and written down by Monday morning (2/23) before 9:00 and posted on the Virtual560 Network as a new blog posting (one posting per team).  Revisions to the Proposal are expected and can be turned in for evaluation on March 2nd.  The proposal counts 50 points toward your project grade.

HW8 - Progress Report - Based on your development plan, each team member will be evaluated for achieving satisfactory progress toward team goals. A progress report for each team member should be turned in on Monday, March 2nd.   Please indicate your name and team name along with a careful explanation of your involvement with the project and specify exactly what you "accomplished". Please be specific as to item and date.  The progress report counts 50 points toward your project grade

HW9 - Final Network Evaluation -  Your Social Network project will be evaluated on the following criteria:

• Creativity and appropriateness of design
• Creativity and appropriate use of Ning tools and/or other services
• Creativity and appropriateness of content development
  
• Degree of involvement by Network members, Including in-class student, outside student, academic and professional members
• WOW factor - can't describe but know it if you see it kind of impact

The Network Evaluation counts 100 points toward your project grade.  Broken links, missing graphic links, and other errors in basic page construction fundamentals will be counted as negative elements and result in point deductions.  Team scores are relative. The team with the most positive and least negative elements will earn the most points.  The team with the least positive and the most negative elements will earn the least points.