The coming weeks ... deadlines and to-dos

Students finished grammar presentations and we spent time on citations, in-text citations, works cited pages, and the requirement to cite your sources to avoid plagiarism. Students provided excellent examples for both.
The mock interviews prepared you to go and find your own interviewees and start interviewing. The first completed interviews are due on March 1, 2011 at noon and will be evaluated by the class that evening. Again, there is a competition for the best interview.
Next week we will address issues that may arise from interviewing, recording, transcribing and reporting of the dialogues. The reason for three interviews from the same country or region is the ability to cross-reference information. You may re-use the same country report, unless new perspectives have become evident in the interview. Be sure to familiarize yourself with the four elements of each interview: country report, preparation's report, transcript, and interview report. These four elements need to be posted together.
BTW only 19 students attended class. Please read the syllabus in the right margin of this blog and consider the 5% drop in grade you will see unless I have agreed to your absence, and we have discussed make-up or catch-up activities. An email to me informing me of your absence is too forward at best and offensive at worst.
For the next weeks, our time in class will be split between short excursions into different writing topics, review of existing interviews, refinement of the standards, and smaller papers on special topics. You will have two weeks for each interview to be completed and posted.
Interview 1 completion date March 1, 2011
Interview 2 completion date March 22, 2011
Interview 3 completions date April 5
We will then have the meetings on April 12, 19, 26 to work on your final project. The final project could be an additional interview, a comparison and contrast of the three you already performed, or a review of interviews by your peers in class. But I am also open to other topics, as long as they relate to Global Communication. The final project needs to be posted on the day of final, May 3, 2011, and show evidence that you
• know to research a topic and quote sources
• structure your topic well
• utilize the newly won knowledge from interviews and preparations
• understand global communications, cultures, and dialogue from different perspectives.
Final papers need to be at least 2000 words long, show books, articles, and web-resources on the works-cited page, and demonstrate simple in-text citation techniques. You may pick the standard (APA, MLA, etc.) but you must adhere to it. Questions? Please ask next Tuesday.