Readings and Class Assignments Participation, Collaboration Quality - 20%

Annotated Bibliography - 5%

Resume - 5%

Proposal - 30%

Analytical Report - 30%

Readings/Participation You are responsible for all course readings on the day noted in the schedule and you must indicate your preparedness through online and in-class participation. You must post meaningful, engaged discussion points and responses before every one of the Russian students' classes throughout the semester.

Participation Quality In addition to your general participation grade, you will be specifically responsible for the quality of your participation within your groups of Russian and American students. You must bear your weight of responsibility for document development as well as group communication. You should be careful to produce as much evidence of your participation as possible during the semester.

Collaboration Quality You must collaborate effectively and consistently with your Russian counterparts. To make this possible, your communications must be frequent and timely and must be of linguistic tone and style that is appropriate for your audience.

Resumes You will create effective, clear resumes as a means to introduce yourselves to your Russian colleagues. You should refer to our class discussions and the Icarus site at http://icarus.lcc.gatech.edu to prepare your assignments. Each individual will prepare his/her own resume.

Annotated Bibliography You will provide individually developed annotated bibliographies that you will use to support your work in the group projects that you will pursue throughout the semester. The annotated bibliography must include an introduction and conclusion and must reflect effective typography choice, text treatment, and document design. A minimum of 10 sources is required.

Proposals You and your international groups will submit hard copy proposals to pursue your plans for working within a collaborative team of Russian and American students to compare and analyze your groups' specific focus on news communications. Your primary focus will be to consider these perceptions from cross-cultural perspectives, informed through your collaborative group work with your Russian colleagues. By necessity, you will also consider issues in cross-cultural, digital communication.

You will describe your plans for developing your analyses and the digital artifact representing your findings. You will begin by describing the need for the analysis and artifact, then indicate how the proposed products will satisfy that need. Next, you will describe in detail, the portion of the products that you intend to create, then assure your readers that the plan for production is feasible. (Note that the American students will digitize the project and the Russian students will contribute to content of the digital product.) You will conclude with a summary of all these points to persuade readers that you will be able to complete the analysis and digital artifact within the constraints of available equipment, skills, and time.

The proposal must explain and describe each student's individual duties as part of the collaborative team, then must also explain each student's duties involved in integrating the team's work with that of other collaborative members. You must use memo format for this document.

The proposal must include an annotated bibliography, a list of applicable and useful sources to prepare your work in creating your analytical reports and digital artifacts. Your international group must also include a signed contract noting the duties of each participant and his/her acceptance of those responsibilities in preparing the work. Since your grades will be determined by noting your work in regard to your accepted duties, you should be careful to balance the work load equally among group members. Each student is responsible for a portion of each of the assignments. Students bearing notably less responsibility for project outcomes will receive less grade credit in proportion.

In addition to the signed contract noting each group member's accepted duties, upon final proposal submission, students may also include individual memos indicating issues affecting their individual project contributions.

Analytical Artifacts You and your international group will produce final hard copy and digital projects that reflect and apply what you've learned through analysis of news communications for your differing cultures. You will produce hard copy and digital artifacts that convey information effectively, whether visual, aural, or textual, to Russian and American users. Explanatory documentation must accompany your digital artifact and you must also include a group contract indicating each group member's duties and his/her acceptance of those duties. Students may also include individual memos indicating issues affecting their individual project contributions. You will use formal report/analytical report format for this document.

Note that your analytical project must include answers to the analytical questions we provided at the first of the semester. Better analyses include additional group-derived issues for analyses as well.

Digital Product Your group's digital project will be a digital expression of the content of your group analysis. It must reflect good principles of design and information delivery that will be covered in class. This document may be creative in content and form. Again, you must include a contract indicating the duties of each participant and those duties should be balanced.

Note that you will receive no credit for completion of your work until it is submitted in both digital and hard copy form. Documents submitted after the deadline will not receive full credit. Again, group members must submit signed contracts noting their agreed-upon distribution of collaborative work.