readings, class assignments, and participation - 10%

annotated bibliography - 10%

resume - 10%

individual proposal- 10%

collaborative proposal - 20%

analytical report - 20%

digital artifact - 10%

All final assignments are due in hard copy at the beginning of the class period on the day of the deadline noted on the syllabus. Email submissions will receive no credit and late submissions will receive minimal credit.

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. To work successfully in the course, you must participate online every day.

As part of your participation, you will present progress reports during the semester to indicate how your work is developing and whether or where there are problems that can be alleviated. These assignments will involve both oral presentations and short written memos to give you experience with both.

You may also choose to provide memos to explain specific problems you've had with group work, to provide indication of a leadership role you have taken in treating your group work, or to explain any other aspect of your class participation that will help to clarify your progress in class participation.

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.

resumes You will create effective, clear hard copy and digital resumes that follow the list of guidelines given in class and on the Icarus site (noted below) as a means to introduce yourselves to your Russian colleagues. Class discussions of typography and document design as well as the materials on the Icarus site at http://icarus.lcc.gatech.edu should guide preparation of your assignments. Your resumes should reflect contextually applied choices based on a clear understanding of the principles of typography choice and document design that we cover in class. Each individual will prepare his/her own resume.

annotated bibliography You will provide individually developed hard copy 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. At minimum, each group member must annotate 5 well-researched sources, but of course, the better developed your annotated bibliography, the higher the grade you will receive. This document should be in memo format.

proposals group proposal- You and your international groups will submit hard copy proposals (with a group contract attached) to pursue your plans for working within a collaborative team of Russian and American students to compare and analyze the the cultural content of the films chosen for class. You must consider aspects of these films from cross-cultural perspectives in history, politics, science, culture, or some other informed basis, further developed 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 produce, then assure your readers that the plan for production is feasible, in part by describing and justifying your methodology for collecting and analyzing information. 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. (Note that the American students will digitize the project and the Russian students will contribute to content of the digital product.)

It is very important that you include clearly defined and well detailed product descriptions of the analytical report and digital product that will result from your proposed work.

The proposal must explain and describe each student's individual tasks as part of the collaborative team (and accompanied by a detailed schedule of work deadlines), then must also explain each student's duties involved in integrating the team's work with that of other collaborative members. The proposal must include a clear list of individual tasks for each participant, a schedule of deadlines for each product to be integrated into the analysis, and a section explaining the action the group will take if a participant fails to complete his/her task.

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 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. You must use memo format for this document.

individual proposalThe individual proposal precedes the deadline for the group proposal, but will follow the same format as described above. It will focus on each individual's tasks involved in developing the class projects and will indicate how the individual's work will integrate into the group project development. You should work on development of these two proposals simultaneously, allowing each one to support the other. You must use memo format for this document.

analytical reports You and your groups will produce final hard copy analytical reports and digital products that reflect and apply what you've learned through the semester about the cultural aspects of the films that you've identified from your national perspectives. 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. You will use formal report/analytical report format for the hard copy analytical report document. You can find detailed material describing the required sections in analytical and formal reports on the Icarus site at icarus.lcc.gatech.edu and on the baseweb site at http://www.lcc.gatech.edu/~herrington/baseweb/ that I use to provide supplemental material or support of class explantions and discussions. Again, you must include a signed contract to support your collaborative work on this project.

digital product Your group's digital project will be a digital expression that displays 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 tasks of each participant in the project. Each student in the group must participate in the product development and the contract should reflect how those tasks are divided.

Note that you will receive no credit for completion of your work until it is submitted in hard copy form to me and digital form to your Russian counterparts. Documents submitted after the deadline will receive minimal credit and email submissions will receive no credit. Again, group members must include signed contracts noting their agreed-upon distribution of collaborative work.