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 qualityIn addition to your general participation grade, you will be 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, including a memo indicating issues involving your participation that are not readily apparent from the class roles and the WebBoard files. You may also submit a memo indicating extra creative risks you might have taken to expand your interaction. Creative efforts are always appreciated.

individual proposalYou will provide an individual proposal (in memo format) with your submitted topic and plans for a collaborative group project treating environmental issues. You must introduce the proposal as a means to highlight the benefits of the plan you propose. You must clearly note the motivation for the research you propose, whether it would answer an interesting question, solve a problem, create a means for developing inventive research into environmental issues, provide a means for education, or provide some other directive that justifies the need for the proposed research. Then you must explain how your proposed plans will respond to the motivation for the work. You must describe the products you propose to create and indicate clearly the methods, means, and feasibility of the work you propose. You should include a clear plan for the activities that your group members would undertake to pursue their work in your proposed project and you must include a schedule noting the deadlines for all work involved. You must conclude with material that will convince me and your collaborative team that you will be able to integrate your work into the work of the group as a whole as a way to form a base for the analytical report. Each individual will prepare his/her own proposal with an included annotated bibliography.

The proposal must explain and describe each student's individual duties as part of the collaborative team (and be 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. You must use memo format for this document. This means that you must work with your group members to determine their interests and capabilities so that you can provide a plan that will be acceptable to them.

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 for the analytical report work, noting the duties of each participant and his/her acceptance of those responsibilities in preparing the work. Your proposal should reflect acceptance of the tasks you list for each participant. 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.

individual progress reportYou will prepare written and oral progress reports that will describe and assess the work that you have completed in the semester and provide an accounting of the work yet to be completed. You will describe and explain any problems or hindrances that you may have encountered, and indicate your plans for completing your work. The progress reports must be submitted in memo format.

analytical reportsYou 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 Australian, Russian, and American cultures' attitudes toward their political processes, candidates, and developments. You will produce hard copy and digital artifacts that convey information effectively, whether visual, aural, or textual, to Russian and American users. Again, you must 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 you can also find supportive aids on the baseweb site, linked from the class page. Again, you must include a signed contract to support your collaborative work on this project.

oral presentationYou and your collaborative group will prepare and present an oral presentation that accounts for the work that you will have completed during the semester. You should describe the work you undertook, explaining the choices you made in its development, then provide comments about your experiences and your collaborative processes. You should indicate whether your research methodology was appropriate to your tasks and explain why it was or was not effective. You will report on your research data and provide clear analyses of the work you developed. You should conclude with an overall assessment of your findings and note the questions they answer and also those that they may generate.