This project is a bit different from the type of course assignments you may be used to. It is designed to provide you with an opportunity to tailor an assignment to your own learning needs and course-related interests.

For this assignment, you will identify an area of social media/PR you want to learn more about, outline a plan of study, and decide on appropriate learning deliverables to demonstrate your mastery of the material. You will then submit this plan to me for approval. Once your study plan has been approved, you will create a personal learning network to guide you in your learning. You may also utilize any content you wish including books, web pages, video tutorials, library resources, open educational material, etc. to help you complete your deliverables by the deadline specified in your learning plan. In other words, you will be able to learn the material in the manner, and with the resources of your own choice.

My goal for this assignment is to prepare you for today's highly competitive and rapidly changing workplace by allowing you to develop experience in directing your own learning. Today, knowledge has a very short shelf life, which means that one of the most important skills you can learn while in college is to become an independent learner. It is my hope that you take this project as an opportunity to help you enhance those skills. It should therefore go without saying that you shouldn't pick a topic/area you already master for this assignment. Although it would be a way to an easy project and grade, you would simply be cheating yourself and your education.

You will be evaluated on:

The thoroughness of your independent learning plan (10%)
The depth and breadth of the personal learning network you built (20%)
The quality of your deliverables (70%)

To help you get started, I've listed a few examples of possible project ideas below.

Researching social media resumes/digital portfolios (what they should contain, what best practice examples are, what professionals in the field want to see, what software/service to use to build them, how to use these services/software) and developing your own as the deliverable.
Learning about online community building and creating a PDF, slideshare presentation, YouTube video to share with the world as the deliverable.
Researching augmented reality applications for nonprofits, offering your services to a local nonprofit and designing the concept of an augmented reality app tailored to their needs (the deliverable).
The possibilities are virtually endless as long as they're relevant to the class and interest you.

The Learning Plan:

Please use the following template when designing your learning plan.

The Personal Learning Network:

Your personal learning network needs to include a Twitter, blog, and social bookmarking component. I've posted detailed instructions on how to build a personal learning network using Twitter on our course blog. You also need to identify blogs, web sites, and social bookmarks that are relevant to your project and subscribe to them. You may even want to start a Google Wave on your topic (optional). You will need to hand in a description of your personal learning network along with your deliverables. Your description should list the people you follow on Twitter, blogs, and social bookmarking sites.

Twitter: list the people in your Twitter PLN with their Twitter UserId. Only list people that pertain to your project (i.e. don't list your buddies here)
Blogs: list the bloggers you followed for this project. Identify them by:

Name
Blog URL
Blog Name

Social bookmarkers: list the people you follow on Delicious or any other social bookmarking site. Again, only list people you followed for this particular project. List them with their social bookmarking URL.
Any other people you followed on other social media sites/platforms

The Deliverables:

These are specified by you in consultation with me. Deliverables are due by the date specified on your personal learning plan.

Personal Learning Project