Please do not begin work on this assignment until we have discussed research ethics in class.Make sure to follow the ethics summary.

Paper:

In addition to participant observation, you should interview at least four people affiliated with the community. They may be community designers, leaders, or regular members. You don't need to stick to Seidman's three interview structure--one interview per participant will usually be sufficient. You must get informed consent before doing an interview; we'll discuss this in class. The interviews are better if they're in person, but telephone works too. You can buy a gizmo at Radio Shack to let you record conversations off of the phone. You must get permission to record the conversation. You may do online interviews of community members in addition to but not instead of doing interviews of at least four people face to face or on the phone.

Each team member must conduct at least three interviews. If you have two team members, you'll need six interviews total minimum. If you have three team members, you'll do at least nine.

Analyze the community in terms of Amy Jo Kim's Nine Principles for Community Design. How does the community address each of these issues?

Note that while I am assigning only parts of Kim's book "Community Building on the Web" for class discussion, you will find all of it helpful in completing this assignment.

In what ways is the community successful? Is it meeting the needs of its members? Compare and contrast the community to other similar ones. In what ways could the community be better designed? How would you change it?

In your paper, make sure to cite the course readings and include a detailed bibliography.

Include in your paper a "methodology" section in which you describe how you did your research: how much time did you spend participating? In what ways did you participate? Who did you interview? (Present these portraits anonymized, as we discussed in the the ethics lecture.)

Papers must be handed in on paper; however, you may optionally also chose to prepare an HTML version with links. HTML papers may be linked to the course web page if you wish.

You will be graded on (in order from least important to most):

• How well written your paper is. (Students for whom English is not their first language may request to be exempt from this. Speak to the instructor.)
• Attention to detail.
• Quality of field work.
• Thoughtful citation of course readings. Show me that you have done the readings and they have aided in your understanding of what you observed.
• Insight into research issues about the design of online communities.

It's a good idea to chose a site that is at least somewhat successful. You'll learn more by thinking in detail about something that works than by tearing apart something that doesn't work. And it's much easier to do a thoughtful analysis of a successful site. We suggest that you discuss your choice of site with the TA and/or instructor before beginning your research.

If you have a team of more than one person, at the end of your paper, include a short description of who did what. Which users each person interviewed, which part of the site each person focused on in their participant observation, etc.

Talk:

Prepare a short talk (ten minutes maximum) about your findings.

The quality of your presentation and overheads counts towards your talk grade. A short talk on how to give a talk will be given in class on 10/10.