Guidelines and Assessment Rubric
Because the work plan acts as a roadmap for the final project it's important to know what kinds of final projects are acceptable. To avoid confusion, however, note that there will be a separate rubric for the final project given out later in the semester. The final project is the culminating experience for this class, and will become the foundation for much of what you learn. Unless you can make a strong case about why you want to pursue something else, the final project should be educational in nature, although education is used here in the broadest sense of the term. For example, you can create a job aid that walks users through assembling a device or repairing a piece of machinery. Although they may not have learned the task, or be able to perform it again without the job aid, learners should be able to perform the task. You should be spending 5-15 hours in design related tasks (writing the work plan, story boarding, and writing the project documentation), you should be spending 40-60 hours in development related tasks (finding and creating media, programming, etc . . . ). These ranges are for individuals, if you work as a group you should be spending more time on these activities.
You can either fabricate your own project, or you can find a real one. You may also want to reverse engineer something that you have already seen, just keep in mind that if you want to show this as part of your portfolio you will need permission for any media and materials you use in it. If you are currently working you are free to "double up" and use something work related as your project. Finally, you may also want to take something you designed in another class (design I or design II) and take it to completion here. We will be devoting some class time to your projects as we come closer to the end of the semester. This will allow you to meet with your groups (if you have decided to team up), and ask me questions, and get help working through some of the problems you are sure to encounter. One final constraint as you think through what you want to take on, you need to meaningfully incorporate sound into your project.
As an initial step, you will be responsible for writing a work plan. The work plan is a contract between you (or your group) and your "client." The finished work plan will consist of the following parts:
Check the syllabus for due dates. Everything will be due before the stroke of midnight (23:59:59) on the date noted. More important than point values for each part are their corresponding percentage of your final grade (repeated above from the syllabus). The remaining 20% of your grade will be based on assignments. To give you more time to devote to your projects the assignments pretty much stop as we get closer to the end of the semester.
Deliverables: Ideally, these will consist of a single MS Word document (or RTF file if you have another word processing program). Go ahead and "build" on existing work (so your second submission should include the intro and goals as well as the additional sections, the third should include everything even though only the storyboards will be new). You can revise the introduction and goals based on feedback I give you but once your final submission is in do not revise your work plan (even if you decide to modify your project partway through). Any significant changes to your design can be noted in your project documentation.
File Naming convention: workPlan1YourName.doc (so if your name were Sam Walker you would name the file workPlan1SamWalker.doc). (use .rtf if you submit a rich text format file). The second and third versions would then be workPlan2SamWalker.doc and workPlan3SamWalker.doc.
Assessment Rubric
Your assignment will be assessed using the following rubric:
Criteria | Points |
Is your Work Plan clear, well written, and professional? | 30 points |
Does your Work Plan include all of the required elements noted above? | 70 points |
Total | 100 points |