You will be making an agreement with the Center for Service and Leadership and with your professor to perform the necessary course work and community service to qualify for your one credit of  experiential learning, a required part of this course. One credit of experiential learning requires 45 contact hours of work. You will sign a "Service-Learning Partners Agreement" and submit a copy to your professor. You will also submit a proposal, after review by your class members and your professor, to the organization for which you will be creating the Web site. You will evaluate your performance and your group member's, and write a reflective essay on your experience.

Objectives of experiential learning project:

• gain workplace experience and extend the learning experience beyond the classroom walls 
• engage in responsible citizenship by providing a service to a non-profit organization 
• enhance critical thinking and evaluation skills 
• acquire new and build upon current technology skills 
• build upon research and analytical skills 
• work with design principles 
• build upon communication and group work skills 

You will be required to do research, gather and evaluate material for the Web site. Research should include interviews with organization members, a review of organization materials, analysis of audience and purpose, appropriate location, analysis of copyright and permission to post graphics, investigation of privacy issues, and location of the Web page. You may get help from the STAR (Student Technology Assistance and Resources) in the Johnson Center, Rm 311.

Keep a log:  Record all of your work, time spent, what you did (meetings, planning, editing, writing, publishing, travel, how this work complements your course work and vice versa, what you learnied, what you might have done differently.  This will help you write your reports. 

Write your Proposal.  After you set up preliminary expectations - both yours and theirs, do some brainstorming, develop your strategy and formulate your proposal.  Your proposal should be presented to me and the organization early in the semester.

Your proposal should have appropriate headings, for example,  the recipient/s of the proposal and position/s with the organization; title of proposal; suggested elements in Web site - purpose, kinds of graphics, design, contents, time frame for completion. Include other pertinent information. Provide as much information as you can, in a concise, edited format, to help the organization decide whether or not to accept your proposal.

Before you write the proposal, you need to meet with representatives of the organization. Explain why you are suggesting the Web site for their group or ask them what changes and additions they envision for an existing site. Ask them what they would like to see on the Web site. Find out if they already have Web space. If not, explain that the Web site will reside on your Mason Web page for a period of time, but that, if they agree to use it, they will have to put the Web site on their own Web space with an independent provider of Internet services.

The proposal must be presented to appropriate representatives of the organization for approval. The group will discuss and design appropriate proposal formats, to be approved by the professor. The group will then design and create a sample Web page to present to the organization for implementation.

Report: After the project is over,  you will write a report, reflecting on what you learned and what you might have done differently. You will also write a report for the Center for Service and Leadership. (see form in the Service Learning Handbook.) 

Whether or not they agree to actually use the Web page will not affect your grade, as long as the Web page fulfills the criteria for the assignment. Develop a workable plan.  Set realistic expectations of your skills, possible design  elements  and the amount of and kind of content.