Critical Thinking Project General Guidelines

Grading Rubric CT3 (wiki help)

Critical Thinking Project Part 3: Networked Organizations

For this part of the project, you will be concentrating on “networked individualism” and the “triple revolution” in American organizations. You will focus on an organization associated with either education or industry and business (work). Choose one OR the other, and then address the ways in which networked individualism and the triple revolution—internet, social networking, and mobile revolutions—are impacting the structure of that organization.

• Go to the page you created in the class wiki for your CT3 project (you will find a link to the wiki on our MyGateway class site navigation menu and in the "Assignments" area, or use this link to access the wiki outside of MyGateway--if you are not logged into MyGateway, you'll be prompted to log on).
• Address the ways in which “networked individualism” and the “triple revolution” are impacting the structure of an education or work organization. (500 words minimum)
• If you choose education as your focus, then describe how networked individualism and the triple revolution are impacting the structure of one area of American education. For example, you might focus on tertiary education—universities.
• If you choose work as your focus, then describe how networked individualism and the triple revolution are impacting the structure of one area of American industry and business. For example, you might focus on the healthcare industry.
• Also in your analysis, and depending on the organization that you chose, describe how recent (in the last decade) advances in information and communications technologies (ICTs) are changing the traditional American student OR worker. (125 words minimum)
• Based on your overall analysis, do you see these changes as beneficial or harmful to American society? Why or Why not? Consider the long-term effects. We want to see critical thinking. (125 words minimum)

Additionally, you are expected to integrate the following:

• At least 3 images throughout your page.
• At least 3 “external” hyperlinks (i.e., links to sites on the World Wide Web) into your text. Do NOT simply copy URL addresses (e.g., https://www.youtube.com/) and paste them onto your page. These will not count toward the minimum requirement. Use the wiki features provided in the user interface to create your external hyperlinks.
• For the remaining parts of the project, your images and external hyperlinks should reflect the substantive matter of your exposition. They should be relevant to the assigned topic, and not simply “add-ons” aimed at filling space.
• Scholarly resources. Integrate and annotate (i.e., interpret for the reader) information from 3 scholarly resources. These can be either peer-reviewed journal articles or chapters from scholarly books. If you quote verbatim from your resources, you MUST use quotation marks! Paraphrasing is also an excellent way of demonstrating your understanding of the material and ability to distill information. Whether you quote directly or paraphrase, you MUST include citations in your text and a reference list at the bottom of your wiki page! Otherwise, your work may be mistaken for PLAGIARISM! You should also draw from the assigned textbook that we use for this class, but that text does not count toward the scholarly resources requirement.
• In this class, you will be using the American Sociological Association (ASA) style to cite and create your reference lists. Here are some Quick Tips for ASA Style http://www.asanet.org/documents/teaching/pdfs/Quick_Tips_for_ASA_Style.pdf
• Appropriate spelling and grammar are crucial elements. This is a university-level course, and I expect your work to be free of mechanical errors. Check your spelling and proofread ALL of your work to insure grammatical correctness and ease of reading!

Finally, you need to review the work of at least four other students and post comments (minimum 125 word--constructive critique) on their wiki pages (you'll find a place to add comments near the bottom of every wiki page). Your Comments are due by Saturday, April 4 by 11:59 PM. You must email Prof. Keel with the names of the students on whose work you commented and include the text of the comments in the email (no attachments). If email notification is not made, comments may not be evaluated.

For help working on a wiki page, see Prof. Keel's video tutorials on "Working in a Wiki, "making links," and "inserting images" in the Wiki Help folder of the class MyGateway site (Critical Thinking Projects). See also: Wiki Help and Tips and the "Wiki User's Guide." Be sure to review the changes made to the wikis since I last updated these tutorials.

Outside Sources: Peer-reviewed sociology journals (other peer-reviewed social science/humanities journals may be acceptable--ask if you are uncertain), original work by the theorists--not included in the class reading assignments, and other primary source documents, articles and books. Other textbooks--especially introductory texts, encyclopedias of any sort, Wikipedia, online dictionaries, sites like "answers.com," blogs, etc. can be used but will not be accepted as "outside sources" and should not form the basis for your essay. And, don't use "outside sources" that simply repeat information we have in the text, lecture notes, and develop in class discussion--the point here is to go beyond these basics. Before using information found on external web sites, please review the guidelines found at: http://www.library.cornell.edu/olinuris/ref/research/webcrit.html to insure the information is reliable.  Better yet, try looking for research and information from the libraries database system (http://www.umsl.edu/services/library/databases/databases.html), it's a wealth of academic research at your fingertips.

Unless otherwise noted, all pages within the web site http://www.umsl.edu/~keelr/ ©2015 by Robert O. Keel.
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