Saturday, August 27, 2005

Blogging As Organizational Communication

Given the proliferation of blogging activity at work, for work, and about work, the purpose of this blog is to explore blogging as a form of organizational communication. Students in an Advanced Organizational Communication (CMNU531) course in the Department of Communication Studies at Northeastern University will be asked to participate in a series of assignments to better understand this phenomenon.

First, they will post their own blog entries on this blog to gain first-hand experience. Students must create at least three unique posts and must have at least 10 comments to other people’s posts. The content of the posts will be about their experience in the course, and commentary on the readings and concepts. All blogging activity will need to conform to the Course Blogging Guidelines.

Second, they will write a Blog Analysis Report. This assignment requires them to analyze a corporate blog, develop an interview protocol, interview the blog’s author, and write a 2,000 word essay sharing their findings. The primary audience for this report will be an academic audience.

Third, they will write an Applied Research Report (also 2,000 words). For this assignment, students will be positioned as external consultants who have been retained by an organization to conduct a “state-of-the-art” literature review and determine best practices about corporate blogging. A goal of this project will be to consult academic and trade publications, as well as organizational practitioners, and translate the findings, insights, and arguments into actionable steps for the organization. Thus, the primary audience for the report is an organizational practitioner.

To the world outside our class we invite comments on the students' blog entries and our class experiment. Student posts should begin to appear in the third week of classes (late September).