Team 3 Presentation

1. Team 3 Presentation Letting Go of the Words Chapter 2 Wiki Writing Chapter 4 Gere Hirsch, Shannon Jones, Spencer Shields, Max Sundermeyer

2. Building Learning communities with Wikis • Shannon Jones Presenting

3. Building Learning Communities with Wikis Article examines Wikis in the classroom. Article addresses the advancement and pitfalls of wikis. Article examines the use of technology in the classroom Article addresses the successful collaboration of students and faculty in creating a wiki based project.

4. Progress of a Successful Wiki in the Classroom: Step 1 • Create the Goals for the Wiki. What is the wiki going to accomplish? What are the contributors going to learn? • Develop the technology. What are the technology and software requirements? How do you use the tools necessary to create the wiki? • The instructor must make it clear what his/ her expectations are. • Develop what needs to be included in the wiki. What needs to be included and how is going to be organized? • Create the wiki webpage. Once framework is completed a static webpage must be completed.

5. Step 2 • Instructor must introduce the wiki. In other words, the instructor must teach the students how to become familiar with a wiki project to include content, organization, and technology. • Students and Faculty must become connected through collaboration in e-mails, Skype, Chat, or face to face if possible to facilitate the wiki project. • The wiki must serve a purpose to the instruction of the course. The wiki cannot be simply used to fill up time and effort of the students. • Again, Instructors must motivate and encourage students to participate in the classroom wiki project. • Finally, after following the process of step 1 and step 2 a knowledge base is created and the wiki becomes useful.

6. Step 3 • Students and Instructor must continue to foster and expand on the wiki. • The successfulness of the wiki must be evaluated to see if the wiki project was useful or detrimental to the learning outcomes of the class. • Feedback must be provided from the instructor to keep the students engaged in the wiki project. • Collaboration must continue between students and the instructor. • Lastly, the students need to know how the knowledge base from the wiki will be used in the future.

7. Putting it all together • Students must be actively engaged in the wiki project. • Students must understand the goals and outcomes of the wiki project. • Collaboration between students and the instructor is key. • Instructors must implement social presence in the classroom to create immediacy between themselves and students.

8. Building Learning Communities With Wikis • Spencer Shields Presenting

9. Using wiki technology • Deciding which wiki technology to use for a particular learning community can be difficult • The power of collaborative technologies depend on their users’ contributions • Gather information about your site visitors • If your assumptions are wrong, your content won’t work

10. Best case scenario • A wiki becomes part of a thriving and sustainable learning community • Learners must move from just adopting the practices to adapting the tools • These tools have to fit the company or organization that is going to use it • Quality feedback from peers as well as instructors encourages greater use of the wiki and a higher level of acceptance and credibility

11. Experience, expertise • You may have groups with vastly different experience and expertise within one type of site visitor • It’s critical to know about those differences • Decide how to meet the needs of all your site visitors • If this is for a learning community, active collaboration on specific projects and across the site fosters feedback oops that keep the community engaged • Evaluate the wiki’s usefulness over the long term • For example, the U.S. National Cancer Institute has two sets of information about every type of cancer: for patients, for health professionals

12. Letting Go of the Words • Chapter 2: Planning: Purposes, Personas, Conversations Content Strategy

13. Planning and Purpose • Max Sundermeyer Presenting

14. Planning, Purpose, Personas • The beginning portion of this chapter explains the planning phase of content strategy and its importance to writing effective web content. • It stresses the need to write with a purpose and explains ways to do so.

15. Plan…plan…plan • Effective content writers never just start writing. • Plan before you write content and while you are writing content. • Think of the conversation. How do you want it to go?

16. Ask Yourself: Why? • Know what you want to achieve with your site. • By stating specific goals for your site, you can begin to come up with a clear plan on how to achieve them. • Put your goals in terms of what you want your site visitors to do. • Know the purpose for everything that you write • Ask: What do I want to happen because I wrote this?

17. Get to Know Your Audience! • Before you begin writing content, think of the conversation that you want to have with your site visitors. • Once you determine your site visitors needs, then you can begin to decide what to write, how much to write and the vocabulary. • Never assume you share the same language as someone else. We may not know the same words or give them different meanings

18. How to Get to Know Your Audience • Think of your site goals – What do you want to help your visitors accomplish? • Establish feedback sections on your website – What are people saying in comments and reviews? • Follow blogs with content related to your site • Social media • People are very opinionated, and they like to share those opinions.

19. Key Themes • THINK before you write. Know your purpose and what effect you want your writing to have. • Get to know your audience! Whether it be from comments, reviews or social media get to know the audience that is coming to your site, and what brings them there.

20. Personas and Content Strategy • Gere Hirsch Presenting

21. Personas • "What Is a Persona? • A persona represents a cluster of users who exhibit similar behavioral patterns in their purchasing decisions, use of technology or products, customer service preferences, lifestyle choices, and the like. Behaviors, attitudes, and motivations are common to a "type" regardless of age, gender, education, and other typical demographics. In fact, personas vastly span demographics.

22. How Are Personas Built? • Conduct user research: How are they using the website? What information they are seeking? • Condense the research: Themes/characteristics relevant universal to the system and its users. • Brainstorm: Organize into persona groups. Name each group. • Refine: Combine and prioritize the rough personas. • Make them real: Develop the appropriate descriptions of each personas background, motivations, and expectations. Not a lot of personal information. • One site estimates the average persona costs $80K to $120K to develop

23. Writing personas • Elements of a Persona: • Made up names • Casual pictures representing that user group • Job titles and major responsibilities • Demographics: age, education, ethnicity, family status • Also include: Goals and tasks they are trying to complete using the site • Their environment: physical, social, technological • A quote that sums up what matters most to the persona as it relates to your site

24. What is Content Strategy • Content strategy is the “method of planning, development and management of informational content” (http://en.wikipedia.org) on an individual company or project basis. • Content strategy is applied to web sites, blogs, Twitter accounts, Facebook and any other means by which a company wishes to have informational contact with customers and/or the public. • In simplest terms, content strategy is project management for content.

25. Why is content strategy important?

26. Content strategy lifecycle:

27. What does that lifecycle mean? • Content strategy steps: • Audit – yes, it is painful, but necessary • Listen to your clients/stakeholders – what do they want? • Develop a Style Guide • Create a unified Design • SEO • Test it – usability, message, content • Plan for the future • Do it all over again!

28. Content Strategy Applied • Social Media class – Fall 2012 • Audited MSU, Mankato’s Technical Communication Internet presence • Surveyed and interviewed customers/stakeholders for feedback • Reviewed competitor’s offerings • Inventoried and tested options • Created a single purpose statement • Created a plan for the future • We hope it is an ongoing effort!

29. Who does content strategy? Content Strategist Sample Role and Responsibilities: • Collaborates with designers to develop media strategy for visual content • Crafts content aligned with strategic vision • Creates editorial calendars • Regularly attends client meetings to communicate content vision and processes • Develops and understands the brand voice of multiple clients

30. Qualifications: Content Strategist • Preferred Qualifications: • Strong copyediting skills and attention to detail • New media, leadership, and distribution skills • Implementing tracking strategies to lead recommendations • Creating content for various mediums offline, online, and within presentations • Ability to work cross-functionally; strategic and creative thinker; strong analytical capacity

31. Tying the 2 Chapters Together Whether writing for a website, a blog or a wiki, it is important to incorporate the following: • A defined goal • An overall plan and strategy • An understanding of the audience and participants • A willingness to continuously maintain and update content and design