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this page reports | data sets | scenarios | formats other pages ASCII
text | word processed
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Rather than structure the course around a textbook, I'm structuring the course around a project. The information retrieval, analysis, evaluation, and presentation skills needed for this project are used throughout organizations. They are transferable skills; you can take them from the marketing department, to production, to finance, to personnel and use the same skills and software.
You are working for New Media Ventures, LLP, a business research and analysis company whose slogan is "the right information to the right people at the right time, their way." New Media Ventures' clients come from the growing industries sparked by digital media, especially the Internet. New Media Ventures blends the power of human experts with the latest technologies to turn raw data into valuable, relevant, accurate, reliable and (most importantly) useful information. Using this information, New Media Ventures' clients, all businesses themselves, can make better decisions.
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To that end, New Media Ventures (NMV) is always exploring better ways to package and present this information. If its utility (its "usefulness") is most important, then how it looks makes a difference.
Your job is to help NMV's clients decide what looks good and is useful. Each of you will find a client with a need for NMV's services, but you don't have to actually find this client. You can make up a client and the client's needs as long as they are plausible.
By Thanksgiving, you will develop for your client a short, sample report in a variety of digital formats. If the client likes what you do, NMV will get that client's business, and you will continue to remain employed, which we assume is a good thing. NMV's management team expects to hear oral reports on your efforts in the first week of December.
Because "usefulness" is so important, New Media Ventures' analysts (you) need to present their work in whatever format clients want it. We have identified four for you to concentrate on:
simple
ASCII text for email and database-driven content
management systems such as discussion forums, blogs, and wikis
word
processed for printing (ink on paper)
web
pages for desktop, laptop, and mobile browsers
multimedia for
viewing on screens and to accompany oral presentations
All four of these need to accommodate images (still and moving), audio, tables, and a wide range of charts and other graphics.
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Your task | write, package and re-package a report with two goals in mind:
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What do pizza, spaghetti, and a
chesseburger have in common?
They all have the same basic ingredients: bread/pasta, meat, cheese, tomato sauce. Think of the ingredients as the content. Then the pizza, spaghetti, and the chesseburger are the packaging, the form in which the ingredients/nutrients are delivered to the eater.
That's what we're going to do in this course, package and re-package the same information in a variety of nutritious formats.
Below, you will find links to some real datasets from sports, business, and international affairs
from which you will pick one that
interests you. Or you may find one of your own.
Next, you will develop a plausible client who would use that data in his/her/their business to make decisions or solve problems. In this case, I strongly recommend that you use one of the rhetorical modes you practiced in ENG 110 and ENG 200: comparison and contrast. Your client needs to decide between two or three options. Some examples are in the box on the right. Feel free to come up with a similar idea, as long as it uses data that can be expressed as tables and charts.
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You will develop and which your report will provide.
Third, you will write a short report that answers one or two questions that your client needs the answers. For purposes of the course this report must have:
at least 1500 words of text: introduction,
body,
conclusion.
at least two levels of headings (main headings,
subheadings).
at least two tables and accompanying charts.
lots of images and other visual elements, at least one per screen
If you open Excel and go to the 
Insert tab, you'll see the panels of choices below. If you pull down "Other Charts", you'll see the other screen shot below. Your report needs to have quantitative data that can be displayed as a table and as one or more of these chart types.
It can be "real" or "made up" as long as it is plausible. I am very open to ideas that may appear a little strange or off-base. Run it past me.
At the Bistro, the course's discussion forum, register if you haven't already and then respond to my message by writing out your scenario. This is due by next Monday, September 8. Why so soon? Because the whole report text is due two weeks later, on September 25.
At the Bistro discussion forum For whom are you writing this report?, you are going to post a message about your client. You can make up anything you want here, as long as it is plausible and as long as I can see how it would fit the first three constraints above: length, complexity, data based. However, if you find the data, I'll make sure you end up with a report using it.
Let's look at some examples of plausible
clients for NMV, the clients' purposes, and the audience to whom
they'll be communicating the report you write for them.
a sports agent making a case to
ownership for a player's next contract
a sports writer revealing a
hidden or little known pattern for readers
a corportate executive
explaining to the board of directors where they could expand
overseas
a student explaining to his/her
advisor where he/she has chosen to do her study abroad semester
a musician trying to figure out
whether or not to release music for free online or go the traditional
route with a label
a politician deciding where to
stand on an issue
Answer these questions:
who is he/she? (job title or role)
what are he/she comparing?
for what purpose is he/she comparing them? (who must make what decision?)
according to what criteria is he/she comparing them? over what length of time? why that criteria/time?
There are two logical ways for you to organize the body of this report, by option or by criterion.
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You must finish the text of this report by September 25. You cannot proceed in the course without it.
You will package and re-package that text, adding audiovisual media where appropriate. The bulk of the course time and your energies will be spent in this part of the course.
Finally, you will make four oral reports to NMV's management. The first three will show us recently established social media site, online activities, and the companies that make and market them. Are any of them hiring new graduates like you? The final presentation will show us how you solved some of the problems you encountered making this variety of documents for your client.
I have tried to select data sets whose content will interest you. Most of them are recent, within the last two or three years. I have also selected many with international content, reflecting both our clients and your future.
sports
ESPN
Medaille sports
Retrosheet
Coolstandings.com
any
of the official
league sites: NBA,
MLB, NFL, NHL, etc.
business
Hoovers (if you go there via Medaille's library site or Medaille One, you have access to a lot of data that you would not otherwise)
US
Economic Census
international
Gapminder World
international
demographics
cultural
dimensions
Nationmaster
UNESCO statistics
Eurobarometer
Special Surveys
Eurostats
United States
National Bureau of Economic
Research
Pew Research Center
US Census
US Census' Population
and Household Economic Topics
You can also find data in already published reports and articles. The report may be supporting one idea, but you're going to use the data to support another idea. Be flexible and imaginative and run it past me if you aren't sure.
Up until now, you've done what all of NMV's competitors do. You have written a great report that exactly answers a client's questions. You're going to spend the rest of your effort doing what makes NMV stand out from the competition.
You are going to package your report in a variety of formats and media with an emphasis on attractiveness and accessibility. You want it to look good and you want it to be easy to use. Remember NMV's slogan:
"the right information to the right people at the right time, their way."
I'll run through one of my examples above, and you can relate it to your own client scenario.
a student explaining to his/her advisor where he/she has chosen to do her study abroad semester
Here's a specific scenario:
John is a 19-year-old sophomore at Medaille College. His parents and teachers are very supportive of his doing a semester abroad, the semester of his junior year, 2010. After much research and reflection, Jphn has decided to apply, through a SUNY school, to a program at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. His parents want to know how much it will cost and how he'll live. His teachers want to know what he'll learn and how it will fit into his academic program. And half his friends don't even know where the Netherlands is.
As an information designer at NMV, you have taken on John as a client. You are going to write a short report that shows him what you can do. After talking to him, you decide that the parents and teachers are already sold on the idea. John wants to explain to his friends and relatives why he chose the Netherlands. They think he's nuts to just drop everything for six months and go to live in a foreign country.
John and his friends and relatives will use that report's information in the following ways. Because the information is digital, it will be easy for John to use all or it or some of it, as he sees fit. John will:
email it to his
friend from high school
upload it to his Facebook pages
as well as his personal blog
print it
out to give to his grandmother, who doesn't use computers
attach the .pdf version to an
email to his uncle, who has a computer but still prints out everything
attached the audio version to an
email that his cousin will load onto his iPod to listen to while jogging
upload the video version to
YouTube and then send the URL to his friends
in a fit of ambitious
enthusiasm, start a wiki
with it that will chronicle his whole study abroad experience
use the slide show to
accompany his presentation to local Rotary Club chapter, whose parent
organization gave him a $3500 scholarship that he can use for travel
during his semester abroad
Personally, I would be very interested in favorably impressing those Rotary Club members. You can have an amazing week or two in Rome for $3500.
I could run through a specific scenario for the other examples above, but I think you get the idea. If you're having trouble with yours, I'd be happy to think through it with you.
Here are some professionally produced reports that we can analyze, that is, that we can break into parts to look at the differences between reports.
These reports of full of information. For your report, you can use raw data from these reports to answer your own client's questions. Or you can follow these reports' data sources to find other data that you can use.
The Progressive Majority: Why a Conservative America Is a Myth
Ten Thousand Commandments: An Annual Snapshot of the Federal Regulatory State
Kaiser Health Tracking Poll: Election 2008 (web)
Women and Health Care: A National Profile
The Impact Of Legalized Abortion On Crime
Digital Music in 2007: A Brave New World
Turn The Page: Making College Textbooks More Affordable
Shifting Mindsets: College Media Adjusts to New Challenges
Technology and Media Use: Online Video
The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis
A Typology of Information and Communication Technology Users
The new shape of online community: The example of Swedish independent music fandom (web)
RIAA v. The People: Four Years Later
Education, Culture and Science in the Netherlands
Use of Intelligent Systems in Vehicles
The Flexibility Of Working Time Arrangements For Women And Men
U.S. Lags World in Grasp of Genetics and Acceptance of Evolution (web)
Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity
OpenDoors Online: Report On International Educational Exchange (web)
Audit Report on the Compliance of Brooklyn Cyclones Baseball Company with Their Lease Agreement
The 2006 Racial and Gender Report Card of the Associated Press Sports Editors
The Contribution of the North American Cruise Industry to the U.S. Economy in 2006
One year later: A re-appraisal of the economics of the 2006 soccer World Cup
Social Science at 190 MPH on NASCAR's Biggest Superspeedways (web)
Open source athletes (web)
Are Runs Scored and Runs Allowed Independent?
How will these reports be evaluated?
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