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COMM 122 Group Assignment Instructions

Summer, 2024, Chengyu Fang 1

Group Project Instructions (40% of the total grade)

Assignment Overview Theories and research in organizational communication help us gain an understanding of organizational

communication processes in various contexts. Lectures in this class are designed to introduce you to a wide

variety of theoretical approaches that have shaped our views of organizational communication as well as current

issues in organizations. While I will try my best to make these lectures as relevant to you as possible, another

excellent way to apply classroom learning to the real world is through your own experience, or through stories

of others, especially professionals who work in areas of your interest. Given that it is challenging to gain direct

professional experience within this quarter, you will instead be engaged with professionals and be encouraged

to make meaningful connections between their experience and theories/concepts discussed in this course.

The objectives of this assignment are twofold. First, I want you to connect with professionals who work in an

area that your group is interested in, and to learn about their day-to-day work. Their stories and own

descriptions of the job will give you a much richer picture of their real work than their job title, written job

descriptions in job ads, or their LinkedIn profiles. Second, I want you to learn about their thoughts and

experiences related to one of the current concerns/issues of organizational communication as they get

manifested and addressed in their organization. By doing so, I hope you will get to learn what various

organizational issues actually look like in a real organizational context, how members and leaders of the

organization communicate them, what policies, rules, or norms are in place to address them, and so on. This

practice will hopefully help you get a glimpse of the culture at the organization or industry that you are

interested in joining in the future.

List of Topics and Issues Below is the list of current topics/issues of organizational communication (along with samples questions you

may ask your interviewees and references) that you can choose from. If your group wants to explore other

topics/issues, you should talk to me and get my approval before moving forward.

Topics & Issues Sample Questions Textbook References

Hiring, newcomer onboarding and socialization

How does your organization hire new employees? How are new employees socialized?

Miller Chapter 7

Organizational/team decision making

What is the decision-making process in your organization or your team? What is a typical meeting like?

Miller Chapter 8

Conflict management What kinds of conflicts do you experience or observe in your organization? How do managers/employees in your organization handle conflicts?

Miller Chapter 9

Leadership What are the styles of typical leaders in your organization? How do they communicate with employees?

Miller Chapter 10 (also in Ch 3 & 7)

COMM 122 Group Assignment Instructions

Summer, 2024, Chengyu Fang 2

Emotion in the workplace How does your organization value employees' emotions in the workplace? Encouraged to express or discouraged?

Miller Chapter 11

Diversity and inclusion What policies are implemented in your organization to promote diversity and inclusion? What are the actual diversity and climate like?

Miller Chapter 12

Technology use in the workplace

To what degree does your organization rely on technology? What features/technologies do employees use? What features/technologies (that were recommended) do employees not use and why?

Miller Chapter 13

Flexible work, virtual collaboration

Does your organization support flexible work and virtual collaboration? Why or why not? What are some pros and cons of flexible work and virtual collaboration in the case of your organization?

Miller Chapter 14

Future of work (e.g., the impact of AI)

Do leaders and employees in your organization discuss the issues relating to the future of work? How do you think your job or tasks will be impacted by AI?

Not covered in Miller

Corporate social responsibility

What does your organization do to address corporate social responsibility? Do the organization’s decisions and actual practices reflect this value?

Not covered in Miller

Assignment Details 1. Step One: Form a Project Group (up to 5 people in each group, finalize your group by Sunday 6/30)

In the first week of class, you should use the opportunities you can find to get to know your classmates and start

thinking about your project group. Groups should be finalized by Sunday of the first week. You don’t have to

decide specific topics yet at this step. Different groups can explore the same topic as long as the

professions/industries you pick are distinctive.

2. Step Two: Pick a Topic/Issue & a Profession/Industry

As a group, pick ONE topic/issue from the list above and ONE job or industry area in which all of you are

interested. You may choose to either select a specific job (e.g., marketing director, event planner, teacher, film

producer, etc.) or a particular industry area (e.g., marketing, PR, sales, healthcare, tech, HR, etc.).

3. Step Three: Develop a Project Proposal and Interview Plan

[Milestone #1: Project Proposal and Interview Plan – due by Sunday 7/7 @ 11:59PM = 2% of the total grade]

*NOTE: You should submit your project proposal and interview plan together as one document.

Project Proposal

Your next task is to develop a brief project proposal. Your proposal should be about 1 page, with clear

identification of the topic/issue that your group is interested in, the profession and job/industry, why this

topic/issue is important in your chosen context, the questions you have, and how the interviews could help

answering your questions.

COMM 122 Group Assignment Instructions

Summer, 2024, Chengyu Fang 3

Interview Plan

Your interview plan should consist of two parts.

Part I: The first part should reflect the following components: 1) Brief profile of your interviewees (pseudonyms1

of your participants, job titles, basic responsibilities, etc.), 2) Brief profiles of the organizations that your

participants work for (names, industries, a few words as descriptions, etc.), and 3) tentative interview schedule

(e.g., who will conduct the interviews, when, how long, how will you conduct the interviews, will you record the

interviews, etc.). You could use a table or other tools to help you organize all these information.

Part II: The second part should include a relatively detailed interview script [see the examples on Canvas]

including greetings, intro, getting consent about audio-recording the interview (if you are recording), main

interview questions (both Part I and Part II), plans for probing questions [follow-up questions that can help you

to gain greater insights into what your interviewee might say], wrap-up, and thank you, etc.

Each interview script should include of two core segments of questions:

a. Part I: Questions regarding the participant’s day-to-day work

b. Part II: Questions regarding the participant’s opinions on Issues of Organizational

Communication (the questions you ask should go above and beyond the sample questions I

provided in the list)

4. Step Four: Recruit Participations

Recruit at least FIVE professionals who currently have the chosen job or work in the chosen industry for

interviews. You could utilize your personal networks or resources available in the Department of

Communication2 or UCSB broadly. To cover theoretical breadth, I’d encourage you to find participants across

different career stages (senior employees vs. junior employees), work arrangements (remote vs. co-located),

location (different states or even countries), demographics, etc. You should feel free to conduct your interview

in a different language but everything you share with your group members and me needs to be translated back

to English. You may interview more than three if you would like to, but no more than eight. Quality is more

important than quantity.

5. Step Five: Conduct Interviews

Once you have recruited a few participants, you can now proceed to conduct the interviews. You can still

continue to recruit participants at this stage if your group still has less than three interviewees. You can ask your

interviewees to connect you with other potential participants (snowball sampling). Even if you are recording the

interviews, I still highly recommend you organize your notes as soon as you finish each interview. Interview

information can fade away quickly and a vivid memory can help you retrieve the necessary content.

6. Step Six: Start an Outline of Your Final Paper

Milestone #2: Outline – due by Sunday 7/14 @ 11:59PM = 3% of the total grade

Outlining is an important part of academic writing. A good outline should describe the core arguments you are

hoping to make and critical support evidence you will be using. You can start working on your outline once your

group has done a few interviews. Step 10 provides more details on what you should include in the final paper.

1 These are fictitious names you give your participants to ensure anonymity 2 To find potential interviewees, you may consider checking out the list of members of the Communication Alumni Council and searching alumni from the UCSB Department of Communication LinkedIn group.

COMM 122 Group Assignment Instructions

Summer, 2024, Chengyu Fang 4

You could use that information to generate an outline of what your group plan to write. There are no formatting

or length requirements for your group outline. However, I’d encourage you to provide as much detail as you can

regarding the overall structure of this paper.

7. Step Seven: Write a Draft

Milestone #3: Draft – due by Sunday 7/21 @ 11:59PM = 5% of the total grade

After turning in your outline, the next important task your group should be working on is to develop the initial

outline into a draft. Although the draft doesn’t have to be complete or perfect, you should put in as much effect

as your group can. This shows your minimum respect for your classmates who might be reviewing your paper. In

sections where it might be incomplete, add brief notes about what you are planning to write. Your draft should

be at least 3-5 pages long, so it reflects substantial development on your paper.

8. Step Eight: Engage in Peer Reviews

Milestone #4 Peer Review – due by 7/28 @ 11:59PM = 5% of the total grade

Peer review when used well could be a valuable step at improving the quality of your writing assignments.

Through providing and receiving feedback, you are not only learning how to become a more effective writer but

also fostering a sense of community. While you want to be respectful to your classmates, you would also want

to be critical in constructive ways. In general, the content of a peer review can often consist of three parts.

Part I: Describe the overall content of the paper which you are reviewing. In other words, you should try to

summarize what is in the draft that you are reviewing.

Part II: Evaluate the overall quality of the paper, which includes both strengths and weaknesses. You could use

the grading criteria for final paper as a base to evaluate the paper you are reading. Specifically, your review

should attempt to address whether this draft does what it needs to do.

Part III: Suggest improvements in conjunction with weaknesses that you have identified. You should offer 3 to 5

specific suggestions on how this draft could be further improved.

*NOTE: the peer review will be done in groups. I will assign the drafts you submitted to different groups based

on the relevance of topics and professions/industries. Peer review arrangement will be announced on the night

your paper drafts are due. However, each of your group members should first read and review the paper

individually. Then, your group should consolidate your individual comments and upload 1-2 pages of feedback

to Canvas. After the deadline, I will send each group the peer review feedback you received.

9. Step Nine: Develop a presentation

Milestone #5: Presentation – due by 7/29 @ 11:59 PM = 10% of the total grade

While you are incorporating the peer review comments and finalizing your paper, it’s also important to think

about how you want to share your findings with your audience. You should develop a 10-minute presentation

and we will save some time for questions in class.

10. Step Ten: Finalize the Paper

Milestone #6: Final Paper – due by 8/4 @ 11:59PM = 15% of the total grade

Overall, while your final paper can be in any structure, it must include the following components:

A. [~0.5 page] Introduction (rationales, key findings, thesis statement)

B. [1-2 pages] Interview Description

a. Description of the job or area your team chose to explore

COMM 122 Group Assignment Instructions

Summer, 2024, Chengyu Fang 5

b. Description of the interviewees (use pseudonyms) and their organizations

c. Description of the interview methods and processes

C. [2-3 pages] Interview Results (based on the interviews)

a. Summary of Part I answers (e.g., important similarities and differences in their day-to-day work

among your participants)

b. Summary of Part II answers (e.g., salient trends/patterns you see among the participants)

D. [3-4 pages] Discussion: Connection (or disconnection) between the Part II answers and the broader

literature

a. (a) whether interviewees’ experiences map onto any of the concepts, theories, models

discussed in the previous literature

b. (b) whether any of their experiences contradict (or offer a different view of) what has been

known in the previous literature

Grading Criteria for the Final Paper • Does the paper offer a clear description of the interviewees and their organizations?

• Does the paper present an in-depth analysis of interviews?

• Does the paper make a good connection between interview findings and the relevant literature (both

from the textbook AND from outside sources such as other journal articles)?

• Are the sources appropriately cited and integrated?

• Do all citations follow the APA style?

• Is the paper easy to follow and coherent? Are there any grammatical errors?

Format & Style Requirements 1. This paper must

a. be typed, double-spaced, with 12-point font and 1-inch margins

b. be 6 to 8 pages long excluding title page, reference page, appendix, charts, graphs, or images (if

applicable)

c. follow the APA style (7th edition). You may find the APA style resources here:

https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa_style/apa_formatting_and_style_guide

/general_format.html

i. Sources, even if they are from the textbook, should be appropriately cited in APA format

(both in-text and on the reference page).

Submissions For the Group Project Milestones, only ONE person needs to upload relevant documents on Canvas on behalf of

your group. Late work will result in grade deduction: one grade down per day late (e.g., one day late = B

becomes B-).

The final papers produced by groups in this course, highlighting vibrant depictions of various jobs and

organizations, will be helpful resources for everyone in the class who is exploring the future career space for

communication majors. After submission, all groups' final paper assignments will be shared with the class after

being anonymized (will be posted on a shared folder on Canvas).