Group paper, individual reports, final presentation

This is a general description of the assignment, irrespective of what project you might choose to engage.

• Your group will submit a final paper based on the goals you have set (and to which I have approved), whether for Haven from Hunger, elder fraud education, or migrants and the welfare system in Union County.
• Each group member will be responsible for at least one section of the paper, which will be well-defined in advance to help me evaluate students’ work and contributions to the project.
• Tasks that can be divided among group member include:
• • Research
  • Action
  • Writing, editing (I would consider proposals to integrate visual media, such as images and videos)
  • Public interface
  • Presentation of group findings/project
  • The key to dividing labor—and I will evaluate this as part of the grade—is that the group divides it up evenly and equitably. Meaning group members might be working on multiple parts of the project.

Each project needs at least one component that involves interacting with community members. These could be simply members of the community (e.g., imagine knocking on doors in selected neighborhoods as part of a food/hygiene drive), populations being served (elders or local immigrants/migrants), social workers or other social welfare practitioners, local public/government officials, etc.

Research component. Your group is gathering information and learning what is out there (and keeping track of all sources as you go, including people and their affiliations).

• e.g., what food supports currently exist at EOU, in the community, etc. How is household food insecurity measured, what data exist to help assess and compare local conditions with the state or country (for instance, food bank data, DHS data on SNAP usage)?
• what agencies or entities work with the elderly (and what are the demographics?), and would be interested in combating elder fraud and know what has already been implemented (think of welfare agencies, community action groups, residential homes, etc.). What about family and friends and various clubs or organizations in town that might be interested and wanting to participate (think of veterans’ groups, or organizations like the Eagles, Oddfellows, as well as religious groups—religious attendees tend to be older, for instance). There is a wealth of information available online—don’t get lost. There are plenty of advocacy groups (e.g., AARP) that are presumably working on this, as well as law enforcement groups, locally, at the state level, and nationally (think Department of Justice, for instance).
• what the population and demographics of local migrants and immigrants looks like (this could involve research into Census data, or even in the case of some Pacific Islander groups seeking information and guidance from local places of worship)? From where do they come? How long have they lived in the US or Union County? What are their sources of support beyond the formal welfare system (that is, what social capital do they value and use)?
• Your group could propose as part of this a brief survey to collect information, but it would have to be brief and we would have to run it through the Institutional Review Board (a formality when it’s tied to a course, but there are other issues that affect whether people will respond and in what medium).

Action component. What is your group, based on the research you’ve done, proposing to do?

• A food / hygiene drive? Public awareness campaign (via what media)? Developing social capital within the community (e.g., working with high school students)?
• Some sort of set of information, user-friendly, to help elders and agencies that advocate for them to reduce the incidence of fraud (there are lots of sources of information about fraud, but way less about what kinds of informational materials or even presentations might be most effective)?
• Awareness campaigns to advocate for COFA migrants and other immigrants (think about languages here …) who may be hesitant to use the welfare system if they believe it threatens their residency status (a very real threat under the Trump Administration—look up ‘public charge’).
• Lots of possibilities here. Choose something that you can reasonably complete over the course of the term, though, and that should help your group narrow.

Lessons learned

• What did your group learn (about the subject matter, working as a group, the community, etc.)?
• What might you do differently given what you learned?
• What would you recommend for students who would like to continue working on any of these projects?

Presentation—of a final paper (with sections written by individual group members) and a brief presentation during finals period.

• Summarize what your group set out to do
• Describe how labor was divided between the group members
• Points will accrue as a group here, and be based on how well your presentation conveys what your group did, what it accomplished,

Each student should turn in a report of their participation and contributions to the project. This should look very much like what is included in the description of division of labor in the overall group project.  

We will use Wednesdays in class (starting week 3) to work on these projects. There will be resources in Google Drive, so you can bring a laptop or use your phones to access those in class.

130 pts possible for the term projects—100 for the papers—which should be between 10-15 pages in length—and 30 points for presenting your findings during the finals block (Wednesday, December 16 from 8 – 10 am). I also want each student to submit, along with the description for the group paper, your own account of your work on the project. It would be similar to what is in the group paper, but not in the same form (for instance, data may be in a different section than the description of how labor was divided). It may include more detail that needed when all of the individual sections are combined with the other parts of the paper. This means that grades on the project can vary from group member to group member, so it’s in your interests to make sure your work is clearly visible in the paper submitted by the group, and in your individual write-ups. The 30 points for presentation will be evaluated based on how well it reflects the work you’ve done in the group paper, and how effectively you communicate it.

Descriptions of the projects will be posted on the website.