ASSIGNMENT: A Group Web Site

Assignment and Audience
Your major assignment for this unit is to research, write and design (as a group) a web site that provides strategies for working in groups. Your team has been assigned to provide basic information about group work strategies to an audience of management employees at a Midwestern group health insurance provider, Surety.

After an incident in which the breakdown of communication among departments led to a major financial loss because of a legal battle, your employer has designed a scheme that uses "communication teams" consisting of management employees from across departments who meet weekly to discuss and act upon a variety internal and external communication issues.

Though the teams are not popular with employees, they are a fact. However, the effectiveness of these teams is being endangered not only by their lack of popularity, but also because the employees participating in them have not read the 450 page book that Surety's lawyer suggested: Let's Talk and Other Ways Organizations Can Avoid Big, Ugly Lawsuits. Surety's CEO noted the hostility toward the book, and wants to help morale by compiling and condensing pertinent information about group work into an easy to read and use web site.

Your group's job, then, is to research the basics of group communication (feel free to use info from Team Developer, E-mail , etc. and provide a user friendly web site that the employees of Surety can use to foster growth of their sorely lacking group communication skills.

Purpose
This assignment will serve three purposes:

• it will help you become aware of how groups work—both through your research and your interactions.
• it provides practice locating and displaying information.
• it helps you develop web design and usability skills—one of the top job skills employers in many fields would like their employees to develop or have.

Planning and Drafting
You'll want to read the material on web development in the textbooks I've handed out and compile your research before you begin this assignment. In addition:

• you'll need to compile information about how groups work. The textbooks will have some information, but you'll need more. You'll need to find a way to cite sources, and you'll want to use recent sources.
• study examples of web sites. You may develop up to six linked pages.
• give yourself enough time to design the site and work with the computer. This project will take many hours and may need some input from a TLC employee or someone with strong computer skills.

Evaluation Criteria
Web site:

• incorporates useful information
• is designed to help the readers make their way through complex information as easily as possible
• is attractive and integrates the visual and verbal components effectively
• shows care for written language appropriate to the intended audience (sophisticated and free from errors)

Grading rubric for this assignment
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