Students were assigned an e-book as their final project in the pilot, which also allowed them to earn the Global Media Project Buckeye Badge. One of the aspects of the final project which made it really unique is that the students had the opportunity to become published authors. We actually published this as an official OSU textbook, so we needed to meet all the normal expectations for academic quality. Here are the criteria they needed to meet, which obviously went above and beyond the grades they earned.
Criteria for publication:
- Originality – produce original thought on the topic of your chapter/s.
- Argumentation – text should be well-argued, and any statements of fact cited.
- Diversity of sources – base your research on diverse academic sources, at least three.
- Inclusion of authentic voices – get feedback from your peers in Turkey on what you are writing.
- Relevance of images – images should be relevant. Choose images which enhance and bolster what you are saying in the text.
What will automatically disqualify your chapter:
- Plagiarism – if we discover plagiarism that somehow went undetected through out the semester’s reviews, the work will automatically be disqualified.
- Copyright violation – images without proper attribution (TASL) will be disqualified.
- Lack of description or proper attribution in image captions and/or breakout boxes.
Rubric of evaluation for the e-book as a whole:
- Was it fact-checked?
- Do images add value to the text?
- Does the text reproduce imperialist images, or challenge stereotypical thinking about Turkey?
- Did you account for your Turkish peers’ perspectives on each major topic?
- Did the team maintain the production timeline, meet deadlines?
e-book cover (prior version), image by Melisa Akbulut