SUNY at Buffalo College Administration Report

AUDIENCE & PURPOSE:

It seems that you are designating two different sets of readers and different purposes for each?

College Administration:  measures to take to reduce cyberbullying

Students:  how to recognize cyberbullying (?)

SCOPE:

How will the questionnaire help you?  Before you commit to writing, distributing, and tallying a questionnaire, make sure it really will help your report.  (For example, what if the students who respond don’t have much experiencw with cyberbullying?  None of that data you’ve collected will be useful to your report.)  Surveys/questionnaires take a lot of time and energy and often don’t end up helping you much with the report itself.  Sometimes it’s better to just use that time and energy to focus on other research sources.

If you do conduct a survey/questionnaire, remember that you cannot distribute it via email on our campus–you can actually get in trouble for doing that, so be careful!

What kind of secondary sources will you need?  Have you done any preliminary research to make sure that these sources are available?

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Proposal Memo
Student Name
University
Course
Professor
Date
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Proposal Memo
Introduction/Topic
The purpose of this proposal memo is to obtain approval for the formal report topic idea
for this course. The topic for the formal report regards the rising cases of cyberbullying within
the college community.
Brief Background
The problem of cyberbullying has significantly increased within the college in recent
years. While the college has been successful in alleviating cases of physical bullying within the
school, incidents of cyberbullying and online trolling have taken precedence. Perhaps, the cases
of cyberbullying have increased because of the significantly high levels of social media use
among college students. The anonymity of cyberbullies further compounds the problem, as
people can hide behind online pages to perpetrate bullying. My interest in this topic is based on
my personal experience of repeated bullying and online rolling for making comments on a
sensitive subject.
Purpose of Formal Report and Intended Audience
The purpose of the formal report is to create awareness about the problem of
cyberbullying within our college. Indeed, the report appreciates the fact that people consider
bullying to only be rampant in lower classes and grades. However, the adoption of social media
by college students has increased their potential to be victims of cyberbullying. Still, the report is
targeted at the college administration as a guide to providing countermeasures to curb cases of
cyberbullying. The school community of students is also a target audience for the formal report
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and is appropriate because it provides information and awareness on the problem. Consequently,
students will learn of different ways through which cyberbullying of perpetrated in online
communities.
Scope of the Report
The report will be limited to instances of cyberbullying occurring within the school
community. In particular, I will not include cases of cyberbullying targeting students by external
actors. Only cases of cyberbullying perpetrated by members of the school community will be
reported in the formal report. Consequently, the research for this report will only be limited to
social media platforms that are popular among students, as well as school chat rooms and social
media pages. Similarly, the formal report will exclude information regarding the cost
implications of implementing the proposed changes and solutions. Even though this report will
recommend specific changes to improve the safety of online interactions within the school, I will
only be focusing on the safety of a few social media platforms and not general online
communities.
Research Plans
As part of the research process, I will use Google scholar to find credible sources of
information on the rates of cyberbullying in colleges. Similarly, I will develop a questionnaire to
be shared with students selected at random to collect information on cases of cyberbullying. The
selection of participants will be random and based on voluntary participation. The questionnaires
will include questions on the students’ experiences regarding the safety of online interactions and
their views on cyberbullying.
Project Timetable
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Week 1: identify the topic; research statistics on the topic.
Week 2: consider feedback on topic selection; make improvements based on comments.
Week 3: Research secondary sources from Google Scholar; Draw patterns and themes from the
research; Develop questionnaire instrument
Week 4: Send out questionnaires; Begin writing introduction sections of the report.
Week 5: Submit the first draft of the report.
Week 6: incorporate feedback into the draft; finish the final sections of the report.
Week 7: Submit the final draft of the formal report