For your final project in this course, you will create a presentation accompanying a memo to explain how contemporary persuasion research could be used to
persuade an audience to change their behavior.
The project is divided into twomilestones, which will be submitted at various points throughout the course to scaffold learning and ensure quality final
submissions. These milestones will be submitted in Modules Two and Four. The final submission will occur in Module Seven.
Outcomes
This assessment will assess your mastery with respect to the following course outcomes:
Evaluate social influence and persuasion attempts for their adherence to theoretical principles•
Analyze the impact of social influence and persuasion attempts on behavior of self and others•
Utilize princ•iples of persuasion and social influence to design persuasive attempts
Assess the ethical implications of persuasive and social influence strategies•
Compare and contrast the impact of audience, source, and message on success of social influence and persuasion•
Prompt
Your project should answer the following prompt: Imagine that you were hired as a persuasion consultant by the director of an organization that needsto
convince an audience to change their behavior. What evidence-based approach would you recommend?
Specifically, the following critical elementsmust be addressed:
1. Select an organization and identify the desired behavioral change and who it is desired from.
o For example, a charitable organization that wants to increase donations, a social movement that wants to change voting behavior, oran organization
that wants to change the behavior of its members or employees. Do not limit yourself to these examples—be creative!
2. Use a presentation to “sell” your design.
a) Propose several persuasion techniquesthat will produce the desired behavior.
b) Clearly explain how proposed tactics will work, what techniques you are applying, and why you think they will work.
c) Identify what behavioral change you predict will occur.
d) Clearly explain why the proposed tactics will work. Delineate what source, message, and audience effects you anticipate and how the strategy will
address them.
e) Explain ethical concerns with your approach and propose ways to address them.
f) Use persuasive communication to ensure that the project provides a compelling discussion of the design that communicates its effectiveness to the
reader.
g) Utilize presentation software: Presentation is clear and well composed. Students may use the presentation program of their choice (e.g.,
PowerPoint, Prezi), but the final product must be submitted in either PPT or PDF format.
3. Write a 2–3-page memo to accompany your presentation.
a) Documentation of the literature (course materials and peer-reviewed journal articles) that you drew on to formulate your approach
b) Analysis of components of persuasion:Reiterate plan to persuade others to change their behavior.
c) Analysis of proposed approach: Explain why your plan will produce the desired behavioral change.
d) Inclusion of articles used to design approach: Provide an annotated bibliography with MORE THAN FOUR article citations and abstracts.
e) Articulation of response: Submission is free of errors related to citations, grammar, spelling, syntax, and organization