Hello colleagues, Michael Glassman asked: "I wonder if people have thought about throwing out written materials and treating social media not only as the topic but as the means of the course?" I did something like that for a Masters level business course called "Leadership and New Media Communication." Before starting on the electronic communications, we first spent some time on general foundations of business/organizational communication-- and we used a text for those readings. Beyond that, some (electronic of course) articles for course readings to expose them to research/writings about the kinds of communications media they were experiencing. Throughout the term assignments asked them to look for, analyze, compare and share with peers exemplars of new/social media representing different genres of business communication. But at the heart of the course was an experiential project. Each person chose a (free) place to develop a course-long project. Since it was "new media" rather than "social media" the project options were defined broadly to include social networking sites, blogs, wikis, Second Life. They were given a series of "communication challenge" assignments, which they'd implement on their project site. The course was offered online in Blackboard, so we had as our home base the online discussion area. They'd post links to their projects, and go visit, comment on and critique their peers' projects. A big part of the discussion centered on what online communications approaches were effective for what kinds of tasks or business objectives. At the end of the term, they presented what they'd done and learned using Adobe Connect, with some peers there live to discuss it. The link to the presentation was also posted in the class discussion, and they were required to watch and give feedback to peers. They did submit a short paper describing the background reading etc. for the project, but nearly all of the work for this course walked the talk, with a very rich online practice, exchange and analysis. The course was fun and interesting for students-- as well as for their professor ;-) Janet *Janet Salmons Ph.D.* *Capella University School of Business and Vision2Lead, Inc. *Site- http://www.vision2lead.com Follow Twitter at #einterview Now available as Kindle e-books: Online Interviews in Real Time & Cases in Online Interview Research Boulder, CO 80306-0943 jsalmons@vision2lead.com