These are the instructions for your individual essay (subject to revision for clarity). The original due
date was November 15, 2020, but you may have until November 29, 2020 to complete this
assignment if you would like.
You will write between 1500-2000 words for the main body of the essay. In addition, you will
provide a bibliography which must include at least three scholarly sources used in your analysis of
the sector, the organization and/or the program, product or service you’re analysing. The essay may
refer to and/or will include other sources of information, including your team’s one-page SWOT
summary, your Data Collection forms, your empathy maps, the signed waivers you collected from
your interviewees, as well as videos, news items or industry reports that you refer to in your essay.
You will also attach four appendices (see below).
Structure of the essay:
I recommend using the following structure for your descriptive or expository essay but you are free
to adapt this to fit your own approach. **Note: The ACM Librarian, Paulina Rousseau, will run a
workshop on November 10 to review how to find scholarly articles in the U of T library (online) and
also to review how to use APA or Chicago formatting guidelines. The workshop will take place and
be recorded on Zoom, with a link to the recording provided in the course quercus after November
10.
Part One of the essay:
• Introduction: summarize what you will do in the paper. Even though it comes first in the
essay, you will write this introduction last! (100-150 words)
• Write a brief description of the organization you are analysing (200 words) including two or
three highlights that are relevant to the product, program or service you’re analysing; use intext citations to identify the sources of your information, based on your group’s SWOT
analysis.
o As part of understanding how to analyse arts and media organizations (whether these
are for-profit, non-profit or hybrid), you have already conducted a SWOT in your
small group (using publicly available online material and academic or industry reports
available through the U of T library). You have identified the strengths and
weaknesses of one arts or media organization’s market(s), unique value proposition,
channels (distribution), general customer relationships, revenue streams, resources,
activities and cost-structures (cost-driven vs added-value-driven), in your small
group. You have also (or are about to) present(ed) these elements in your team’s
SWOT video. This information helps to provide the foundation for your essay and
can be drawn on to write the description of your organization. Don’t forget to cite
the sources in your essay that were used for the SWOT in your bibliography!
• Write a brief description and highlights of the product, service or program that you are
analysing for your essay, including why you are interested in it (about 100 words)
• Write a brief description of an imaginary scenario related to the product, service or program
that you are analyzing (about 150 words). Sample scenarios might look something like this:
o EX. 1: Your media company is launching a new series on Netflix that they hope will
attract an inter-generational audience. It is the story of many generations of one
family living under one roof in Scarborough, Ontario, and reflects the concerns,
misunderstandings and joys of grandparents who are immigrants; parents who work
too many hours as professionals; and children who are secondary and post-secondary
UTSC VPAA10 2020 Individual Essay Instructions
November 2, 2020 REVISED
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students. Friends, neighbours and relatives—not to mention world events—
complicate things for all the generations, whether they’re in Scarborough or on the
other side of the world. In your scenario, answer questions such as:
§ What would attract someone to watch this series?
§ What is the promotional strategy required to attract the attention of someone
who might be interested in the series?
§ Where will people watch this series?
§ In what ways will they use social media to discuss it?
o EX. 2: The Gates Foundation is researching whether and how the arts can help with
improving mental health during global pandemics such as COVID-19. So far, they
have conducted one preliminary study in the U.S.A., and are now interested in
conducting another study in Scarborough, Ontario, at UTSC. In your scenario,
answer questions such as:
§ What would attract someone to participate in this study?
§ What are the promotional and marketing strategies needed to convince people
in the neighbourhood (especially university students) to participate?
§ Where will the study take place (online? In person?)
§ In what ways will social media be used to promote the study?
• Find and summarize three scholarly references that examine something similar to the
products, services or programs that you’re interested in, or that looks at the kind of
organization that you’re studying, or that says something about the broader field of arts,
culture and media that you think will help you to better understand something about the
product or program or service you’re describing (about 250 words). You can use class
readings if you wish, except for the excerpts from Five Good Ideas; make sure they’re scholarly
references and not simply news items.
Part Two of the Essay: Data Collection & Analysis
• Gather some original research using the Data Collection Form provided. Point form notes
(handwritten or typed) are fine. You will gather this information by going through a journey
mapping exercise yourself (either in the live sessions on October 27 or November 3 or by
using the recording of the live session on November 3 as a reference). You will then conduct
a similar journey mapping exercise with three friends or family members using a separate
form for each participant. Before you do this, please use the draft email below and adapt it
for your own purposes so that you can email your three friends or family to ask them to
participate in the interview and journey mapping process. Please make sure to have them
sign the waiver below before or during the interviews. Once you have completed your four
interviews, save the four forms as a PDF to attach as an appendix to the essay. (Note: do
not report the names of the people you have spoken to; please mask their identities as
well as your own by calling them “Participant 1”; “Participant 2”, etc. This includes
you.) Save the four signed waivers as a PDF and include these as another appendix to the
essay; these signed waivers will identify who the participants were but will not identify what
they answered during your data collection interview. Notice that the information you are
gathering is NOT about your product, program or service. The information is much more
general than that.
• Analysis 1: Based on the information you gathered in your Data Collection Forms, you will
develop an empathy map for at least one participant (about 100 words per interviewee). See
the sample empathy map below. Empathy maps answer questions about what someone
UTSC VPAA10 2020 Individual Essay Instructions
November 2, 2020 REVISED
3
“thinks & feels; sees; says & does; hears” and what their “pain” points, “joy” points, and
general experiences and expectations are. To generate your empathy map, you can simply fill
in point-form answers right on your version of this empathy map for your participant(s).
From: Osterwalder, A. & Pigneur, Y. (2010). Business Model Generation. Hoboken: John Wiley
& Sons, p. 130.
• Analysis 2: In the body of the essay, summarize the information gathered on your Data
Collection Form for yourself and at least three others (about 500 words). I recommend using
the following questions to help you with undertake this analysis; these questions were
developed in consultation with the Laboratory for Artistic Intelligence:
• How many research participants did you do this exercise with? Please summarize
their demographic information by participant.
• In general, for you, how did the different responses compare?
• What similarities or patterns did you notice between the participant responses?
• Were there any differences between them? If yes, what were those differences?
• Do you have any other interesting observations to add?
• Analysis 3: Then, make the link between your analysis of the data collection you have done
in this Part of the essay and your description of the program, product or service that you
examined in Part 1 of the essay (100-200 words). To do this, imagine whether and why one
or more of the participants you surveyed might be interested in the product, service or
program you described in Part One of the essay. Don’t identify the person by name, just by
Participant number.
• Conclusion (about 100 words) including any new questions that arose during your analysis.
In addition to the content above (a total of about 1500-2000 words), you will add your:
• Bibliography
• Appendices:
o One-page SWOT summary from your group project, revised as needed for this
paper
o Revised recruitment email (as you used it to reach out to your friends and family)
o Up to four Data Collection Forms (one per participant), filled in by you and the
anonymized participants, assembled as one PDF attached to the paper
UTSC VPAA10 2020 Individual Essay Instructions
November 2, 2020 REVISED
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o Signed waivers from yourself and your three participants in the Data Collection
(journey-mapping) exercise, assembled as one PDF attached to the paper
Resources for data collection and essay writing:
Journey mapping exercises on October 27 & November 3, 2020
During the live sessions on Tuesday, October 27 and November 3, Helen Yung and Ali Pourmand
will pilot (October 27) and then conduct a demonstration (November 3) of the form we have
developed together, that you will use to collect information (including journey maps) from yourself
and three other people (friends or family over 18). The Data Collection Form is attached to these
instructions. The core question that they are investigating is to understand what kinds of cultural and
aesthetic activities people are involved in during COVID times. The Bb Collaborate sessions will be
recorded and uploaded to quercus as usual, so that all students can review the process.
All of us in the live session on November 3 will go through the mapping exercise in breakout groups
to respond to the questions on the form. That means that those who attend November 3 will already
have completed one of their forms.
How to write an essay:
For more information on how to write an essay, see the resources provided in the library and
through the Writing Centre (don’t forget that Paulina Rousseau will run a workshop on November
10 reviewing how to search for articles and how to use formatting guidelines in your essay):
https://guides.library.utoronto.ca/citing
https://utsc.utoronto.ca/twc/
For more options and resources about essay structures and citation guides, you can also look
through the resources found at Purdue Owl:
https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/resources.html
Draft recruitment email (please revise to suit your purposes and include the revision as an appendix):
As part of my VPAA10 course: Introduction to Arts and Media Management, I have been learning
how to analyse arts and media organizations (including for-profit, non-profit or hybrid). In my small
group of five people, I have conducted an analysis of __ [arts or media organization]
to identify its market(s), unique value proposition, distribution channels, revenue streams, resources,
activities and cost-structures. I now need to research specific customer relationships by developing
customer and client personas and mapping a few customer or client pain points, joy points, and
general audience experiences and expectations. I have gone through the questions involved in this
exercise myself, and would like to invite you to participate, as a friend or family member who shares
interests in arts and media. The information I collect will not be identified by your name or by our
relationship. I will then incorporate my final version of my results in my own individual essay about
the organization. All the information gathered will be kept in confidence and destroyed at the end of
the course (December 2020). I’d really appreciate it if you could spend 15-20 minutes with me to be
involved in a conversation for this project.
UTSC VPAA10 2020 Individual Essay Instructions
November 2, 2020 REVISED
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Waiver for participants to sign (revise and complete and sign one for each participant including yourself):
As part of my VPAA10 course: Introduction to Arts and Media Management, I have been learning how to
analyse arts and media organizations (including for-profit, non-profit or hybrid). In my small group of five
people, I have conducted an analysis of __ [arts or media organization] to identify its
market(s), unique value proposition, distribution channels, revenue streams, resources, activities and coststructures. I am now researching specific customer relationships by developing customer and client personas
and mapping a few customer or client pain points, joy points, and general audience experiences and
expectations.
I have gone through the questions involved in this exercise myself, and invite you to participate, as a friend or
family member who shares interests in arts and media. The information I collect will not be identified by your
name or by our relationship and will be used for course discussions and in my individual essay. If you give
your permission below, the summary of the information I collect and use in my essay may also be
anonymously aggregated with others in the class project and provided to Helen Yung of the Laboratory for
Artistic Intelligence (https://artisticintelligence.com/) as part of an examination of the cultural and aesthetic
needs of the general public in COVID times. If you have any concerns about the project or your rights as a
participant, please feel free to contact my course instructor, Dr. MaryElizabeth Luka
([email protected]), and/or the Research Oversight and Compliance Office – Human
Research Ethics Program at [email protected] or 416-946-3273.
It will take about 15-20 minutes to go through the journey-mapping questions with me. We will have a phone
or online conversation. I may record the conversation, only so that I can refer to it for accuracy afterwards.
All the information gathered will be kept in confidence and destroyed at the end of the course (December
2020). I will interview three people in total, and my classmates are also interviewing three people each. There
should be no foreseeable risks, harms or inconveniences to you. You may find that you discover something
valuable about your own likes and dislikes.
Your participation is voluntary; i.e. you can decline to participate, or withdraw at any time, or decline to
answer any question or participate in any part of the discussion, all without negative consequences. There is
no compensation for participation. Once you have answered the questions, I will anonymize and combine
your responses with my other results to develop a combined “persona” (a description of key demographics as
a customer or client) and compare these to that of my classmates, at which point, I won’t be able to separate
out your information from that of the others in the study. The University of Toronto research ethics office
may have confidential access to the data collected to help ensure participant protection procedures are
followed in this study.
Sample Solution
