IDIS 110: Major Project
100 points

The major project for IDIS 110 is an opportunity for you to apply what you've learned about research and IT to an interesting question. You will identify an interesting topic, research the topic and develop a multi-page website that presents your results. This page gives the details on the various aspects of this project.

Research Requirements

You must research whatever topic you choose and produce an annotated bibliography of the materials that you use to develop your website. The nature of the resources you use will, of course, depend upon the topic you choose, but your final website must include a complete annotated bibliography of the sort that we discussed during the research section of the course.

Technical Requirements

Rather than presenting your material using the standard mode, you will build a multiple-page, hyper-linked website instead. This gives you more flexibility in how you format and tailor your presentation, but raises some interesting questions as to how best to present your material. Use Dreamweaver, or some other web development tool, to develop a website that has the following features:

• A title page, with your paper title, an image and identification information (your name, the class(es), the semester)
• A main navigational page for the reader that gives your thesis statement and a hyperlinked table of contents
• A menu on each content page that allows users either to return to the main navigation menu or to step sequentially through your material, either forward or backward - Your users should always know where they are and how they can get to where they want to go.
• Your title, name, class(es) and semester on each page
• A bibliography page with standard citation forms (e.g. MLA, APA) used consistently, and annotations of your sources
• Citations in your text that hyperlink the appropriate bibliography entries (using anchors).
• Hyperlinks that refer the reader to appropriate sites, external to your site, for more information - Make it clear to your reader that these links go to outside pages.
• At least one instance of the following things:
• a bulleted list
• an appropriately sized image - Remember to cite the source of all copyrighted images.
• an internal hyperlink
• an external hyperlink

Note that your target audience will be the Calvin academic community. All web features (e.g., backgrounds, graphics, colors, fonts, media) should enhance and support the your content, and should be laid out on the pages appropriately. It is usually best to avoid using text in all capitals and light colored text on dark backgrounds, both of which tend to be hard to read on line.

Note also that even if you are linking this IDIS 110 project with a standard written paper in one of your other courses, you'll still need to produce a website version of your material for IDIS 110.

If you would like to modify the presentation expectations given here for your project, please let me know in advance.

Grading

For this IDIS 110 project, we'll focus heavily on the quality of the research you do and on the quality of your presentation. Content will, of course, count as well, but the scales will be tipped in favor of your ability to deploy research and information technology in an appropriate manner.