The final project for IDIS 110 is to build a hypertext version of a paper of your choice. You will identify a topic interesting or useful to you, and develop a multi-page website presentation of your material. This page gives the details on the various aspects of this project.
The selection of the topic for your project is up to you. To help make this course more useful, I encourage you to choose a topic that is of relevance to you, perhaps in one of your other courses (including a paper you have already written or will write for another course). If you have trouble finding a topic, then consider one of the following suggestions in the area of information technology:
Rather than presenting your material using the standard mode (e.g., as a Microsoft Word document), you will build a multiple-page, hyperlinked 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:
Examples for all these features can be found in the sample final project site and instructions for building them can be found in Lab and Project 6.
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 that is: (1) in all capitals or all bold; (2) light colored on dark backgrounds; or (3) rendered in unusual colors. All of these tend to be harder to read on-line. Be sure to run a spelling checker on your text (in Dreamweaver, you can do this by choosing "Text"-"Check Spelling").
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 requirements given here, please let me know in advance. I encourage you to be creative in your presentation style, but if you find yourself wandering far from the sample website style, you may want to show me what you're doing; not all colors/styles are equally effective.
You'll discover that hypertext provides some new capabilities for delivering information not present in traditional papers. As a general rule, however, never obscure the content of your paper with pointless bells and whistles. Use hypertext capabilities competently and only when appropriate; this will allow your readers to focus on the content, which is, after all, the point of writing and presenting the material.
Once you get your paper published the first time and every time thereafter, open up a browser, and look at the site through Calvin's website (using a http://www.calvin.edu/ URL). If I can't find it there, you'll get at most half credit for the final project! Also, check each and every link and image on the site.
For this IDIS 110 project, we'll focus heavily on the quality of your presentation. Content, spelling, grammar and style will, of course, count as well, but the scales will be tipped in favor of your ability to deploy web presentation technology in an appropriate manner.
Submit the URL for your final project website in the comments field of your KV submission. Similar to Lab 7, hand in only the URL, no files. If your final project is not on-line, you'll get at most half credit for the final project.
If you think that I'll have any problems finding any of the required elements of the project (e.g., the external hyperlink, the image, etc.), then include a note explaining where I can find them.