Major Web Development Project
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Beginning with a print document that has the potential for rich visuals, external links, audience engagement, and more, we'll work to move that document into the electronic environment. Along the way, we'll engage in research on individual pieces of the project, take pictures and generate graphics, locate relevant external links, and more. We'll design the website that will contain the entire project, add our media (text, image, and more), test the website, and "go live" with it.
Our major web development project enables us to both experience and reflect on the differences between print and electronic media. Working together, we'll "remediate" or "repurpose" an existing print project, share the product of our intellectual and creative energy, and hopefully learn a lot about how web development teams work.
Websites often have teams of people working behind the scenes to bring them together. Graphic designers, coders, writers, usability testers, server-side administrators and more. Any significant web development project requires the collaboration of many people, and this course provides us with an opportunity to experience the collaboration while using a wiki to facilitate our collaboration.
Key Tasks for a Successful Project
- Research and writing. We have a print document starting point. But it doesn't reflect our work, so we need to do our own research and writing. We need to update the information in the print document, add content to build depth to our web project, and make it a true collaboration. We'll all use the Course Wiki to produce, revise, edit, and share the textual content in the project.
- Images (and video?). Our project is one that screams for visuals. While we cannot take all of our own pictures, we can take a lot of them. We'll need to get good pictures, edit them, and integrate them into the overall project. Video is even a possibility, if it has a clear purpose and can be integrated into the overall design.
- Site design. We'll need to figure out what our site should look like. Layout, color palette, site navigation, and more all need to be developed. (Once we have a storyboard, I'll handle the behind-the-scenes coding so we can focus on the many other complex elements.)
- Graphics development. We'll need to create the graphical elements for the site. The images are clearly connected to specific textual content, but the graphics give the overall website its look.
- Content migration. We need to move the finished product of our work in the wiki into individual pages in our project, and the images we develop need to be integrated into the individual pages. While this work will happen later in the process, there is no overall website if it doesn't happen. We'll all be working on this one.
- Usability testing. We need to make sure our audience can make productive use of the site.
Evaluating Our Work
Team-based projects pose significant challenges. How do we evaluate individuals' contributions towards the common goal? Is there a distinction between effort and results? Collaborative projects best realize their potential when roles and responsibilities are clearly defined, and when each person meets his or her commitments on time and in a satisfactory way. We'll work together to define specific roles and responsibilities, and to encourage each other to meet our commitments to the class web development project. Here are the key ways we'll evaluate our work and our contributions.
- Delivering on commitments. Each of us will have a specific set of tasks due at specified times. Delivering the needed goods on time will count a lot.
- Course Wiki. We'll put all of the written work on the course wiki, subject it to editing, revision, addition, etc. Each of us will have primary responsibility for a subset of the written content. But we're also responsible for helping raise the quality of all the content that will appear on the site. Do a good job on your part (solid information, clear documentation of sources, your own written work) and be visible in making positive contributions to the other content on the wiki and you'll do well on this score.
- Website Design Mockups/Storyboards, Graphics, Images, External Links, and More. We'll divide up the work here. If you have individual responsibility for some of these, your individual work will be evaluated. In most cases, we'll be working in pairs or small groups. Group members will document members' commitments to ensure clear responsibilities.
- Effort. Many of us will be "learning" new software, new electronic environments, and more. Don't shy away from the new, the learning, the difficulties. In a very real sense, this constant learning is part of what it means to write for and in electronic media. While there can be no expectation of perfection, there is an expectation of sustained and serious effort.
- Peer Evaluation. Students are very reluctant to negatively evaluate their peers' effort on a project. The major exception to this tendency concerns slackers in group project environments. Don't let down your peers and you'll be fine.
Don't like the look? Restyle!
Wikiwiki | Escher
| Cloisonne | The
Blues | Negative | Skinless