JUMP TO: Proposal | First Status | Second Status | Submission | Grading
Groups of three to four students will develop a complete web site as a collaborative effort. The completed site will contain significant content and present some significant value. That value may be in a commercial, informational, artistic or entertainment sense.
Each group is encouraged to locate a company or organization to sponsor their site. The sponsor would become the client for the project.
The group will perform as a "design and production team," seeing the project through from inception to completion. Quality planning and execution are considerable parts of the project grade.
Here are the key dates for the project:
| Key Dates | ||
|---|---|---|
| Proposal | Fri, Mar 12, 6:00p.m. | week of class eight |
| First Status Report | Fri, Apr 9, 6:00p.m. | week of class eleven |
| Second Status Report | Fri, Apr 23, 6:00p.m. | week of class thirteen |
| Final Project Due | Mon, May 10, 6:00p.m. | week after class fifteen |
Over the course of this project, your group will submit a proposal and two status reports. Submit one copy per group, via email. Please CC the group members on the message. The penalty for tardy or missing submissions will be applied to the final project grade. The status reports will be considered when assessing the planning and performance component of your grade.
The proposal must indicate the following:
By this time you should have agreed on a general approach to the project, partitioned it into specific tasks, and assigned responsibilities to the group members.
Your first status report should indicate:
This first part is a restatement of the information from your proposal. Please highlight any significant changes that have occurred since the proposal. Please include:
Provide an outline of the web site broken into sections. Generally, a section would be defined as an area linked off the home page. A section could be a single page or a group of pages. Also, for the purpose of this outline, count the home page as a section on its own.
For each section, specify:
The web site outline lists specific responsibilities that have been assigned. Your group may decide to assign some additional general responsibilities. This may include roles such as project coordinator, client liaison, report writer, bibliographer/researcher, graphic designer, etc.
If your group has assigned any general responsibilities, describe them here.
Indicate whether you intend to use any "advanced technologies" in this project. Basically, that means either CGI programming, or any feature beyond the scope of the HTML 3.2 specification, such as frames, Java, Javascript, or style sheets. If so, please indicate which technologies and how they will be used.
It is critical that your presentation be as accurate as possible. If I sense the potential for problems in project scope or approach, I can raise them now, when they can be corrected more easily. When it comes time for me to evaluate your team performance, accuracy -- not naive optimism -- will gain the most credit.
By this time, you should be well on your way towards accumulating the content of your web site. The next step is to design the most appropriate presentation for that content. In this report, you will provide me with a "prototype" that illustrates the general structure of your web site.
Your second status report should indicate:
Briefly summarize the current status of the project. Indicate what key accomplishments have occurred since the first status report. Summarize the plans that will bring the project to completion.
Please review your first status report, and inform me of any material changes or corrections to your project plan. Depending upon what's changed, this section could range from a simple declaration ("no material changes") to a complete respecification of the web site outline.
Each group member should contribute a one-paragraph status summary to the report. It should highlight the member's major accomplishments achieved over the past two weeks, and indicate what their plans are for the completion of the project.
Provide me the URL of a prototype of your web site. The prototype must demonstrate the navigation and page design schemes adopted for the site.
You may need just two HTML pages for your prototype: a mock-up of the home page, and a mock-up of an interior content page.
You will not be graded on the HTML in this prototype. Broken or missing graphics are OK. If graphics aren't ready, just block out the approximate space with HEIGHT and WIDTH and use appropriate ALT text.
Do not use the intended final project URL for the prototype. That is, use something such as proto.html rather than index.html Also, please keep the prototype on-line until the final project is complete and turned in.
Please invest the time to produce an accurate representation of the project status. This could be our final opportunity to detect any problems that may otherwise adversely affect your grade.
To receive credit for your project, you must complete all the following items and turn them over to the instructor by the due date.
The web site must be published on a publicly accessible web server.
The group must submit the following materials:
The floppy disk will contain the complete contents of the web site, suitable for off-line browsing. Please use a Windows format floppy. Please attach a permanent adhesive label to your floppy, and mark it with the project title and "LIS 341 - Spring '99".
The group report will summarize the final result of the project. This report must be printed, not emailed. It must contain:
The report must be produced as follows:
If appropriate, you may choose to discuss some of the design decisions that were made. Sometimes, in the course of the project, students will encounter conflicts between instructor requirements, client demands, and their own preferences. If any such conflicts arose, you may wish to discuss them and explain your decisions. This may mitigate some grading penalties that otherwise could occur.
If appropriate, you may attach additional items to your report as addenda. These items should document additional materials or information that were delivered to the client. This will ensure that I can credit you for work that may not be directly reflected in the web site. If, for instance, you provide the client with maintenance documentation, then please attach a copy to your report. However, I do not want to see routine correspondence (email, meeting minutes, and the like).
Each student must submit the following materials:
Do not underestimate the importance of these items. Your individual contribution to the project is 40% of the grade, and my assessment of your contribution is based on these items. Do not treat the report as a mere formality. Treat the report as if your grade depends on it, because it does.
Your report should not only clarify your contribution to the project, but also demonstrate that you've achieved some insight from the work. The report will be printed and turned into me, not emailed. It should be two to three pages, and follow all the production requirements (margins, typeface, etc.) of the group report. Your report should address the following:
Attach a set of confidential peer evaluation forms to the back of your individual report. There are two parts to the peer evaluation.
Since I will be treating your individual submission confidentially, I encourage you to seal your submission materials in a large, manila clasp envelope.
Each group is urged to meet with the instructor prior to submitting the final project. The instructor will perform an informal design review and point out some areas that may be subject to grading penalties. This review is optional. You may choose to omit it, but doing so probably will eliminate the possibility of an A on this assignment.
You may submit your materials to me or leave them in my mailbox in the GSLIS office. Late materials will be accepted, but penalized severely, at the rate of 1% per hour.
There will be two components to your grade for the project. 60% of your grade will be shared among all the members of the group. 40% of the grade will represent your individual contribution to the project.
In the past, I have used the following criteria to evaluate the shared component of the grade:
The remaining 40% of the grade will be based on your individual contribution to the project, as evidenced by your individual report and the peer evaluation forms submitted by your group.
Chip Rosenthal$Id: ass-project.html,v 4.9 1999/05/07 06:12:30 chip Exp $