303 Home

Due: 19 April
Weight: 25%

You'll be responsible for creating a website and maintaining it during the semester. You'll post your Insight Papers to it and I'll mark the website the week after classes end. Check the course packet for some detailed instructions on creating a website. It may be useful to read the U of A's advice on creating websites.

I've created a few Website Development Tutorials that may be helpful. Please feel free to read them.

What's Required?

You'll need to include the following features on your website:

What Do I Hand In and When?

As soon as you have your basic page up on the server -- after the first day in the lab, presumably -- send an email to me with the subject line 303 website and tell me the URL at which I can find your site. I'll put together a webpage with links to everyone's website so that you can see how your colleagues are doing. After that, you just need to maintain your website by accumulating all the required components and by posting your Insight Papers. After the end of term, I'll visit your website again and calculate the final mark.

How Will You Mark These?

I'll split your mark evenly between content (getting all the require elements onto your site) and creativity. I'll be visiting the sites occasionally throughout the term, so -- like Santa -- I'll know who's being naughty and nice. If you're not posting your Insight Papers and generally neglecting your website, I'll know. Here are the criteria:

50% Content

Does your webpage contain all the elements listed for this assignment? As it evolves over the term, are your responses (and perhaps paper and Perl program) posted there? Are the links broken? Do the graphic images load? Do stray HTML tags show up on your pages? Can the user navigate easily to other pages on your site or do they magically need to know the URL's beforehand?

50% Rhetoric and Creativity

Remember, Aristotle defines rhetoric as "the ability to find, in any given situation, the best available means of persuasion." This is an opportunity to persuade someone who has never met you what kind of person you really are. (Or, alternatively, your opportunity to impress me, who knows only a little bit about you.) Toward that end:

Choose your web page's layout, colors, fonts and background textures wisely. White text on white background will gain zero points for you. Red text on green background will do the same. Try to maintaina consistent style for your website — or at least for its various sections.

Ease of Navigation. This is a very important rhetorical aspect of your website. Difficult navigation convinces your users that your time is more important than theirs and, as a divine being, you simply can’t stoop to the level of mere mortals. While this might be intensely satisfying to your ego, your mark will be intensely disappointing.

Be polite and grammatical. This is an English course, after all. Besides, things like tone, grammar and punctuation aren't about adhering to arbitrary rules, they're about how you present your persona to others who know the "real you" only through the words you write. And the WWW is the "world" wide web for a reason. Ever hear the one about the Nobel prize-winner who was such a genius that s/he couldn't figure out how to use a comma? Me neither.