Assignment:
Design a web for a professional association or organization and include
as components of this web (1) a home or index page; (2) a description
of the organization's mission or philosophy; (3) its history or
background; (4) its functions or services; (5) its benefits for
members, the profession, and/or the public; a FAQ page (if
appropriate); and (6) instructions for requesting additional
information or applying for membership. Produce at
least three or four substantial pages of your own text. If you
include text that is not your own (e.g., text that you have found in
print or on the web), please place that text in quotation marks and
include a full citation, using a standard format such as
American Psychological Association
style,
The Chicago Manual of Style
(see the
Quick Guide),
or (for online sources only) the
Modern Language Association
style.
Include on the home or index page a substantive summary of the
content of the web, with key words carefully selected to serve
as links to the subsidiary pages. Also include a brief summary
of the main ideas at the beginning of each subsidiary page, again
with key words to serve as links to items lower on the page. Use Writing Guidelines: Professional
Organization Web as a guide for your writing. Use the design
principles in Robin Williams and John Tollett's Non-Designer's Web
Book, Chapter 6, as a guide to overall design and page layout.
For an example of the page layout, navigation system, and text for
the main and subsidiary pages of a professional organization web,
see the Capital District Community
Gardens (a sample, recreated from the organization's print-based
publicity materials). Please note that the table and image borders,
the parenthetical numbers, and the underlining are added for emphasis
and illustration only.
For the Community Gardens style sheet, please see:
cdcg.html and
cdcg.txt.
For an example of the page layout, navigation system, and text for the
main page (only) of a professional organization web, see the
Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication.
Your professional organization web is due Friday, October 26, 6:00
p.m.
In-Class Exercises (Please prepare Exercise 2 for Thursday, October 4.
We will do the other exercises together in class):
1a. Consider how you would redesign the Capital District Community
Gardens, Inc. brochure for presentation on the web. What information is
included in this brochure? Who are the intended readers of this
brochure? Why is the Community Gardens addressing these readers? What
do they hope to accomplish with this brochure? How might you rewrite
this brochure to ensure clarity and readability? What are the main
ideas? How might you make the main ideas clear and prominent in this
printed material? How might you adapt this printed material for
presentation on the web?
1b. Consider the histories of the World Wide Web. How would you rewrite
these histories to achieve greater focus and emphasis upon the main
points? Write a complete-sentence outline each of these histories.
Include a summary and overview of the main ideas for the essay as a
whole and a heading and main-idea sentence for the beginning of each
main section.
Examples:
History of the World Wide Web
What Are CERN's Greatest Achievements? (Please select The WWW, then History of the Web.)
2. Prepare an oral critique and proposal, including (a) an assessment of
an organization's current publicity materials (paper or web-based) and
(b) a proposal and justification for your redesign of the organization's
existing publicity materials or your creation of new publicity materials,
based upon your critique. (If your organization does not currently have
any publicity materials, explain how you plan to obtain the content for
your web.) Use existing content if you wish, but expect to be responsible
for both the content of the web and the quality of the writing. Be
prepared to add new content and/or to rewrite as necessary. Be prepared
also to present your critique/proposal in class on Thursday, October 4,
either to a small group or to the entire class.
3. Working in a small group, prepare a critique of one of the webs
posted as examples below. Using the writing guidelines for this
assignment and Williams and Tollett's four basic design principles,
evaluate both the quality of the design and the quality of the writing
of the web and be prepared to present your findings in a brief oral
report.
Examples:
Brown University Research
Oceanside High School Class of 1960
Pinelands Regional School District
U.S. Marines
The Eggman Writing to the Web
Libertas Solutions Web Writing
Still Waters Revival Books
Latest Update: 2007-10-25
