Goal. This is a service-learning project. The goal of the project is to design, or overhaul/re-design, a Website for a real entity. The project is designed to allow students to integrate and extend knowledge acquired throughout the course and to apply that knowledge to solve a problem of substantial scope, while providing technological assistance to our community.
Teams. Students are required to work in groups. Groups of 3 are highly recommended; groups of 2 are allowed but not preferred; groups of 4 and working by oneself alone are not allowed. Experience suggests that successful teams require expertise in design, implementation, and project management, so please form teams with members whose skills complement each other. Each team member should plan to devote approximately 48 hours outside of class to the project over the course of the semester (6 hours per person for 8 weeks). Every team will need a client and a project manager. The project manager can be different from the client liaison.
Client and Content Requirements. Your project should meet the needs of a real entity, preferably a public, non-profit entity, such as a government agency, a library, an information center, a school, a museum, an archive, a hospital, an association. It is important that the chosen project be sufficiently substantial to represent a significant accomplishment, but that it not be so complex that completion within the available time would be unlikely. Projects are required to include significant real content (such as 10-30 pages); mock-ups that contain only a limited quantity of content for demonstration purposes would not be acceptable.
Teams may select any topic for their project, but they should be careful to select a project for which the required content can be obtained in the available time. Therefore, please be careful not to select two extreme types of clients: (1) clients who just need a very simple Website without much content, and (2) clients who need a large Website with complicated technologies.
Once you have selected an appropriate client, a Faculty-Client Agreement and a Students-Client Agreement will be distributed to you and your client to sign so that a formal working relationship can be established between us and your client.
Technological Requirements. Projects are required to make substantial use of at least two of the key technologies introduced in the course, integrated in a manner that is appropriate for their intended application:
Since the Website is finally to be hosted on the client's server, please assess the client's technical environment carefully before selecting the technologies, and discuss the Web hosting issue with the client as early as possible.
Although I expect you to hand-code your Website (to get the best control of all the components and to make your Website easy to maintain), you are allowed to use an HTML editor (such as Dreamweaver, Microsoft SharePoint). However, please be advised that HTML editors generate messy codes, and incorporating Javascript into messy codes can be challenging.
Planning. Immediately following the midterm exam, project teams will meet on Moodle to discuss and nail down the details of their planned project. Each team will present their project plans to solicit feedback on their plans from other members of the class. Please briefly address at least the following aspects of your project:
The instructional staff will be available for consultation with project teams during office hours, by appointment, and by email or phone. Because project teams will be working with a diverse array of technologies and application environments, this assistance will necessarily focus more on strategies than details. Teams should discuss their project plans with the instructor no later than the planning session following the midterm exam. Submitting a one-page plan to solicit my feedback will be helpful.
Please do not start late! Very often, your client does not have a blueprint of the Website at the biginning stage. That is, he/she cannot clearly specify the technical and design requirements and does not give you enough content to start with. A good strategy is to build a prototype with the incomplete requirements and content, and ask for his/her feedback. Sometimes it takes time to figure out why your code does not work the way you expect. Getting feedback from your client and users, revising and debugging all take time. Therefore please plan ahead.
Service-Learning Paper Work. In Spring 2011, CCELL and the Office of Risk Management (ORM) implemented a new risk management policy for service-learning students. This policy requires that every student participating in a service-learning class has field trip insurance secured for every off-campus visit they make to a community partner site. Students need to fill out a form for requesting trip insurance and an invididual project log available at CCELL Website.
Evaluation. You should consult the real entity for information needs, content, and feedback. Note that I can evaluate your Web site from the perspectives of information structure/organization, Website design, and information technology, but I cannot evaluate your Website in terms of its content and how your Website is going to be used by its users. Ideally you should meet with both the users who will be using the Web site (such as tourists visiting Louisiana) and the entity which serves the users (such as the Louisiana Department of Culture, Recreation & Tourism). However, if it is impossible to meet with the users, you should meet with the real entity at least three times - at the beginning of the project in which you collect their information needs and content, in the middle of the project in which you collect their feedback on your progress, and at the end of the project in which they evaluate your Web site. Please leave at least a week for client evaluation, user evaluation, and a final round of Website revision.
Please note that the client evaluation is different from the user evaluation because your client is a part of your design team. The client evaluation is compulsory and a Project Evaluation Form is to be distributed to your client to collect his/her feedback. The user evaluation plan is optional and needs to be designed and executed by yourselves, but if the user evaluation is positive, it will improve the Evaluation aspect of your project grade (see below).
Project Report. Each team will produce a single written report, due on November 29th. The sole role of the project report is to convey information that cannot be conveyed as effectively on your Website. The key here is the content, not the style of the report. So there are essentially no style guidelines except that I would like to be able to understand it (so it is helpful if it is well written), and I would like it to be reasonably concise (in my mind, about 5-6 pages, single spaced). The content of the report should address at least:
Of course, different groups will devote more or less space to each of these, and some groups will add other things. For example, some groups might talk about changes that they made to their vision of who their customer really was along the way as they learned more. Others might talk about suggestions for supporting project groups in future semesters that would extend their capabilities. Others might want to write about group dynamics (perhaps as a form of "group therapy":-)). So there is no cookbook recipe and no fixed format for a good project report. The key is to reflect all sorts of issues in the process and learn a lot, and to describe what you have learned.
Other Deliverables
Grading. Your project will be evaluated with the following 4 aspects (with some subjectivity):
Please note that you are trying to meet two requirements: course requirements (academic goals) and your client's requirements (civic goals). It is possible that these two requirements are not completely consistent with each other. If this happens, you should strive to meet the course requirements first, and then to meet your client's requirements later on; or you may negotiate with your client when your client's needs conflict with your technical capability and Website design principles. If a serious conflict occurs, please talk to me.
The project grade will be assigned mainly based on your group work (such as your website, your project report, your client evaluation, and your maintenance manual). All the members in a team will have the same project grade. However, if somebody's integrated course grade is at the boundary between A and B (or between B and C), I will use the other materials that are submitted individually (such as reflective essay, project survey, self/cross-evaluation form) to understand your individual learning experience, in an attempt to upgrade your grade. This approach may favor any student whose integrated course grade is 78, 79, 88, or 89.
Useful information (some recommended by students):