1. Goal.
The goal of the project is to design, or overhaul/re-design, a Website, preferably for a real entity.
The project is designed to encourage 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 your community.
Service-learning and experiential learning can be highly rewarding experience. However, the summer session is short, while working with a real client requires you have a cooperative client, and good project management and communication skills. Highly motivated students are highly encouraged to do a service-learning or experiential learning project. However, students are allowed to do an in-class toy project to improve their Website design skills, but need to write an extra paper related to Web design.
2. Teams vs. Individuals
Students who plan to do a service-learning or experiential learning project are required to work in groups (because an individual
student cannot complete a real project in one semester). Groups of 3 are highly recommended; groups of 2 are allowed but not preferred;
groups of 4 are not allowed. Students who plan to do an in-class toy project should work individually, although discussion with other
students and learning from others are always encouraged.
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 student 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.
3. Client and Content Requirements.
If you have a public, non-profit client (such as a government agency, a library, an information center, a school,
a museum, an archive, a hospital, and an association) your project is a service-learning project. LSU CCELL will recognize that, and put
a note on your transcript, indicating you have taken a service-learning course. If you have a private, small business client,
your project is an experiential learning project. In both cases, 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.
If you have decided to do an in-class toy project, you may use your friends, family, or a fictious organization as your client. Furthermore, you will need to write an extra research paper (4-6 pages, single space) addressing Web design issues. Topics can include Web site design, Web portal design, information architecture, comparison between Web sites of private entities and public entities, comparison between large Web sites and small Websites, website accessibility, low-cost webhosting services, or any Web design issue you think is important. Your paper must include at least 10 references, at least half of which must be journal articles.
All real 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. Toy projects are also required to include sufficient number of pages (such as 10-30 pages) so that you can practise navigation design; but some Web pages can have limited quantity of real content or some ficitious content.
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, real 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. Students who work on a toy project do not need to sign these agreements.
4. 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 your client's server, please assess your client's technical environment carefully before selecting the technologies, and discuss the Web hosting issue with your client as early as possible. Caveat: do not assume your client knows the cost and limitation of external Web hosting.
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.
5. 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.
6. Student Trip Travel Insurance Requirement
LSU CCELL and the Office of Risk Management (ORM) have implemented a risk management policy for
service-learning students. This policy requires that every student participating in a service-learning and experiential learning
class must have field trip insurance secured for every off-campus visit she/he makes to a client (or community partner) site.
Every student needs to fill out a form for requesting trip insurance
available at the Office of Risk Management Website.
The insurance is free to students.
7. Evaluation.
You should consult your client 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 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 your client 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 your client 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 you yourselves, but if the user evaluation is positive, it will improve the Evaluation aspect of your project grade (see below). Actually a positive user evaluation is needed if you want to earn an A on the Evaluation aspect.
8. Project Report.
Each team will produce a single written report; check the Syllabus page
for due time. 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 4-6 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. To help me grade your project, please write an abstract or a summary at the beginning of your report, briefly describing the following aspects:
9. Other Deliverables
Among the above deliverables, only the Website Maintenance Manual (3) and the Project Reflective Essay (5) will take you some time to think and write up.
Students who did an in-class toy project (without a real client) do not need to submit these deliverables, but need to submit the extra research paper.
10. 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.
11. Useful information (some recommended by students):