| BSU > ENGL 3160 > writingremedies |
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MLA Format |
The Writing Process |
Erlys' Class Page |
Kurt's Class Page |
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Kurt's Final Site Report |
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PurposeThe purpose of our site is to aid our students in our classes. We provide links to our individual classes (College Writing I and II and Gathering Voices) as well as links to pages that will be useful to all English students (Grammar, MLA Format, and The Writing Process pages). My class page is designed to allow students access to my syllabus and upcoming assignments (which I will add later in the second semester) as well as examples of students' work. I hope to meet this purpose by keeping the information to a useful level. I believe I have kept the information simple and straightforward. My syllabus is basic and easy to scan. The examples of students work are not long, yet they are excellent examples of the composition assignment we covered first semester. My grammar pages and the writing process pages are designed to help students who may need to brush up on their basic understanding of these concepts. Again the pages are very basic. I tried to clearly define all terms and provide a few specific examples to demonstrate the terms and definitions. Design and Text Composition DecisionsI knew that I wanted to use a heirarchy format. A sequence format would have been too difficult with students having to sift through too much information in a specific sequence. Likewise, a grid format would have been much to difficult to desing. Plus students could just as easily get completely lost within the site. I hoped by using the hierarchy form to have some consistency and sequencing to my site, yet still have the option for students to jump around within the site. I tried to have some sequencing within the pages by listing them in specific orders. For example, if students visit the writing process pages, they will be guided to a page that gives them the option of examining either the pre-writing process or the revision process, which I have divided into three levels. Here they can choose to go in order from level one to level two to level three and then jump over to the grammar page where they can choose to go to either parts of speech, sentence structure, or word usage errors. If they choose to go in order they can experience it as a sequence. However, they do have the option, because of the links on the grammar page and on the writing process page, as well on the individual pages, of skipping around. For example, a student may just want information on the final level of revision. When she clicks on the writing process page, she has the option ot bypass the first two levels and click on the third level. ProblemsI can't say that we encountered any major obsticles. Sometimes the scanners were obstinate, but once they decided to work proerply they were very beneficial. I found the hardest thing was to remain consistent in fonts and styles with my partner's pages. Because we only kept the template on one disk, we found the individual styles of our pages differning some. For instance, I chose to use heading 1 and left justification for my headers at the top of the page. She though decided to use heading 1 and center justification. Thus, there were minor inconsistencies that we could have taken care of by having the same templates on our disks. Instead we had to do plenty of copying and pasting and reformatting to remain consistent. Also, in terms of our own course pages, we differed too. I set up my student example pages differntly than she did. She went into some detail about each assignment and then had links to her students examples. Whereas I chose just to list the assignment, as opposed to describing it in detail, and then listing one or two students examples. This probably was because I only had a few students volunteer work while she made it mandatory to hand in an example. I didn't go into depth because I chose to focus on the upcoming semester. I think students will still find the grammar and writing process sections helpful next semester, while few will probably look back at examples of already completed assignments. Another problem was matching theory with reality. Initially we had some pretty lofty ideas, such as changing the image on the header and using an image map on our homepage, but reality quickly dashed our grandious ideals. Hectic schedules and limited computer access caused us to pare back some of our ideas and to keep it relatively simple but, hopefully, still effective. What I DidAs I stated earlier, I worked on the grammar pages, my course pages, and the revision pages in the writing process section. Erlys' focused on the MLA pages, her course pages, and the pre-writing pages of the writing process section. I also helped to scan most of the examples on the site. We both came up with the color scheme and the header design. You can visit Erlys' site report here. |
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Copyright © Erlys J. Moore
and Kurt Reynolds |
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