- Meeting: T/R – 12:40-2:00 PM
- Location: 317 Bessey Hall
- Instructor: Jack Hennes
- Office: 301 Bessey Hall
- Office Hours: T/R 2:00-3:00 PM (or by appointment)
- Twitter: @hennesjack
- Email: hennesja@msu.edu
- How to Design and Write Web Pages Today by Karl Stolley
- A dependable computer with reliable Internet and email access
- Access to Slack (our team can be accessed at https://210web.slack.com/)
- Sublime Text 2 downloaded on your computer
- A pad of grid paper/engineering notebook with gridlines
Students will:
- learn and practice the design genres crucial to building useful and usable websites.
- analyze digital works and communities to understand rhetorical, social, and cultural implications of emerging media environments.
- learn and practice the basic web authoring skills needed to put good design into practice.
- learn and practice principles of user-centered design.
- design and built a working version of their professional portfolios.
- be able to frame web authoring as a rhetorical practice and a vital professional writing skill.
- be sufficiently prepared to advance to WRA 410 (Advanced Web Authoring).
Discussion and collaboration are essential parts of this course, as are in-class tutorials and workshops. Attendance in class is essential, so you are expected to attend class regularly and have completed any necessary preparation.
You must complete all major assignments in order to pass this class. Scoring guides for each assignment will be provided well in advance of their due dates so that students are well informed of the instructor's expectations. Course work should be submitted according to guidelines and on time; late work will only be accepted at the discretion of the professor. Lateness is considered to be any time after class on the day the course work is due.
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Personal Course Site: 200 points. Create a site that will serve as your home base for this course and as a course portfolio. The site must include at least one page designed for this course that includes basic contact information, links to assignment submissions, and other materials that are relevant to the class. An initial version is due the first week of class as part of your first module grade. You'll use it throughout the semester to collect and present all of the work you do for this course (particularly your modules) in one, easy-to-use view.
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Modules: 200 Points. A series of 13 short exercises designed to introduce you to key concepts and to give hands-on practice with important tools and techniques throughout the semester. Your work for each module will be posted to your personal course site. You must complete at least 10 of the modules to earn a passing grade for this semester-long project, but completing all of them will earn you extra credit.
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Portfolio Design Documents: 200 Points. The major semester-long project will be designing your professional portfolio that you'll maintain throughout your academic career. Before you build anything for that project, you will develop a series of design documents that will guide that project, serving as a blueprint for the site you eventually build. This will require you to learn key genres in web design. Specifically, you will learn about and make sitemaps, wireframes, and design comps for your portfolio.
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Professional Writing Portfolio: 400 Points. Over the course of the semester, you will design and build a portfolio website. This will be a starting point for your professional portfolio, something that you can maintain throughout your degree and develop further in either WRA 410 (Advanced Web Authoring) or WRA 455 (Portfolio Seminar). You will research what characteristics define an effective portfolio and develop initial designs that will be reviewed by your peers and then revised. You will then build a functional version of your design over the course of several weeks after a series of tutorials and hands-on workshops. Your final grade for this project will be based on the functional HTML and CSS you produce, how well what you built adheres to your designs, and a reflection in which you discuss your work on the project.
Revision is an important part of the writing (and coding) process. To that end, you will be allowed to revise any of your projects for a higher grade. Consult with the instructor if you wish to revise; revisions will not be accepted if the policy is abused to extend deadlines. All revisions must include an additional description of the changes made, as well as the original and revised versions. All revisions are due by the last regular day of class.
Course projects will generate 1000 total points over the semester. Based on a 1000-point scale, the following table describes how final grades will be assigned.
| Points | Grade |
|---|---|
| 1000-950 | 4.0 |
| 949-875 | 3.5 |
| 874-800 | 3.0 |
| 799-750 | 2.5 |
| 749-700 | 2.0 |
| 699-650 | 1.5 |
| 649-600 | 1.0 |
| 599-below | 0.0 |
Academic Honesty-Article 2.3.3 of Academic Freedom Report states "the student shares with the faculty the responsibility for maintaining integrity of scholarship, grades, and professional standards." In addition, the College of Arts and Letters adheres to the policies on academic honesty as specified in General Student Regulation, 1.0, Protection of Scholarships and Grades, which are included in Spartan Life: Student Handbook and Resource Guide. Students who commit an act of academic dishonesty may receive a 0.0 on the assignment or in the course. For additional information, see MSU's ombudsman's website.
Be advised: copying code, particularly as a programmer, is common practice. For the purpose of course assignments where you are asked to demonstrate your understanding of the structure and syntax, you will be expected to compose your own and to document your work through comments.
To receive any accommodation for any disability, students must first register with the Resource Center for Persons with Disabilities. The RCPD will request appropriate documentation and make a determination regarding the nature of the accommodation to which a student is entitled. The RCPD will then give the student a visa that specifies the kind of accommodation that may be provided. It is then the responsibility of the student seeking accommodation to present the visa to his/her instructor.