CourseWork Marks for Semester Ending July

Here are your coursework marks: MD2001 CourseWork Marks

Note that the marks stated here are unofficial. Only the Exam Unit will release official results.

Assignment 4

Assignment Question:

Contribute and build this wiki: Discover SCSJ

Each student will be given a particular topic/section to focus on, but they are encouraged to contribute to other students' work. Cooperation among students is vital to produce a coherent wiki.

You will be graded based the following:

• Collaborative effort (30pts) - You are expected to work with you classmates and contribute meaningful work to the wiki. Revisions either improve the editing or add additional content. You do not delete the content of the other person unless that content is found to be in error. If such error is found, you are to communicate via discussion your reason for deleting the information. Each topic to be discussed will be created under a different thread under discussions.
• Multimedia elements (10 pts) - Graphics, photographs, sound, and videos are used as needed and add to the content.
• Organization (5 pts) - Table of contents and heading must be appropriately used. Information must be organized in a categorical manner. Additional pages are added if needed.
  
• Hyperlinks (10 pts) - An effective wiki hyperlinks sources and gives readers additional information about the topic.
• Original writing (10 pts) - The effective wiki summarizes information but never copies it. So, remember to cite your sources.
• Content (25 pts) - Do your research and provide sufficient information about your assigned topic/section.
• Coherence of wiki (10 pts) - The wiki must be coherent as a whole and should NOT contain repeating and contradicting information.
  

Assignment Specifications:

• Work individually on your assigned section, but contribute and collaborate on the wiki as a whole.
  
• Weightage: 35%
• Duration: 3 weeks

Introduction to Wikis

A Wiki is a collaborative Web site that allows users to create, add to, modify, or delete the Web site content via their Web browser. Most wikis are open to modification by the general public. Wikis ususally collect recent edits on a Web page so that someone (like the moderator or owner of the wiki) can review them for accuracy.

But you might be thinking - we can already collaborate on a document online using e-mails! If you look at the next image, you will understand why using wikis is a more efficient and quicker way to write collaboratively. All the information is stored at a central location. No more e-mailing everybody after a tiny update.

Alright then, what about blogs? Can't we collaborate using blogs as well? Well, the difference between a wiki and a blog is that users cannot modify original posts made by the blogger. In a wiki, provided you have the necessary permissions, you can practically edit and change anything on the wiki. However, the older versions of the same document will be stored in database, just in case somebody is spamming the wiki and we need to revert to the previous versions.

A popular wiki is Wikipedia, a free Web encyclopedia. You can obtain more information about wikis at this Wikipedia Wiki page.

Just to get you acquainted with the wiki software, you will go to this trial-scsj wiki to personally experience what you can do in a wiki. Spend some time to familiarize yourselves to the user interface and start editing this wiki to your heart's content!

Referencing Web Sites

I'm posting some supplementary information here about how you should properly reference web sites for your assignments. Please learn them and use them in your assignments.

These two links below will tell you how to use properly cite a web site:

• Harvard Referencing for Electronic Sources
• How to Reference a Web Site at the End of the Text

The following link here will give you a complete overview of the Harvard Referencing System:

• Referencing - The Harvard System

Assignment 3

Assignment Question:

Create a blog on the topic of handphones and write about them as creatively as you can.

You must perform research and include the following information about handphones into your blog:

• Historical development of handphones
• Technological development of handphones
• How it works (handphone companies, service providers)
• Category of handphones and their functions
• Impact on the way business transactions are carried out
• Impact on the culture of the community
• Benefits and disadvantages
• Future directions

Remember to give credit to your sources (meaning you have to reference your work).

Incorporate as many multimedia elements as you can into your blog. But do remember this article by Jakob Nielsen.

You will be marked based on:

• Your creativity in addressing this topic on your blog
• The depth of your research on this topic
• The extensive and appropriate use of hyperlinks to explain the given topic
  
• Inclusion of references in your work
• Inclusion of appropriate multimedia elements

Assignment Specifications:

• Work individually (publish the address of your blog in the Comments section of this blog post)
• Weightage: 30%
• Duration: 2 weeks

Introduction to Blogging

You can obtain some basic information about what blogs are from these YouTube videos below:





You can also read more about blogs at this HowStuffWorks article - How Blog Works

Assignment 2

Assignment Question:

Read this article: Writing for the Web by Jakob Nielsen
Select a website operated and managed by a company and write a critique/review report (based on the above article) about your opinions on the site.

Your report should contain the following:

Site information

1. Your name
2. Title of site
3. URL of site
4. Last revision or copyright date
5. Type of site (news, entertainment, direct sales, etc...)

Content

1. Purpose of site
2. Primary audience

Structure

1. Navigation
   
   • Load times
   • Length of time you take to navigate comfortably
   • Did a click take you somewhere you didn't expect to go?
2. Organizing principle
   
   • How is the site organized overall? (like a book, chronologically, product by product, etc...)
   • Include a diagram of the site's structure

Mechanics

1. Frustration factor
   
   • How fast did the page download?
   • If you had to wait, what seemed to slow it down? (one big graphic, many small graphics, etc...)
   • Was your computer able to handle all the fancy stuff?
   • Did all the fancy stuff get into the way of the content?
2. Was contact information available?

General

1. What did you like the best?
2. What did you like the least?
3. In print, how would it be better done?
4. Overall rating of the site
5. Other comments about the site

Assignment Specifics:

• Work in groups of 2-3
• Submit a typed report (outlined above)
• Weightage: 15%
• Duration: 2 weeks

Managing Multimedia Projects

Download the lecture slides.

Assignment 1

Assignment Question:

Conduct research and prepare a PowerPoint presentation on ONE of the following topics:

• New Media
• Interactivity
• Web 2.0

Then, on the following week, present your findings using your presentation to the class.

Assignment Specifications:

• Work in groups of 2-3 (publish the names of your group members as well as your chosen topic in the Comments section of this blog post today)
• Presentation should explain the topic sufficiently, but should finish within 15-20 minutes
• Submit a printout (handout of 6 slides per page) of your presentation to me
• Weightage: 20%

What is Multimedia?

You'll find the slides to the lectures here.