Assignment:  Website design for online science journal

Using Williams’ and  Tollett’s The Non-Designer’s Web Book as a design guide, our class will create a discipline specific web site consisting of a homepage followed by  topically connected  pages.  Our web site will feature an online science journal for a specific audience.

To create the journal we will form teams to design, layout, and edit the documents.  Everyone in class will contribute two versions of a science article—one in technical language, one translated for a third grade version of the science magazine.  If we progress far and fast enough, we may even be able to launch our final product.  Our goal, however, is to plan and develop a publishable, online science journal.

The homepage should introduce you and your topic to your audience. It should reflect:

1. awareness of the conventions of a specific discourse community,

2. cultural consideration of your population’s learning styles,

3. consideration of access issues, and

4. adherence to design principles.  

The additional pages should each include original text related to the journal, the science article translations, and links.

The online science journal design is entirely up to you, the members of our class, as long as it is appropriate (a good rule of thumb--would your grandmother enjoy it?).  Remember all of the criteria for web evaluation.  Also, apply the four design principles:  proximity, alignment, repetition, and contrast.  Have fun with this assignment and, remember, we have technical support for you.

Additional references you might find useful:

The Writing is on the web for science journals in print

http://publish.ups.org/editorial site for American Physical Society (APS)

http://www.earthresesarch.com/unearthed.htm a rich research and link site in the earth sciences

The Bare Bones Guide to HTML

A Beginner’s Guide to HTML

The Homepage Hall of Fame

University of Kansas Quick Reference

Interesting examples of Web Pages

Sample student explorations of a topic

HTML goodies page