Group Project Assignment
ENG 444 Spring 2000 / Newbold
last revised April 3, 2000

The World Wide Web: a "Hypertextual Mediaverse"

Purpose and Objectives

Now that we have explored orality, literacy, and hypertext, we can examine through research some ways new literacies and means of expression are taking shape on the World Wide Web.  A group project normally allows you to pool expertise and divide labor, and in this case it should also provide a unique vehicle enabling different voices and talents to construct a multivocal web of meaning. Thus, the overall objectives for the project are

  • To discover data, information, and opinions about your topic
  • To reflect on how communication is happening in the WWW environment
  • To build knowledge about your topic in a collaborative way
  • To become resourceful at using groupware and other networked systems as a task environment
  • To allow you to put to work what you have learned this semester about creating hypertext multimedia documents
    • The thematic focus will allow you to unite the subject matter with the manner of discovery and delivery--to suggest once again that the medium is at least a large part of the message!

    Overview

    Selecting a theme:

    Each group should pick a theme from the following suggested list, or propose one instead; each group should have a different theme. The themes, however, should involve an aspect of the World Wide Web:

  • The Web in education--who's doing what? how do we know it's any good? (may include hyperfiction composed at high school level)
  • English department Websites--what they do, how they compare, what they could be (could include secondary school sites)
  • Current events on the Web (news sites)--what's out there; can they be resources for teaching and learning?
  • "Great Books" on the Web--what's there, where they are, and how they could be used
  • Non-fiction hypertext discourse on the Web--where they are, how they work, how they compare to traditional essays
  • Fiction or Drama on the Web--What's out there? Who supports it? Could it be used for teaching?
  • Connecting communities to the Web-- How far we have come? What's the trend? Who's behind it?
  • Technology and Education organizations--How many there are? What do they specialize in? What resources do they make available?  What are their agendas?
  • Digital literacy--What does it involve? Who is working on defining the concept? What resources exist for users to enhance, expand their digital literacy? How does it add onto or replace traditional alphabetic literacy?
    • What the project should contain:
  • 750 to 1,000 word (or equivalent) contribution from each group member
  • Title Page listing contributors, with an
  • Abstract (summing up and generalizing about what the group discovered) and
  • Links to different portions of the hyperdocument (contributors should link to an info. page where they tell about themselves and what they contributed to the project)
  • Various externally linked documents and multimedia that relate to the theme in some demonstrable way