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There are five main assignments, or "Tasks," in the course.
Keep track of all tasks you complete. Keep copies of all documents you write and keep records of all you do for the class. You (not the teacher) are responsible for documenting and summarizing your own performance.
Email a summary (less than one page) of your course performance to the teacher before the last class. Include your name, section number, and a brief evaluation of the quality of your work. Focus both on what you learned and what you achieved.
Task 1: Help Others
Interactive multimedia is a rapidly evolving medium which demands a lot of the men and women who wish to become proficient at it. We will all learn more by helping each other.
Here are some ways you can help promote the class learning environment.
- Attend every class.
- If you see that a classmate is stuck, volunteer to help him or her.
- Read the class discussion archive regularly, and respond to classmates who send in questions or comments. (Questions about enrollment should be emailed to the professor, not to the class discussion archive.)
- Look at the work of other students in the class, and comment on it.
- If you learn of an effective technique, share it.
- If you find useful computer resources on campus that are available to students, tell all of us.
- If you find a helpful Web site, let us know, by posting it to the class discussion archive.
Task 2: Simple Project
Due Week 3
Write an organized web essay on the topic described below. Your essay should be no bigger than 1 megabyte.
Keep in mind that your document should be interesting. All of us in the class will be reviewing it. Also keep in mind that while technical wizardry is good in an interactive document, a clear intellectual focus or consistent artistic vision is even better. A document needs to have a point, not just style.
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Topic: "What was in my pocket?"
Use the real or imagined contents of a pocket in your jeans as a starting point to explore a subject of interest to you. For example, you might find a shell in your pocket from a recent walk on the beach, and use it as a starting point to explain a facet of marine biology that fascinates you. Or you might find a Mexican peso, or a ticket stub, or someone else's phone number written on a matchbook, and that object might lead you to a story or an explanation or an argument. Your essay may be serious or whimsical, personal or formal, heavy in text or heavy in graphics--but it should in some sense represent who you are or who you can imagine yourself being. Focus on a narrative or a theme or a point, not on a general self-introduction.
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Task 3:Complex Project
Due Week 7
Write an organized and complex interactive multimedia presentation on the general topic described below. Clear your particular topic with the instructor before you begin. Your presentation should be no bigger than 3 megabytes.
"Complex" means that the issues dealt with in your presentation can be understood better through hypertext, animation, or multimedia components than they can through simple linearity, or through print.
This is a group project. Form your own group of three or four people. Look for group members whose skills complement yours. A project done by three people should be commensurately more developed than a project done by one.
Keep in mind that your document should be interesting. All of us in the class will be reviewing it. Also keep in mind that while technical wizardry is good in an interactive document, a clear intellectual focus or consistent artistic vision is even better. A document needs to have a point, not just style.
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Topic: Create a teaching document (such as a tutorial) for an academic course or department at Cal Poly or elsewhere, or for a nonprofit organization or club. Consult with your "client" as you create the document, to make sure that it meets their needs. |
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Task 4: Student Presentations
In a group of three people, prepare a presentation on a topic selected from the list below. The presentation should take sixty to ninety minutes, and should include computer-based presentation materials (in Powerpoint, Director, or some other form) as well as lecture and discussion.
You can sign up for a presentation through the existing threads on the class discussion archive. The first three people to sign up for a topic become a group; the fourth person will have to choose something else.
A presentation will earn full credit by providing an interesting, useful, and informative sixty to ninety minutes for the rest of the class. Each person will be graded for his or her visible efforts at achieving that end.
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Report Topics:
Ethics and Legality in the New Media. Property rights. Freedom of speech. Plagiarism. Violence. Pornography. Where do we draw lines?.
Week 4
Using sound in your document. What are the sound formats?How do you record sound files? How do you insert them into your document and then control them? Includes lab component.
Week 5
Collaborative writing and editing environments. How can a geographically spead-out team work together on a report or design? A lot of different software applications claim to solve the problem. What do these programs do? How do they work? What is "state of the art" in decentralized collaboration?.
Week 6
Links to data bases--A lot of interactive documents are designed as user friendly gateways into data bases. Thus, for example, a simple interactive web page gives you access to you university records, which are stored in a huge volcanic labrynth about one half mile beneath the campus surface. What are the software hooks between use-friendly front ends and large data bases?
Week 7
Using Video. How do you make digital video files? How do you control them in documents? How do you use them effectively? Includes lab component.
Week 8
Careers in multimedia design / interactive writing. Where do you find jobs doing this work? How do you sell your creations to a multimedia publisher? What is freelance work like versus corporate? What do the jobs pay? What do you have to know to get them? What's it really like?
Week 9
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Task 5: Deep Project
Due Week 11
Write an organized, complex, ambitious, and deep presentation on a topic of your choosing. Your topic may be serious or whimsical, fictional or informational, poetic or technical--it's up to you, but clear your topic with the instructor before you begin. Your presentation should be no bigger than 20 megabytes.
"Complex" means that the concepts dealt with in your presentation can be appreciated better through hypertext, animation, or other multimedia components than they can through simple linearity, or through print.
"Ambitious" means that in your presentation you are reaching beyond the technical or rhetorical skills you employed to create the first two projects in the class. Perhaps you are using 3D graphics, or highly interactive sound, or mathematical scripts which calculate results with variables that your reader enters. Perhaps you've used Shockwave to put a Director project on the Internet. Perhaps your document includes a self-scoring quiz, or an interactive game. Perhaps you've created particularly efficient hypertext information retrieval methods.
"Deep" means that the topic of the presentation is covered in detail, to a depth of specificity that is satisfying to readers. Superficial coverage will not suffice.
This may be a group or individual project. Groups should be no more than four people. Look for group members whose skills complement yours. A project done by four people should be commensurately more developed than a project done by one.
Keep in mind that your document should be interesting. All of us in the class will be reviewing it. Also keep in mind that while technical wizardry is good in an interactive document, a clear intellectual focus or consistent artistic vision is even better. A document needs to have a point, not just style.
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