UCI ICS 1C, Homework 4

The final two weeks of the session, most of your lab work will focus on the creation of a Web-based hypertext "research paper" on some academic/scholarly topic which you pick (subject to acceptance by the instructor). The topic can be related to another course you are taking, your major, or the content of this class. An annotated guide to Web resources in an academic/scholarly area is one type of reasonable research paper.

Here's the overall time-line:

• 21 & 26 August: Consider what topic you want to choose and get at least 5 distinct sites from which you can get suitable information. Prepare a proposal consisting of 50 to 100 words describing the scope of your paper and 5 of the references you will use. Check with Cahill and Leung if you have questions about the appropriateness of a topic or want suggestions.
• 26 August: In lab, submit your proposal using the Web form http://www.ics.uci.edu/~vitus/ics1c/doc/hw4a.html which will be available at that time.
  Suggestion: Use a text editor to create your proposal and then cut-and-paste into the form provided.
• 27 - 29 August: Proposals on display so that the instructional staff and members of the class can offer comments and propose questions for you to address.
• 9 September: Final project due by 5 p.m.

Grading will be on the basis of content and presentation (including appropriate use of the technology). The choice of topic is a critical part of this project.

The characterization of it as "academic/scholarly" is deliberate. Techo-toy gee-whiz stuff is fun, but not what is expected here.

In choosing your topic and writing the proposal (one could almost call it an abstract written before the paper), imagine that the audience will be a faculty member, parent, or fellow student who is skeptical that all this "network computer stuff" has substantive content beyond number-crunching, network-cruising, chat-line, game playing.