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Assignment 4 and beyond: "The Term Project"

The final four weeks of the quarter, the lab assignments will focus
on your 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:

  21-28 February: 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 ics1c@ics.uci.edu or Franklin and Frost if you have questions
     about the appropriateness of a topic or want suggestions.
  27-28 February: In lab, submit your proposal using
       http://www.ics.uci.edu/~ics1c/doc/hw4a.html
     Suggestion: Use pico or another text editor to create
     your proposal and then cut-and-paste into the form provided.
  1-7 March: Proposals on display for members of the class so that
     they can offer comments and propose questions for you to address.
  15 March: Final project due by start of class 11 a.m.

Team/joint papers are acceptable with 2 to 4 people collaborating.
All participants and their roles should be identified in the proposal.

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.

-- sdf
Stephen Franklin
ICS 1C Instructor