UCI ICS 1C, Lab Exercise 4

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.
• 1-2 March: In lab (Wednesday and Thursday), submit your proposal using http://www.ics.uci.edu/~ics1c/doc/z.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.

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.