Professional Biography: Web Page
General Description
In the past two decades, web pages have become a new kind of communicative tool used by individuals, companies, non-profit organizations, political groups, hobbyists, and other social groups. A web page allows an individual or group to present more than just information--it can become a kind of identity, using text, images, and sound to present an electronic "face" to the user.
As with hardcopy documents, designing (or reviewing) a web page requires an awareness of the rhetorical situation: What is the purpose of the web page? Who is the audience? What strategies are being used? What is the desired/actual effect the page has on users?
The kinds of rhetorical strategies you can use in designing a web page are more diverse than when you are designing a hardcopy document. Although both kinds of texts require that you think carefully about both design and content, web pages give you the opportunity to combine text with images and sound in a more flexible manner.
Whether you are designing or reviewing a web page, you should think carefully about how the textual, visual, audio, navigational, and technological elements work together to form the whole.
Since we are working together in this class, we will use a web page to virtually introduce ourselves to each other. This assignment will give you the opportunity to practice some basic web site design as well as introduce yourself to the other members of the course. Based on these web pages, your memo of interests, and on our other online interactions, you may be forming collaborative teams for working on your final project.
To give you experience writing a web page, this initial assignment asks you to follow an organizational template to create a standardized professional identity for the course. In many professional settings, you are asked to utilize the standard documents of the organization where you are working.
Your assignment, then, has two components: selecting the information to include in your professional biography; and analyzing the design of the template.
As you are creating your page, consider the rhetorical situation of "presenting" your (professional) self online:
- What primary message do you want to convey about yourself?
- What kinds of information and experience might be most relevant to the course, your instructor, and your colleagues?
- What is the best way to organize that experience? What do you want to emphasize?
Another aspect of the assignment asks you to analyze the design of the template itself. You will include this analysis in your project assessment memo. Consider some of the following questions as you use the template for this assignment:
- What choices have been made about visual layout (colors, font, spacing, for example)?
- Why do you think those choices were made?
- What is the overall effect of the layout?
- Did you feel delimited by the use of the template? Did you want to make creative choices that you were not able to in this case?
- Why do you suppose your choices for this virtual identity were delimited for you?
- In what ways were you able to import some sense of creativity into the template?
For this assignment, you will also need to visit the web pages of the other class members and use this information in the class discussion on possible team structures.
For creating the web page, you can use straight HTML or a website design package such as Composer, Claris Front Page, or Dreamweaver. In class, we will discuss how to “publish” your web documents.
Required Documents for this Assignment
- project assessment memo
- professional biography web page that conforms to the standard template
- Note: you will need to publish your web page for the class to review
Resources
Template for Professional Biography Web Page
Webmonkey’s How-to site for Web Authoring: http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/authoring/
Joe Gillespie’s Web Page Design for Designers: http://www.wpdfd.com/index.htm
Publishing your web page at the University of Arizona: http://computing.arizona.edu/internet/create_pages.shtml