Graduate Projects

Graduate students do an additional project of some sort that they construct in a manner that will advance their education and/or career. I am open to negotiate a variety of graduate projects, but past projects have fallen into five groups:

A critical project (in any digital media or print) on a nonlinear topic related to the class and to your interests (a good choice if you plan to go on in graduate school or are preparing for comps).
An additional web project and reflection (good choice if you are preparing a portfolio).
Additional readings and response. You may do some additional reading on a topic related to the web and hypertext and write an extended response about what you have read. Good choice if you want to expand your knowledge of a particular area. I had two graduate students do historical readings about Hypertext and Critical theory and another do readings about identity online in the spring of 2010, and they all wrote terrific reflections. T
Some graduate students have successfully combined their graduate project with their creation project, writing a critical introduction to an ambitious project.
You can do a digital or web-based project using software other than Dreamweaver. For example, Gina Cooke creative an academic blog, LEX, at wordpress.com. The emphasis here is really on creating a prototype of the project.
Most rarely, a graduate students falls in love with one of his or her early projects and re-imagines and expands it into a graduate project.

Deadlines

I would like a proposal (e-mail is fine) about your topic no later than Week 12.
I would like a draft by week 14. (Drafts are very important in this class. Do not neglect this step!)
I would like the final draft by the Monday after finals week.

Please remember that my primary goal is for you to do something that helps get you one step closer to graduation. I am willing to negotiate a variety of alternatives in addition to the ones above as long as you can make an argument about how the project helps your education.

Past Projects (print and electronic)

Becoming Online Actions (2010) This project is a collection of reflections for anadditional readings project and the prototype for an online essay.
Barbi Smyser-Fauble Web Resume and Portfolio (2010)
"Composition with a BANG!—and a POW!—and a THOK! Teaching Multimodal Composition through Comic Books" (Fall 2008)
"South Asian Literature for Children and Young Adults" (2008) This was a combination project that involved a good deal of original research.
"Urban Space Understood as Cyberspace" (2008) Print paper linked to a portfolio.
"Sophist:ication" (2008) Repurposing of a sophist paper.
"Applying Roland Barthes' Concepts of Studium and Punctum to Usability Testing of Web Sites: East and Southeast Asian Selections." (2006) This paper explored ideas that the student later used in his teaching internship.
"From Hacks to Standards" (2005) This student redesigned a web page as a graduate project, giving up tables for divs as his primary layout strategy and then wrote a lengthy reflection about the process.
"Websites for Teachers" (2005) A guide (primarily for ISU teachers) on how to build your own website.
"The Pentacle of Originality" (2005)
"MetaFiction in Literature for Young People" (2004)
"I can only speak" (2004) A webbed essay (now offline) exploring the relationship of the teaching and performance from a graduate student stance.
"Seeing Unseen Media" (Spring 2004)
"A Critical Look at Owls" This paper was completed just hours before OWLs all but disappeared from our collective consciousness. (Spring 2004)
"A Collection of African Proverbs" (Spring 2004) This was a web project to extend a portfolio.
"Great Possibilities: the Use of Online Academic Works." (Fall 2003) This print paper suggested that the arguments against the using of online academic works is caused more by the current online publishing system than by online data itself.
"Teaching Drama through Performance" A critical introduction to the virtual blocking project (Fall 2003).
"Mothers and Monsters" The student originally did this website in more modest form as her identity project. She liked it so much that she decided to expand it into a graduate project (Fall 2003).
"Intranet Web Design" (Spring 2003)
"Paper vs. Online Newsletters" (Spring 2003) The student used this project as part of a spring board into a successful freelance career focusing on newsletters.
"Writing for the Web" An exploration of the important of text on the web. (Spring 2003)
"Internet Privacy, Security, the Cookie Monster, and Social Mistakes" (print). (Spring 2003)
MEME (Marriage in Early Modern English) (Spring 2003) A website to expand her technical writing portfolio.
"Poetry on the Web" by Lisa Savage (Spring 2003)
"English 101 as a Paperless Classroom" (Fall 2002) You may need to resize your window to display the site properly.
"Reflections" (Spring 2001) A collection of the student's digital essays.
"Using Computer Games to Teach Writing"(print). The student later presented this paper at Computers and Writing in Normal. (Spring 2001)
Web Design (Fall 2000)
"The Importance of Viewing Writing as Interactive: Publishing Student Work on the Web" Print. a critical examination of different ways of theorizing student publishing on the web. (Fall 2000)
Tristram Shandy in Hypertext This was a combination final project/graduate paper. (Fall 2000)
"Censorship on the Web" Print. A examination on paper of how schools and libraries are coping with the censorship issues which the web raises. (Fall 2000)
Repurposing or Reinventing: The Battle in E-Publishing Check out the section on Kinetic Poetry. (Fall 2000)
A Resource Guide to Online Training A critical examination of the state of online training. (Fall 2000)
"Virtual Spouse" The author wrote the critical introduction to this collaborative final project as her graduate paper (Fall 1997)
"Assessing the WWW as a Resource for the Teaching of English" A first draft of his thesis proposal as his paper and then created a site evaluating English Ed web sites (Fall 1997) that became the core of his Masters thesis.
"A comparison of writing in web-based Academic journals to writing in print based Academic journals" Print. (Fall 1997)
"There we meet minds: Authorial Intrusion in afternoon" A print paper about the role of the author in the classic hyperfiction, afternoon. (Fall, 1996)
"Literary E-zines: A Hypertext" An exploration of the genre of online small press publications (Fall 1996).
"The Graphical Rhetoric of Rush Limbaugh Websites" This print project was done in 11x17 four color paper. Very pricey. (Fall 1996).
"The Electronic Resume." The first web-based paper written in one of my classes. (Fall 1995)

This list leaves plenty of room for new projects. Surprise me!

If you have any questions or comments, e-mail me at kalmbach@ilstu.edu