Class Policies

Grading
Grading will primarily be based on your creative assignments and evaluations of your progress in mastering the software.

• 60% creative assignments
• 20% written analyses
• 20% tests and in-class assignments

Attendance
If you are more than ten minutes late, you will be considered late. Two lates equal an absence. Four absences result in a full letter reduction in your grade. More than that and you could be considered for a failing grade. For excused absences, I would like print documentation that I can keep (xerox of doctor report, etc).

You are expected to be quiet and attentive in class. If you are sleeping, typing on your cell phone, giggling and chatting, etc. this will count against you in the final grade.

Plagiarism
You will fail if caught plagiarizing.

Late papers and assignments
For every week an assignment is late, it is worth a full grade less.

Format style
All papers should be in 12 point type (in Times Roman or similar font with serifs) with 1.5 spac-ing and 1 inch margins. They will be marked down if not in this format.

Assignments
Assignments are primarily geared toward proving that you have acquired some technical achievement in the software packages we will be covering. They will be described during the se-mester.

Early in the semester, you will be required to edit a short book and typeset it. You can collect in-formation from the internet or you can use your own material if you happen to be a creative writer of some nature. The material should equal roughly 96 pages of material (I’m not sure if Lulu will accept a smaller amount). You will create a cover for this material and create an order at Lulu, though you don’t have to buy it. This project will be graded on:
• cover design
• cleanliness of typesetting
• general quality of concept and editing

Later in the semester, we will do an exercise in creative hypertext. Hypertext fictions are like “choose your own adventure” type stories. You will be required to write a short one and illus-trate it in Dreamweaver, including basic illustration. This assignment will be graded on:
• quality of interaction
• use of graphics to enhance literary experience
• quality of writing

For your final project, you will take either the material you collected for you edited Lulu book or for your hypertext creative project and create an interactive Flash application for it. The Flash project will be evaluated on the following:
• use of mulitmedia elements such as sound and video
• appropriateness of interface
• general use of design principles, including issues of legibility

Other assignments related to the projects above will be assigned throughout the semester. Some of these assignments will include
• recreate a CD cover from a book of covers that is found on reserve in the library
• write and illustrate a “6-word short story”
• animate a short poem of your own or someone else’s in Flash

Writing Analysis
Three short analysis papers will be due during the semester. These will include technical descrip-tions of the objects being written about – a book, a website and a Flash site – as well as evaluative elements such as success of the site and points where it could be improved. These papers are from 3-4 pages long and should be formatted as outlined above. These assignments will be graded on style, grammar, etc. so put some time into them.