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Some General Points on the Electronic Exhibit
The most important work you will produce is your electronic project.
You should look on the electronic exhibit beyond the confines of this class.
You should look on it as a way to explore subjects of interest. By the
same token, this offers a chance to consider new or unfamiliar topics.
The project should always follow your own path of inquiry. Each group should
see itself as a scholarly team, engaging primary material and creating
an exhibit that reflects the distinct questions, interests, and discoveries
of its members.
Each group will produce an electronic exhibit on the World Wide Web.
The core of these exhibits will be a written analysis, and as a result
the same issues of organization and argument that apply in traditional
printed papers will apply to the Web projects. In addition, these exhibits
should bring together images as well as scanned textual material, engaging
visual objects as well as archiving primary sources. The Web project is
also designed to introduce students to the possibilities--as well as the
headaches--of group work. Each team will need to learn about delegating
responsibilities, sharing work, and organizing time. The specific goals
of these projects will of course vary according to their topics. Each group
should meet regularly with the instructors to discuss what approach to
take and what sources to use.
Each group will receive individual training. As a result, training will
not begin until October, by which point students will have formed their
groups and identified their topics. These groups will also received specialized
orientation to the resources at Washington University's various libraries.
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What makes for a good exhibit?
Content, content, content! Those should be the three words
you keep in mind while creating this project. Unfortunately, most
of the material on the World Wide Web will not provide a good model, since
the analytical quality of most Websites remains poor. This project
should instead combine the aesthetic qualities of a good museum exhibit
with the analytical qualities of a good research paper.
First and foremost, your project should provide a thoughtful, integrated
approach to a particular subject. As with other papers you write,
the project as a whole and each of its elements must contain a cohesive
thesis that serves as a point of reference for the rest of the project.
It is not sufficient to create a series of Webpages, each on a different
subject. Indeed, the most challenging part for many of you will be
to coordinate your efforts in order to make certain that your readers will
know how the different pieces relate to one another.
The evaluation of your project will fall into three parts: organization
and argument, style, and Web design. Of these three, Web design is
the least important, in part because many of you are novices with creating
Web material, but in large part because how your project looks is infinitely
less important than what it says. You should work by the same organizational
and stylistic rules that would govern any paper. The evaluation of
your project will consider such familiar subjects as a cogent thesis, proper
verb tense, active voice, etc.
Then there's the visual quality of the project. You should avoid
unnecessarily elaborate Web design whenever possible. Use images
sparingly. Obviously, there's nothing wrong with having a flashy
image at the start of the project or at the beginning of each page.
Beyond that, however, you should only use images or other materials when
they reinforce your key themes. Likewise, you should not simply insert
images without any explanation. Instead, interrogate the images,
discussing them openly and explaining how they reinforce your key themes.
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Organization
This project does not need a particularly elaborate organization.
Examine the way other students have prepared their projects for useful
models. One thing you will notice is considerable similarity.
A standard approach that many students have taken with great success is
the following:
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Introduction
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Part A
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Part B
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Part C
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Conclusion
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Sources
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Documents
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This table represents not just a list of the individual sections, but
also the way you should think about them in relationship to one another.
The Introduction is of crucial importance, since it establishes the key
themes of the entire project. Parts A, B, and C constitute the individual
sections of each member of the group. No one section is more important
than the other, and as a result they occupy the same level of the table.
The list of sources needs to be a full bibliography. Finally, the
page of documents should provide links to key texts or images that appear
in the project.
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A Note on Sources
The foundation of your project should be primary sources.
These sources can come from on-line or from published collections.
In either case, you must provide proper citations for all of your sources.
In addition, you need to approach on-line sources with scrutiny bordering
on suspicion. Do not use sources of dubious provenance. Likewise,
do not use--let alone reproduce--sources of questionable legality.
