Some guidelines are offered here for organizing student Web development teams and executing a term project. The purpose is to get students in a course to learn how to cooperate and cooperate in a real website creation project, to document their activities and to present the final results. Here you'll find:

• Project Proposal
• Project Evaluation
• Guide for Team Operations
• Project Milestones
• Team Presentation
• Written Reports

Suggested Project Management and Milestones

1. Student questionnaires collected: by end of first class. This give the instructors data to know the students, thier strengths, and to provide guidance in team formation.

2. Design Teams Formed: by the end of the 2nd or 3rd class. Students are allowed to form their own teams but with instructor input and advice. Make sure each team has a strong designer and programmer.

3. Project Milestone I: by end of first month of class.

   • Project definition---propose a site to build (see Project Proposal Guide)
   • Requirements---what exactly will the site do for the client
   • Team organization and task division---who will do what
   • Information and site architecture---site map outline completed, flow chart and rough thumbnail designs for: homepage, major sections and sub-sections for the site completed.

   Milestone I is monitored by the instructors. Each team will submit a report addressing the 4 items and the instructors will give guidance and suggestions to revise the plans for the project.

4. Project Milestone II: by end of 2nd month of class.

   • A ``content-only site'' is mostly complete, the textual content, the pictures and images as part of content rather than visual presentation, the information architecture, textual navigation, and site organization are done to provide a skeleton for production work later.
   • Banners and constants should be in place. System for navigation and forms roughly designed.
   • The site does not need to have finished graphics or CGI programming. All that remains is the addition of graphics and CGI programming to the pages.
   • The project now should basically be as close to a fully functional 2nd generation site as possible.
   • Send the URL to TA and instructors for examination.
   • Instructors and TAs to meet in the lab with the students and go over the site and check it against requirements set forth in Milestone I. Any major problems need to be addressed here. TAs may disclose a whole report for each of the teams and report any red flags.

5. Project Milestone III: by end of third month of class.

   The project now gives a good idea of the final site, layout, navigation, and graphics design. It is ready to be analyzed by the instructors. The instructors will have a last chance to provide input before the project is done. Team members will also plan for the final project presentation and the project team report as well as individual reports.

6. Project Completed: one week before final presentation at the end of class (in liu of final exams).

   • Each site must have appropriate graphics for the entry page and unified design elements for each sub page. Design (layout, type, color, space) and concept must work together. The site must be easy to use for the intended audience, index, navigation, and contents are logically and clearly structures. Additional features such as contact by email, suggestions, feedback, guest book or other page with HTML form/CGI are also expected.
   • Site XHTML has be validated and hyperlinks checked. The appearance of pages has been tested on different platform/browser combinations. Forms and server-side programming all have been tested under different conditions. The site is deployed and fulfils the intended purposes and fulfill the requirements set earlier.
   • Each team will make a 20-25 min in-class presentation of the completed website.

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