English 351 Grading Guidelines
For undergraduates, your grade in this class will be based on participation, on completing the reading assignments and the reviews, and on the quality of your web projects in your portfolio. In looking at the quality of web projects, I pay most attention to and am most interested in your improvement over the semester. For graduate students, the same criteria hold, with the graduate student paper added to the mix. Students in this class usually come from diverse areas of the department and I hope that you will work on projects that reflect these diverse interests.

In looking at your sites, I pay particular attention to the final project. Many of you have never created a web site before and what I am impressed by growth from project to project much more than I am your first efforts.

The bad new
I will lower your grade if you do not attend class, if you do not participate in our class projects, if you do not write the responses to the readings, and if you do not participate in the peer reviews, or complete the reflections in the portfolio. My grading philosophy is to reward excellence and/or growth over the semester and to punish non-participation.

In general...
People who get an A in the class have participated, they have produced three very nice projects at least one of which is exceptional in its ambition, in the scope of its architecture, in its navigational scheme, etc. They have met the deadlines in the class, and their work demonstrates mastery of all the different aspects of web site authoring. They have written a reflection about each project and have done a nice job of assembling a class portfolio.

People who get a B in the class have usually done good solid work. They have three fine projects, but no one project really stands out. These projects tend to be fairly ordinary in terms of ambition, features, content, etc. Often their participation or attendance is slack. They not have not completed all of the responses to the readings or turned in the reviews late. B students show much less change during the semester.

People who get a C in the class have usually done the minimum. Their projects are modest in scope and execution. Often their navigational strategies haven't advanced beyond the linear. Nonetheless, these students have mastered the essential skills of creating websites, moving pages to servers, and testing them.

My Evaluation Criteria
Although I am not yet ready to start attaching letter grades to hypertext projects, I have gotten a much better sense over the years of the criteria that I use to make judgments about projects. I pay particular attention to at the following issues:

• Content
  Is the content of the web appropriate and sufficient for its purpose?
• Ambition
  Is the site substantial.
• Overall Look
  Is the site attractive? Is the look of the site appropriate to its audience and purpose?
• Entry Page
  Does the initial page(s) provide a good orientation to the site? Do I know why I am there, what I will find, and where I can go?
• Navigation
  Do I know how to get around? When I click on a link do I know what to expect? After I arrive, do I know how to get back? Do the links make sense? Does the site need/support nonlinear navigation? Are the breaks between pages sensible?
• Proofreading and testing
  Does each page have an appropriate title? Do the links all work? Has the interface been tested? Has the text been proofread and spell checked? Has the author tested the site with real users?