E-mail Instructor

U of A Web Site

Dept. of Psychology

Over the course of the term you will have been researching a topic in navigation extensively. This assignment is the final culmination of your work presented as a hypertext document, that is, a web page. To translate this into more familiar terms, if this were a traditional double-spaced research paper it would run somewhere in the length of ten to fifteen page of text (i.e., approximately 3000 to 4500 words; note that this doesn't include title page, graphics, or reference list).

Before going on, for those students who have never constructed a web page or may even be only passingly familiar with the World Wide Web, don't panic! Web pages are actually relatively straightforward to construct. Obviously, some web page design features are more complicated than others, but the construction of a good, basic web page that conveys the information in an interesting, engaging, and useful manner is within everybody's grasp. Part of the reason I have chosen this assignment is that I would like to see my students have a bit of an edge when it comes to looking for jobs or advancing in jobs they are already in. Being able to construct even simple web pages is marketable skill. By the end of this course you will be able to list on your resume that you have the know-how to construct a hypertext document and will actually have a web page to show for it. For those students who are already hypertext savy, good for you. I hope you will take this opportunity to explore some new and interesting ways of navigating information spaces.

The fact that you are constructing a hypertext paper gives you a number of opportunities not available when working in the traditional hardcopy medium, such as the inclusion of figures, hypertext links to related material, and interesting methods for allowing a reader to navigate your information space. That being said, this hypertext project will share a number of similarities with the more traditional papers you are familiar with.
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First, this is to be a formal research paper. I expect correct usage of English, complete sentences, and proper references. Second, this is also to be a comprehensive research paper. That is, I expect full coverage of whatever topic in navigation you have chosen to research. Therefore, your paper must include at least fifteen references, at least ten of which shall be journal articles. There are two reasons why I insist on this number of journal articles in your paper. First, all cutting edge research is presented in journal articles ("bleeding edge" information may more often be found at conferences, which you won't have access to, or sometimes as web sites, which you may find out there on the Internet). Yes, a great deal of information is available in books, but by the time a book is published the research discussed in it is no longer new. This is especially true of any navigation research done in the last ten years. For example, Gould (1986) claimed to have demonstrated cognitive mapping in honey bees. Gallistel (1990) in his book Organization of Behavior relies heavily on Gould's article to defend his arguement that there are certain behavioural abilities that cross all species boundaries. However, in the time it took for Gallistel's book to be run off the press, new articles (e.g., Wehner, Bleuler, Nievergelt, and Shah 1990) cast significant doubt on Gould's (1986) claims that honey bees use cognitive maps. The second reason for focusing on journal articles over books is that I want you to be very familiar with reading journal articles by the time this course is over. If you intend to continue in academia you must be skilled in reading journal articles critically. Also, you will have to be able to find the journal articles that are relevant, which means you will have to learn how to make effective use of the Library's search resources.
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As this is a hypertext document, there will be a several specific requirements I will have for you that reflect the electronic nature of this paper, such as the inclusion of a number of hypertext links, some images, etc. For the time-being don't worry too much about the particulars. Two or three weeks into the course I'll go through the details with all the students in class and add some additional guidelines on the course web site and we'll talk about distinctions between electronic texts and hypertexts, and what helps to make an effective hypertext document.

As a final point, depending on when you give your research presentation there may be a greater or lesser degree of similarity between it and your final research paper. Regardless, keep in mind that an oral presentation is substantially different from a formally written paper, let alone a hypertext document. There are things you can do in an oral presentation that simply will not work in any form of paper. The last time I taught this course one student gave me, essentially, the identical material for their research presentation and their research paper. Without indicating what the student's final mark was, let me simply say that this little incident lowered it substantially.
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