This website is one of our projects for English 306: Introduction to Professional Writing at Purdue University. The main purpose of this site is to provide other professional writing majors and their instructors with resource annotations appropriate to our area of study. Our professor's intentions for this project are to teach us many different skills such as web design and development, usertesting, copyediting, APA annotation style, teamwork, and project management.

Front row (left to right): Anu, Sarah, Jean, Abby, Nim, and Carrie. Second row (left to right): Betsy, Stefanie, Katie, Ashley, Mr. Yuk (AKA, Melissa), Meredith, and Heather. Back row (left to right): Kyle, Cory, Dennis, Adin, Charles, and Ben. Behind the camera: Amy. Not pictured: Jeni.

History of the Project and Development of Teams
We feel that our site is consistent and reliable in terms of its content and design. Our research annotations are well-developed and edited, and our page is carefully designed and tested. Our hope is that the site contains useful information for future professional writers.

Figure 1: Chart of Original Project Teams

We began this project with each project team selecting a relevant category for the archive and researching print- and web-based resources within that category. Teams selected client-consultant relationships, copyright and intellectual property, document design and devleopment, electronic media, and professional writing organizations. We looked for reliable and useful sources for our target audience of professional writing majors and annotated them according to APA format. (Note that we have not indented our citations to avoid coding complications.) In addition, our annotations went through peer and instructor reviews and were revised accordingly.

After completing the annotations, each of the five teams created its own web design templates. Node layout, navigation, colors, fonts, and backgrounds were chosen and constructed carefully by each team. The main goal for each of the teams was to create a template that was easy to read as well as to navigate. In addition to the templates, each team created a storyboard, handouts, and a PowerPoint slide presentation outlining the team's choices and rationales. Each of the five teams presented its web design to the class, and then we voted on the website design that best fit our archive's main goals. As a testiment to our collaborative spirit, we ended up drawing upon aspects from each team's web design templates. We believe that each team had excellent, well-articulated ideas.

New Teams and Tasks
Once our class selected our web design, we reorganized our teams to reflect the new tasks required of the archive's development.

Figure 2: Chart of Reorganized Project Teams

Our web development team revised the templates based upon the class input and then made further revisions after usertesting results were gathered. Their work has been invaluable. Our copyediting team worked diligently to revise the content of our annotations and web pages. This team made some of the tedious work more enjoyable. We have two usability teams--the test designers and implementors and the users and credits page developers. The test designers and implementors created a user test, administered it, and compiled the results. Their debriefing provided the web development and copyediting teams with significant data for site improvements. This team also developed our subcategories for our pages. The users and credits page team responded to the user test, and we created this page. Each of these teams has a representative from our original course project teams, and our team reorganization allowed for renewed energy for the project.

Note from Credits Page Team
Through our extensive researching, revising, and testing of this website, we feel that it sufficiently completes our main goal of providing useful and releveant information to professional writing students and their instructors in an easy to use and navigate format. To encourage fair use, we want to stress that our site is open to anybody who needs or wishes to use it; however, we would like credit for design or content information obtained from it. Thus, please cite your use with a link or reference to this credits page. As noted, we hope you find the material useful and relevant.


Note from Professor
The students of English 306 have impressed me with all of their enthusiastic work to make this website possible! At many points in the semester, this group has rallied together to help one another with their semester-long client projects, development of annotations, and web designs for the archive. I feel lucky to have had the opportunity to work with each and everyone of the students in the course, and I invite you to explore the fruits of their labor.

While I am not directly responsible for the design and content of the website, I take full responsibility for any errors or oversites of this project and its resulting archive. Thus, please email me any comments, suggestions, or questions about this site: kimmehea@purdue.edu.

A special thanks goes to Dianne Fenster for the graphical designs displayed on our nodes. These images represent the spirit of our site and our commitment to fair use practices.