Your Academic Simulations Weebly is a nice attempt at a transduction from Inquiry essay to functional academic Web site. I appreciate that you made a venture into a medium that I don't know if you're fully comfortable in. Having to consider design, text, usability, accessibility, and audience all at once can be challenging, but you took it on. You also had the obstacle of transducting from an essay on a different topic! But in all, this was a nice effort.
The Academic Simulations opening page really doesn't tell us much. It's almost like a title page or splash page from the Web of old. We have the digital connectivity image from the syllabus, but there's nothing that introduces the topic, the key inquiry, or who you are. The reader sees "Page 1 Agashe" at the bottom, but there isn't anything else to gather from this page. There are links to the other sections, but those aren't readily apparent on first look. What if someone logged into this site? Would they ever want to visit this homepage again?
Once we move into the second page (Computer Simulations), it's clear that you've considered the journey approach to finding answers to questions. This isn't the same as inquiry, but at least it starts to take us in that direction by moving through the stases. You start with definitional issues (what are simulations?) and cause and effect (why does this matter?). The Robert H. Smith School of Business examples are helpful annotations of the simulations. The screen captures are especially nice, and this page (and the next one) are along the lines of a typical Web site, though the images are a bit small for viewers to actually see or make sense of.
The other academic examples such as Autocad, dissections, and chemical reactions are again informative and show your knowledge of the situation, but I'm not sure what the exigence is as a viewer. Why is this a Web site I should read? Your writing is professional, and the pros/cons visual is one that though text-based is helpful for juxtapositioning. Ultimately there is an argument ("We should not become so dependent on simulations...") but no central inquiry or clear exigence of why one should read the full Web site. Do you have any videos of demonstrations of simulations? Anything that could show instead of tell? How could you make the visuals more engaging? The Works Cited is great, but the lack of links and full size illustrations (video or photo) can be detrimental.
Hey Maitreyi,
ReplyDeleteYour Academic Simulations Weebly is a nice attempt at a transduction from Inquiry essay to functional academic Web site. I appreciate that you made a venture into a medium that I don't know if you're fully comfortable in. Having to consider design, text, usability, accessibility, and audience all at once can be challenging, but you took it on. You also had the obstacle of transducting from an essay on a different topic! But in all, this was a nice effort.
The Academic Simulations opening page really doesn't tell us much. It's almost like a title page or splash page from the Web of old. We have the digital connectivity image from the syllabus, but there's nothing that introduces the topic, the key inquiry, or who you are. The reader sees "Page 1 Agashe" at the bottom, but there isn't anything else to gather from this page. There are links to the other sections, but those aren't readily apparent on first look. What if someone logged into this site? Would they ever want to visit this homepage again?
Once we move into the second page (Computer Simulations), it's clear that you've considered the journey approach to finding answers to questions. This isn't the same as inquiry, but at least it starts to take us in that direction by moving through the stases. You start with definitional issues (what are simulations?) and cause and effect (why does this matter?). The Robert H. Smith School of Business examples are helpful annotations of the simulations. The screen captures are especially nice, and this page (and the next one) are along the lines of a typical Web site, though the images are a bit small for viewers to actually see or make sense of.
The other academic examples such as Autocad, dissections, and chemical reactions are again informative and show your knowledge of the situation, but I'm not sure what the exigence is as a viewer. Why is this a Web site I should read? Your writing is professional, and the pros/cons visual is one that though text-based is helpful for juxtapositioning. Ultimately there is an argument ("We should not become so dependent on simulations...") but no central inquiry or clear exigence of why one should read the full Web site. Do you have any videos of demonstrations of simulations? Anything that could show instead of tell? How could you make the visuals more engaging? The Works Cited is great, but the lack of links and full size illustrations (video or photo) can be detrimental.
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