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Creating The
Freshman Experience Web Site
CSE 180 is a
computer literacy course for freshmen. In this class, we
learned advanced word processing, presentation software, web
page design, spreadsheets, mail merge, email, electronic
conferencing, and much more. Our professor, Dr. Alice
Christie, proposed that we create a web site on The
Freshman Experience.
We accepted her challenge.
We formed nine different teams to accomplish the different
tasks involving in researching and creating a web site about
the freshman experience. Below, we describe what each team
accomplished and we list each team's members. We used
Netscape Composer to create our individual HomePages
as well as the pages for this site. All teams contributed
to writing the content for our Freshman Experience Web
Site.
Survey
Team |
Web
Design Team
| Data
Manipulation Team
| Digital
Photographers
| Interviewer
Letterhead
Creation Team
| Letter
Writing Team
| Monitors
| Editor
More
Pictures of Our Class in Action
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The
Survey/Data Collection Team
Team Members:
Tony, Traci, Ashley M, Jessica, and
Jesse
We created
surveys for freshmen, faculty and administrators.
Deciding what kind of questions to ask was the
first step. Each group was asked to tell us how
they felt about the first freshmen class here at
ASU West.
We sat together
and discussed what we felt were the most important
topics. After that, we used our word processing
skills to prepare the surveys. We printed separate
surveys for each audience, and we sent our surveys
to administrators, faculty members, and freshmen
students asking their opinions of ASU West's first
semester with freshmen. We asked ENG 101
instructors to distributed and have students
complete surveys in their classes.
Once we collected
the returned surveys, we collated and graphed the
results using our spreadsheet skills. These results
can be found in three sections of our Freshman
Experience Web Site: Students, Faculty, and
Administration.
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The Web
Design Team
Team Members:
Chris and Nick
The web creation
team designed templates for each section of The
Freshman Experience Web Site. Our job was to
put together the web site and to make it appealing
to the eye and readable. We created these templates
using Netscape Composer. We created banners
and buttons using Adobe Photoshop Elements.
We needed to consult with all the other teams to
know the content and divide it into meaningful
sections. After this consultations, we decided on
the following sections: Home, Our Project, The
Educated Person (a class assignment), Students,
Faculty, Administration, and About the Authors. We
felt overall that the process of putting these
pages together was quite frustrating at times, but
in the end was very rewarding.
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The Data
Manipulation Team
Team Members:
Edith, Dustin, and Joe
We worked
together using Microsoft Excel to create the
demographics charts for The Freshman Experience
Web Site. We were in charge of creating visuals
of the data gathered by the data collection team.
This team provided us with demographic information
gathered by Dr. Vince Waldron and Dr. Emily Cutrer.
We took this information and created charts that
would load quickly and look good on the
web.
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The
Digital Photographers
Team Members:
Erin and Chad
We took digital
pictures of our class actively working on The
Freshman Experience Web Site. We also
photographed the guest speakers (Provost Maimon and
Cindy Rasmussen) who came and spoke with our
class.
Then we learned
how to use Photoshop Elements. With this program
we resized and cropped the photos in so they
would load quickly and look perfect for the web
site.
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The
Interviewer
Team Member:
Megan
I was in charge
of interviewing faculty, administrators, and
students.
When Cindy
Rasmussen and Provost Elaine Maimon came and spoke
with our class, I had questions ready to ask them
about how freshman came to be a part of ASU West. I
also asked questions of upper level students,
freshmen, and the professors of our learning
community, Dr. Alice Christie, Dr. Vicki Hay, and
Professor Edward James.
Finally, I wrote
up each of the interviews for The Freshman
Experience Web Site.
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Cindy
Rasmussen
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Letterhead
Creation Team
Team Members:
Ashley T. and Nicholas
We created the
the CSE 180 letterhead. We used the picture of all
the freshman and resized it to create a background.
After that, we changed it to a watermark in order
to make the typing over it noticeable.
Using our
letterhead, we wrote thank-you letters to those who
helped with the project.
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The
Letter Writing Team
Team Members:
Natalie, Melissa, Ashley T. and
Terran
We wrote letters
to staff, faculty and administrators informing them
about our Freshman Experience Web Site as
well as our surveys. We did this by looking up
their e-mail addresses and sending them email
messages.
We also wrote
letters to the freshman English teachers letting
them know about our project and asking them to
distribute a survey to their students so that we
could gather data for our site. We also also
physically distributed the surveys to the
administration, faculty, and those teachers
administering the survey in freshman
classes.
Finally, we wrote
thank you letters to faculty and administration who
have helped us complete our project.
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The
Monitors
Team Members:
PJ, Heather, and Vince
We were the
overseers of the class while working on this
project. We helped each of the other seven groups
with ideas, technicalities and general questions.
We made sure each team was doing its part instead
of fooling around. We also helped coordination
between teams.
Whenever a team
needed extra help, we pitched in and helped them.
We also let Dr. Christie know how each team was
progressing and how the teams were interacting and
cooperating.
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The
Editor
Team Member:
Maria
My role was to
help with the final organization of all the
material for The Freshman Experience Web
Site. I edited all the text written by each
team, helped decide where on the web site each
piece would best go, worked on joining all the many
parts of our Freshman Experience Web
Site.
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