ANALYZING THE GENERATIONAL CURRICULUM
What are the implications of this site?
Since this site is a natually expanding phenomenon, it will forever
be evoloving. I think of the generational curriculum like a time-machine.
If you go through the generations starting from G-1 to the present you can
see definite trends in each generation. What happens is that each generation
builds upon the works of the prior generations because of the advancement
of technology. Each generation not only benefits from the works of the other
generations but adds to the knowledge pool so that the next generation could
continue this tradition of advancement.
For example, I was a member of G-3 in both the traffic psychology class
and the cyberpsychology class. Since I am now a part of G-4b I have observered
how this generation used the knowledge that I helped to acquire in G-3 to
their works now. They now use cut-and-paste more because our generation
discovered that it was much easier to use this system than to, for example,
telnet information from uhunix to our papers. I also observed the rate
in which the generations worked at and it seems as if every new generation
catches on to the concepts faster and better. I think I could attribute
this to the fact that there is a generational curriculum. Without the use
of the generational curriculum I believe that the rate of progression and
evolution would probably stay constant.
What should be the approach to present a "front end"
that can integrate this site?
Now that this site is growing at a phenomenal rate, I believe that there
should be a practical way of accomodating the eager cybernaut that happens
upon this site. There are many different approaches that can be used such
as; Tour Guides, Indexes, and Search Engines.
I think tour guides are a great tool to travel through a site without
getting lost. If I were to go through a site without knowing how large it
is I could be missing out on some great pages without ever knowing it. That's
where I think the use of tour guides come in. If you can think of a site
like a city and you were only there for one day, what approach would you
take to visit it? Would you just get on a bus and get off where ever you
feel? Would you continue this pattern throughout the day? I don't think
so, I think you would probably want to get the most out that day and take
a tour so that you can see the best parts of the city. For this site I took
Calvin Chung's Tour 1.I like it
but I think it needed to be more focused because I tended to get lost in
all the options that he gave me. I began to wander without guidance and
soon I got lost. However, I like the idea and I'm sure the future generations
will build on it.
I believe that indexes are a valuable source for any site. It allows
the cybernaut to look at all of his/hers options on a page. The real value
of an index is that you can always find what your looking for if you know
it by name. However, Indexes are really not useful to the browsing cybernaut.
If that's you I suggest the tour!
In my opinion search engines within large sites are a must! However,
I think that some people think that just putting a search engine on their
site solves the problem. When I talk about a search engine within the site,
I mean that it is specifically used to search within that site and not any
other.
How does this site differ from other sites on the web?
Well there are many different ways to describe how this site is different
from many others. A good way is to evaluate it on set of criteria. The criteria
consists of: (1)regualarity, consistency, and predictability, (2)elegant
navigation and supports user task. I will evaluate how this site measures
as far as this criteria is concerned, then if needed I will compared that
to other sites.
Regularity, Consistency, and predictabilty
This site despite it's enormous size has a shared fuctionality. This
means that all pages are consitent with the theme of the site. If you look
through all the pages you will see that they all have ties to psychology,
which is the focus of this site.
This site also has consistent options within all the pages which gives
it a uniform and practical look. These consistent options are; Links to
Dr. James' homepage and the students' homepage and an e-mail button on the
end. You may think that these options are no big deal until you go through
a large site and find these options missing in most of the pages.
There are also internal consistencies within each generation. For example,
G4b students all should have a homepage, 5 reports up, and the links to
Dr. James' homepage and their own homepages'.
As far as the whole site is concerned it is not very predicatable in
the sense that you would know what every site is about by browsing through
a few pages. This site is too vast for that. That is also why there are
different front-end ideas that are being developed in order to address this
problem.
As far as each generation is concerned it is very predictable because
there is a certain standard that was placed on that generation.
Elegant navigation and supports user task
When it comes to navigating through this huge site there are few minor
problems. As with any large site, getting from route A to route f could
be a slow task. However, the options that are standard in each page make
the journey easier. For example if I were going through pages of someones
report in generation 2 and I didn't know how to get back to their homepage
then I would simply scroll to the top and click on their homepage link which
is standard in every student page.
As far as supporting the users' task there really aren't any criticisms
because I found no problems in using this site for a variety of different
jobs.
BACK TO THE TOP?
E-Mail ME here!!!
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