PLEASE NOTE: All CMIT modules have now been withdrawn,
and are unavailable for the 2010/11 academic year
These web pages and lecture notes are left as reference for those students
requiring CMIT modules to complete their programme only, and are not an
indication of modules currently offered.
assignment: essay
This assignment is due on or before Thursday 21 January 2010 by 12 noon. You should hand in a paper copy of the essay, and place your essay on your web space.
If you are taking MIT2214 for 20 credits, you must submit two essays.
Submission Guidelines
You should aim for approx. 2,000 words total (excluding bibliography, etc.) on one of the following questions. If you prefer, you may phrase your own question, but you should confirm it with Gary before you begin researching and writing. Your essay should be presented in XHTML format, and placed in your university webspace, in a folder called 'mit2114/essay/'. You should also submit a hardcopy version, printed from the browser screen (ie not showing the XHTML tags).
For students based on the main campus, all work must be handed in to the CMIT Office (i.e. not to Gary personally). You should ensure that the work is signed in correctly. State clearly your URL and your student number on your work; do not include your name. You should also resubmit your revised web review in the same manner.
Distance learners should email the URL of their essay(s) to <cmit-submissions@exeter.ac.uk> before the deadline.
Some of the questions include references — these are starting points for your research, and you are expected to explore well beyond these. Be careful particularly how you cite books and online references; check this bibliography and the references below for examples. We do not insist on any give style of citation, but do require sufficient information to rediscover the material. For further details, see the Presentation Conventions.
Weighting of Marks
Marks are primarily weighted towards the content of the essay, with 90% of the final mark for the essay awarded for the quantity of research beyond the given references, clarity and perceptiveness of argument, and factual accuracy. The quality of bibliographical citation is also included in this portion of the marks.
The remaining 10% will be based on the overall presentation of the essay. You should aim for simplicity and clarity for the reader; you can resuse the design you developed for the web review if desired.
Questions for 2009/2010 Academic Year:
- Is Wikipedia a consensus of knowledge, or merely an accumulation of diverse opinions? Examine the value of an encyclopedia based entirely upon user contributions.
- Are Virtual Communities real or imaginary? Can they tell us anything about how RL (Real Life) communities are built? (starting points: Wertheim 1999 esp. chapter 6, Foster 1996)
- "Hypertext destroys our skills of linear reading and reduces our attention span". Discuss whether these and other effects are real, and are causing a dumbing down in literacy (starting point: Birkerts, 1994).
- Do social networking websites contribute to social isolation, or do they provide a means for the shy to engage more easily in social interaction?
Past questions from the 2008/2009 Academic Year:
- "Most information on the web is junk." How could we make it easier to
evaluate web material to extract the good information from the rest?
- "Information is organised on the Internet as though you took all the
books from a library, dumped them in a room and turned off the lights."
(Bob Frankenburg). How effective are methods of finding information on the Internet?
- The speed of email facilitates communication, but the low cost of
sending multiple copies can produce information overload and spam.
How can these aspects be reconciled?
(Stefik 1997, pp. 111-123)
- Are Virtual Communities real or imaginary? Can they tell us
anything about how RL (Real Life) communities are built?
(Wertheim 1999 chapter 6,
Foster 1996)
- "Hypertext destroys our skills of linear reading
and reduces our attention span". Discuss whether these
and other effects are real, and are causing a dumbing down
in literacy (Birkerts, 1994).
- The World Wide Web is the application that popularised the Internet. Has it developed to keep pace with its changing role? (Naughton, 1999)
Starting points for your research:
- Birkerts, S. (1994)
- The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age, Faber and Faber, London.
- Giese, M. (1998)
- Mark Giese. Self without body: Textual self-representation in an electronic community. First Monday, 3(4), April 1998. Available from: http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/587 .
- Foster, D. (1996),
- Community and identity in the electronic village, in
Porter
(1996), chapter 2, pp. 23-38.
- Porter, D., ed. (1996),
- Internet Culture, Routledge, London.
- Stefik, M., ed. (1997),
- Internet Dreams: Archetypes, Myths, and Metaphors, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
- Turkle, S. (1995),
- Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, Simon and Schuster, New York.
- Valauskas, E.J. (1996)
- Lex networkia: Understanding the internet community. First Monday, 1(4), 1996. Available from: http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/490 [Accessed 13 January 2009].
- Wertheim, M. (1999)
- Margaret Wertheim. The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace. Virago Press, 1999.