Small Research Website: Proposal
Due date: Sunday, October 19, 2025 at 11:59 pm
Points value: 25 points
For your next project, you will build a website exploring a topic related to the internet, web writing, or digital rhetoric. This assignment is an opportunity to learn more about topics that are of interest to you—ideally something we will not have a chance to cover in this course. Your task will be to conduct research via credible web sources and, based on what you learn, create a website intended to share knowledge about your chosen subject with your classmates.
Before researching, writing, and building your small research website, however, your first task is to choose a topic and write a proposal.
Choosing a Topic
To prevent overlap, you must claim your research topic and have it approved by me before pursuing it further. I encourage you to be creative and choose something you want to learn more about and/or a topic that aligns with your future professional goals.
Here is list of potential topics to get you started:
- Accessibility
- Algorithms (Zach)
- Analytics
- Blogging
- Bot farms (Britney)
- Content management systems (CMS) (Oxana)
- Data collection and ad targeting
- Data visualizations (Janee)
- Digital art (Raven)
- Digital humanities
- Digital marketing
- Disability accommodations
- DITA
- Diversity in web design (Catalina)
- Ebooks (Robyn)
- Ethics of the web (Harmony Rose)
- Full-stack web development
- GitHub
- Hosting platforms
- Human-computer interaction (HCI)
- Intellectual property (Lynzie)
- Intercultural communication on the web
- JavaScript
- Online advertising
- Online education
- Open access (OA)
- Open source (OS)
- PHP
- Privacy and security
- Python
- Responsive design
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
- Social media marketing
- Usability
- User analysis/testing (Stevan)
- User experience (UX) (Quintin)
- Video and audio editing (Monica)
- Web typography (Faith)
- Wikis (Nolan)
- XML (Kane)
You are not required to pick a topic from the above list. However, whether you choose something from the list or not, you must run the idea by me via private Slack message and get approval for your topic BEFORE submitting your proposal.
I encourage you to brainstorm two or three topics of interest in case one of your fellow classmates has already claimed it. (More than one person can conduct research in the same general area/category, but topics cannot overlap.) I will update the above list throughout the week as topics are claimed by your classmates.
Writing a Proposal
After getting approval of your topic from me, write a project proposal for your small research website.
Your proposal does not need to go into too much depth; I am looking for 250–500 words describing your interest in your topic as well as your research plan.
Please submit your proposal in HTML/CSS form. Create a file called “573-lastname-firstname-research-proposal.html” or “679-lastname-firstname-research-proposal.html”, format your proposal in HTML, and include some basic CSS in the style tag (h1, p, etc.) instead of creating an external stylesheet. You do not need to include a footer, navigation menu, or even a header (unless you want to!).
I have created an example for you to use as a reference, but you must make it your own. View the source code of the example to see how I made it.
Even though you're only working with one file, be sure to zip it before submitting. Brightspace does not play well with others (non-zipped HTML files).
Remember to let me know if you have any questions. I'm looking forward to hearing your research topics and reading your proposals!