A Second Look at Web Pages

We'll look at a small set of related pages this time: starting at U of M Admissions. These pages seem to be an equivalent to our Prospective Student pages.

Go to your WikiName? page and create a new page [[*SecondLookAtWebPages]]. As is routine, use headings to distinguish between Description and Analysis.

Take a couple of solid, uninterrupted hours to work with this. It may take longer. Take the time. You might want to print out the pages to help you focus on it, but you will have to follow links, too.

Review Stoner and Perkins, chap 3: Description and Analysis to warm up. Chap 4 and chap 5 go into more detail on how to proceed with description and analysis.

This is an exercise, practice. Effort is notable and noted.

Start here: with the Admissions page, and look at the pages linked to the top navigation bar

• Academics
• Student Life
• Opportunities
• Twin Cities
• Find an Answer

Some of these pages have sub-pages; you might want to follow the links to see where they go, but you can focus on this cluster of pages.

Describe

Describe the pages. Watch for continuity - and describe once those elements that don't change - but also watch for what's presented on each page: images, text, what kind of text it is... Note the page titles. Look at the text: how it's organized, the headings used; note the tone, the diction, what it says, and how it addresses the visitor; note even how long it is in relation to other similar pages we've looked at. Take note of what the visitor is given to do: take a tour, follow links... Follow the links in the text to see where they lead. Take note of what's presented on these pages, and what's not. Don't evaluate in your description. Neutral language.

Be systematic, methodical. You may want to draw a map and take some background notes.

Pay close attention to internal characteristics of the text on each page

• form
• style (the style of the kind of text: formal, informal...)
• organization
• lines of argument

Also look at web elements in the texts

• lists
• heads
• links: placement and phrasing - or lack of links

If you use bullet points, use complete sentences. Better, start clustering your descriptions into 2 - 3 - 4 sentence proto-paragraps.

Describe until you can characterize the cluster of pages by bringing forward the most important patterns or elements of the cluster. In characterizing, you shift from the details you described to the patterns those details define. Conclude your notes on description with a solid paragraph in which you characterize the pattern or elements. Your characterization will boarder on analysis.

Neutral language and balcony view.

Analyze

Move to analysis, using the VisitorRoles search model. Here's where what you noted about the text comes into analytical play, where you attach what you described to a theory, a search model.

You can focus by using the questions,

• "How can the rhetor in this cluster of pages be characterized? What patterns and elements of the pages come together to create this characterization?"

and, given that,

• "What role is the visitor being cast in in? Who is the ideal prospective student at the U of M? And what is the visitor being given to play that role as prospective student?"

(Recall: BSU > kindly benefactor. SCSU > Marketing guy. And the visitor was cast as the ideal student given the rhetor.)

In your analysis, characterize the rhetor, characterize the kind of place the university is presented as, and characterize the prospective student visitor implied by that rhetor. Then consider what the visitor is given to facilitate playing that role: these are elements in the text, the images, what's offered on each page, even the structure of the text. (Recall how the BSU Visitor who is invited to Take a Tour is given a map, a Campus Tour link, and links to other pages...)

Pin your consideration to elements of the page that you described:

• images
• text: consider, now, in analysis, the tone, the arrangement, the diction, the length, what's mentioned, what's not...
• what's presented - and what's not.
• links: consider, now, what words are linked and where they lead to, and how that works with placing the visitor...

Length: A few paragraphs or so, or more. There's no formula so much as guidelines. Your analysis will draw on your description. You don't need to come to any final conclusions about this group of pages because I'm not asking you to move to interpretation, so the analysis may not feel like an essay, may not close.

But like description, analysis leads to a further question. See if you can develop one, a question about roles and visitors that your analysis might open into.

Other

If you wish to interpret and evaluate, go ahead. But, as always, place your interp and eval in its own section. I need to see that you're making the distinction between description, analysis, and interpretation/evaluation.

A reminder: This is an exercise, practice. Effort is notable and noted.