Final Project

My project is the website that hosts this blog: https://splopenn.wixsite.com/home (The blog is hidden from the homepage).

The project is a website that explores the issue of the education gap. I will give a quick overview of the layout, then the reflection. The home page is intended to encourage readers to continue exploring the site by placing a gripping quote as the first thing you see. The other pages are prominently displayed so visitors will know what information is available. The next page, "What Is the Education Gap?" serves to give readers a quick insight into the issue. Its is not too fact-heavy, to avoid turning readers away at the beginning, and has an embedded video that I think readers will be more willing to engage with than plain text. After getting invested in the issue from this page, the next page, "Mapping the Problem," has an embedded interactive map that explores the numbers behind the education gap. The text on this page discusses how the education gap is quantified and gives a case study on Birmingham. The site was originally intended to only address the education gap in Birmingham, but I decided that it could just as easily reach a wider audience. I kept the case study of Birmingham on this page because it is useful to have a small-scale example of large-scale issues, and the map remains centered on Birmingham by default so that visitors have a quick place to start that has an obvious issue of education inequality. So, the audience is still general, but site visitors from Birmingham will have the most relevant information. The next page, "Effects," is the most text- and research-heavy. It begins with a quote and a graph to make sure readers are still interested (though I expect by this point they have been hooked by the video and interactive map) then summarizes two reports in order to give a deeper understanding of how the education gap hurts students. This page is intended to really get people ready to act, but could be improved by more testimonials or personal stories. Finally, we come to the "Take Action" page, which every page except the home page links to. The purpose here is to get site visitors to turn what started as maybe a mild interest, but hopefully grew into a deep concern, into action. There are plenty of ways to get involved for anyone in the country -- because the audience is intended to be anyone interested in the issue -- but has one opportunity (MTR) which is mostly targeted to people in the South but could be taken advantage of by anyone.

So, a quick recap on the important points: The audience was initially intended to be only Birmingham residents, but I changed that to a general audience (anyone interested) but retained Birmingham case studies as a way to make the problem more manageable. The purpose of the website is to get people to take action, which I try to achieve by drawing people in slowly (each page gets more involved) and linking to the page that gives information on ways to take action from every other page. I chose my media in order to achieve this purpose. The picture on the homepage is easy to consume and clearly relates the subject of the page. The video is still easy to consume, and the text around it is light. Next, the map draws the reader in even more by being easy to use and informative. Then the graph summarizes the problems the education gap causes, and the text on that page is the hardest to consume (which is why it is last, hopefully after they are hooked). The final page is easy to navigate and to get to other resources.