The two websites I found within my major that I found a particular interest in was Boston University and Southern Miss's. I looked into several schools, but I found that Boston University was the most organized and eye appealing. One can find just about anything they are looking for on this site. Boston University's link is http://cjdegreeonline.bu.edu/program-overview/. It was simple but unique. On the other hand, I hate to say it because I am an eagle through and through, but the CJ website for Southern Miss is very unprofessional. The link to the University of Southern Miss's Criminal Justice Department's link is http://www.usm.edu/cj/. This does not just go for the Criminal Justice department, but all the departments. The are informative, but the way the website is organized is a little confusing. It is also not eye appealing. Instead of the photo on the home page being a picture of Arthell Kelly Hall (home of the CJ department), it is actually the dome in the front of campus. What I noticed on both sites is that they do not try and persuade people to join their majors--they just give information. The reader of a prospective student is usually a high school senior and needs to be persuaded in some form or fashion, such as giving advice about what careers a person could get after they complete the program.
The purpose of writing and creating the website is to inform readers about my current major and its importance. I am going to write a persuasive and informative website about Criminal Justice, while also being organized and having the website very eye appealing. The outcome I hope to achieve is that I can get others to recognize their interest in criminal justice and I hope that it helps other students to realize that this major is for them, or that they were not as interested once they learned the actual facts about the major. The primary reader of this site will be current students of the school, or future students—high schoolers and possibly older students who are intending to come back to school. My relationship to them would simply be to address them in a way that they can understand what criminal justice is all about—not just the short facts, but what they can do once they achieve their degree. Other people who might read this page would be other professionals looking for jobs within the field and other members of the school. The reader usually knows slightly about a major, the point of the website is to give a more thorough follow up. Something I will consider for my reader is that they need an organized way of finding things. Events and circumstances that might influence my writing is that criminal justice has sprouted interest in the last ten years and information for students should be more readily available.
Readers usually look for particular answers to questions they have thought about before looking at the website, such as: how much is tuition? What are the requirements? What can I do with this degree? The reader will usually look for subheadings within a text or even in different tabs throughout the site. The reader will use this information to determine how the information provided that they found on the site will affect him or her. If they decide this is something that they want to further engage, they will have the contact information and resources to further their plan. I want the reader’s attitude towards the subject to be positive so that they will be interested in the topic before even reading more into it, because it is hard to persuade someone who is not open minded. Other stakeholders in communication would be professors in the field that would actually follow up with the students and ask them about their interests. They will be affected by how many more people will actually email them about the major, hopefully. Some limiting facts that might get in my way of the site would be that I can only provide as much information as I am given. Also I might not be able to provide certain links to career websites without permission.
I learned a lot from the previous websites I looked at. I learned that some websites are more organized, eye appealing, and informative than others. This is helpful to the reader in many ways so that they will be able to make an appropriate decision for themselves in the future.
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