Table of Contents
1.0 Purpose Statement
The purpose of our website is to not only review some of the
off-campus housing units available to Shippensburg University students, but
inform them on the opinions that current tenants of these units have in order
to help aid students in their pursuit of finding off-campus housing.
Our primary audience will consist of freshman students
currently living in the dorms who are looking to move out for their sophomore
year. Our secondary audience will consist of upper classmen who may still live
in the dorms or may already live off-campus and want to move out of their
current residence. Also, our secondary audience will consist of parents of
students at Ship who may want research housing units their son or daughter may
want to move into.
2.0 Introduction
(Disclaimer) At
Shippensburg University, it is required that incoming freshmen and transfer
students with fewer than 30 credits live on campus. No students are guaranteed
campus housing throughout their student career at our campus. (Shippensburg University Catalog 2009,
University Housing) Therefore, a large majority of students will move to
off-campus residences after completing a year at the University. Hence, our
website will assist them in gathering information of local rental properties.
2.1 Purpose
The purpose of this report is to
propose our idea of hosting a website that will provide valuable information
pertaining to off-campus housing. In order to achieve our goal, we will be
distributing surveys to students who currently live in off-campus housing.
These off-campus housing units will consist of Rock Towne, College Park
Commons, and Bard Townhouses. These surveys will contain questions pertaining
to many different aspects related to where they currently reside. With this, we
can accumulate first-hand data.
Shippensburg University students
use the website: shipunderground.com. On this site, students give their
opinions and ratings on professors here at Shippensburg and it is widely used
throughout campus. Our website is modeled from this and we are hoping to
achieve ratings of rental properties.
2.2 Background Information
One of the reasons we chose to
build a site based around this concept is because we all know how difficult it
can be to choose the right place to live. It is very common for students to
just sign a lease for the first place they visit, or base what they are going
to do on the biased opinion of one person they may know. We have all seen this
first hand, and we believe our site can be a useful tool to use in which
students can look at all ends of the spectrum. For example, instead of just
seeing the residence and finding out the price, using our site they will be
able to see ratings on such things as proximity, internet connection, how good
the utilities are, etc.
2.3 Sources of Information
Other than the use of surveys for
our data, we will be conducting our own research using literature provided by
the off-campus residences we research to acquire some validity and provide
details.
2.4 Scope
We are proposing to provide
un-biased opinions about off-campus residences to students at Shippensburg
University. We are trying to simply provide an effective tool for students to
use when choosing off-campus housing. We are not in any way shape or form advertising
for any of these residences. Links for the sites will be provided, but that
will be the extent.
2.5 Organization of Proposal
Our proposal will consist of the
Plan of Work, Site Description, Group Work and Schedule, as well as our
Qualifications. We believe this is an effective way to be clear and concise on
how we are planning to develop our idea as well as show how we function as a
group.
3.0 Plan of Work
We desire to make the transition from on-campus housing to
off-campus housing less stressful for underclassmen. To do this, we will
provide a website that includes information for three large rental properties
within a mile to campus.
Each member of our group has lived in various off-campus
dwellings. We have selected the properties where we have been most happy while
living off-campus. We feel this is a good jump off point. With more time, we
would expand the number of properties to research and include on the
website.
As college students ourselves, we have general knowledge
about the current housing options in the town of Shippensburg. We will call the leasing offices and conduct
internet research for Bard Townhomes, College Park Commons, and Rock Towne
Student Townhomes. We are interested in gathering information in regard to
rental price, cost of utilities, furnishings, and amenities.
The website we create will display facts about each
property, and based on those, we will provide pros and cons. Additionally we
wish to provide valuable opinions of each rental property based on surveys distributed
to current and past residents.
4.0 Site Description
The
following is a brief discussion about the overall design of our website. Here
we will provide the colors we plan to work with, the layout of the information,
and how we’re planning the navigation for each page.
4.1 Layout
The
Ship Room Raters logo will be located at the top of our site. This will be at
the top of both the home page and each of our individual websites as well. The
logo will also work as a link back to the main sites homepage, removing any
confusion for the audience if they need to get back to the homepage at any
point.
We’re
planning to have two navigation bars on the site. One will be right below the
logo and will go from the left of the screen to the right. There will be a link
to our “About Us” page, then 3 links to each of our sites, and a link to our
“contact us” page. The second navigation bar will be located along the left
side of the site. This will have links to each of the same links as the first
one, but will also include specific links to each page of our individual sites.
For instance, there will be a like that reads “Bard Townhouses” and underneath
of it, in smaller letters, there will be three more links that read “Housing
Info”, “Pros/cons”, and “results”. Please review our flow chart (Figure B) for
a visual of this organization.
We’re
planning to have two navigation bars on the site. One will be right below the
logo and will go from the left of the screen to the right. There will be a link
to our “About Us” page, then 3 links to each of our sites, and a link to our
“contact us” page. The second navigation bar will be located along the left
side of the sight. This will have links to each of the same links as the first
one, but will also include specific links to each page of our individual sites.
For instance, there will be a like that reads “Bard Townhouses” and underneath
of it, in smaller letters, there will be another link that reads “Housing
Info,” thus informing the audience that that specific link will direct you to
housing information for Bard Townhouses.
The
main information that the site will provide will be displayed in the rest of
the area taking up all of the bottom right of the screen. Here is where we will
provide pictures of the different housing units, analysis of their pros and cons,
and other statistics based off the research we’re accumulated.
One
specific graphic we are hoping to use is a map of Shippensburg University with
the locations of each housing unit circled so that our audience can see where
in town the apartments are located. We plan for the circles to also be links
that site visitors can click on which will take them to the site of the housing
unit that is circled.
4.2 Attachments
Figure
A offers a flow chart for how the navigation of the site should work.
Figure
B offers a rough outline of the site layout.
5.0 Group Work and Schedule
Our workload thus far was divided among three team members.
It consisted of submitting a work plan with logo, letterhead and business name.
We also created a work schedule and Gantt chart to demonstrate our tasks and a
time line of completion. Our team collaborated on a business name: Ship Room
Raters. Bobby Wood created the original Gantt chart and survey for research;
Beth Weyer created the work schedule and designed Ship Room Raters letterhead
and logo; Mike Edwards wrote the work plan itself. Combined, this took
approximately five hours to complete.
For this proposal each member chose two sections. Mike Edwards completed 1.0 the Purpose
Statement, 2.0 the Introduction, and compiled our information into memo format.
Beth Weyer was responsible for 3.0 our Plan of Work and 5.0 the Group Work and
Schedule, revising the Work Schedule and Gantt Chart. 4.0 Description of
Member’s Sites and 6.0 Qualifications were completed by Bobby Wood. Combined, this
took an estimated six hours to complete.
Internet research is assigned to each member. Mike Edwards:
College Park Commons; Bobby Wood: Bard Townhouses; Beth Weyer: Rock Towne
Student Townhomes. It could take several hours to view websites and type up findings
for Room Raters website.
Surveys were created but will be revised by Beth Weyer and
Bobby Wood as they have background knowledge in research and public relations
practices. Twenty surveys will be distributed to current and past residents at
each rental property. Our classmates
will help to complete surveys and we will ask neighbors to help as well. We
estimate this may take an hour to complete and additional time to collate.
Writing for the Room Rater website will be done by Mike
Edwards and Beth Weyer. Bobby Wood will be responsible for finding &
downloading images, backgrounds, and other components to site. He has the most
experience with Dreamweaver and will be a valuable contributor to our webpage
layout.
Testing, editing, revising, and proofreading will be an
equal contribution from each group member.
The final presentation hasn’t been discussed to date.
6.0 Qualifications
Ship
Room Raters is compromised of three competent and intelligent individuals. All
three members are technical communication minors. Mike Edwards, the team
leader, is a Human Communications major, and the other two members, Beth Weyer
and Robert Wood, are both Communications/Journalism majors. All three of us are seniors and have lived in
several different apartments throughout our four years at Shippensburg
University. We all have very strong
communication skills in both writing and speaking. We have all participated in
group research projects before ranging from a variety of topics, such as:
·
Beth
has developed a public relations plan for the Boy Scouts of America in a group
with seven other individuals.
·
She
has also developed a marketing plan for Rock Towne prior to this project.
·
Mike
has developed a proposal suggesting a program at Shippensburg that provides students
with better information about their health and well-being. In this group he
worked with three other individuals.
·
Robert
has developed a public relations plan for Creative Edge Inc, a small
advertising company in West Palm Beach, Florida.
·
He
has also developed a proposal for exercise classes at Shippensburg University.
In this group, he worked with one other individual.
As a
team, we are confident we can provide potential residents with all the
information they will need to make the right choice for their future living
arrangements. Our goal is to provide an easy to understand and informative tool
for fellow students to use. We will take our past work and the knowledge that
came from our former research projects and utilize that knowledge to create our
web site.
See
Attachments for our individual resumes.
