abstract

background

theory

praxis

models

course

a challenge
slow development
web authoring
lessons

references

As a class, assignments and exercises on the mechanics of web development and image editing took time away from work on the theory of hypertext authorship and design. And this relatively basic level of HTML instruction limited our ability to explore applications of hypertext theory to concrete academic hypertexts. While we read some of the scholarship on hypertext, nonlinearity, and the academic essay, students struggled to make sense of it.

It was only after students were comfortable enough editing HTML and images, uploading files to their server space, and attaching cascading style sheets to their documents, that some students began to make sense of such authors as Kolb (1994), Johnson (1997), and Janangelo (1998). Still, I suspect that most students in the class never really understood the larger goals of the course. For these students, the course was mostly about learning Macromedia Dreamweaver, Adobe Photoshop, and producing a research paper as a website.

This course is probably better conceived as an advanced seminar for students who have already completed both a research writing course and a web development course. The class could meet some days in a computer classroom and some days around a seminar table. Students could bypass the artificial process of translating linear print text to hypertext, and could possibly experiment with nonlinearity earlier than my students did. Students in such a class might be in a stronger position to work in the spaces between hypertext theory and web development practice.

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