In Spring 2003 I piloted a class to teach English majors (and other humanities students) how to understand, evaluate and design web sites.

This course taught students how to create and manage content, in the form of web sites and electronic texts, for the World Wide Web. It provided humanities students the opportunity for active, hands on instruction and participation in a computer lab setting (The Teaching with Technology classroom, or TwTc).

Students learned first to evaluate and critique web content, then to work individually and in teams to design and create web pages and graphics for the course, for other humanities classes, and for themselves. They gained experience in several widely used browser, graphics and web design programs, including Microsoft Internet Explorer, Adobe Photoshop Elements and Macromedia Fireworks and Dreamweaver. We emphasized a humanities-oriented approach, rather than solely a technical one; the class analyzed pages from critical and aesthetic standpoints, and emphasized creative approaches.

A second goal was for student teams to design a web site for an existing humanities class which did not already have one; they met with the professor, determined the needs of the class, and prepare a page which was also to include an electronic text for that course. As a result of this course, students gained expertise in several marketable skills; they also applied the scholarly practices of critical thinking, rigorous precision and creative expression which we emphasize in other areas of humanistic inquiry to this new and increasingly important medium.

This web page gives you access to my assignments for this course (including my syllabus, two presentation assignments, and two project assignments). You can also see samples of several students' individual web projects, and four group projects which created sites for the following humanities classes: African American Studies 190, English 263, English 237 and 382, and Great Books 101.

I hope you will enjoy viewing their work, and appreciate that most of the students came in to the class with no prior experience in web design.

Jonathan Glance
Associate Professor
Department of English
15 August, 2003