A full syllabus is available in Canvas.
This course covers web publishing. Students explore current web technologies along with design, development, and evaluation.
By the end of this course, you should be able to:
- Recognize and have the ability to use basic web development technologies.
- Communicate with others about concepts, terms, and implementations common to web development technologies.
- Implement an instructional activity using web development technologies.
Over the course of the semester, your weekly primary tasks will transition from a focusing on learning new skills and evaluating different instructional approaches toward the development of your own instructional project.
During this time, you will be sharing your notes, observations, and queries with your fellow students.
Collaboration with your fellow classmates will be of critical importance!
There are weekly deadlines for all assignments. I'll do my checks the Monday after the deadline. Missing a few deadlines shouldn't hurt your grade —but it will absolutely make it harder for you to catch-up and be able to complete the actual course. In light of this, there are a couple of weeks that are slightly less intense primarily for review of material before progressing. However, if you've fallen behind, use these periods to catch up!
Initially most of your assignments will be specific, predefined instructional lessons. For each of these assignments, you will:
- need to complete the actual assignment
- post summary notes about the technical content of the lesson(s)
- post any technical questions that you have
- address other students' technical questions
- post aspects of the instructional aspects that you find useful, not useful, how you might improve them, and how you might implement similar aspects in your own project.
There will be a single repo for the entire class for this assignment. (You'll understand what a "repo" is by the end of the first week.)
Most weeks there will be requirements helping you move from an instructional concept toward your completed project for the semester.
Your project task will require an approved instructional technology topic using skills covered within this course. If you feel you can use technologies beyond those covered in this course, you must have prior approval. In general, as long as your project demonstrates the covered skills, any additional technology use will be approved.
You will each have your own repo for this project.
More project details are available on the Projects page.
As there is a rather wide difference in prior knowledge on the related topics, there will be significant latitude in the learning tasks that you may focus on completing.
If you are a complete novice, you should focus primarily on completing activities and adding to the collective course notes. If you're already comfortable with the technologies that are being covered, then you should focus on interacting with the assigned lessons with a focus on the instructional aspects, not necessarily with the technical aspects, and you should assist in clarifying and correcting information in the collective course notes and answering your classmates questions.
Regardless of prior knowledge, all instructional lessons are to be completed, to include a summary of the useful and not useful aspects for each activity, as well as elements that you might use in implementing your own instructional project.
There are no clear measures for demonstrations of learning tasks or interactions with classmates. The key is that the it provides a constructive additions, modifications, and clarifications.
In general, providing a summary of a topic that was addressed in the week's learning tasks, asking clarifying questions related to the week's learning tasks, answering such questions, or providing clarifying descriptions and examples, will meet the weekly technical learning tasks.
For each instructional activity, a minimum of three pieces of information must be provided: a positive aspect of the instructional approach, a negative aspect of the instructional approach, and an aspect of the approach that will inform your instructional projects moving forward. The aspects informing your instruction can be something that you will incorporate or something that you will avoid incorporating in your instructional course project or other instructional projects outside of this course.
This course is designed to include both collaborative and individual aspects, but rarely will any aspect be exclusively one or the other.
One clear example will be the running course notes and FAQS, i.e. this repo (you'll understand this term by the end of week one) for all notes. Each of you is expected to actively contribute to this repository.
In addition, if you have a question, you may reach out to your classmates, and they are encouraged to help in answering or clarifying your understanding. Likewise, if someone posts a question that you think you can provide additional information about, please do so!
Meanwhile, your course project must primarily be your own work, but if you run into a situation where you need assistance, you are still encouraged to reach out to your classmates for assistance.
There are now many AI services that may provide you assistance throughout this material. I encourage you to limit your use of AI during all non-project work. You're here to learn the basics of web design and development as it relates to instruction, you're not here to learn how to use AI.
Likewise, I encourage you to limit your use of AI during your project work, as this is how you practice transferring the skills that you should have learned in the previous lessons.
However, if you are having challenges understanding general topics and your classmates are not helping to clarify your understanding, and you can't attend an office hour with me within the next 24-36 hours, then you may use AI services to help you get a better understanding of the topic - on the condition that you add your new-found clarification to the course notes.
The world of web development is fast paced and multifaceted. With very, very few exceptions, we all need to help one another. That holds true in this class.
It is perfectly acceptable to work through exercises together. This does not mean that you can split up assignments into two different sections and work independently on each of them. If YOU don't work through the tasks, then it's unlikely that you'll be able to complete your final project.
In other words, working side-by-side on exercises is not only allowed but encouraged, but running relay races for exercises is not acceptable.
Twice a week, I will have a one-hour long, online Office Hour.
I genuinely enjoy being able to help clarify technical concepts and help you better understand web dev topics and your personal projects. However, since a key goal of this course is being able to seek and find assistance outside of this course, I strongly encourage you to use other resources before reaching out to me.
The one massive caveat is if you're just having a challenge staying motivated or you doubt your confidence in your ability — definitely reach out to me in these cases!!! For some of you, this topic will require a very different type of thinking than you're accustomed to - I am very good at helping folks reframe how they're approaching the course material, as well as individual challenges, so that it isn't as challenging as they might otherwise think it is. (https://xkcd.com/530/)
Since most of you have day jobs, some with odd schedules, I'm intentionally varying me scheduled office hours week to week so that I'm available to provide a range of days and times to meet. If you feel that I'm your best resource for a certain challenge and my office hours aren't going to work with your schedule, please reach out and we'll find a time that does work for your schedule.