“Teaching Cybertext Writing, Design, and Editing:
Language, Image, Linking, Thinking”
Chris
Funkhouser
New Jersey Institute of Technology, USA
Ira Shor, in Critical Teaching and Everyday Life,
proposes a student-centered pedagogy which theorizes that everyone immersed in
mass culture is "habituated to a dizzying pace of life." (63) Describing the
factors today's teachers face, Shor writes about the "addicting standard of
stimulation" set by radio, television and other illuminated media, certifiying
that a "hyped use of words in pictures fits into the whole accelerated gestalt
of daily life." (63-64)
Accepting this as contemporary circumstance, methods must be constructed and made
readily available to help teachers bridge the gap between past and present in
terms of technology and the humanities classroom. Digital technology is changing
the whole nature of education in our society. This means that professors and
students from all disciplines need to be prepared to read and transmit their
work in new ways via the computer.
My essay will outline, then describe in detail, successful methodology
established in teaching "Electronic Publishing" classes to graduate and
undergraduate students with interests across multiple disciplines at New Jersey
Institute of Technology. The primary objective of "Electronic Publishing" is to
enhance a previously untrained student's ability to use computers effectively
and intelligently to create and design texts in academic, commercial, or other
settings. Projects in this course of study intend to build understanding and
functional skills in the visual presentation and online structuring of
information. Students learn how to create interactive online documents that
incorporate language with visual aspects of computerized text by combining
graphics, sound, animation, text, and video into compelling content. The
approach to teaching cybertext writing and design I have developed at New Jersey
Institute of Technology since 1997 is effective for students presenting research
in every area of the humanities, including languages and literature, history,
philosophy, music, art, film studies, linguistics, anthropology, archaeology,
creative writing, and cultural studies.
As a pedagogue, I formulate this discipline as an investigative, processual
endeavor that demands the understanding and application of two human principles
in conjunction with four essential aspects of design. To learn and succeed as
online producers of text, students must first embrace and attempt to embody the
concepts of patience and organization; the fundamental areas of attention in
creating hypertext documents are introduced as: language, image, linking, and
thinking. Every technical and aesthetic aspect, or problem, of document
construction may be addressed through a series of questions, and a checklist of
formal considerations associated with these principles and areas of attention.
All of the dimensions or elements within the principles and aspects of design
highlighted above will be fully addressed and explained in the paper. Among the
multiple subjects that arise in this discussion of how to teach students to
produce cybertext are: gathering and formatting content, conducting research on
the Internet, presenting effective visual communication, strategizing and
solving technical problems, interlinking and layering documents, and otherwise
establishing objectives and sensible schemes for online documents. In
"Electronic Publishing," students are eventually introduced to a completely
different language: the relentlessly precise language of computer programming,
HTML, which intervenes with content and re-creates sense and vision within
cybertext writing and editing. Code is language that handles the work of online
producers: writing, image, and sound; sometimes it is relatively easy to
understand and use, at others it may also be fearfully complicated. Methods of
conceptualizing (for students) what HTML is, and how to make use of it in
humanities projects, will be outlined in this presentation.
This essay will, in addition to covering materials listed above, offer a detailed
account of the various components of the "Electronic Publishing" courses which
consists of a month of unique design-oriented research followed by two months of
"hands-on" work. Students in the course not only study electronic publishing,
they do electronic publishing by editing two editions of a journal based on
their personal academic or creative pursuits. An electronic portfolio of a
student's work in every class they are enrolled in must also be completed as
part of "Electronic Publishing."
The program of "Electronic Publishing" designs a technology plan for other
Humanities-oriented departments interested in developing curricula around
electronic publishing initiatives, Internet communication, and hardware/software
management schematics. Methods of reading and presenting work using
technologically sophisticated computers and networks are made clear by my
process; students are quickly able to exhibit and exercise their learning in
these courses. At the conclusion of my paper, I will present guidelines
formulated for the assessment of student generated work.
For current "Electronic Publishing" course materials on the World Wide Web, see:
<http://www-ec.njit.edu/~cfunk/353>,
<http://www-ec.njit.edu/~cfunk/605>