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Discussion of "The Pedagogy of Web Site Design" by E.L. Skip Knox in Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks Volume 1, Issue 2 (August 1997).
Description of the ALN: The objectives of the ALN Web are to provide (1) a focal point for information interchange among researchers and practitioners in the field of asynchronous learning networks and (2) a scholarly reviewed on-line journal which captures the archival knowledge of the field. The ALN Web contains: the Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks (JALN), the ALN e-zine, columns, news posting areas, workshops and other features directly or indirectly related to ALN. The JALN provides viewable and downloadable journal articles in the format of a traditional journal." (from the ALN Guidelines).
The following is not a critique of "The Pedagogy of Web Site Design," but rather an attempt to illustrate how the Web can be used for traditional pedagogies as opposed to the kind of "constructivist" pedagogy I explore in "The Bluestocking Archive: Constructivism and Salon Theory Revisited."
Skip Knox describes the long distance learning course, Humanities 101, that he developed out of the "traditional" lecture course of the same title in his article ""The Pedagogy of Web Site Design." Knox has taught this course in its Web version six times as of summer 1997, giving him much more data for his comments than is normally the case for published meditations on teaching Web courses. He notes that his conclusions "apply best to a fully virtual asynchronous course in the humanities. A course that has a local, physical component will have a different dynamic, as will a course that uses synchronous tools like a MOO or chat."
The course is set up with recognizably traditional components ("syllabus, readings, registration information, study questions, and 18 or so complete lectures") on a Web site, with the site functioning as the focal point for all course activity. In addition, students have a textbook in hard copy and a listserv list for class discussion. The Web site has:
a cover page whose main function is to pre-load some graphics and to serve as a visually attractive first page. The true main page shows the main divisions of the course: the Visitor Center, the Registration area, and the Classroom. The latter is where all the content resides. In all, the site comprises 51Mb in 1,336 files. Of these, 691 files are HTML documents, about two-thirds of which are actual content pages and one-third is administrative material. The other 645 pages are graphics, sounds and text files.
Knox notes that in his first on-line teaching course, Humanities 309 (the Italian Renaissance), the reading was partially book dependent, with the Web site offering additional readings and the internet used for discussion and email. His initial approach was to free up instruction from the classroom lecture dynamic: Rather than "teaching" them, I would let my students find their own way through the information; I would serve as coach and resource, not as authority figure. . .So I provided objectives, identified the required reading, and even seeded the class with discussion questions, to help them get started, but otherwise I stood to the side, waiting to guide." The result was chaos and student distress. In a traditionally offered course, Knox says he would organize the course around topics: the snarled politics of 15th century Italy, philosophy, the crisis in the Catholic Church, art, literature. But Knox assumed that by providing course material on his Web site, students would be able to organize themselves according to their interests:
In creating a course when anything might be done at any time, I had created one where it appeared that everything needed to be done all the time. The Web site sat there, seeming to insist upon being read at once. If someone made a reference in discussion, then you felt obliged to go read that, or else not to participate. Students were either overwhelmed with work or were too intimidated to keep trying.
Instead of drawing the students together into an identified group, the Web site "anatomized" students. Knox's account of this first course points out the importance of student/reader conversation as an interactive aspect of the Web site: "we had no common basis for discussion. And without that, we literally had no class; we were instead separate individuals. . .who might by accident have something to say to one another." It seems to me that the difficulty was that conversation was not structured into the course site. He describes the course as being "unstructured, webbed," but I would argue that "webbed" is not synonymous with being "unstructured" and that the difficulty arose precisely because the site was not webbed.
Certainly the structure of an instructional Web site can be successful whether traditionally or "constructively" designed. When Knox describes how he has translated this experience in his successful course, Humanities 101, he focuses on how he has organized his lecture and source material on his Web site. He chose an organizing principle that clearly refers back to lecture style teaching. In explaining how the new site works he comes closest to discussing a "hyperbook" in the terms I analyze in my essay. However, his focus on linearity in particular outlines the difference between using the Web for a traditional pedagogy, versus using it to develop a new orientation toward teaching through the technology. The following points organize his argument:
1) Each lecture is presented as a series of pages, rather than as one file. There are a number of good reasons for this, one of which has to do with rhetoric. The common wisdom of Web design says no document should be more than three screens long because people begin to lose interest and focus. So an online lecture certainly needs to be broken up, but where to make the breaks?
2) Each Web page serves to present a thought, a concept, a scene in a narrative. The link between one page and the next is a caesura, and the end of a page is a dramatic moment, rather like a dramatic pause in public speaking. The reader has to click on the mouse button and wait a moment (but not too long!) for the next screen to appear. Just as the end of a chapter in a book should propel the reader forward to the next chapter, so the words at the end of one Web page should create a little tension and lead the reader forward. Not every page lends itself equally to this, but being aware of the technique can help in the presentation.
3) Even a casual visitor to the on-line lectures will notice that I have almost no external links within a lecture. This is an important component of Web rhetoric and of Web pedagogy. I have seen enough other teaching sites that argue for lots of hyperlinks that I want to explain my position and experience here.
4) The student comes to the Web site with roughly the same expectations she brings to a textbook. She expects to be able to understand quickly what the work is about, to be able to move through it readily, to have a clear idea of the boundaries of the work, and to be informed by the content. A site that is filled with hyperlinks violates almost all these expectations. While in theory we are offering the student the opportunity to explore, in practice the site consists of an unknown number of reading assignments.
5) Most of my lectures therefore have no links at all except to the next page, previous page, and Table of Contents. Students learn quickly that a lecture is a known quantity and can plan their time accordingly. Many of the lectures have sound file links, but these are simply to help the students pronounce names and do not take the student away from the page. I do not embed pictures in the lectures because the download time would disrupt the rhythm of the reading.
From these comments, it is clear that for Knox, pedagogy means layout rather than a cognitively-oriented theory:
The important lesson here is not whether linear is better than webbed. So many variables enter into the equation-the personality and tastes of the teacher, the constraints of the discipline and subject matter, the technology itself, the type of students, and so on-that one cannot reach general conclusions. The important lesson is that a form works best with a conscious pedagogy underpinning it. We are simply putting content on the Web, we are putting it there in a particular form. And, even more important, we ask the students to address that content in particular ways.
The notion that "We are simply putting content on the Web" is the primary principle I would contest in a constructivist pedagogy. Knox's comment that "a Web site is relatively static" further underscores the difference in the two approaches. Although Knox is describing a long distance learning course, which is extremely different from the classroom-oriented course I discuss, and which demands very different things from a Web site in order to supplement the missing context of the classroom, his useful analysis of his experiences helps point out how a pedagogy impacts Web design and orients, even directs, the student's use of and interaction with the site. For Knox, the Web site "plays an important part in creating and sustaining the community of a given class," besides "deliver[ing] content"; in a constructivist approach the Website should enable the creation of content, reenact the epistemology of student-text relations, and a component of these two processes sustain the community of a given class. (back)
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