Teaching Cybertext Writing, Design, and Editing: Language, Image, Linking, Thinking

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>