Contextualized design: Teaching critical approaches to web authoring through redesign projects

Development of Concept-Based XHTML/CSS Pedagogy for Non-Technical Learners

“…To this list, add journalism (Royal, 2005), rhetoric and composition (Dick, 2006;Karper, 2004;Turnley, 2005), education (Marx, 2003;Victor, 2002), information science, library science, linguistics, mathematics, psychology, and particularly, literacy (Hofstetter, 2006;Mackey & Ho, 2005).…”

“…What comprised a Web design curriculum was vastly inconsistent though-it depended on the academic discipline, whether the course focused on technology or information literacy, for example, or even the hardware and software available to students at the particular university (Stepp, Miller & Kirst, 2009;Turnley, 2005). Now into a third decade, this instructional inconsistency remains.…”

“…In addition to the term Web design, the various fields employ phrases such as Web composition (Karper, 2004;Turnley, 2005), Web authoring (Niess, Lee, & Kajder, 2008;Turnley, 2005), Web literacy (Karper, 2004;Mackey & Ho, 2005;Maddux et al, 2008), Internet literacy (Hofstetter, 2006), Web development (Blackwell, 2002;Park & Wiedenbeck, 2011), Web engineering (Whitehead, 2002), hypermedia design (Lim et al, 2003), and hypertext authoring (Gordon, 2005)-all ultimately refer to the creation and posting of Web pages.…”

“…Web design "is transitioning from a cutting-edge technology to a more accepted, more transparent technology" (Karper, 2004, p. 35), because of the Internet's presence in daily life; this sometimes means that computer literacy instruction presents Web design as software training, but more often these educators reclassify it as an advanced 'new literacy' that requires integration of not just technological skills, but the judgment and perspective of communication and composition skills in the Web medium (Karper, 2004;Krunić et al, 2006;Mackey & Ho, 2005;Royal, 2005;Turnley, 2005 It should be noted that many traditional computer literacy standards promote advanced intellectual skills, including problem solving and design, as "critical elements in technology education" (Jakovljevic, Ankiewicz, de Swardt, & Gross, 2004, p. 267), even while focusing on software or hardware training-these two ideas are not mutually exclusive (Ebersole, 1997;Niess et al, 2008). Accreditation standards for colleges and universities also mandate the integration of information literacy and technology as intellectual skills in higher education curricula rather than just software training (Mackey & Ho, 2005).…”

“…(Bransford et al, 2000, p. 137) Students' everyday experiences using the Internet and Web pages can be deconstructed to reveal how Web pages actually operate, how the display and functionality they encounter had to be purposefully designed and then built, for example. Starting with an exploration of Web pages or the Internet may still be problematic for novices though: Turnley (2005) reports that students' experiences with Web pages "tend to highlight visits to technically sophisticated, commercial sites…students often express that they were not able to find less sophisticated examples in their searches" (p. 134). It becomes difficult for them to relate or connect the rudimentary Web design ideas they are first taught with the advanced Web pages they see daily.…”