The Birth of Web Site Design Skills

Abstract

The fleeting life cycle of Internet technologies poses new challenges to the pillars of scientific method, validity and reliability, in research about technology. Time compression—the concentration of numerous and rapid technological changes into shorter, erratic time cycles—affected the author's research on Web site design skill, resulting in a disappearance of data that is unexpected in the Information Age. Given the intensifying digitization of human life, the discipline of sociology increasingly confronts a tension between an imperfect, realistic data situation with which history has already made its peace, and an ideal type of scientific method that was always challenging, but now seems even more formidable. History, the past and the discipline, offers tools and insights to address the complexity of time in the digital world and its effect on evidence and methodology.

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

“…(Ariga & Watanabe, 2008, p. 815) The ever-advancing and time-compressed nature of Web technology leads to a lack of uniform definition for the term 'Web design' (Karper, 2004;Kotamraju, 1999). It is generally understood to mean the design, creation and posting of Web pages ("Web Design," Wikipedia, 2013), but the process can be as finite as formatting text and hyperlinks for push-button publishing (e.g., blogging) or as all-encompassing as the information design, graphic design, multimedia design, computer language markup, scripting and programming sequence necessary to produce a complex website or Webbased application (Burch, 2001;Hofstetter, 2006;Sklar, 2008;Teague, 2006;Wang & McKim, 2013).…”

“…Web designers routinely teach themselves, becoming experts via experimentation and discourse (Deek, Coppola, Elliot, & O'Daniel, 2000;Karper, 2004;Kotamraju, 1999):…”

“…This ever-shifting, time-compressed scenario has led to hesitancy by academia to pursue in-depth exploration of a research topic with such instability (Connolly, 2012;Kotamraju, 1999;Park et al, 2013;Victor, 2002). For example:…”

“…Students in effect learn not how to create quality Web pages, but how the software allows them to create Web pages; "learning the procedures associated with the technologies [becomes] a major component of the evolution of the designers' composing processes" (Karper, 2004, p. 127). For both technology and literacy educators, this represents a danger (Karper, 2004;Kotamraju, 1999;Niess et al, 2008): "When interactions with technologies are assumed to be automatic rather than contingent upon personal, social, and political factors, users (including students and teachers) are positioned as passive receivers rather than active agents" (Turnley, 2005, p. 134 should be incorporated into Web design instruction is yet another debate without consensus, and "the decision to teach HTML coding as an alternative to using packaged Web-design software has shown mixed results (Mauriello, Pagnucci, & Winner, 1999; Rea & White, 1999)" (Dick, 2006, p. 206). In reality, HTML is usually included in Web design instruction in addition to WYSIWIG software, rather than alternative to it (Hofstetter, 2006).…”

“…This attitude also likely persists because HTML was enfolded by computer literacy expectations (Carter, 2006;Kalman & Ellis, 2007) and because Web designers were/are predominantly self-taught (Deek et al, 2000;Karper, 2004;Kotamraju, 1999)-i.e., HTML can be considered easy enough for students to teach themselves. More recently however, educators' attitudes are shifting:…”