The chapters devoted to Web building (Fifteen, Seventeen, Eighteen, Nineteen, and Twenty) can be assigned early or late in the semester depending on your plans. If you assign Web building early in the term it can complement the work that students do in the rest of the semester or you can devote the last three or four weeks to developing a large-scale project on the Web.
Chapter Seventeen is designed as an introductory step along the way toward learning HTML composition. We have included a home page building assignment in the Chapter, but you should feel free to use the process of learning HTML in conjunction with any other kind of project. In general, learning HTML comes more easily if it is done in the context of a concrete project. Be aware, however, that adding an HTML component to a traditional writing assignment places an extra burden on students. Often competing interests arise between learning the process of composing with HTML and undertaking traditional composition activities. Even students who are quite skilled at rhetorical analysis can produce less than stellar results as they devote their attention to mastering the workings of HTML. To ameliorate distractions created by the learning curve of HTML, provide warm-up assignments which serve as preludes to the larger projects that you wish students to undertake.
You'll also want to carve out additional time for those students who may be intimidated by HTML projects. For some students, handouts need to be supplemented with extended office hours or small group tutorials in order to overcome initial trepidation. Overall, we believe that composing with HTML is something that students can learn quickly and easily, but because it is different than what most of us are used to, it does require some extra attention initially.
Another concern that you'll need to address before asking your students to create Web projects is the kind of editor they will use. We have designed the Web building chapters so that students who are using only a text editor should be able to quickly get a sense for composing using HTML codes. At the same time, many facilities now provide HTML editors for you and your students to use, so you may find yourself doing more work teaching the workings of the HTML editor than the codes. If so, the design information that is woven into chapters eighteen and nineteen may prove more useful than the HTML instruction in Chapter Seventeen. In any case, the information in the chapter (as well as in Appendix Five and on the Connections Web site) can always serve as a reference for students who are building on the Web.
Regardless of the tools that you use to compose HTML, you'll want to also provide information about resources that are available on-line for your students. You may want to flesh out a section of your class Web site with links and information about HTML building. We encourage you to link from your class site to the resources for Web composition at the Connections Web site. You might also demonstrate for students the process of "viewing the source" of Web pages that they find. Not only will this provide an endless variety of commands for them to use as references, it will help students begin to think about the relationship between the HTML files that they compose and their appearance when viewed in a browser.
Finally, be prepared for some of the complications that will arise as you begin to post your students' HTML projects. (Most likely, you will be posting these projects to your own Web account.) Your biggest concern is likely to be the (mal)functioning of student projects. Invariably some projects will work when viewed from a diskette, but links and images will break when moved to the Web server. Often this is a result of incompatibility between the filenames used in the link tags and the names given to the files themselves. Case sensitive breakdowns of links are a common occurrence. Another common problem arises when files are posted to the server using the wrong format. If all the link and filename information appears to be correct, you might repost problem files in order to verify that their formats are correct. With experience, instructors learn to keep breakdowns to a minimum, but in general, you'll need to spend some time troubleshooting the projects that students create.
This raises the question of what lengths instructors should go to in order to help students publish their work. Arguably, fixing a broken file name on a student project could be considered a problematic intrusion on the part of an instructor, especially since projects are likely to be evaluated on the basis of functioning links and images (among other criteria). Similarly, a glaring typo, comma splice or grammatical error on the opening screen of what is otherwise an excellent student project takes on a new significance when that project becomes posted and available for readers around the world to see. Instructors who have taken on the task of publishing student work can find themselves placed in unfamiliar editorial roles.
A related issue concerns the level of intervention that instructors must apply to projects which are publicly disseminated. If you are placing student projects on a departmental server or within your own Web account, you'll want to take extra precautions to ensure that the materials students are using are not protected by copyright. Similarly, you'll want to protect against plagiarism or the posting of offensive materials. The sense of publication that students derive from creating Web pages is one of the chief values of assigning Web projects, but with the benefits of publication come other costs. The best way of handling these issues is often to foreground them ahead of time for the class. Once the ground rules have been established, we have found that there are fewer problems when students finally undertake their Web projects.
Exercise 17.1 Creating and Linking Pages
Time: This exercise will take one or two class periods or can be started in class and completed as homework. If combined with a more specific project it might be extended in conjunction with exercise 18.1 and carried out over several weeks.
Suggestions: Although this exercise is geared toward getting students comfortable with file logistics and basic HTML composition, you can easily combine the exercise with a specific teaching goal. For instance, you might have students create an initial page which introduces a controversial topic and two additional pages that offer differing perspectives on the topic.
You'll also want to be sure to allot enough time for the exercise. You might workshop the exercise during a class period then ask students to complete their work as a homework assignment. Also note that this exercise can be continued in conjunction with Exercise 18.1.
Above all, you'll want to spend some time trying out the process yourself so that you can guide students with the composition logistics of your own system. Use the exercise as a map for the development of the three pages and also as a way of introducing the process of HTML composition that your class will be using. If you use the home page building exercise that is outlined, you may want to assign it earlier in the term and provide students with opportunities to update their pages as the semester progresses.