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A171 Start Writing for the Internet
I'm taking this course together with A172 (Writing Essays) in preparation for starting an Open University Arts degree with A300 Twentieth Century Literature: Texts and Debates, in 2005. The course is based around a set book - 'Writing for the Internet', which is supplied with the course material. There is also a course website, with electronic copies of the study guides and other printed material, and an audio cd. I've enjoyed doing several Open University short courses before, but the format of these Arts faculty writing courses seem particularly effective because we have small tutor group conferences and a tutor to give feedback.
Course start date November 2004
Block One - How the screen changes the page
The course starts with a look at how the screen changes the page - the web site author is Jane Dorner, who is clearly an accomplished writer, but I find myself at odds with some of the things she says, which seem to appear technically inaccurate and misleading. For example, there seems an obsession with copyright, and yet no mention of
Copyleft, or
'Creative Commons' to put the Internet in perspective. Dorner makes some sweeping statements such as: "...most people print out anything on a screen that is longer than 500 words...", "..most people read 25% slower on screen than on paper.." - says who? Where's the provenance, where's the source? Who are "most people"? This is an undergraduate environment where students are expected to give balanced arguments, and to quote sources - shouldn't the course authors do the same? Ironically, one of the key points at the end of block one says: "Details of the origin of any data or information should be given".
We are told that we should always open external links in a new window to prevent copyright infringement, which seems technically incorrect. The usability guru Jakob Nielsen, and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) suggest that the back button shouldn't be broken by opening new browser windows as it confuses people. The statement could only really be justified for a site that uses frames. Strangely, Dorner's own site has external links that open in the same window. Here's a quote from Nielsen:
"Opening up new browser windows is like a vacuum cleaner sales person who starts a visit by emptying an ash tray on the customer's carpet. Don't pollute my screen with any more windows, thanks (particularly since current operating systems have miserable window management)".
Another comment is that there should be an email link on every page - but there's little mention of the danger of spambots that harvest email addresses from web pages, or spam prevention techniques. And again, Dorner doesn't practice this herself - some of her pages have an email address, others don't.
I'm keeping an open mind about the course because it's only just starting and the emphasis is on writing, but my initial thoughts are that the website could be more accessible (there are browser compatibility issues) and the content more accurate, and applicable to an undergraduate audience.
In my view, Dorner is certainly an expert writer, but she seems to fall down in her attempt to explain writing for the Internet, because of her strong personal bias towards protecting copyright, and apparent lack of technical expertise. I think the problem I'm having is separating Dorner's excellent advice on writing from her seemingly dubious technical advice.
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Block Two - Writing emails
Block two contains some common sense advice about constructing emails. The block explores the evolution of electronic communication, how messages can be misunderstood, and the importance of correct tone of voice and being succinct. There is an emphasis on privacy and the problems of forwarding mail without permission. Although I had covered most of it before, I did find some of the tips from the audio cd useful such as having a one line summary at the start of the body of a mail followed by a 'Details:' sub-heading, which helps make the content clear from the beginning.
The tutor group conference has been a little quiet - we're now well into the course and there have been very few messages. This tends to be the case in small conferences, but it may pick up when we have more tutor group activities to do.
After block two we had the first electronic tutor marked assignment (eTMA) to complete. I enjoyed doing the eTMA as it consolidated the work we had done over the first two blocks.
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Block Three - Writing for web pages
Block three introduces a content management system called 'My Website' which allows us to create simple web pages and publish them to a secure OU server. In my view, the key to the phrase 'publishing web pages' is in the word 'publish' - "to make information available to people". However, only one person gets to see our pages - our tutor, so we may as well have created a word processed document. I realise that there are potential copyright or plagiarism issues, but surely the whole point of writing for the Internet is to write for a large audience? It's also useful to get feedback from your peers, and share ideas through publishing to the web.
I would have preferred this course to be centred around a blog rather than web pages. A blog can be up and running in minutes and the whole focus is on writing rather than technical issues of web design which are covered more thoroughly in other OU courses such as T183, and TT280, etc. The course is almost halfway through and we haven't really got down to the 'nuts and bolts' of Internet writing yet.
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Block Four - Word power
This section describes a very simplistic approach to web writing, that in my view is OK as a starting point, but doesn't always fit well with all types of Internet writing, and isn't applicable in every situation. However, I did find the Simplified English (SE) concept helpful; six of the SE rules were suggested:
• do not use different technical names for the same thing
• if you have a choice, use the shortest and simplest names
• use active verbs: 'he picked up the book' not 'the book was picked up by him'
• cut sentences of over 25 words into 2
• separate ideas into paragraphs
• the maximum length of a paragraph is 6 sentences.
The FirstClass conferencing continues to be disappointing on this course - out of the 26 students originally registered in my group less than half have ever read messages, and only between seven and four have ever contributed to a tutor group activity.
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Block Five - Words and pictures
I found block five a little disappointing. We were given a mishmash of design ideas about download speeds, metadata, usability and accessibility, etc., that again seemed inaccurate and confusing. For example, we were told: "Make sure the page is around 25 - 40Kb in size. A very rough rule of thumb is that 20Kb would take around 5 seconds to download on a standard modem connection." Says who? What's a 'standard modem connection' in 2004 - surely more than 28.8Kbps? And again the author doesn't follow her own advice on her own web site..
I'm still confused with this course - some parts I find annoyingly inaccurate and biased, others I've quite enjoyed. I have learnt a few useful things about Internet writing, but overall, in my view, the course is flawed in its approach to this subject. The 'My Website Maker' publishing tool seems unnecessary and give a distorted impression of web publishing. There seems too much doubtful advice on web design, and not enough on actual 'writing'. This is only a relatively new course, but it already seems in need of a major re-write.
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References
Dorner, J. (2002) Writing for the Internet Oxford: Oxford University Press (Set Book).
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