Course Introduction
I’m envisioning my course site being in WordPress or some other content management system, so students would have to click through from the D2L page to get to the main course site. On this site, I would have a brief written message welcoming students to the course and asking them to click through the link to the main course website.
For my course website, I think I will have a static home page. I am in the process of acquiring this second site, as my attempt at branching it off from this one was unsuccessful. The home page will include an introductory video and a brief description of the course. The video will give students an overview of the website and a general timeline for the course. Additionally, it will begin to answer the question “what are the digital humanities?” and outline how students will be asked to interrogate the concept through different class activities. I’m also hoping to have a transcript of the video to make it as accessible as possible.
While the syllabus tab of the website will delve into it more fully, the first page will also address the general goals and objectives of the course. It will incorporate images and links to examples of existing DH projects to give the students an idea of what they will be working on going forward. These images/links might include examples of coding, network analysis, mapping, data mining, or other kinds of DH projects.
At the top of the page, there will be a navigation bar that includes links to the syllabus, the different units of the course, assignments, and resources that link to various digital humanities tools. I’m hoping to to keep the menu small so students will not be overwhelmed when first perusing the website.
Reflection
What I found most interesting about this week’s assignment was that it made me realize how important the introduction to a course can be. I’ve always just thought of course introductions as a general syllabus day, but how you present the course from the beginning can really influence how students approach the class. When I first wrote up my assignment for the course introduction, I didn’t include the idea of having a video introduction until I realized how a link to the syllabus and/or course objectives didn’t fully capture what I wanted to students to get from the course. I’m also hoping to look into ways to make sure that the website is fully accessible. I considered having students interact by doing brief introductions on some sort of discussion board, but I haven’t decided yet. Since I proposed a hybrid course, if the students are meeting in person I might prefer if they introduce themselves to each other face to face.