A171 15 Jun 2007 09:11 am
So How Are We Meant to be Learning..?
A poster over in the OUSA 10 Pointers conference.. er, forum (grr to changing the “official” terminology for no good reason) was lamenting the end of A171 (Start Writing for the Internet) – it’s in the middle of its final presentation at the moment, and they were sorry they’d missed it.
I did A171, and I have to say there were a few problems with it, most noticeably that in my mind it was overly-prescriptive in its “teaching”. Here’s the thing: it’s a university-level course. One of the things that a university is meant to teach its students is independent thinking – most courses will present the facts, and present advise about how you should treat those facts, but if you’re to do well at this level one of the things you usually have to show is your ability to take information, analyse it, and come to your own conclusions about how it should be used. A171 never really let you do that.
Instead, the course author (also the author of the set book) had her own ideas about how information should be presented on the internet, and if you didn’t agree, tough. I remember losing TMA marks as I hadn’t used colour within an article I had written – I’m sorry, but how annoying is pointless colour on a webpage? Use it to highlight links, yes, but otherwise it’s just a distraction. I remember the early 90′s when Netscape first introduced colour & blink tags and scrolling marquee tags to the HTML spec, and web designers the world over produced some real abominations until the novelty wore off – the A171 marking scheme seemed to almost positively encourage a return to those bad old days.
Being a bit of a techy, I was also able to nitpick when the author strayed away from writing and presentational stuff into more technical details – for example, the 406 & 506 were models of Peugeot car, and not models of Intel processor that the set book claimed at one point (that would be 486 & 586, which was renamed Pentium before it went on sale).
Of course, all this griping could be just a case of sour grapes – of the four courses I have results for so far, A171 was my lowest mark by quite some margin, but I still blame that on the course’s “Do it this way or else” approach. A course that’s gone, and at least by me won’t be missed.