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.


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