Open Season for E-Learning: anxiety in the classroom and knowing how to know
Description
The presentation will address how to structure web design course curricula, which can reduce anxiety among design students in confronting ever-evolving digital technology through collaborative online practice.
Takeaway
The presentation will share various online class activities for web design courses that guide design students to become more proactive learners who know how to know. The activities include ‘one-to-one student pairing system’, and ‘instruction design.
Abstract
The technology of website design and development is rapidly evolving. New software and techniques are emerging to the market on daily basis, and the lifespan of digital technology is being reduced. It is extremely difficult for designers to grasp all the available technologies to design and develop websites. The constantly evolving nature of digital technology is also challenging traditional methods of teaching code wherein students learn passively from their instructors. Many design students are afraid of coding, as the process of coding differs from typical graphic design process.
Once the students are accustomed to ‘spoon-fed’ coding knowledge from their instructors, it may be difficult for them to become motivated to learn the latest technology by themselves. After the students graduate and become professional designers, what they have learned from universities may not be valid if they don’t keep up with the latest technology.
With the inundation of online educational services and desire for distance learning, market demands on integration of online learning technology into higher education keep increasing. There are tremendous amounts of online resources available online, which teach computer software such as Adobe Creative Cloud and HTML and CSS. The online tutorials for web design are incredibly accessible to design students, those being either available for free or at a low cost. The problem is in the excessive amount of online learning resources. Moreover, many of the online resources are not verified. Students are often frustrated with learning from online resources, as they are not sure where to start and how to verify the information.
The presentation, Open Season for E-Learning, introduces the course curriculum for Interactive I, an intro-level web design course at Texas State University. Most of the students who took the course had no prior coding experience and they were required to self-study coding. The presentation will share how to reduce students’ anxiety with coding by motivating them to become content creators instead of simply content consumers. Traditional methods of teaching the existing technologies of coding to students are no longer adequate when confronting ever-changing digital culture. Design educators need to transform their role from delivering information to facilitating environments where students can take direct ownership over their learning process.