Our rationale for not delving into the actual code was that the plug-in was a class on the use of computers and interactive technology in literature. By allowing WYSIWYG ("What you see is what you get") editors such as Composer to handle the coding, we were able to focus more appropriately on content. We wanted to avoid getting mired in the technical aspects of HTML, and I think we succeeded. The student pages were, for the most part, very good electronic documents. Teaching HTML would be like teaching the codes that are buried in any word processor, appropriate for a Computer Science course, but not necessary in a Literature course.
Like HTML documents, word processor documents have invisible codes which control the formatting and placement of text on the page. Users rarely need to access the codes directly; commands are entered via the word processor's much friendlier user interface.
This is a screen shot of part of the syllabus for English 201, section 017 with "Show Codes" turned on in WordPerfect (Macintosh). Similar codes are embedded in every word processed document.
In the plug-in, students learned how to create HTML documents, but they did not learn how to hand code HTML. In the early assignments, the students created pages in MS Word and converted them into HTML via Word's "Save as HTML" function. The document could then be edited using Netscape Composer. The use of Word proved to be a rather unnecessary step, however, as Netscape Composer allows the students to create and edit the document directly in HTML. Still, many students wrote the documents in Word and converted them into HTML.
The codes are still there, whether the students are composing in a word processor or an HTML editors (which is really only another kind of word processor). In a very real sense, the "typical" essays required in any college course are electronic documents (unless they are hand-written or typed on a manual typewriter). HTML allows for a new kind of electronic document, one which has rather different capabilities than a word-processed document. Both are surfaces; a print text can its surface printed out and presented, whereas an HTML text presents its surface on a computer screen and is linked to other texts. Beneath both surfaces are the formatting codes.
When we're teaching students to use word processors or HTML editors, they do not need to learn the codes which underlie the document design. Such knowledge is useful for troubleshooting or for more advanced document design. But this is not something that 201 instructors would be expected to teach.