IV.Defining and Designing Components of Effective History Web Sites
The most important thing to remember about the Internet is that it is just another form of communication. Like any form of communication, it may be a missed opportunity if not properly applied. Initially educators must face a daunting array computer hardware, programming software, and Internet connections. For the novice designer the technological aspects of designing course material might pose a daunting challenge. Paula Petrik cautions that Internet more about communication in a technical environment rather than about technology itself.40Paula Petrik, “We Shall Be All: Designing History for the Web,” draft essay. It is quite possible that students would know as much or more than their humanities professors about technology. Rather than trying to match wits over new media, educators may simply view digital environments as the new meeting places where they can relate information to their students. Sarah Horton takes this one step further by asserting, “Web teaching is all about making connections: connecting your students to one another and to resources around the world; combining different materials—music, motion, text, narration—into one presentation; collecting related information for multiple sources.”41Sarah Horton, Web Teaching Guide: A Practical Approach to Creating Course Web Sites (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000): x.
The ability to convert all sorts of different materials into binary code allowed designers to incorporate all sorts of diverse media into a single project. One of the most widespread uses of digital media in university history departments today is the posting of syllabi.42Dennis Trinkle, “History and the Computer Revolutions. A Survey of Current Practices,” Journal of the Association for History and Computing II/1 (April 1999). The digitization of all kinds of primary and secondary materials offers seemingly limitless material for an instructor to incorporate in a course. Photographs, films, and sound can now be stored in digital media as jpegs, mpegs, and wav files. Rather than the old style syllabi, all these elements can be merged into one digital environment. Only the limits of a teacher’s imagination will restrict the potential of a digital syllabus.
Before posting syllabi and whatever odd collection of material might be available, a person must make a number of considerations. First and foremost the designer must consider the intended audience. Understanding why a person visits a site and what they hope to find will facilitate development of the content. With a target audience in mind, a developer can write more specifically to the known visitors, and information may be organized to serve the needs of those viewers. While normally it would be necessary to decide if the anticipated visitors were primarily novices or experts, an on-line syllabi or sites focused on particular class topics would have an easily identifiable audience. Although on-line work might be viewed by anyone with Internet access, the target group for educational designers would be more easily identifiable users.
Writing for the Web itself poses unique challenges. The style of writing on the Web is as different as writing for a scholarly journal or a documentary. There may be a tendency to simply post existing essays on the Internet, but people tend to read text on the Web differently. Visitors tire of scrolling through long, uninterrupted text. People familiar with the Web have grown accustomed to short passages of texts accompanied by an abundance of graphics. This pattern is repeated on the majority of sites from commercial and company Websites to government agencies and news outlets.43For examples of these sites see Amazon.com, IBM.com, the U.S. Senate, and the Washington Post. The Washington Post, for instance, breaks longer articles it places on-line into smaller portions of between 500 and 700 words. Some designers suggest keeping chunks of information around 100 words, but that would depend on the type of content presented.
Sites offering electronic versions of journal articles and longer scholarly content often provide an alternative when they anticipate that their visitors may want the option to print the document. To facilitate printing, some sites offer documents on one long html page, while others offer a more polished version as a pdf document.44pdf stands for Portable Document Format. The Adobe Corporation developed this format which became the industry standard largely because it in creates compact, cross-platform files that are perfect for electronic transfer. Another reason for the wide acceptance of pdfs is that Adobe provides free downloads of the software needed to read the files. Since it is not modifiable, a pdf maintains a documents original layout complete with text, images, and graphics. In addition a pdf may be viewed in most Web browsers, and it enables viewers to print individual pages of longer documents.
Text written in simple html will stretch to the right and left margins to fill the available space. Since the viewer can set a font size and expand browser windows, it is advisable that a designer suggest font sizes in their code and fix borders within a window so that lines of text are somewhere around fourteen words per line. This is easier on the eye and readers will not lose their place from the end of one line to the beginning of the next.45Jakob Nielsen, “Let Users Control Font Size,” Alertbox (August 19, 2002).
Brad Johnson suggests that very early in the process designers should immerse themselves the content. Technology, content, and presentation are all equal parts of the development process, but the content will more often than not suggest which technologies to use and how best to present the information. Johnson and his colleagues at Second Story start with the substance and then develop a site around it. A Web page should enhance access to information within the site. The Second Story designers conceive of the site as the place where you build an emotional connection to the content. The aim is to draw visitors into the site and instill a desire to stay and explore by virtue of a compelling, engaging, and dynamic design. The content may exist within the site, but the design should offer more to the viewer. A well-designed Web site should transcend language.46Brad Johnson, “What Can Good Web Design Do for Humanities Projects: Reflections and Case Studies,” DC Area Technology and Humanities Forum, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia. October 2, 2002. Johnson is the creative director at Second Story (http://www.secondstory.com).
There are many theories on how to best design a Web site. While Second Story represents high-end design, others promote simplicity as a means to achieve greater functionality. In all his Web work, Jakob Neilson stresses usability over design. Neilson advocates the utility of the Web and has an aversion to sites heavy with graphics and other distractions.47“useit.com: usable information technology,” site designed and maintained by Jakob Nielsen. <http://www.useit.com> However, graphics and design elements make the Web a unique environment. Neilson’s Website now looks like a throwback to the early days of the Internet. His use of odd pastels as backgrounds is tempered only by his sparing use of them. In fact, color is an important element of design and may be used to great effect. Sites may employ a “brand color” that ties together a Web site. Variations on a color theme may be used to identify different sections of related material.
The designers at Second Story also endorse simplicity in design, and as such they rely a great deal on graphics to facilitate their navigation. Despite a deceptively slick look, Second Story projects strive for focused content and simplicity of design. Whether or not you endorse the embellishment of sites with graphics, navigation should be consistent throughout and as straightforward as possible. Site visitors should always be aware of where they are within a site and how to get where they would like to go.
Design and content should really go hand in hand. The extent to which a designer utilizes graphics really should depend on the content. Educational sites discussing artwork, artifacts, or maps would require more graphic elements, whereas academic studies such as this one will be less reliant on images. Everything on the Website should support the main objective of the site. Michael O’Malley points out that websites are like essays, “A good paper has one idea. Everything contributes to that. All elements should contribute to site. If you don’t know why it’s there, get rid of it.”48Michael O’Malley, “What Can Good Web Design Do for Humanities Projects: Reflections and Case Studies,” DC Area Technology and Humanities Forum, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia. October 2, 2002. O’Malley is an associate professor of history at George Mason University and the associate director of the Center for History and New Media.
The same principle of having all design elements supporting one main idea should apply to links as well. The creation of links within an essay is one of the unique and wonderful innovations of the Web, but novice designers tend to overdo this option. The sparing use of links to only related material keeps readers focused on the content considered most important by the designer. This cannot be stressed enough with regard to educational sites. While surfing the Web, the presence of links tempt users to stray from site content. A site for a course on the history of leisure in America may include a link to the Bicycle Museum of America that would have lots of images and descriptions of old bicycles.49“The Bicycle Museum of America,” (http://www.bicyclemuseum.com/Html/main.html). Viewed on June 24, 2005. Links to sites about Lance Armstrong or the Tour de France would not be appropriate and only offer students an unnecessary distraction.
Exploration is often said to be one of the advantages of the Web. Students can follow their whims and create their own narrative. Michael O’Malley advocates changing the standard model of the professor standing before a captive audience of students attempting to persuade students to think like him. O’Malley says, “We should challenge them to dig. Encourage blundering. Challenge their thought.” The model we hope to create is that of opening a chest of treasures for students to investigate. Of course, we hope that exploration is within the desired subject and not on unrelated topics.
We should not use the latest available digital innovations simply because we can. As Bass and Rosenzweig warned “We should be…reminding ourselves to use technology only where it makes a clear contribution to classroom learning.”50Randy Bass and Roy Rosenzweig, Rewiring the History and Social Studies Classroom.” Section 3. Designers of educational sites should always ask themselves as they work, “what can I do with digital technologies that I can not otherwise do?”
My web site on the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 is an example of using digital media to show concepts in a visual manner that cannot be described nearly as well in text.51“World’s Columbian Exposition: A Vision of the Future, A Reflection of Its Present.” Produced by Steven Saltzgiver in 2002. Historians have produced a number of very good books on that World’s Fair and even explored some of the troubling racial and sexist attitudes of that time period. Even some of the best historians have struggled to convey the lengths organizers went to, to marginalize or diminish the presence of ethnic contributions to the Fair. As a visual medium, an interactive map produced for the Web can instantly show how women in various ethnic groups were pushed to the periphery of the fairgrounds. The interactive and visual aspects of the Web can elucidate a concept in ways that are difficult or impossible in other media.
Finally, designers must consider a site’s overall aesthetic. Developing an on-line exercise for a course titled, “Magic, Illusion and Detection at the turn of the last century,” O’Malley deliberately created a dark, mysterious atmosphere that would encourage exploration and suggest the deception and detective work of the age. O’Malley argues that the, “Design of site should fit the ideology of the course.”52Michael O’Malley, “Magic, Illusion and Detection at the Turn of the Last Century,” <http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/magic>. Viewed online March, 7, 2005. O’Malley also posted the syllabus for a course on Jacksonian America on-line, but in doing so he replicated the style of an 1840 handbill. Students clicked on various parts of the syllabus to access the course description, schedule and assignments. While this syllabus didn’t have the same immersive effect as his Magic and Illusion course, the choice of fonts and images suggested the time period under consideration and evoked
Creating an atmosphere conducive to learning may also be about developing an historic environment that students may inhabit. Another collaborative project between the American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning of the City University of New York and the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University resulted in the development of “The Lost Museum.” This interactive educational project recreates P.T. Barnum’s American Museum that had reflected a unique side of antebellum American culture for nearly twenty-five years. The web site is replete with advice and instructions for educators on how to use the web site in their classrooms as well as an extensive archive that provides contextual information and allows for further research on related topics. The intriguing design of the site lets visitors move around the museum as if they were actually there. Although a fire destroyed the building in 1865, the museum is resurrected through this inventive project. Visitors may “move” about the virtual environment and interact with it by opening drawers and examining objects. The designers not only recreated Barnum’s museum, they also created an opportunity to communicate with students and convey some important information about a fascinating time in American history.53“The Lost Museum” Site created in 2000 and maintained by American Social History Project / Center for Media & Learning at City University of New York in collaboration with the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. <http://www.lostmuseum.cuny.edu/>
Using the Internet in the history classroom does not always have to utilize the latest innovations in Web design. As I have said before, teachers should use the Web to engage and communicate with their students. Professor Patricia Seed has used the Internet as a unique teaching environment that allows her classes to focus on the nature of historical information. Instead of providing the class with an on-line syllabus consisting of a page of links grouped by subject matter, Seed assigned her students to produce the list themselves. Searching on a particular topic, students determined which sights were historically accurate and appropriate for inclusion. The class then constructed simple html pages and posted the results.54Patricia Seed, “Teaching with the Web: Two Approaches,” Perspectives (February 1998): Section II. The result required students to make historical judgments and then apply some basic understanding of technology to come up with the final project. This merging of historical content and digital media begins the process of getting students to think beyond traditional research boundaries. Later these simple sites would be expanded in more elaborate projects with multimedia components and their own historical interpretation and analysis. Whether sites are simple html or elaborate interactive showcases, educators must never lose sight of the primary goal of administering good history instruction.
Next Section: Future of Historical Studies through Digital Technologies
40 Paula Petrik, “We Shall Be All: Designing History for the Web,” draft essay, (http://www.archiva.net/Resources/AHA-00.pdf).
41 Sarah Horton, Web Teaching Guide: A Practical Approach to Creating Course Web Sites (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000): x.
42 Dennis Trinkle, “History and the Computer Revolutions. A Survey of Current Practices,” Journal of the Association for History and Computing II/1 (April 1999). (http://mcel.pacificu.edu/JAHC/JAHCII1/ARTICLESII1/Trinkle/Trinkleindex.html)
43 For examples of these sites see Amazon.com, IBM.com, the U.S. Senate, and the Washington Post.
44 pdf stands for Portable Document Format. The Adobe Corporation developed this format which became the industry standard largely because it in creates compact, cross-platform files that are perfect for electronic transfer. Another reason for the wide acceptance of pdfs is that Adobe provides free downloads of the software needed to read the files.
45 Jakob Nielsen, “Let Users Control Font Size,” Alertbox (August 19, 2002). Available on-line: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20020819.html
46 Brad Johnson, “What Can Good Web Design Do for Humanities Projects: Reflections and Case Studies,” DC Area Technology and Humanities Forum, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia. October 2, 2002. Johnson is the creative director at Second Story (http://www.secondstory.com).
47 “useit.com: usable information technology,” site designed and maintained by Jakob Nielsen. <http://www.useit.com>
48 Michael O’Malley, “What Can Good Web Design Do for Humanities Projects: Reflections and Case Studies,” DC Area Technology and Humanities Forum, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia. October 2, 2002. O’Malley is an associate professor of history at George Mason University and the associate director of the Center for History and New Media.
49 “The Bicycle Museum of America,” <(http://www.bicyclemuseum.com/Html/main.html>. Viewed on June 24, 2005.
50 Randy Bass and Roy Rosenzweig, Rewiring the History and Social Studies Classroom.” Section 3.
51 “World’s Columbian Exposition: A Vision of the Future, A Reflection of Its Present.” Produced by Steven Saltzgiver in 2002. (http://mason.gmu.edu/~ssaltzgi/Worlds_Fair/worlds_fair_map.html)
52 Michael O’Malley, “Magic, Illusion and Detection at the Turn of the Last Century,” <http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/magic>. Viewed online March, 7, 2005.
53 “The Lost Museum” Site created in 2000 and maintained by American Social History Project / Center for Media & Learning at City University of New York in collaboration with the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. <http://www.lostmuseum.cuny.edu/>
54 Patricia Seed, “Teaching with the Web: Two Approaches,” Perspectives (February 1998): Section II. Online edition available at http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/1998/9802/9802TEC2.CFM.