Page created: 2024-02-14
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Underlying Principles for Instructional Web Pages

This web site has been under development since 1996 (i.e., for nearly thirty years). It contains a wide variety of materials, including some very odd items. But it is mostly made up of essays, texts, and reference materials developed in support of the courses I have taught at UCSD. Some are more useful than others, more original than others, or more interesting than others.

The rise of information sites like Wikipedia and YouTube and of search engines like Google and Bing makes it easy to follow up and learn more about almost any subject. Accordingly, a college teacher’s mission has evolved away from providing information towards inviting engagement and fueling lasting habits of critical thought. I like to think that the materials on this site have for the most part been able to ride with that tide, with informational pages never losing sight of the other two goals.

Here is a list, in no particular order, of some of the principles I have tried to observe as I have developed class materials that appear on this site. In 1996 I did not begin with this list. I began with vague instincts and preferences. They congealed into a list only as I looked back in 2024 and took stock of what I had made.

• Every page should have a reason for being included, ideally a reason that is explicitly stated. (For exogenous materials, this has often been tagged with the made-up word “procursus.”)
• Every page should be as reader-friendly as possible, for example with “dramatis personae” listings before stories, links to definitions, maps, &c.
• The explicit audience is average (or slightly nerdy) college students. Essays should be introductory for this level, potentially sparking interest that can be followed up elsewhere.
• Every page should be interesting, at least to me.
• Pages should be as widely accessible as possible to facilitate use not just in my classes, but also by individual visitors and students at other schools. Although pages should link to each other when relevant, there is no overall lineal organization across items.
• The site as a whole should have a distinctive “voice.” I am a North American social scientist and my superpower is skepticism. This should be neither concealed nor flaunted, but students generally learn more from an instructor with some personality, including occasional crotchets.
• Insofar as possible, every page should be a model of English prose.
• Formatting should be functional but aesthetically appealing and appropriate to screens of many sizes, although special concessions do not need to be made to accommodate mobile phone screens, which are too small for viewing instructional materials. Frequent paragraph breaks, subtitles, and numbered parts are helpful.
• Photographs and other illustrations should be original when possible, unusual otherwise, and justifiably relevant. Student art —an educationally productive option for some assignments— is an extremely desirable addition to many pages, always with explicit permission of the student.
• Source citations should be minimized except for borrowed text. An instructional web page is not a scholarly article.
• Clearly copyrighted materials should be avoided altogether, ambiguously copyrighted materials should be avoided when possible. Original materials should be offered for free educational use.
• When an older text is used here, it should be reedited to conform to these principles, with the fact of modification explicitly noted.
• Because Chinese is widely taught, all Romanized Chinese should be correctly spelled, with tone marks, and accompanied by Chinese characters. With imported texts, this usually involves reediting.
• Translations should be accompanied by the text in the original language insofar as I am competent to manage that in order both to encourage language students and to stress that English is not the only language in the world.
• External links should be avoided because they tend to be unstable. If included, they should be reviewed at least yearly.
• Meta statements should facilitate the correct classification of each page by web indexing services.
• Every page should be dated at the top so that returning users know immediately whether there have been recent changes.

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