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In the Fall of 1999, Jim Andris was trying a new experiment in one of his classes at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. In the previous few years, Dr. Andris had become a committed advocate of the theory of education known variously as engaged learning or constructivism. Students who are engaged in learning collaborate to accomplish real-life goals. As much as possible, students decide what they want to do and how to accomplish it, while the instructor acts as experienced guide and facilitator.
| Jim Andris decided that when he taught his IT 590: Visual Literacy, Technology and Education class in the Spring of 2000, his students would have the option of designing a website for some not-for-profit organization. Once the class started, he and his students began negotiating with officials at the Scott Joplin House to build such a website. As it turned out, the State of Missouri never used the developed material, and has since put up a fine website for the Scott Joplin House, which is a Missouri State Historical Site. However, at the time, officials did permit us to visit and photograph the site, and the artist-in-residence, Jan Hamilton Douglas, was kind enough to act as host and guide while we were there. |  |
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Jan Douglas, right, talks about ragtime history
with Jim Andris and some of his students.
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The students of IT 590 still published a final website on the SIUE server. They had to learn a tremendous amount about digital imagery in just a short time. The picture to the left shows the collage that the class made as they were learning some of these techniques. We reviewed rules for good photography, principles of visual and media literacy, how to make a collage, how to edit digital photographs and video and how to design a website for ease of use. And of course, we had to learn to use many different pieces of computer software: FrontPage, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, and Photoshop, to name just a few.
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Digital collage of Jim Andris' class learning
about web publishing and media literacy
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The students also had to learn to work together as a team, every student eventually finding out how to contribute her strengths and, at the same time, profiting from the strengths of the others in the class. All students had to learn how to be objective about their own abilities and how to judge how far they had come and where they needed to go. We began by developing an on-line database of any student products that could be shared. We generated a tremendous amount of material that way, and some of it was quite good