Welcome to HUM 100–How the Web Works: Building Your Digital Identity, Literacy, and Network. We will gather in the computer lab of the old Moody science building at Austin College, Monday through Friday from 9:00 am to 11:50 am, here on the course website, in Twitter at the hashtag #HowtheWebWorks, in our Hypothes.is web annotation group, in our Diigo social bookmarking group, in the student domains listed in the sidebar, and anyplace else we can colonize on the web.

This studio lab will provide students the opportunity to build and manage their own space on the World Wide Web. In doing so, students will learn about issues such as digital identity and literacy, the historical, technical, and cultural infrastructure of the Web, and open connected learning. Students will learn how to blog and tweet for academic and professional purposes and will begin to create a portfolio of digital content in an open networked environment. Students will also learn build a digital toolkit for knowledge creation, representation, and curation through using applications to create timelines, social bookmarks, annotations of texts and videos, podcasts, and other graphical and visual items. The class will reflect upon how the internet, social media, and other digital technologies are transforming how we think, the way we learn, and our sense of personal identity and community.

“How the Web Works” is an experimental course grounded in an approach to learning that is open and connectivist. That is, it is being conducted on the “open web” on the WordPress platform, and not within a learning management system such as Blackboard or Moodle. This allows learners and course materials, with appropriate respect for concerns about privacy and intellectual property, to be more readily connected to persons and sources outside the course, which promotes the development of a rich personal learning network.

The syllabus for the class lists course policies and procedures. The materials and activities for each module of the course are listed on the Schedule page. There you will find a description of that unit’s themes and topics, required and optional texts and resources, and activities and assignments.

To begin, navigate to module 1, “Home on the Web: Building a Domain and Getting Connected.”