ENGL 313: Rhetorical Web Design

This course teaches students to analyze specific audiences and rhetorical situations in the design of large-scale websites; to apply the principles of information architecture to the creation of intuitive navigation systems and a seamless user experience; to learn how the markup languages (HTML/XHTML/XML), cascading style sheets (CSS), and client-side scripting languages (JavaScript) render Web pages and support the use of graphics, video, and other media; and to learn the basics of visual design and production as they relate to web photographs and graphic images.

Through readings, class discussion and applied projects building and editing actual content management systems, students at Iowa State University (particularly all in the Technical Communication B.S. major) can learn how to:

  • Analyze and apply the principles of information architecture to the creation of intuitive navigation systems and a seamless user experience.
  • Understand and write hypertext markup language (HTML), cascading style sheets (CSS), and JavaScript to create web pages and support the use of graphics, video and other media.
  • Engage critically with a variety of web texts.
  • Analyze specific audiences and rhetorical situations in the design of large-scale websites.
  • Identify and analyze the cultural forces embedded in web design that shape the relationship between and among language, knowledge, and power.
  • Select appropriate software for web design tasks. 
  • Learn the basics of visual design and production as they relate to web photographs and graphic images.

Students in this class have access to a local-access-only webserver, and under my guidance design and build simple front-end (HTML, CSS, and JS-based) web projects, experiment with a wide range of libraries and foundations for the development of responsive and accessible documents, and develop a large final website project for an actual client.

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