Life on the leading edge
(written some time in 2004, I think)
Web development allures. The mix of sophisticated technology, aesthetic design, and demands for precisely written content make the web developer's world perfect for craftspeople. The constant and rapid evolution of web technology taunts: what is out of reach today will certainly come within grasp momentarily (as Browning says, "...or what's a heaven for?"). I have the web developer's disease, the devil on my shoulder, the perverse little voice teasing, "How'd they do that?" and "Can't you do that better?" Beyond that, learning from Kelley and Emily the business of working with clients from start to finish brings the developer into contact with the real world, designing (or redesigning) sites that drive modern commerce and education. I can't imagine a better career.
Over nearly 4 years, I've discovered, however, that there is a great deal of resistance to my attempts to open up the world of web development to students. From initial rebuffs by campus curricular committees ("this is a course on applications and it doesn't fit our policies for computer literacy, so it shouldn't be taught") to hostile rejections by CELS administration ("teaching these courses is intolerable"), it's been a lot of paddling upstream. Nevertheless, the world moves, and we all must move with it. And nearly every student and every user of google and amazon understands that the world is now powered by the web. Turn it off for a week and the worlds of education, commerce, government, and recreation stop turning. And to me, if this is the most pervasive technology of our age, it belongs in every major university as a critical enabling technology, an object of study in its own right, and a key to the future survival of the institution itself. These are not just my ideas; they are shared and championed by higher education leaders everywhere.
So, I'm hooked. Developers like John Peterson, students, and my son Jonathan Logan have encouraged and helped me reach a better appreciation of what matters in web technology today. Through practice and service to people around me, I continue to build the skills and understanding—technical, design, business, writing—that are needed in this new world. I continue to try to establish a curriculum so that I can share with students (and benefit from their challenging questions and demands for alternative solutions to nearly everything you can do and every way it can be done), who grow and eventually become my best teachers.
A key element of being able to teach "the web" is keeping up with it. I've heard this referred to as "chasing technology," which is something I always thought was one of the major purposes of faculty in land grant universities. But many faculty don't want to do this, fearing it will distract them from more theoretical learning, weaken their students with diversions from "fundamentals," etc. None of these faculty want to do this themselves; others actively oppose my new offerings in the various committees that steer the University. I would give up my efforts were my students not telling me how important this matter is to them. Even while the great research universities and a number of technical for-profit colleges (our competition in the marketplace) are beginning to turn this way, nevertheless, many of my colleagues insist that URI trail far from the leading edge in this field. Frankly, I see this as an institutional error.
And so I have tried to teach, and will seek ways to be allowed to continue to do so. In the meantime, I try to find time—mostly very late at night, early in the morning, and on the weekends that should be devoted to family, but often aren't—to keep up with the Niagara Falls of new technologies, all of which demand new books, all of which are out of date within 3-5 years. But reading isn't enough to nurture a craft, and so I build pages and sites. Occasionally, I have even reached the leading edge, such as the nested background effects in the CSS-driven menus of Eileen Naughton's site (done for free for a friend of the University and its land grant programs); not even Meyer had yet published that one (at least not at the time I'd figured it out)(you will need something other than Bill Gate's broken IE6 browser, which doesn't handle contemporary web standards; I will eventually get around to applying Dean Evans' IE7 fixes to Gate's miserable product, but in the meantime, get a real (Mozilla group) browser and start finding out what you've been missing).
Working with Brian Maynard has been a delight. We've done two projects, including one for his herbaceous garden plants course and another for the sustainable plants site. We'll be further upgrading the garden plants site this year, adding over 1000 images, mostly taken by Brian and his students, creating an invaluable online learning resource for future generations of URI horticulture students. We believe this will eventually be highly valued by gardeners all along the Atlantic Coast as well. I undertook a commercial site as an exercise in applying the web site redesign methods of Kelly Goto and Emily Cotler. The resulting client survey, creative brief, budget, schedules, etc., (and my own client-focused bulletin board of works in progress) went directly into my classroom, providing a highly credible "this is how you do it" session on core business techniques of the web development professional. The client-driven display techniques were also immediately transferable to a temporary redesign of the department web site home page.
There are no Masters or PhD programs in web development anywhere in the country yet, so far as I've been able to find (see survey). I'll keep trying to get a few undergraduate courses, and perhaps even a full major, developed at URI, as I believe the National Research Council's severe warnings that research universities must be doing this now, at the risk of great peril if they do not. In the meantime, on my hours away from "work" I'll continue to practice and grow in this field. It is a source of great joy, excitement, and consummate utility.