Course Design:

I have tried to set this course up so that it will be very easy for everyone to use. I have envisioned the course as if it were a stack of cards. Imagine a large stack of 3 x 5 cards on your desk in front of you. That stack is our course. Divide it into four smaller stacks, and that is our course as it is set up on a weekly basis. As you work through the material each week, you will read each card before setting it aside to read the next one, and so on.

I know that this linear progression is not the way all on-line courses are arranged, but I think it will be best for us, since we will all have worked through the same material by the end of each week. You have already read Week I's first "card," the professor's introduction, and now you are on the second one, "Course Design."

You can do the coursework for the week on your own schedule. You may choose to do a little each night, or you may want to do it all over the weekend. I do ask that you complete each week's work by Sunday night of each week.

Some "cards" will require you to read text, like this one. Some will offer you a choice of reading text or listening to me, in audio format, like the last one. Other "cards" will ask you to look at material on the world-wide web, by linking you to other sites about photography. Some of these are museum sites that will take us to virtual exhibitions, others are sites about individual photographers or processes.

After you look at the internet sites, you will return to our site to continue your progression through our stack of cards. Some of the "cards" will ask you to think about topics or images in our textbook, Seizing the Light, by Robert Hirsch. The first few reading assignments have been placed on electronic reserve for those of you who have not yet gotten the book (click on the coursework link of the header or footer to return to the coursework index page where these reserves are located).

Some of the "cards" will link us to sites that are quite sophisticated, with audio and video components. If you can't access these on your computer, don't worry about it. We all know that computer-based learning is full of glitches. Just move on to the next "card" and keep going.

Some of our "cards" will involve "talking" with each other, by writing responses to topics in a conferencing format. I used this system last semester, and it was great! I think we will enjoy sharing our ideas with each other in this way. Let's try it now! It may seem a bit confusing at first. Bear with it, it is actually quite easy to use once you figure it out.

Please click RIGHT ARROW to continue.