Where are the webwriting courses?

Blogger Shelley Sanders asks for Mainstream Web Writing Courses, Please.. Excerpt:

With all things web hurtling toward us at the speed of light, it’s clear that the web is the way of the future. Actually, it’s already kind of the way of today. 

So, when are we going to stop teaching fluffy writing? When will we have educated people who don’t have to unlearn and who can just get better at doing? 

Have we started yet? 

If a Google search for “web writing class” is an indication, not really.

I know whereof Shelley speaks. For the last dozen years of my college-teaching career, I worked like mad to develop and teach a good solid 3-credit course in writing for the web. 

It ran three or four times, with varying degrees of success. But we finally had to drop it because we simply couldn't attract enough students.

I used elements from the course in other courses, like advanced communications for tourism, an industry now utterly dependent on the quality of its websites. 

The students there understood the value of the course--they were working in teams of consultants, overhauling the marketing efforts of real tourism operators. The websites were invariably in need of heavy makeovers, and the students did respectable revisions.

I saw the same interest and skill development in other business students, and in tech-writing students. Yet for some reason "academic" students had little or no interest in webwriting (and don't get me going about my colleagues!).

Since retiring, I've had some success in one-day workshops designed for specific groups, like teachers and trade unions (especially when the workshop includes a critique of websites of individual unions and school districts). As the post just below indicates, free online webwriting courses are available. But education is an intensely conservative profession, and it will be a long time before it recognizes the need to write well for this new medium.

Comments

[twitter.com/Shelley_Sanders]

Thanks for your thoughts on my post, and more importantly, for your work trying to bring web writing to colleges. I look forward to reading more of your blog.