I wasn’t sure what to expect with this class. Because it was a 300 level course and I’m only a freshman I was really nervous about the difficulty of the course. But because last semester I took Intro to Modern Publishing with Dr. Lang, I was a little more reassured that I would actually survive the course. If anything I was expecting the same type of high level complex readings as last semester and wiki entries. But because this course is digitally based, I wasn’t sure how much computer science knowledge I should have going into the course. I also expected the course to follow more of the self-publishing and compare to publishing houses with diversity.
My expectations were met with the readings and the wiki entry we had in the beginning of the semester. But what I didn’t realize was that this course was more project based. I was surprised about how expansive digital publishing is, and I learned that a lot of it includes extra features that allow the text to be interactive.
My biggest takeaway is probably how different digital publishing is from print publishing. It allows there to be blurred lines the author and the audience, as the texts often take on collaborative authorship. I didn’t realize how much design and upkeep it takes to keep the websites running and to attract an audience.
I guess if anything I would change how many projects there were. I thought that the projects were really complex and that they had too many components to them. I think that maybe simplifying the projects would be helpful, especially with the amount of readings and blog posts we were doing on top of that.