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This two-term PSU Capstone class was inspired by the work of Dr. Patricia Schechter, PSU History Department, on previous Capstones involving uncovering Portland YWCA history, combined with
the desire to have a Web site to complement the year 2001 exhibit celebrating the Portland YWCA's centennial.
A group of 9-10 seniors from a wide range of majors participated. The first term was dedicated to learning about the work done by the previous YWCA capstones, reading essays written by previous students who had gone through the archives, and otherwise becoming involved with the material involving and issues the history of the Portland YWCA. During the first term the group also learned the principles of good Web design and how to do basic coding to create Web pages. Only one student in the group had previously done HTML-coding before.
From this basis, the students used the content and essays surrounding topics of interest to each of them and developed initial versions of their part of the Web site. During the second term of this capstone students learned about how to conduct Web site usability testing to evaluate the functionality of their site, did usability testing with the population of students, faculty and staff at PSU, and following this learned how to use the information obtained in usability testing and how to make the necessary changes to hone and polish their Web pages.
Some of the challenges involved in this project which we experienced which would be important for any other group contemplating a project of this kind:
- Creating, from the first week of class, a safe atmosphere in which to have frank discussions (sometimes potentially uncomfortable) about issues of race, gender, and sexuality. We had someone come in from the Center for Academic Excellence come in the first week to help us learn about good communication skills and how to really listen as part of our effort to address creating this atmosphere from the beginning.
- Developing a common understanding of the material involved, reading essays by previous students and other works to inform us of the history of the YWCA in general, the history of Portland, and the history of the Portland YWCA in that context.
- Creating a "common "syntax" by which to discuss on the Web pages the issues of race, gender, and sexuality we were exploring.
- Holding class in a computer lab where we had constant access to Internet access and the other tools we used (Notepad, FTP) was essential. We had access to scanning machines (for the photographs) and Photoshop (for processing the photographs) in another nearby computer lab.
- Learning the principles of good Web design and the need to make a site usable for whatever audience(s) you have determined for your site is just as important as learning the basic codes to create the pages.
- Learning to divest oneself in the Web pages created (after being so engaged in creating them) was essential during our usability testing. To help work around this we had students pair up in teams and had them tests parts of the site which were not their sections (i.e. their classmates' sections instead).
- This was a very "team taught" class. Dr. Schechter guided the students through learning the historical material and methodology and providing a framework for discourse. I teach Web classes as part of my full-time job and covered teaching the students the HTML, Web design principles, and Web site usability testing.
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