CHNM co-hosts forum on website design

In October 2003, CHNM and Georgetown’s Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship hosted “What Can Good Web Design Do for Humanities Projects: Reflections and Case Studies.” The forum provided an opportunity for scholars, designers, and interested students to discuss how technical design as expressed through the web encouraged or discouraged learning. Brad Johnson of Second Story reviewed sites his company has produced, showing how advanced designs that harnessed such technology as Flash enabled users to simulate experiences such as touring Egyptian tombs. George Mason University Professors Michael O’Malley and Paula Petrik discussed the importance of not just using the web as a bulletin board, but of harnessing the medium’s capacity to stimulate unmediated learning among students and multi-sensory presentation of historical materials.