IDT 575 — Course Objectives

Designing & Writing Interactive Texts

The course objectives for IDT 575 describe what students will **learn to do**. They operationalize the course goals by translating conceptual commitments into teachable intellectual practices.

These are **objectives**, not outcomes.

Objective 1: Structural Analysis & Design

7 words

Analyze and design texts as structured systems.

25 words

Students learn to analyze existing texts and design new ones as structured systems composed of linked objects, metadata, and rules rather than linear prose.

100 words

Students will develop the ability to analyze texts as systems with underlying structures—objects, relationships, metadata, and constraints—and to intentionally design those structures to support meaning, navigation, and reuse. Rather than treating structure as incidental or purely technical, students learn to recognize it as a primary design decision that shapes interpretation for both human readers and machines. This objective emphasizes structural literacy: seeing how tables, links, schemas, and templates organize knowledge and enable interaction across platforms.

Objective 2: Object-Level Writing Fluency

7 words

Compose using discrete, addressable textual objects.

25 words

Students learn to write using discrete, reusable textual units that can be linked, listed, transcluded, and recombined across contexts and publication environments.

100 words

Students will learn to compose at the level of objects rather than undifferentiated documents. This includes writing entries, definitions, notes, tables, and structured fields that carry identity, metadata, and relationships. Students practice composing text that is designed for reuse, recombination, and transformation, developing fluency in working with granular units that can move across systems without losing meaning. This objective prepares students to write in environments where texts persist, fragment, and circulate beyond a single authored artifact.

Objective 3: Hypertextual Literacy Practices

7 words

Apply hypertextual practices intentionally and reflectively.

25 words

Students learn to apply linking, listing, tagging, templating, and transclusion as rhetorical and epistemic practices rather than merely technical features.

100 words

Students will develop intentional fluency with core hypertextual practices—linking, listing, tagging, templating, and transclusion—understanding each as a mode of reasoning and meaning-making. Rather than using these techniques implicitly or decoratively, students learn to select and combine them deliberately to express relationships, organize concepts, and guide interpretation. This objective emphasizes reflective practice: students analyze how hypertextual choices shape reading paths, conceptual boundaries, and interpretive possibilities.

Objective 4: AI-Assisted Writing & Design

7 words

Collaborate with AI as co-designer and reader.

25 words

Students learn to work with AI systems as collaborators, using them to generate, inspect, critique, and refine structured interactive texts.

100 words

Students will develop the ability to collaborate productively with AI systems throughout the writing and design process. This includes using AI to generate drafts, test alternative structures, surface patterns, and reflect on how design decisions shape machine responses. Students learn to treat AI outputs as diagnostic signals rather than authoritative answers, maintaining human control over structure, intent, and meaning. This objective emphasizes critical engagement with AI as an interpretive participant in the writing process.

Objective 5: Cross-Platform Textual Mobility

7 words

Move texts intentionally across tools and platforms.

25 words

Students learn to translate, adapt, and publish structured texts across drafting, structuring, and publishing environments without degrading meaning or intent.

100 words

Students will learn to move texts intentionally between environments such as wikis, markdown repositories, AI interfaces, and publishing platforms. They develop strategies for preserving structure, metadata, and relationships as texts change form and context. This objective emphasizes understanding how platforms shape texts, how affordances differ, and how writers can maintain control over meaning as texts circulate, are reused, or are processed by machines.

Objective 6: Ethical & Public Knowledge Practices

7 words

Practice ethical, transparent, public knowledge production.

25 words

Students learn to engage ethical citation, attribution, revision, and collaboration practices within open, public-facing knowledge environments.

100 words

Students will develop ethical practices for writing and publishing in shared knowledge systems. This includes attention to citation, attribution, revision history, transparency, and collaborative governance. Students learn how authority, credibility, and accountability are constructed in public knowledge environments and how their design decisions participate in those processes. This objective prepares students for responsible participation in open knowledge communities and AI-mediated publication contexts.

Integrative Rationale

The objectives for IDT 575 translate the course goals into concrete intellectual practices students can learn, apply, and reflect upon. Objectives focused on structure and object-level writing enact the course’s foundational claim that interactive texts are systems rather than linear documents. Hypertextual practices are framed as epistemic acts that shape meaning and interpretation, while AI collaboration is treated as a diagnostic and reflective practice rather than an authoritative source. Cross-platform mobility ensures students maintain control over meaning as texts circulate, and ethical objectives ground all work in responsible public knowledge production. Taken together, these objectives form a coherent, practice-based framework aligned with the course goals.