Welcome

Welcome to Introduction to CSS3. CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets, a method of styling your HTML documents with various colors, fonts, layouts, and spacing. But that is just the beginning. You can also do some "cool" stuff such as creating transitions or adding animations. There are so many things you can do with CSS, that we focus on the following:

Throughout the entire course there will be an emphasis on the importance of accessibility. Not only will you style your site, but you will test it and other sites on the POUR accessibility principles to ensure that your styling is enhancing your site, not putting up unseen roadblocks.

How this course works:

This course assumes that you already know how to write HTML code and are ready to style your pages. In each module you will be asked to do the following:

Watch video lectures.

The information has been broken down into pieces to help you learn the material in the smallest chunks that still give you enough information to do something with it. The goal is to give you the ability to listen to these during any time you have. You will find that some of the videos have material that makes sense to you at once. Sometimes you may want to replay other videos to clarify the material.

Change the video speed to one that works best for you.

You may find that you can speed the videos up and still retain the information. On the other hand, my mom is always telling me I talk too quickly... so you may find that you prefer to slow the videos down. The important thing is to find something that works well for you. Use the in-­video quizzes to help you gauge how your learning is going.

Code with video lectures.

Some of the videos are not traditional lectures, instead they are videos where I demonstrate the concepts from an earlier lecture. I highly recommend that you code along with me while you watch these videos. The key to success in this course is in writing code. I put these videos in so that you have something specific to practice. It is also a great way for you to see how often I mess up when I am coding!!

Read extra materials

Each module will include reading material. It is impossible to learn everything you need to learn just by listening to the lectures. There are suggested readings to go along with this course. I also encourage you to seek out other resources online. Anyone who wants to work with technology needs to understand that it is important to update your skills.

Quizzes

The first three modules will each have a graded quiz. These quizzes are intended to reinforce your confidence in the material, not "trick" you. As often as possible each question will be linked to a specific lecture or reading. You can take the quizzes as many times as you like, but there is a limit on how many times you can take each quiz in a certain time period. Occasionally I include an ungraded quiz to help students track their current progress and prepare them for the graded quiz.

Peer Graded Assignments

There will be three peer graded assignments in this course: they are at the end of Week One, Week, Two, and Week Four. You are actually ready to start the final assessment by the end of the third week of class, I just wanted to provide some examples to accompany the final project.

Optional materials

There will also be optional material provided in many of the modules. These may range from links to recent articles to videos on pioneers in the fields of design and accessibility. None of these materials will be required for the quizzes, but rather provide additional ways for you to branch out and learn more about the history of the field or the emerging ideas.

Communication

Communication for this course is done via the Discussion boards. The best way to utilize the discussion board is to search for your topic before posting. If you can't find an answer, please try to post your question to the appropriate week. The mentors and Course liaison do a great job of helping people. And of course we rely on students to help each other as well. If you want to contact me directly, I do check my ColleenAtUMSI Twitter account. I can not respond to emails.

Participation Strategies

Engaged learning looks different for everybody. In this course, we hope you will define your own measures of success and engage with the material in a way that best suits your needs. We recognize and celebrate the diverse ways learners engage in courses. As you go through this course, we hope you will reflect on your unique skills, needs, and aspirations, and engage in the course material in a way that aligns with your own goals. While the course provides time estimates for completion, you should feel empowered to engage in the material in whatever ways make sense to you.

Ground Rules

We expect everyone to be mindful of what they say and its potential impact on others. The goal is to have respectful discussions that do not violate the community space created for these conversations. Here are some productive ways to engage in this course:

We expect all learners to abide by our full Learner Engagement Policy . We will specifically be monitoring this course for language that could be considered inflammatory, incivil, racist, or otherwise unacceptable for this learning space, and we will remove language deemed such.

Please note that external study groups on applications like WhatsApp are not affiliated or endorsed by the University of Michigan. We strongly discourage joining external groups and instead recommend interacting with your fellow learners within the platform.

Please express caution if you do join or post any personal information in these forums or in these groups. These forums are publicly accessible and any information you post may be collected, published, or used in an exploitative manner (scams, etc).

Academic Honesty

All submitted work should be your own and academic dishonesty is not allowed. Academic dishonesty can be defined as:

Course Support

Questions and discussion of course material should take place within the course itself. Please do not contact instructors or teaching assistants off the platform, as responding to individual questions is virtually impossible. We encourage you to direct your questions to [forum], where your question might be answered by a fellow learner or one of our course team members. For technical help please contact the Coursera Learner Help Center / edX Help Center / FutureLearn FAQs support forums.

Accessibility

We are committed to developing accessible learning experiences for the widest possible audience. We recognize that learners with disabilities (including but not limited to visual impairments, hearing impairments, cognitive disabilities, or motor disabilities) might need more specific accessibility-related support to achieve learning goals in this course.

Please use the accessibility feedback form to let us know about any accessibility challenges such as urgent issues that keep you from making progress in the course (e.g., missing or inadequate alt-text, captioning errors).

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice

We welcome all learners to this course. People like you are joining from all over the world and we value this diversity. We strive to create a community of mutual respect and trust, where people from all backgrounds, identities and views are valued and heard without the threat of bias, harassment, intimidation, or discrimination. We pay attention to your feedback, how different types of learners experience this course, and aim to make improvements so the course can best serve everyone. We hope you enjoy learning about topics that are important to you.