Dewey on BYU Humanities

Dewey was a pragmatist who sought to reform the American educational system by finding a consensus between the two extremes of rationalism and empiricism. Empiricists thought that experience starts with what is given to our senses. Rationalism, on the other hand, is based on thought and gives little to no credit to experience. But real experience, according to Dewey, is an interaction between a thinking being and the world. Dewey valued change, and progress over time. To him, intelligence is not simply the gathering of information, but the process of solving a problem. Because he was so concerned with practical results, he is known as one of the founders of pragmatism.

A good social website, then, should seek to solve a problem its visitors may have. It should invite participation, giving its visitors the opportunity to test out the standards it presents. Finally, because it can only be good if it is consistently successful, it should seek for feedback and always look to update and improve itself.

Going back to Plato: the BYU Humanities website falls short because it either tries to solve too many problems at once or it doesn't effectively communicate to its visitors how it can solve their problems. A more cohesive interface, driven by a unified theme (as discussed above), would work wonders for the presentation and effectiveness of the site as a whole.


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