One theme from the history of science is that the platforms and infrastructures used for learning make a difference. To understand the history of science, it is helpful to pay attention to how people record and share knowledge. To be effective teachers and learners, we have to pay attention to how we ourselves record and share knowledge, too.

This website lets me control more effectively how I share course materials with you. It lets me open up sections of the site so that you can contribute to each other's learning on a shared infrastructure, hopefully building confidence and skills to participate in other digital knowledge projects beyond this course (wiki-based and otherwise). It also lets me make some parts of the course accessible to others who are not enrolled in the course, contributing to the university's public-facing mission by providing a (partially) open educational resource.

The university officially values digital citizenship, and this course website helps both you and me to be better digital citizens. It lets me decide not to collect certain login and tracking information from students that is collected by default on the university's course platform, which students cannot meaningfully consent to share and whose collection instructors cannot directly disable. It lets you be more deliberate about what you share with the course and how, and it centres the value of personal and collective responsibility for shared projects of learning.