Collaborative Class Projects // Amaranth

A collaborative class website changes the stakes of a course assignment. Instead of writing a paper that only one person reads, students contribute to a shared project that lives on the open web. Each contribution is small, but together they create something no one person could build alone. Students write more carefully, design more intentionally, and care more about clarity.

Designing for an audience

Building a page on a collaborative website is a design challenge as much as a writing one. Students have to think about visual hierarchy:

What does a reader see first?
How do images and text work together to tell a story?
How does the page guide someone through an argument?

These are communication skills that transfer far beyond a single course—and they’re exactly the kind of skills that humanities graduates need but rarely get to practice.

Digital literacy without coding

Our platform teaches students how websites work—how simple code blocks display images, how metadata enables functionality, and how version control lets a group collaborate without overwriting each other’s work—without requiring them to learn programming. They edit simple text files and see their work published as webpages. Many students also use AI to handle technical decisions while keeping their focus on the intellectual argument—learning to direct AI rather than be directed by it. Technology becomes a little less intimidating, and the confidence that comes from building something real is something students carry forward.

Built to last

Commercial website builders lock content into proprietary platforms that charge subscription fees. Our sites run on GitHub Pages—free, open, and built on web standards that will still work decades from now. Some early projects haven’t been touched in almost a decade and they work exactly as they did at the end of the course that created them. Sustainability by design.

How it works

The process is the same for instructors and students: create a free GitHub account, duplicate the project template, and start editing the sample pages. No coding, no special software, no server administration. The Xanthan getting started guide walks through every step, and we’re always happy to visit a class to help.

Campus Histories

Multi-semester project — each cohort builds on what previous students made
UNM site styling baked in via Xanthan
Card-based navigation through individual building histories

Metahistory

Spans multiple courses and years of student contributions
Permanent left sidebar with auto-generated table of contents
New pages picked up automatically as students add them

The Silk Road

Object pages with images, metadata, and interpretive essays
Thematic essays connecting multiple objects and historical patterns
Map-based view of places and materials connected through exchange

Farming the Middle Rio Grande

Farmer profiles combining oral history interviews and student-written web pages
Cross-course collaboration between qualitative methods and local food systems courses
Recordings archived in the UNM Digital Repository