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It's easy enough to learn the menus and tools in a graphics program. It's a whole other thing to make a graphic image that looks good. It's easy enough to link some web pages. It's a whole other thing to construct a usable information space.
To make good-looking and usable webs, it might help to think about three separate tasks:
the conceptual
task of chunking and linking to make a hypertext. The rest of this page
discusses an example.
the technical
task of getting the HTML correct and online so that the students can
use the web.
the visual
task of making an attractive look-and-feel
Using the World Wide Web to Enhance Classroom Instruction, by Norman Mathew and Maryanne Dohery-Poirier, covers much of this same ground. It is especially good on the instructional design behind Web-based instruction and on the control shift from teacher to student.
A good way to start is to put your course disclosures and handouts on the Web. Because the format of a course disclosure is familiar and common, let's start with one that has four 8 1/2 x 11 numbered and stapled pages. It's all text, black ink on white paper. It has some stylization -- capitalization, bullets, and white space -- to emphasize the seven sections:
administrivia
description
student objectives
content / syllabus
method of evaluation
texts and resources
special
considerations
For example, here is the chunked-up course disclosure statement for Fall 2002's MBA 600:
Welcome | The Course | The Syllabus | The Case | The Reports | The Roundtable
When you hand out the course disclosure statement during the first class, most students start flipping through it. They don't read it linearly. They find the answers to their most important question: how much of my precious time will this course demand.
how
much reading?
how long is the term
paper?
how much will the
final exam count?
will there be a class
session the Wednesday before Thanksgiving?
what's the attendance
policy?
How do the students know how to navigate the paper course disclosure? They've seen it before. The staple, the page numbers, and the subheadings are common to many documents. Also, you have provided the stylization cues. Their navigation model is linear: top to bottom of the page, first page to fourth. Secure in that model, they can flip through quickly and skim for what they need.
You may spend the whole first class session going over the document linearly also, elaborating, answering questions, pointing out the connections between the objectives and the content. Some students take notes, but most just listen. They don't know the document or the course as well as you do. The next day, when they take a look at that course disclosure, they may have their notes. Mostly, they'll rely on memory for what you told them orally.
For starters, let's chunk up that course disclosure. Instead of one document, we're going to make seven different web pages, one for each of the seven sections. Okay, but when the sections are online, how will students find their way around?
Repeated and consistent links. Look at the bottom of the page you're reading now. You can click on:
the
Workbench logo to go to the Workbench welcome page. It is in a child-parent
relationship to Gizmos, Inc., just as Gizmos, Inc., is child to Ricci Street.
the
Gizmos, Inc., logo for the welcome page for that neighborhood. The links in red
-- Showroom, Playroom, Research Lab, Workbench, Kiln, Toolkit -- will take you
to those welcome pages.
the
Ricci Street logo for the welcome page for this whole site. The links in red --
search, sitemap, and help -- are always available.
These links take up a lot of space on the screen, so I put them at the bottom. You'll find the higher-level (more parental) of those links repeated at the top of the page. Most importantly, they have a consistent, predictable place on every page. In additon, the pages have a similar look and feel, which greatly aids navigation.
At the top, the mechanical gizmo is hot. Before you click on it, think a moment. Where do you expect it to take you?
You can make links for all the connections you think are relevant, those you would make orally in class as well as those you wouldn't have time for. Many of the connections on your course disclosure, students would forget otherwise. For example, you could:
link
your name to your personal home page
link the
prerequisites to their course disclosures
link the objectives
to the content
link the content to
the evaluation criteria
link the syllabus to
texts and resources elsewhere on Ricci Street
link text to its
sources and to opposing viewpoints on the World Wide Web
Where does it start? Where does it end?
My first course webs started as chunked and linked course disclosures. I've steamlined them a bit on Digital Wares' Lantern Lane neighborhood.
Similarly to what you do with a course disclosure, you can do with your in-class handouts. Mine comprise much of the rest of Ricci Street.
Another good way to start is to host a Bistro forum for your class.
I hope that this brief introduction creates more questions than it answers. Please post them at the Bistro and we can all share. When you're ready to start making web pages, I'll help you set up FrontPage and show you how to use the Ricci Street pages as templates.
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