ASU College of Business
Instructional Web Site Development Workshop
Summer 1997
CONTENTS
(This area is continually under construction.)
WORKSHOP BACKGROUND AND OVERVIEW
Distance learning (DL) includes primarily synchronous (generally live)but also nonsychronous approaches to reaching remote sites. With nonsychronousDL, students can time the educational aspects of their lives to accommodatetheir own schedules. Currently, there is taking place a tremendous expansionof nonsychronous educational delivery through an amazing proliferationof Worldwide Web sites on the Internet. Some of these sites have been developedto assist with synchronous DL, but the majority are being used in conjunctionwith on-campus classes for the sake of extending the educational experiencebeyond the walls of the traditional classroom. Not only does using theWWW facilitate geographical and temporal flexibility for students, it alsoprovides the opportunities for tying together an entire online world ofresources into a set of course materials. Furthermore, this can be donein a manner that enables nonlinear learning using multiple media; soundand video can be used to strengthen the printed word. For example, a studentreading an online summary of the next day's planned class discussion canclick on a link that provides a definition to a word, and then on a linkthat pronounces that word audibly. Another link might provide a discussion(audible and/or printed) about the word's derivation, and still anotherlink might actually trigger a quick-time video that further adds to theunderstanding of the concept. Of course, these items might serve only as"bells and whistles" for some students, but those students wouldalso have the option of bypassing the corresponding links, assuming thelinks were sufficiently well documented on the Web page. In summary,instructional Web pages can be valuable course tools; nevertheless, they mustbe developed so as to include appropriate information, to have useful linksto other pages, and to minimize confusion in the process.
This workshophas the dual objectives of exposing faculty to some of the things thatmight be done through class Web pages and then training these faculty howto accomplish these things. Faculty members who attend the workshop andcomplete the in-class and outside exercises should expect to be capableof identifying how Web pages might be used to support their classes effectively,and they should be capable of developing and maintaining their own relativelysimple Web sites. Such sites would generally serve as a starting pointswhich refer students to course syllabi, to current and past assignments,to various text and binary files associated with the course, and to otherWorldwide Web resources that might assist the students' learning. These basic sites would be then expected to evolve, adding featuresand modifying their contents so as to serve the needs of the students better.
Included in this workshop are an introduction to the WWW and then exercisesand additional training for improving Web usage skills. Intermixed withthe usage training are exercises introducing basic Web page developmentskills and then building on those skills so as to leave the participantscapable of integrating Web pages into their classes. Expected introductoryusage topics include: Netscape and WWW basics; surfing via hyperlinks;direct navigation to specified URL designations; exposure to several searchengines; bookmark concepts; and a tour of a variety of class Web sites.More advanced usage topics may include: advanced query concepts; capturingimages and downloading files; exposure to plug-ins for viewing and/or launchingapplications for linked files; and viewing graphical images offline. Expecteddevelopment topics include: an HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) primer;working with the Netscape Gold editor; publishing to a personal directoryon a Web server; Web site design principles; and working with forms.
MISCELLANEOUS WORKSHOP MATERIALS
OUTSIDE EXERCISES FOR WORKSHOP
LINKS TO EXAMPLE COURSE WEBSITES
LIST OF REFERENCE MATERIALS
Please submit any comments, corrections, etc. about this document to jseydel@cherokee.astate.edu
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