Keep good Web design basics

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1 Redesigning class handouts and educational materials for Web delivery April 2003 Ed Garay UIC Instructional Technology Lab Academic Computing and Communications Center University of Illinois at Chicago Keep good Web design basics Author concise and meaningful content Offer a clean and intuitive design Provide a consistent user interface Microsoft PowerPoint Slide Use effective navigational tools Design for the screen and exploit the Web Map out course site organization Write short scannable textual documents Keep good Web design basics Use browser-independent hypermedia Ensure fast downloads Know your audience 40 KB or less per page 100 KB per page maximum Follow Web Accessibility guidelines Design easy-to-maintain Web pages See

2 Preferred Web file formats HTML documents preferred Native Web file format, cross-platform Easy visual authoring with Dreamweaver, GoLive Save as HTML in Word, then use Dreamweaver Adobe Acrobat PDF files ok Easy to create portable document format Retains precise look-and-feel Best for Web printing, supports zooming Good security features: can password-protect files, disable printing or cut-and-paste Preferred Web file formats Plain-text documents Lowest common denominator, cross-platform Smart in-line text entry in Blackboard CourseInfo Ideal for Web Accessibility and PDA display Proprietary formats least preferred Maybe easiest to upload a Word or PPT but.. Requires users to have software, like Word and PowerPoint, to open.doc and.ppt files, etc. Potential for cross-platform problems PowerPoint presentation source files can be huge ITL will help you avoid using proprietary formats Microsoft Word legacy Documents can be easily saved into HTML. Upload the HTML file to your Blackboard course site or class Website, or make further changes to it using a real Web authoring (HTML) tool, like Macromedia Dreamweaver.

3 Sample Macromedia Dreamweaver Web authoring environment Redesigning for Web-based education How much Web-based instruction do you want to integrate in your class? The more you want to do, the more time commitment will be required by instructors and students Consider amount and type of feedback Make sure to weight in Web activities in your grading scheme Putting class materials online Syllabi Handouts and lecture notes PowerPoint presentations (in HTML or PDF) Related hyperlinks, practice exams Narrated PowerPoint presentations Streaming audio, video Multimedia-rich learning modules Interactive multimedia-rich content

4 Posting a class announcement on a Blackboard course site Sample Web page in Blackboard Sample Web page in Blackboard

5 Streaming a narrated PowerPoint presentation In this application, medical students can review a number of streaming video clips showing proper and improper ways of handling psychiatric patients very effective and engaging teaching and learning application of streaming technology On-demand streaming archive of medical surgical procedure

6 Macromedia Flash is an ideal technology for developing highly-interactive multimedia-rich and rather engaging educational courseware. The ITL is ready to help you create these type of learning modules. Web activities Have students explore Web resources Have students author Web resources Foster student collaboration and interaction, collaborative learning Have students build electronic portfolios Integrate rich discussion forum activities Run real-time chat sessions Web activities Run virtual office hours and online realtime review sessions Offer self-assessment exercises and weekly small quizzes Use automatic grading of quizzes and provide custom feedback Have students practice using interactive multimedia-rich learning modules Beam in guest speakers over the Internet

7 In Blackboard CourseInfo, sending to your class is very straight-forward. In Blackboard CourseInfo, sending to your class is very straight-forward. A sample discussion forum in Blackboard CourseInfo x

8 A sample discussion forum in Blackboard CourseInfo xxxxxxxxx A sample discussion forum in Blackboard CourseInfo xxxxxxxxx A sample discussion forum in Blackboard CourseInfo

9 A sample discussion forum in Blackboard CourseInfo x Blackboard CourseInfo provides one of the easiest ways of offering online assessment Blackboard CourseInfo provides one of the easiest ways of offering online assessment

10 Blackboard CourseInfo provides one of the easiest ways of offering online assessment. Instructors can choose to have Blackboard return custom feedback to the students, based on their answers. Brainstem is an interactive learning module developed by the UIC College of Medicine and ported to Macromedia Flash by the UIC Instructional Technology Lab Brainstem can be found at:

11 Macromedia CourseBuilder for Dreamweaver is another easy-to-author option to create and deliver highly-interactive multimedia-rich online assessment. The ITL can help UIC instructors create these using CourseBuilder for Dreamweaver ACCC e-rooms (aka Centra Symposium) is a state-of-the-art interactive and easy-to-use Web conferencing system that can augment the educational hypermedia of traditional face-to-face on-campus classes, as well as Internet-based distance learning programs. For more information on ACCC e-rooms, please contact the ITL