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If you maintain a web site for your course, take a minute to review these points. You also might want to take a look at the CTS Organizing Your Web tutorial for some additional hints on page design and organization.
As educators and researchers, you know the importance of teaching students to critically evaluate sources and the information they provide. Make sure your web pages include the necessary data to help students identify the creator of the pages and whether or not the pages are current.
- Does your course home page include all the important information about your course and you?
- Do all of the pages in your site include the course number?
Is each page identified with an email contact and the date the page was last updated?
Adding navigational links to your pages makes it easier for students to quickly move to the information they need and can make a web site seem less confusing.
From your home page, is it easy for students to get to all the important sections of your web site?
Does every page have a link back to the home page?
Have you considered adding a navigational bar to every page with links to your site's main sections?
Poorly designed pages can be hard on the eye and diminish the credibility of the information provided. Consider using a consistent layout or set of graphics across your web site to make it easier to navigate the pages and to give your site some cohesiveness.
About colors and backgrounds:
- Is the text easy to read against the background color or image?
- Does the color scheme reflect the image you are trying to project for this site?
- Use only "web-safe" colors for backgrounds.
Note:
"Web-safe" colors are colors that appear consistently well on almost all computers with color monitors. Most HTML editors have web-safe color pickers that can be used for selecting text and background colors. There are a couple of online color pickers (Dougie's Color Picker and ColorMaker) you can use to test out various color combinations. See the Resources page for more links color links.
About text and fonts:
- Are the fonts you have chosen easy to read and appropriate for the message you are trying to convey?
- Do font sizes reflect what you are trying emphasize?
- Do you use bold, italics and heading sizes consistently throughout your site?
About layout:
- Are your eyes drawn to what is important?
- Have you used heading fonts, bulleted lists, or tables to help organize the information on your page?
- Are included graphics appropriate to the site and quick to load?
- Are you using consistent layout and design to give your course web site a visual identity?
About printing:
- Do your pages print correctly? If your images or tables are too wide, printouts may be two pages wide.
Note:
Many students find it helpful to print out lecture notes from the course web site and then take notes on the printout. This can be particularly useful if the lecture notes include images. Check to make sure that you've designed your site so that it will print correctly on a single page width. Things that make a web page span across two printed pages include images that are too wide (it only takes one) or tables that are forced to a particular width. If you are having problems getting your web pages to print to a single page width, contact CTS (helpdesk@rice.edu).
Is the information you've provided on the web site consistent with your goals for it? Deciding what information to provide online is a challenging task. If you are going to provide lecture notes or course outlines, you will need to remember to update them on a regular basis.
Basic course information you might want to include:
- Course outline
- Course requirements
- Grading procedures
- How to get help: Teaching assistants, office hours, and newsgroup or mailing list information
- Required work and class assignment information
- Reading assignments or required texts.
- Other important course information like participation or attendance requirements.
Course notes:
Course notes are a very valuable part of a course web site. Some instructors choose to provide lecture-by-lecture notes while others choose to include more general notes for topics covered. The latter option is generally easier to maintain since it doesn't require constant updating as the semester progresses.
Notes can be made available in several different formats. While standard web pages may be the easiest format, some instructors include notes in a variety of formats including postscript files, Adobe Acrobat (PDF) files, and PowerPoint presentations. While some instructors choose to convert PowerPoint presentations into HTML using various converters, a better job can usually be accomplished using PDF files.
- Include the main points of your lecture or module
- Digitize graphics that illustrate key points. (Students will be able to refer to these images without losing time sketching the illustrations during class and can take better notes.)
- Include video or audio clips, if they illustrate a point well
Links to other web resources:
One of the real advantages of the web is the ability to immediately access a variety of information resources from around the Internet. Maintaining a list of links to relevant web sites can be a valuable addition to your course. Consider constructing activities or exercises based on the web sites or including notes about particular aspects of the sites in order for students to get the most out of the links.
Student projects:
Increasingly faculty members are requiring students to construct online projects. Although such projects may require extra time in teaching the technology, such projects can help students develop a sense of a public audience and convince them that their work is not merely an exercise, but an important contribution to ongoing scholarly projects. For an overview of important considerations in assigning student projects for humanities classes, see "Constructive Student Projects" at the Crossroads site, http://www.georgetown.edu/crossroads/constructive.html.
Once you have finished updating your course web pages and are ready to have students use them, send email to cts@rice.edu and ask to have your course web page added to the "Rice Course Web Pages" (http://www.rice.edu/academic/courseweb.html) page. Include the Course Number and Course Title, as well as the web address of your course.
Classroom
Technology Services (cts@rice.edu)