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Educator's Voice

Volume 3, Issue 11
November 21, 2002

Little Things Can Mean A Lot

Recently, a new online teacher asked me a question that, as an Instructional Design Consultant, I have probably been asked a thousand times - and one which I find continually intriguing.

Enthused about putting a course online, but having had little experience, and dealing with limited time and resources, she asked: "What are some of the 'little things,' that are not too technical or time consuming that I can do to make my course look good and work well?"

She noted that she had a good syllabus, an excellent textbook, well-developed lecture notes, and pretty good slides. She knew that a threaded discussion would probably be very useful, and she had found some relevant links to enable her students to broaden their fund of knowledge beyond the traditional course material.

What, then, would I suggest to her? Well, here are a few "little things" that immediately came to mind - not listed in order of importance:

Encourage learning how to search. If you are going to ask students to do some Web research, it would be prudent to have students visit an online search tutorial - e.g., one at Search Engine Watch or at the UC Berkeley Library.

Foster an appreciation of "Netiquette." To help students communicate more effectively online, encourage students to consider the kind of class environment in which they hope to participate, and to learn some "rules of the road" at a site such as Arline Rinaldi's The Net: User Guidelines and Netiquette.

Promote extensive interaction. Monitor the course often, respond as quickly as you reasonably can, reach out with email to students who seem timid or passive, try to involve students in active and collaborative learning projects, use authentic tasks where possible, and encourage a sense of teamwork or community. Keep in mind principles such as those espoused in Chickering & Ehrmann's (1996) classic article, "Implementing the Seven Principles: Technology as Lever."

Add images. We all know that "a picture can be worth a thousand words." The same may be said of good diagrams and charts. Think about adding images to your text pages. The image link wizard in the eCollege Visual Editor, as well as the one in MS Word, enables you to easily load images onto a page, and it's fairly easy to resize them once placed on the page. If you first need to figure out how to obtain images, you can learn to quickly save an image on your hard drive here.

Use borders. On many Web pages with a lot of text, authors often place the text in such a way as to allow no borders - i.e., leaving the text on the HTML page immediately adjacent to the frame or browser window.

You can easily make your text material more attractive to look at and easier to read, just by adding borders. One can do this with the eCollege editor, just by clicking on the HTML button (now there's no need to panic) and insert <blockquote> at the very top and </blockquote> at the very bottom, and then click on "Save Changes."

You'll then see your text with nice clean borders on both sides. You can achieve something similar if you are using the MS Word upload tool. You need only prepare your Word document before uploading it, by inserting a 1x1 table on the document, using the Table menu to alter the table properties to 85%, width and no borders, and then pasting the text inside the table.

Embed hyperlinks. While it is helpful to provide students with links to subject-related sites, in the Webliography, for example, remember that hypertext links can be embedded right in the body of text on your pages or slides. The wizards or assistants usually found on the editing bars at the top of your page or slide enable very rapid creation of the links. The embedded links allow the learner a great deal more flexibility and control over the course of his learning, and this usually translates into greater satisfaction.

Ask for feedback. Periodically, invite your learners to give you information about what works and what might need improvement. Consider using, for example, something like The One-Minute Paper. As you know, learner feedback can be a great resource for enhancing your teaching, and asking for it clearly communicates that what students think and feel matters.

Well, it seems that I could go on and on, but I'm sure that you get the gist. Now, I wonder, what do you think of these "little things"? Can you recommend others that might make a difference for new instructors?

Feel free to send me your thoughts. Who knows, perhaps we'll post them. Also, if you need further clarification on any of the above, I'd be delighted to hear from you. Thanks!

Ed
edl@ecollege.com

       --Edward H. Ladon, Ph.D.

TIP

Visual Editor - HTML View Tip

Here is a tip that I use every day when dealing with course design. You do not have to be an HTML wizard to use some simple HTML code! This tip will help you align your text with a picture within the Visual Editor.

After loading an image or picture onto your page with the "Add Image" button, you may notice that any text (new or old) will move to the bottom of the picture. If you would like the text to "wrap" around or stay right next to the picture, use the HTML view.

1. Click on the HTML / Design toggle button.
   
   
2. Find the code for the image (it will have .gif or .jpg, etc. next to it and will be surrounded by carrots <> such as this: <IMG alt="Image of a pasta dinner" src="/ec/Courses/CRS-OCW18-963606/meal.gif">).
   
   
3. After the quotation mark on the right side of the .gif (etc.) place the words: align=left such as this: <IMG alt="Image of a pasta dinner" src="/ec/Courses/CRS-OCW18-963606/meal.gif" align=left>.
   
   
4. Toggle back on the HTML / Design button and you will see what has happened with the text and the picture. If you like it, save changes. If not, toggle back and try something different or take it out all together.
   
   
5. Some basic uses are: align=left align=right align=center

Good luck!

       --Jeff D Borden, M.A.