From Text to e-Text - Resisting Print

In Chapter 5, you were introduced to the idea of message design, a concept that integrates the research in text design and screen design. Many of the Web design guidelines developed through the last half of the 90s were heavily grounded in research done in print design and reflect this work.

User-Centered Design (Part 2-Age, Gender and Accessibility)

In the previous chapter you looked at the challenges involved in writing for diverse audiences. You became aware that diversity is not limited to international audiences, but that just one group may contain learners with varying learning styles, native languages, and cultural backgrounds. This chapter focuses the work on accessibility in the better-known sense. That is, accessibility issues such as levels of cognitive development, health, mobility, and perceptual factors which inform user-centered design practices. This chapter includes gender and technical access issues as well.

User-Centered Design (Part 1-Cultrual Diversity)

In the Introduction you encountered the idea of learner profiles. You had the opportunity to assess the skills and background of your audience and to relate these ideas to planning learning outcomes. You looked at learning styles and diverse learning needs. In this chapter, you will explore more information about your target audience and ways to analyze their needs. Knowing your audience will give you confidence that your e-Texts and the design for your course will meet their learning needs. This process is called user-centered design.

Five Factors for Planning

This chapter is for a reader who is at the beginning of the writing or development process, or who wants to affirm planning decisions. In this chapter you will consider five planning aspects in e-Learning design: 1. Outcomes 2. Learners 3. Activities 4. Assessment 5. Resources An overview of each aspect will help you describe your own hopes and expectations for your online course. By the end of the chapter you should feel confident that the Web is a good delivery technology for your course.

e-Learning Trends - The Mobile Environment

In the introductory chapter, we identified trends and opportunities for e-Learning in higher education. One of these trends, m-Learning, is the focus of this chapter. Today, who doesn’t own a personal digital assistant (PDA)? A PDA is one example of a handheld device in which several technologies have converged – notebooks, e-Textbooks, online calendars and address books, email, music files…. m-Learning often takes place via a wireless device such as a PDA, but students in Japan use cell phones and any airline traveler knows how many laptops suddenly make an appearance when the seatbelt light goes out.

Usability Testing

In his book Designing Web Usability (2000), Jakob Nielsen names three conditions that would have to happen for him to give up writing books and focus on writing for the Web. The first two, better computer monitors and interfaces, make it as fast, easy and pleasant to read from a screen as from a book.

Structuring the e-Learning Environment

In this chapter, you will encounter some ideas about structuring the e-Learning environment so that your clients/users are able to easily access and use the learning content. The environment is where you reflect the structure of your domain by sequencing topics, showing concept relationships, and supporting reader interaction with the information. The way you organize the environment to support learning and information retrieval is known as information architecture. On the Web, the site architecture is revealed in the visual design, elements with which users interact. Visual design and the interactions it reflects are called the interface.

The Active e-Reader

This chapter introduces a number of terms and phrases that you may not be familiar with. These terms are listed in the accompanying Handbook with enough space to define them in your own words or note examples, references, and resources.

Selecting and Evaluating Learning Objects

In the previous chapters, you became acquainted with key issues in developing online learning. You gained an awareness of some of the overall issues facing learning organizations. Finally, you looked at the needs of your audience in terms of learning styles, inclusivity, and adult learning characteristics.

From Text to e-Text - Message Design

In Chapter 4, you were introduced to the idea of learning (or educational) objects and repositories. Chapter 4 emphasized the identification, retrieval, and reuse of learning objects that reside in repositories around the world.