Welcome to WEB 101: Using the Web in Education and Training

A Web-based tutorial on using the World Wide Web for Education and Training

[CLAS Welcome Page] | [DIS Welcome Page] | [David Bowen's Welcome Page]
Last updated: 9/12/05

WEB 101 CONTENTS:

1. Contents of This Welcome Page (first-time users of this site, start here!)
2. Taking an Online Course: What You Should Know (presentations for New Student Seminar at DIS)
3. Online Literacy Tutor
4. HTML Editors for creating web pages:
   1. Using Netscape Composer (includes general background on web pages and HTML)
   2. Using Microsoft Word
5. Using HTML For Presentations (a presentation that uses HTML)
6. General background
   1. What is The Web, Really? This is Web basics.
   2. Four Ways That Education and Training Units Can Use the Web
   3. Three Technologies That Can Transform Education and Training
   4. A Web Dictionary
7. Advanced general topics
   1. Scenarios - What it Might be Like to Use a Flexible learning System
   2. What do the World Wide Web screen styles look like (HTML styles)
   3. Technical issues
8. Developing Web Courses
   1. How can we apply The Web in Education and Training? This gets specific about how to use The Web in coursework.
   2. What does it take to get started in using The Web for Education and Training? Read this if you're convinced and want to get started developing a course.
   3. Creating Web Content for Your Courses (materials from a workshop)
9. Institutional issues
   1. Marketing, registration and counseling
   2. Administrative and social issues in using The Web for Education and Training. This presents and discusses some of the issues in using the Web for education and training.
   3. Possible Professional Roles
10. American Federation of Teachers standards for distance education
11. Internet Studies web sites. Internet Studies is an emerging academic discipline that deal with the Internet and its interactions with other elements of society, from a wide range of perspectives. Here are links to some programs:
    1. U Min Internet Studies Center http://www.isc.umn.edu/
    2. U Wash Center for Internet Studies http://www.cis.washington.edu/
    3. Brandeis Internet Studies http://silk.cs.brandeis.edu/inet/index.html
    4. Yale - The Center for Internet Studies http://www.ycis.yale.edu/
    5. University of Nebraska at Omaha Office of Internet Studies http://ois.unomaha.edu/
    6. Curtin University of Technology (Australia) Internet Studies http://smi.curtin.edu.au/internet/internet.html
    7. University of British Columbia (Canada) Internet Studies http://www.tech.ubc.ca/moreabout/#internet
    8. Internet Studies at the City University of London http://www.soi.city.ac.uk/organisation/is/research/isrg/
    9. Unit for Internet Studies (indpendent consortium) http://www.internetstudies.org/
    10. Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org/
    11. Chronicle of Higher Education article on Internet Studies 3/30/01
    12. Silicon Valley . com article on Internet Studies 4/22/01
    13. (Related) U of D major in Electronic Critique (English Department major) http://www.e-crit.com/curriculum.htm
12. Visit Other Education and Training Web Sites
13. Experience Teaching via the Web, Email and Computer Conferencing
14. Graphics Demo
15. News About Education and Training on the Web
16. On-line Workshop Evaluation.
17. FLS Support for Your Own Web 101 Workshop
18. Kit for Offering Your Own Web 101 Workshop
19. View All Comments and Questions

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CONTENTS OF THIS WELCOME PAGE:

(NOTE: The links below are internal to this document. If you scroll through this page all the way to the end, you will have seen everything that these internal links would take you to.)

• Preliminaries -- self-directed learning
• Web 101 Goals and Objectives
• Web 101 Hyperlink Structure -- getting around
• Web 101 Intended Audiences
• What is Wrong With Web 101 Today
• Web 101 Contents

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PRELIMINARIES:

NOTE 1: As of this date, this is very much a work in progress. YOUR COMMENTS ARE NEEDED! One convenient comment method is to use the e-mail links below.

NOTE 2: This is not the place to find lists of "cool sites", to learn how to do a Web search, to learn how to open another URL, etc. This is a place to learn about using The Web for education and training.

e-mail: drbowen@cll.wayne.edu Send e-mail to David Bowen

e-mail: ckoss@cll.wayne.edu Send e-mail to Christine Koss

Web 101 has a consistent hyperlink structure, described below. This description describes how to navigate from topic to topic by "clicking on" links. If you are unfamiliar with this new entry into the English language, here is a definition.

Click on. Verb. To move the mouse cursor to the designated text that is (normally) displayed in blue and underlined, and then to click the (left) mouse button (as if the right mouse button ever did anything in its life, but Macs only have one button anyway).

SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING

Web 101 is an example of self-directed learning. You are in charge. You decide what you want to learn about. Ideally you would decide not only what you want to learn, but the learning methods you want to use, but more about that later.

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WEB 101 GOALS AND OBJECTIVES:

Goals for Web 101

• That you should experience using The Web for education and training
• That you should learn about using The Web for education and training

About that first goal (experiencing using The Web for education and training), our belief is that implementing all of the features that will be needed is a long-term task. We are not pretending that these techniques are implemented here and now in Web 101. As you go through this workshop, imagine how it could be done better, more interactively. Imagine how we could to respond your needs and interests using the techniques that work best for you. Then tell us. The primary task in using The Web for education and training will be in defining the interactive features that are needed to do the job right. Implementing these techniques will not be easy, but defining them will be primary.

Web 101 is an example of self-directed learning. You select the topics and their order. Here are some guidelines for self-directed learning:

Guidelines for Managing Your Own Learning

• You do not need to read the whole page. Just because we think put it in here does not make it worth your while.
• Boredom is a sign that the particular material might not be relevant to you. Move on.
• Have a clear idea about why you are learning particular material. Explicitly, what do you want to be able to do afterwards.
• Recognize that you may need to change this idea as new knowledge changes your horizons and your goals.
• Keep a list of unanswered questions.
• At any one time you will be learning about a subsection of a general knowledge domain. A "big picture" of the knowledge domain is very useful. Keep looking for the boundaries of the knowledge domain. Understand how your specific interest fit into the big picture.
• If you get confused, backtrack. Ask yourself how you got here and where do you want to go. Do you really want or need to know this part?
• If necessary, find and ask someone knowledgeable or experienced, but you be the judge.

The Web is quite capable of delivering materials in a set order with no learner control. However, in setting up Web 101 we wanted to see how different we could be, and how it might work. We trust that you'll let us know about this on the evaluation.

Now for specifics ...

Prerequisite Skills

General Windows and Mac skills are a prerequisite for Web 101. You need to know how to start Netscape first, befroe you can learn anything from Web 101. The mouse skills link will review these skills. (To return to this point after you are through reviewing the mouse skills, use the "Back" button on your Browser. The [Return to Welcome Page] link will take you to the top of this welcome page.)

Objectives for Web 101

Good training should always start off with the objectives. Traditional objectives work in an instructor-controlled setting. Here we will try some new types of objectives for a learner-controlled setting. Basically, when you leave, we don't want you to have wasted your time. We want you to have learned something of use to you. If you want to get started, we want you to have a good idea of next steps in your area of interest in using The Web for education and training.

As a result of using Web 101, you should be able to:

1. Describe what The Web is.
2. Discuss the general topic of Web 101: Using The Web for Education and Training.
   1. Identify any areas that you feel should be added to Web 101.
3. Identify the specific area(s) within the general topic that interest you and where you have the most to contribute.
   1. Describe the content in the specific area(s).
   2. Identify first/next steps in becoming active in the specific area(s).

At the end of each session of Web 101, we will ask you to evaluate our success in meeting the above objectives.

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WEB 101 HYPERLINK STRUCTURE:

• Each major topic has a separate page. For a list of the major topics, see "WEB 101 CONTENTS", above.
• Each page is reached via this Web 101 Welcome Page. To go to a particular page, click on the link in the Web 101 Welcome Page.
• Each page has a [Return to Web 101 Welcome Page] link. To go from one page to another, click on the [Return to Web 101 Welcome Page] link and then click on the link in the Web 101 Welcome Page to the new page.
  
  
• At the start of each page is a list of links to the major topics within the page. You can either scroll through the page in a straight line (not recommended), or click on one of the links to go to a topic of particular interest.
• Within each page, at the end of each primary topic, is a [Return to Top] link. Clicking on this link returns you to the top of the page, where you can click on the link back to the Web 101 Welcome Page or click on the links to other pages.
  (NOTE: If you scroll all the way through a page to the bottom, you will have seen everything that the page's internal links would take you to.)
  
  • There is an elaboration of this scheme. In this Welcome page, it is not the page contents at the beginning, but the workshop contents. The page contents are further along. In this case, the [Return to] link goes to the section on page contents, not to the workshop contents section.

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WEB 101 INTENDED AUDIENCES:

Training has always recognized (at least in theory) that one size does not fit all, that training must be developed for specific learners with specific characteristics -- the intended audience. But because some of you may just want to get started, we have put this topic off to the side, or at least near the end of this page.

We hope that Web 101 is widely relevant. As we hope to demonstrate here, there is a lot of work to be done in making The Web useful for education and training. Making full use of The Web in education and training will take many people and a lot of time. This is our attempt to get started. Let us know how our efforts work for you.

We do have some specific audiences in mind, and in a few places, remarks are directed towards one or another of these audiences. In this case, the remarks are inside curly brackets {} and the audience is identified. As of this point, the specific audiences are:

• {WSU/ISP faculty: Faculty within the Interdisciplinary Studies Program at Wayne State University.}
• {Distance Education Professionals: those engaged in deploying distance education technologies and strategies within Higher Education. For example, members of SEMTEC, the Southeastern Michigan Television Education Consortium.}

If you have specific concerns that you would like Web 101 to address, please let us know, for example by using the e-mail links In the "Preliminaries" section above.

If you would like to use Web 101 in fostering the use of The Web in education and training, we will support you with our experience and advice. See the pages on FLS Support for Your Own Web 101 Workshop and Kit for Offering Your Own Web 101 Workshop. The links to those pages are items 6 and 7 in WEB 101 CONTENTS at the top of this page.

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WHAT IS WRONG WITH WEB 101 TODAY:

Currently, WEB 101 asks you to, "do as we say, not as we do."

What we say:

• Keep your documents short for fast user response
• Use lots of graphics
• Be interactive

What we do today and why:

• Our documents get longer because there are no good tools to keep track of many, many documents
• We don't use a lot of graphics because they are harder to produce
• We aren't very interactive because we are just learning what the interactive functions should be.

So, today, the interactivity is provided by people, including us.

But we will get better. We hope to be the place where people come to discuss how to use The Web for Education and Training, and therefore to learn from others.

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