DE Oracle @ UMUC

Effective Practices in Online Teaching: How the Classroom Looks

CSI Staff

Staff Writer

Center for Support of Instruction

Published: 0 2004

Category: » Webtycho » Document-design

Over several years of working with faculty members on their online classes, Instructional Support Specialist from the Center of Support of Instruction have noticed some very effective practices on the part of the faculty. Here are some that faculty members might want to consider when putting up their online classrooms.

Clown pants: Using more colors does not necessarily help the message

In an attempt to draw attention and add variety to tracts of text, some users may try to use colors in the classroom. There is nothing wrong with this if done judiciously. One problem that can arise is what the Yale Style Manual, amongst others, have described as the "clown pants" effect -- an overload of color leading to confusion rather than skillfully highlighting information. Another concern is that there should be enough information so that readers who suffer from some form of color blindness can still meaningfully use the information. This means not only that, ideally, the highlighted information should additionally be emphasized by some other means (such as bolding or italics), but that the text should also have enough contrast with the background so the text doesn't disappear altogether for those with visual impairments.

QUIT YELLING: All-caps look like shouting

In an attempt to get the message across, it is sometimes tempting to write text in all caps. While this is certainly useful to grab someone's attention, there are two problems with this. The first is that all-caps writing is often perceived to be shouting. While this may sometimes be the intent, it is generally inappropriate in a classroom, whether online or face-to-face, and can be taken as a breach of online etiquette. The other problem is that it is more difficult to read extended lines in all uppercase letters, and after a while they lose their effectiveness. See our previous feature article, Avoid Document Discomfort.

Studying in Times Square: Flashing messages are distracting

In another attempt to attract attention to an important item (such as an assignment deadline), it might seem prudent to have text flash or blink. Back in 1996, web usability guru Jakob Nielsen made the compelling point in his article on web design mistakes that "[a] web page should not emulate Times Square in New York City in its constant attack on the human senses: give your user some peace and quiet to actually read the text!" It holds as true today as it did then.

The temptation to skim: Reading online is different than on paper

Jakob Nielsen's research has found that readers read differently online than they do on paper, and makes suggestions on how to write for the web. In 1997, he found that only 16% of readers read entire pages word-for-word, and that the majority of users skim pages. He suggests being succinct, avoiding long blocks of text, and using hyperlinks. His work since has only further vindicated his original recommendations. It is not a question of content, it's related to the medium. This doesn't mean that all learning materials must be brief bullet points. Much of the material presented in the online classroom may indeed be intended to be printed out. However, these recommendations definitely hold true for class announcements and conference postings. See our previous feature article, Avoid Document Discomfort.

It looked fine in...: MS-Word generated HTML causes problems

Faculty are encouraged to use HTML to spruce up the presentation of their classrooms. However, using Microsoft Word to generate the material and exporting it as HTML can create some unexpected problems. Word documents themselves are not a web-ready format , but even using its export-to-HTML feature, extra code is included. The code is intended to help the documents work with other Microsoft products, but poses problems for WebTycho. Whenever using HTML code generated by Word, it is advisable to test the page in at least the two major browsers (Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator) to avoid the problems show below:

document as displayed in Netscape 7.1

document as displayed in Internet Explorer 6

For various reasons, many faculty members prefer to compose their material in a word processor and then paste it into WebTycho rather than composing directly "online". There is nothing wrong with this practice. However, WebTycho users should be aware that word processors will often create "curly quotation marks" (also called "smart quotation marks"), which, when pasted into WebTycho, turn into unsightly questions marks. While the question marks can be manually removed from the pasted text, an easier approach is to turn off the curly quotation marks in the word processor, or convert the text so as to remove it. For detailed instructions on how to turn off the curly quotations marks, see WebTycho's Help and Support site.