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Developing Effective Course Websites to Supplement Traditional Classes Capt Shad Reed, MAJ Steve Schweitzer United States Military Academy, West Point

Abstract While a few courses around the country have been developed that are heavily dependent upon information technology and the internet, thousands of courses have taken a more conservative approach and chosen to augment conventional classroom instruction rather than replace it. Although a well executed and integrated website has the potential to dramatically enhance active learning, designing an effective website can be frustrating, challenging and time consuming. The goal of this effort is to identify what a course website should be designed to do, what should appear on a course website and how it should be formatted. Survey data are presented illustrating the effectiveness of two different course websites and the websites are examined to determine what characteristics led to their success or failure.

Introduction Technology has undoubtedly changed education. Many universities have created virtual classrooms where students can remotely logon, attend online lectures, turn in electronic homework, and take online tests[1,2]. While web centered courses offer many distinct advantages, they face many challenges and are not yet ready to supplant traditional courses[3]. Courses that integrate the internet into an existing conventional classroom environment stand to significantly increase student interaction and active learning. Nevertheless, the question of what a course website should do and how it should do it is still largely unclear[4]. Furthermore, the disparity between what instructors put on websites and what students want on websites is quite large[5]. To compound matters, studies indicate that the number of courses attempting to integrate websites into the classroom is also increasing at an alarming rate[6]. Unless these issues are resolved, thousands of educators in all fields will squander valuable time developing poor websites. When a professor finally decides to make a course website, many decisions must be made regarding content, format and layout. It seems that the default website typically has some administrative information such as a syllabus, a few outdated and rarely updated solutions, a faculty biography and some undocumented links to other sites. Further, the average website suffers from organizational problems that tend to hide the data that is present. In many cases, these websites are of little use to the student and are seldom visited. In the extreme, poorly executed websites can detract from a student’s opinion of the course and can sap their motivation as they repeatedly visit the website looking for information. The result is that many professors are of the opinion that course websites are a waste of time or that they are unnecessary[5]. On the contrary, a well-executed website can be valuable educational tool that will, in a manner similar to a course textbook, become a crucial component of a student’s learning.

Proceedings of the 2002 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright  2002, American Society for Engineering Education

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Schweitzer, S., & Reed, S. (2002, June), Integrating Effective Course Web Sites Into The Classroom (Rev 1) Paper presented at 2002 Annual Conference, Montreal, Canada. 10.18260/1-2--11000