Panel on the Development, Maintenance, and Use of Course Web Sites Melody Y. Ivory Asst. Prof., Information School Adj. Asst. Prof., CS&E April 6, 2019

The Design of Course Web Sites Designing good course web sites is difficult Requires understanding of effective design practices (usability, accessibility, …) Requires understanding of technology (HTML, XML, …) Requires time Potential solutions Templates, generated sites (Heines), course management systems Still need to adhere to effective design practices What if changes are made? Design processes Take time to follow Design patterns Need to be developed Evaluation tools Not a substitute for user evaluation Ideal solution Integrate all of the above

UW Course Web Site Template

UW Course Web Site Template

Macromedia Course Web Site Templates http://www.trainingcafe.com/members/coursesite/index.asp

Macromedia Course Web Site Templates http://www.trainingcafe.com/members/coursesite/index.asp

Generated Site (Heines)

Generated Site (Heines)

Most course web sites reflect this process Design Processes Scenario An instructor is teaching a core course for new undergraduate students and needs to create a course web site Most course web sites reflect this process

User-, Information-, or Learner-Centered?

User-, Information-, or Learner-Centered?

User-, Information-, or Learner-Centered?

User-, Information-, or Learner-Centered?

User-, Information-, or Learner-Centered?

Design Patterns Area that needs work Templates, generated sites, etc. need to reflect effective design patterns Some patterns developed for educational sites WebTango Project (webtango.ischool.washington.edu) Prototype analysis tool for comparing design to other high quality education sites

Automated Evaluation Tools Over 30 automated evaluation tools to compare pages to guidelines e.g., Bobby, LIFT, WebSAT, WAVE, Validator, etc. Survey: The State of the Art in Automated Usability Evaluation of User Interfaces, Ivory and Hearst, ACM Computing Surveys, 33(4), December 2001, pp. 470-516. Good at identifying potential problems and teaching about effective design practices Effectiveness in improving sites is unclear Study: Using Automated Tools to Improve Web Site Usage by Users with Diverse Abilities, Ivory, Mankoff, and Le, IT&SOCIETY, 1(3), Winter, 2003.

What is Needed Integrated environment to support Web site design and development (grant proposals) Incorporates design process (user-,information-, and learner-centered?) Incorporates design patterns and templates Incorporates site generation (early design representations) Incorporates evaluation support Question: Should the education domain be used as a testbed to guide the development of this environment?