Web-based authoring is included among the required communication skills, and the student reports for the course's two design projects must be submitted in Hyper-Text Markup Language (H.T.M.L.) format. An extensive database of resources for students and instructors is maintained on a server at University Park and made available throughout the University's system of campuses.
Templates of home pages for individual instructors are included and can be easily downloaded and customized. One example is the author's course home page. Additional templates for the course cale ndar, text and materials, grading system, and class policies are included.
One implicit requirement of the WWW is the artistic composition of web pages. Since most course instructors received their graduate degrees before the creation of the WWW and the proliferation of web servers and pages they are often unknowledgeable in HTML and web page authoring. Furthermore, most instructors of engineering courses are not artists. The ED&G 100 templates allow the creation of artistic web pages without a major commitment of the instructor's time.
With the gentle push from, and assistance of, the web page templates the instructors can quickly become proficient in basic web-authoring skills. In turn, they instruct freshman students in the basics. A successful method of instruction will be presented in the concluding section.
II. Instructing Students in Web Authoring
During the Fall Semester of 1997 in Section 1 of ED&G 100 at the York Campus of the Pennsylvania State University the author used a very brief PowerpointÒ presentation to introduce the subject of web authoring. As individuals, the students were then assigned to 1) decompose an existing web page by saving its HTML source, background image, and graphical images to their own media; 2) to modify the existing web page in some individual way in Microsoft WordÒ ; and 3) to save and print their modified web page.
A basic level of awareness and competence was achieved. The proof of this assertion is the successful completion of their design project reports in HTML format by all project teams.
III. The Presentation
Table of ContentsIntroducing the World Wide Web The "Big 4" Uses of the Internet The 3 New Technologies of the WWW A More Sane Way: The Reality of Web Authoring Tools Creative Piracy:
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Author: Donald E. CohoEmail: dec147@psu.eduHome Page: http://www.yk.psu.edu/~dec147/ |