Papers in PDF format

The course was designed to follow good adult learning principles, particularly that the user should be in
control of their own learning (content, pacing, and sequencing), that alternative methods of learning the same
material should be available, and that the subject area for assignments should, if possible, be the student’s
choice. We also tried to emulate all the different kinds of support that traditional F2F students have. The
introduction of Netscape Frames gave us the ability to make all aspects of the course available to the student on
the same screen. By implementing a “side frame,"“ “ledge frames” and “main frame,” we were able to
introduce our students to the navigation icons that represent course modules, help, resources, forums,
evaluation and all other aspect of the course. Students can click on any navigation icon to load the desired page
in the main frame, and still have all other components of the course immediately available on the other frames.
Following a great deal of revision, the home page for the course has stabilized as shown in Figure 1. It is
extremely important to expose a learner to the most important features of an on-line course as quickly as
possible. We introduce the most important icons in the main frame and the navigation icon is presented within
the first paragraph of the introduction screen.
The icons in the ledge frame represent the most often used components of the course: FAQ (Frequently Asked
Questions), Help (which gives access to discussions of different problems, to the Teaching Assistant and
Instructors), Navigation (which explains how to move through the course), Registration (course availability
and how to register), Instructor information, Marks (including a summary of the marking criteria for each
assignment and individual controlled access to each student’s own marks), Conferences (which links to the
discussion groups set up to discuss issues and get help) and News (current course news and announcements).
The side frame gives the student access to the actual instructional modules of the course and their related
reference resources. A toggle button at the top of the frame gives the student option of switching from the links
to the course modules to likes to each modules reference resources. With the Course Module button activated,
students have access to the instructional and assignment modules. The Introduction module lays out the format
for the rest of the modules in the course and also provides the student an overview of what is required. Each
subsequent module deals with aspects of the Internet and on-line communications that students must master to
effective participate and contribute to the Internet. When the Course Information and Resources button is
activates students have access to the course reference material and resources. All reference material is available
on-line. Each of these sections point to the most current and effective resources available on the Internet.
One of the more challenging aspects of maintaining this course is keeping track of the changing resource
URLs and updating the list with newer and more effective material. Other than internal links that point to
components of locally produced course resources, most links point to sites throughout the world. One exciting
part of putting together an on-line course is that instead of telling the student where to go to get material or
information you can actually give that student a link the actual resource or expert. Immediate access to experts
and their material make the Internet a very powerful instructional tool. For example, rather than designing an
HTML tutorial, we pointed (with permission) our students at Alan Levine's Writing HTML: a tutorial for
creating WWW pages [Levine 1995]. This has been rated by many as the “best” HTML tutorial on the Web.
We concur with this evaluation, and since permission has been granted for our students to use it, it would be a
tremendous waste of resources to attempt to replicate it.
As the course progressed, it became obvious that, since most of our students were connected via modem, the
speed of page loading was a priority. Many “nice, but not necessary” graphics were deleted, backgrounds were
simplified and a more efficient conferencing system was sought in order to improve the speed of the course.
Student Learning
The lack of classroom interaction and discussion is the greatest determent to distance learning. We are social
beings; we need to interact. An enormous amount of learning takes place in through peer interaction. Until
desktop videoconferencing technologies are fully mature and bandwidth on the Internet increases our best
option for simulating or providing interaction between all participants are computer conferencing systems. The
NetHowTo Forum became our direct link to the students and their link to the instructors. Equally important,
the NetHowTo Forum became a link between students. To facilitate participation, students were required to
participate in two different public forums or conferences dealing with two different issues. To earn 10% of
their final mark each student was expected to initiate at least two new discussion points and was required to