Benefits of putting course materials on a web site

Len Fellman, College of Alameda

Tuesday January 8, 2002

1) Students who miss classes don’t feel left behind: greater retention

2) Announce coming exams, with study hints

3) Give feedback and hints for homework

4) Encourage e-mail correspondence (link to instructor’s e-mail)

5) Archive materials for future use

6) Students respect a well-organized course

7) “Late-breaking news”: Clean up loose ends and errors from lectures;

announce changed exam dates, etc.

8) Post solutions to exams or homework

9) Eliminate hand-outs for late-enrolling or long-absent students, or eliminate hand-outs altogether.

10) Contact with students doesn’t end when instructor leaves school

11) Bypass malfunctioning campus networks

12) Provide links to other materials on the web
(such as the download site for Adobe Acrobat Reader)

13) The proportion of students with computers (and e-mail addresses) has grown dramatically in the last one or two years. There is peer pressure to own one.
Students who don’t have one can still do everything in our lab (which has fast T1 lines for internet access).

14) Needed software is quite inexpensive for instructors with academic discounts:

Office, FrontPage, Adobe Acrobat (full program, not just Reader), etc.

15) Offer pages from late-arriving textbook; put textbook problems on screen for discussion

16) Make a web page advertising the TUTORS for your department.

My main web site: http://lenfellman.home.attbi.com
(or http://home.attbi.com/~lenfellman )

Recommended hardware and software

venders offering academic discounts:

(a) www.gradware.com

(b) www.edtech.com

Contact Jeff Koh at ComputerLand of Silicon Valley: Manager, Education Accounts
Toll Free: 1-800-639-1319 Fax: 408-519-3260 E-mail: jkoh@cland.com

1) Canon scanner ^—model N1220U ($150)

Comes with Adobe Photoshop Limited Edition

I just saw one “factory renewed” on www.pricewatch.com for $99

2) Adobe Acrobat (full program, not just the “Reader”)

$53 from CaliforniaColleges.com; $60 from gradware.com

3) Microsoft Office XP Professional

$99 from CaliforniaColleges.com

4) Microsoft Front Page 2000 or 2002

ver. 2002: $74 from CaliforniaColleges.com; $80 from gradware.com

ver. 2000: $64 from Edtech.com

5) “Box Top Software”: ProJPEG (file compression add-on to Adobe Photoshop)

$50. Converts graphics files to compressed, JPEG format.

ProJPEG is a file-format plug-in for Adobe Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro.

Compression abilities that out-perform Adobe's JPEG and all the other Web graphics tools for the smallest JPEG file sizes, and is available individually for $49.95 or as part of the BoxTop Super Bundle, a six tool value pack of all BoxTop's Web graphics tools for only $134.95.

6) Other software for creating drawings

I use Geometer’s Sketchpad and a shareware math program called (X)PLORE.

Technical Issues

1) Need for lots of web space

With AT&T’s cable modem service ($45 per month when you buy your own cable modem for $140 rather than renting theirs), you can have six separate web sites with 10 MB on each one.

(I have one for each of four courses, plus a site that links to all the others).

2) Need to learn file management

(a) for your web folder(s) on your own computer, and

(b) in your service provider’s member services.

3) A few minor technicalities involving photoshop software

(a) using greyscale rather than color

(b) flattening layers

4) Service provider must support “Frontpage Server Extensions” and/or multiple file transfers (FTP).

5) A small set of features in the Front Page and MS Word programs:

(a) designating files to be published

(b) converting Word files to either HTML or to Adobe Acrobat (PDF) format

6) File and URL paths can be tricky

7) Incorporating “themes”

8) Getting to your member services from a remote location

For AT&T users, you get to member services via www.attbi.com

9) A more sophisticated example of a course web site: Ed Peterson

http://www.peralta.cc.ca.us/%7Edpeterson

10) Have a friend who knows the answers.

I don’t know a lot, but I got it to work. Feel free to contact me:

lenfellman@attbi.com, or (510)528-1122