First of all I'd like to request Ann's permission to copy her excellent paper to our "Multimedia Interest Group" at HKU which is currently struggling with the issues surrounding web-based teaching. I found the paper a comprehensive and informative summary of many of the issues of WWW design for instruction and I have no argument with any of its guidelines. In fact here in Hong Kong we are currently designing a large site for Civil and Structural Engineering (The Virtual Site Visit) which coincidentally follows all of Ann's rules. (I regret that it is not yet in a state where I could give out the URL, but I'll be demonstrating it at EdMedia'98 in Freiburg).
BUT... although I don't have any argument with Ann's precepts I have considerable concerns about her often-repeated phrase "delivery of instruction." It raises up the hoary old specter of Richard Clark's food trucks. I thought we'd got past this view of education as something educators "deliver" to students. (To do Ann justice, she also quotes David Merrill's statement that "authoring systems allow us to create bad instruction faster." Maybe she agrees with me.)
While Ann is concerned with effective presentation of information, as John Hedberg [ITForum Paper #25] was concerned with the use of metaphors to facilitate learning in the last discussion, I find it sad that for many people the WWW--possibly the most significant advance in communication since the telephone--is being seen as a replacement for the blackboard, or the TV screen, or the text book. Purely a "delivery" medium.
ANECDOTE TIME: Next September every first-year student at HKU will have a laptop computer. A month ago our Computer Centre provided a demonstration of ActiveX as one of the WBT systems it proposes to support. One of the audience asked: How can we use ActiveX in lectures unless every student has an Internet connection to his seat?
We may snigger up our sleeves at this poor fellow who seems to regard this sophisticated technology as a form of interactive overhead transparency, but for many academics WBT is just the latest in an endless series of threats to their existence in front of the class. It is our jobs as educational technologists to deconstruct the hype surrounding the WWW and assist teachers to use it creatively.
Last week we were privileged to have Tom Reeves and John Hedberg in Hong Kong for a series of seminars on this very topic. They both demonstrated ways in which the WWW could be used to support constructivist approaches to teaching and learning through collaboration, exploration, presentation, the use of cognitive tools, etc.
It can be argued (In fact John did so) that attractive page design is of secondary importance to interactivity; that MS Word's facility to "Save as HTML" is much more significant than Java; that e-mail, displayed in ascii, can be more exciting than Shockwave.
So, thanks Ann for a paper that I will keep and refer to when discussing WWW page design with knowledgeable colleagues; but it is only a small part of a very large picture. To concentrate exclusively on display features such as design, speed, frames, etc., is to perpetuate the view that the WWW is primarily a means of "delivering instruction" and that is about as nutritious as http://www.gourmetcakes.com