Resource List for Engaging Online Materials

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Web Formatting Guides

These comprehensive reference works contain everything you might want to know about writing and formatting text for Web delivery. Jakob Nielsen and Sarah Horton are widely-respected authorities on Web design.

  1. The "Web Style Guide," 2nd edition, http://www.webstyleguide.com/index.html by Patrick Lynch and Sarah Horton includes basic design principles as well as tricks of the trade.
  2. "Writing for the Web," by Jakob Nielsen (http://www.sun.com/980713/webwriting/) summarizes a range of Web writing principles in succinct, straightforward statements with details about typestyles, lists, captions and other elements of Web-formatted text.
  3. "Web Teaching: Writing for the Web," by Sarah Horton.
    (http://www.dartmouth.edu/~webteach/articles/text.html) discusses writing style, including journalistic writing, chunking, page length, and links. She also gives tips on what to avoid.

Graphics

Online resources for appropriate, attractive, and accessible graphics in online courses..

Books
  1. Tufte, Edward R. (1983) The visual display of quantitative information. Cheshire, CT, Graphics Press.
  2. Tufte, Edward R. (1997) Visual explanations: Images and quantities, evidence and narrative. Cheshire, CT, Graphics Press.
Web sites
  1. One of the best resources available for accessibility issues is the DO-IT program at the University of Washington. Their site includes guidelines for creating accessible Web pages at: http://www.washington.edu/doit/Brochures/Technology/universal.design.html
  2. Jakob Nielsen writes a weekly column on good, usable Web design: http://www.useit.com/. Much of his advice is directed to commercial Web sites, but his principles apply to all Web design.
  3. In addition to Edward Tufte's books on good informational graphic design, he has a Web site at http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/. His question-and-answer page may give you more than you really want to know, but is entertaining: http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a?topic_id=1 Here (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/ppt2.html) Tufte discusses the pitfalls of PowerPoint.
  4. For guidelines on creating graphics visible to a colorblind person, see "How to Make Figures and Presentations that Are Friendly to Color Blind People" at http://jfly.iam.u-tokyo.ac.jp/color/
  5. "Infographics: Creative Presentation of Statistics—Computer Graphics" at http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3065/is_n3_v18/ai_7399385 makes a good case for using graphics to represent certain facts. Unfortunately, the examples they cite don't appear on the Web page, but the principles are still useful.
Free Art Online
  1. Microsoft's huge collection of clip art: http://office.microsoft.com/clipart/default.aspx?lc=en-us
  2. The University of Washington Library's database of image collections: http://www.lib.washington.edu/types/images/
  3. Google Images, at http://images.google.com/imghp?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&tab=wi&q=, searches for graphics relevant to your search terms. Be careful! Not all of these are free or in the public domain. When in doubt, use a link to the source, rather than copying the graphic.

Copyright, Permissions, and Fair Use

  1. The University of Washington discusses "fair use" of copyrighted materials at http://depts.washington.edu/uwcopy/Using_Copyright/Guidelines/Fair.php
  2. If you believe you will need to seek permission to use graphics or other materials, the University of Washington provides guidelines for use of copyrighted materials at http://www.washington.edu/computing/copyright/ and at http://depts.washington.edu/uwcopy/
  3. The University of Washington Library System has also provided information about copyright issues, at http://www.lib.washington.edu/services/course/copyright.html
  4. The Copyright Permissions Center will help you obtain permission to use copyrighted materials: http://www.washington.edu/admin/pubserv/copy/cpc/index.html

Creating and Using Rubrics for Assessment

  1. Teacher Created Rubrics for Assessment: http://www.uwstout.edu/soe/profdev/rubrics.shtml#powerpoint. A gateway site to guidelines for creating assessment rubrics for a variety of activities. Intended for K-12 teachers, but applicable to higher education as well.
  2. Good rubric for online discussions, with annotated examples, at Chat Protocol, Chat Examples, and Chat Rubric: http://pact.gse.uci.edu/ed173online/173chatprotocol.html
  3. A five-tier rubric for participation in online discussions: http://www.edtech.neu.edu/teach/use_blackboard/managing_your_course/documents/sample_rubric.pdf
  4. A four-tier rubric on four core competencies: "think, value, communicate, and act":
    http://www.valenciacc.edu/oit/pdf/AzizOnlineForumParticipation.pdf

Discussion

  1. The "Handbook for Instructors on the Use of Electronic Class Discussion" developed by Nancy Chism of Ohio State University (http://ftad.osu.edu/Publications/elecdisc/pages/index.htm) is written for college teachers. The sections "Foundations," "Choices," and Tips" are particularly helpful for structuring and facilitating discussion groups.
  2. BusinessDegree.net (http://www.businessdegree.net/resources/resources-for-online-discussion-moderators/) offers resources for online discussion moderators.

This list was compiled by Linda Baker and Jan Kinney from UW Educational Outreach.

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