Introduction: E19.2251 is an introduction to the theoretical foundations for designing on-line learning environments and the practical skills necessary for conceptualizing and developing your own instructional web site. At the course's end, you will be confident in your ability to plan and implement a small web site, as well as know where to look to assist you in expanding your web design abilities.

Final Project: Your final project is to be an INSTRUCTIONAL web site that reflects the learning theories, models, and design skills that we learn in this class. The topic is entirely is up to you.

Grading Policy: On grading, Neil Postman said the following—"If a number can be given to the quality of a thought, then a number can be given to the qualities of mercy, love, hate, beauty, creativity, intelligence, even sanity itself. When Galileo said that the language of nature is written in mathematics, he did not mean to include human feeling or accomplishment or insight." The most significant component of your grade derives from your participation in class. By that I mean showing up regularly, engaging in reflective and creative dialogue with your classmates (in person and through your blogs), and putting a strong effort into building a web site that reflects a thoughtful approach to instructional design for the Web. While I'm always happy to see strong graphic design, I'm a whole lot happier to see an instructional tool based upon an understanding of how people learn. I try not to get too hung up on grades: We're all graduate students and I expect that we'll put our best effort into it. Let's try this for a rough breakdown and we can discuss it in class: Final Project (25%), Personal web site (10%), Design Outline (25%), Blog (20%), Translation Exercises (10%), In-class participation (10%).

About the Design Outline: Your final document is the "wherefore and how" of your project. It tells me everything about your instructional site: Who you designed it for; which instructional model(s) you considered; the narrative; and your design choices. It will contain the following sections: Analysis (background and problem description; audience description and learner analysis); Design Description (site narrative and information architecture); Project Description (description of instructional methods and page design); Prototype (original and revised storyboards and flow charts).

I will comment on your blogs and class projects no later than Thursday of every week.

You should post all of your responses to your readings on your blog. I'm only asking you to blog one night a week, though I'd be happy if you tried to do it a bit more. I don't set minimum or maximum lengths for your blog postings, but please make sure that they are substantive to our class and/or related to education. In addition, you should post responses to at least two of your classmates every week. For those of you counting, that means that there should be a minimum (there, I did it) of 8 original blog postings and 16 responses with your name on them by the end of the course.

• File naming conventions: DO NOT use any CAPITAL letters or spaces when you save files. Always use lower case letters and if you need to insert a space, use an underscore, like this: jim_d_file.htm

• Taking screenshots (literally, creating an instant image of what you see on the computer screen): The quickest way (on the Mac) is to press the Apple key and the Shift key and the number 4 key at the same time (so, that's Apple + Shift + 4). Hit those three at the same time and then let go. DON'T click on the mouse, but move it around. You'll notice that it's changed to what looks like a crosshair. You can click and drag over the section of the screen that you want to turn into a screenshot. When you let go of the mouse, you'll hear a "shutter click" (if the computer audio is up), indicating that a screenshot was taken. The file will save either on the desktop or into a Documents folder as "Picture 1."