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TABLE OF CONTENTS
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This is intended to assist faculty and staff at Ulster County Community College, in the creation of official web pages. Contact the Web Coordinator or Office of Information Technology for assistance in readying your page for inclusion on the web site.
CONTENT
The minimum content for Departmental pages should include the following:
- Department name
- Office location
- Telephone number
- Name of Director/Chair/Supervisor/Coordinator
- List of faculty/staff and their titles
- Date the page was last updated
Additional information could include degree/certificate/diploma programs offered by the department, courses and syllabi, programs and services, announcements, news and events.
The minimum content for a Personal page would include:
- Name
- Title
- Office address
- Telephone number
- E-mail address
- Office hours
- Date the page was last updated
Additional information may include personal comments, background or biographical information, your areas of research and interests, and links to relative sites.
The minimum content for a Course page should include the same vital information that you hand out in class on the first day of class including:
- Instructor's name, office address and hours, phone number and e-mail address
- Dates of current semester and last date page was updated
- Course syllabus
- Attendance policy
- Course objectives
- Methods of assessing students
- Grading and exam policies
You might include personal comments on your course, your style of teaching and expectations, background information on yourself, your areas of research and study interests, and (optionally) your personal interests. Other material might include course schedule, assignments and answers, a reading list, a list of links to related sites, previous exam questions and answers, review questions, handouts, lecture materials and announcements.
DESIGN
Your basic design should include the following:
- Follow a simple and consistent design that allows users to concentrate on the content.
- Make your home page short and simple; avoid "monster" graphics that take the page a long time to load.
- Don't use gratuitous graphics. Blinking text and other excessive decorations can be distracting in an instructional web page. Background textures and colors can affect download time and may impede the readability of the text.
- Keep in mind that not only might some of your visitors not have access to color monitors and graphics, but also they might be color blind, visually impaired, or otherwise disadvantaged by the use of too fancy a design.
NAVIGATION
When building your pages, consider the following:
- Design your page with user friendly navigation and functionality.
- Create your main course page and then include navigational links to subsequent pages.
- Include a link on each course page back to the main page.
- Add navigational aids useful to your users (for example, "Return to Top," "Table of Contents," "Next/Previous Page" for documents in a series)
- Provide appropriate cross links. Students should be able to move from one page to another on your site without having to go back to the home page. Put the cross links to all the major parts of your instructional pages on all major pages within your site.
- Include links back to the Ulster County Community College home page (http://www.sunyulster.edu).
- Avoid links to pages that are not directly relevant to your course.
- Do not link to empty pages or documents that do not yet exist.
- Avoid "over-linking." Too many links can be a visual eyesore.
EDITORIAL
You should decide the style and format that best suits your goals. Instructors, keep your primary audience in mind as you design your pages
- your students.
- Proofread your pages. Be sure to check for spelling and grammatical errors, missing words, and other general editorial errors.
- Review your pages. Have others (preferably some students) look at your pages and provide feedback.
- Preview your pages. Look at your pages not only on your own machine with your preferred browser, but also on other browsers. ( i.e. Netscape and Internet Explorer)
- Keep your pages up to date. Initiate a regular schedule for reviewing your pages during the semester that includes checking that all your links are working correctly.
- Update your pages from semester to semester.
- Avoid browser-specific terminology (for example, "Click on Netscape's FIND button").
TECHNICAL
The Office of Information Technology and the Web Coordinator can offer assistance for instructors to develop instructional web pages for their courses. Be sure you know the correct URL (uniform resource locator, http://...) address for your instructional web site and that you provide the URL to your students, preferably in writing. Include alternate text for images, for the benefit of browsers without graphics capabilities.
PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS FOR INSTRUCTORS
While the design and content of your instructional web pages is up to you, take into consideration these items:
- Not all students have home access to a web graphical interface. Those who do not are dependent on public facilities in the library and the computer lab for graphical access. These facilities are limited. Take into account how many students you have and how many do not have personal access when designing assignments requiring web access.
- Be careful of using light fonts on a dark background--it may be very difficult to read or impossible for your students to get printed.
- If your students will be printing material found on your web site, check to see that the page prints successfully (in portrait [vertical] rather than landscape [horizontal] mode).
- If you design a web page with features such as Java, JavaScript, tickers, sound, video, or any beta technology, etc., indicate what the computer would need to run these items (software, a soundcard, etc.).
- If possible, provide a direct link to a page where users could download the software (i.e., "This document can be viewed in Adobe Acrobat. In order to download Acrobat, go to this link."). Keep in mind that students may not be able to install or use such features on the campus public facilities.
- Include a link to the College disclaimer, and your own statement that the material posted on your page(s) does not reflect the views or opinions of the College.
POLICY
Web pages require College resources and therefore must adhere to College policies
as outlined in the Ulster County Community College Technology Policy, with particular web page related policy stated in Section 18. Please review this
policy prior to building your web pages, and if you have any questions, please contact:
Jack Murphy, Web Coordinator (DEW 205, 687-5219)
or the Office of Information Technology Help Desk (687-5169)