Creating Web-Based Training This Page Intentionally Left Blank Creating Web-Based Training A Step-by-Step Guide to Designing Effective E-Learning Joseph T. Sinclair Lani Wallin Sinclair, Ph. Lansing American Management Association New York • Atlanta • Chicago • Kansas City • San Francisco • Washington, D. Brussels • Mexico City • Tokyo • Toronto Special discounts on bulk quantities of AMACOM books are available to corporations, professional associations, and other organizations.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sinclair, Joseph T. Creating Web-based training: a step-by-step guide to designing effective E-learning / Joseph T. Sinclair, Lani Wallin Sinclair, Joseph G. Employees—Training of—Computer-assisted instruction.
Employees— Training of—Computer network resources. Web sites—Design. World Wide Web. Sinclair, Lani Wallin II.3⬘124⬘02854678—dc21 2001022798 䉷 2002 Joseph T.
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. This publication may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in whole or in part, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of AMACOM, a division of American Management Association, 1601 Broadway, New York, NY 10019. Printing number 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 This Page Intentionally Left Blank To my father, Joseph Treble Sinclair, Jr., a professor of geography at Eastern Michigan University, who was a dedicated educator Contents Acknowledgments .xxxiii I Creating Web Pages.
3 Web Pages and WBT. 4 Where Do Web Pages Go?. 6 How Does It All Work?. 7 Create and Test.
8 VII VIII CONTENTS Request. 9 Receives and Views. 9 Web Pages Everywhere. Creating a Web Page.
15 Microsoft FrontPage Express. 16 From the Web to Your Computer. 18 Time to Start. 19 Text for Tutorials.
19 Using Netscape Composer. 20 Using FrontPage Express. 22 Testing Your Work. 25 Getting the Right Look.
26 Making a Table in Composer. 27 Adjusting the Table. 29 Placing the Text in the Table. 29 Typeset the Headings.
31 Changing the Type Size. 31 Making a Table in FrontPage Express. 32 Adjusting the New Table. 34 Placing the Text in the New Table.
35 Typeset the Headings. 37 Changing the Font Size .41 Prepare Your Workplace. 43 Image Layout with Composer. 44 Improving the Look.
47 Image Layout with FrontPage Express. 51 Improving the Look .57 Creating a Link with Composer. 59 Creating a Link with FrontPage Express. 62 Images and Links.
63 Link an Image with Composer. 63 Composer Image Link. 63 Link Back Using an Anchor. 65 Link an Image with FrontPage Express.
67 FrontPage Express Link. 69 To an Image. 74 Retreat and Advance. 74 Test All Links.
75 Create an Email Link. Refining Web Pages. 79 The Critical Role of Text. 81 A World of Examples.
82 Other Template Resources. 83 Follow the Traditional Guidelines. 85 Superscripts and Subscripts. 86 Add an Image.
86 Beyond Basic Typesetting. 87 Text for Tutorial. 88 Add Another Table. 88 Add an Image.
89 Bold and Italic. 90 Change Type Size. 91 CONTENTS XI Headings. 94 Tables for Organizing.
94 Using FrontPage Express. 95 Add Another Table. 96 Add an Image. 96 Bold and Italic.
97 Change Type Size. 100 Tables for Organizing. Color and Images. 106 Text and Background.
106 Consistency in Color Use. 109 Colors in Composer. 111 Colors in FrontPage Express. 116 Web Image Formats.
116 XII CONTENTS GIF. 118 Edit an Image. 125 Making Text Images. 125 Icons and Design Elements.
Navigation and Menus. 131 Using Tables for Menus. 132 One Row, Multi-Column. 137 Variations with Tables.
Publishing Web Page. 157 Content Management Application. 157 CONTENTS XIII Internet Host. 158 Where to Go.
161 Uploading Your Web Pages. 161 Using WS_FTP Pro. 166 Authoring Program Uploads. 172 The New Text.
178 Ease of Production. 179 XIV CONTENTS Video. Interactivity and Usability. 204 Bottom of the Page.
205 Storage by Media. 205 CONTENTS XV Storage by Sections. 205 Storage by Sections and Media. 206 Not Website Structure.
220 With the Web. Types of WBT. 229 XVI CONTENTS Questions & Answers. 234 Sidebars and Footnotes.
239 Navigation Menus Used As Quick References. 244 Short Sound Bites. 246 Long Sound Bites. 247 Entire Sound Presentations.
247 Sound in General. 247 Two or More. 248 Just an Alternative?. 248 Sound Effects and Music.
250 CONTENTS XVII Placement. 251 Text Enhanced Calculators. Advanced Web Techniques .265 What Can You Use?. 267 What Can It Do?.
268 Real Estate Calculator. 272 Web Page Devices. 274 Shareware and Freeware. 275 XVIII CONTENTS Programmers.
277 Pop-Up Window. 284 How They Work. 286 One-Line Text. 287 Multiple Choice Menu.
288 CGI Script Form Resources. 296 Color and Background. 298 XX CONTENTS Data Accumulation. Advanced WBT Techniques.
335 Connectors and Cables. 344 The End of the Line. 349 Analog to Digital. 349 Sampling and Resolution.
350 CONTENTS XIX Typefaces. 300 Brief CSS Tutorial. 313 Multimedia-Based Software. 319 Microsoft Media Player.
319 Text-Based Software. 327 Web-Database Applications. 327 Templates for Everything. 328 Where’s the Content?.
328 CONTENTS XXI Direct Digital. 350 Windows Volume Control. 360 Using for WBT. 365 Cables and Connections.
365 Audio and Video. 370 XXII CONTENTS Digital 8. 377 Editing Video Clips. 381 CONTENTS XXIII The WBT Project .395 Learning Management Systems.
396 Website Management Software. 412 XXIV CONTENTS Process. 413 Influences on WBT Design. 417 Operating Systems and Software.
420 Control and Sequence. 421 Synchronous and Asynchronous WBT. 432 Development and Delivery. 434 CONTENTS XXV Beta Testing .443 The Starting Point.
444 How Do I Use XML?. 445 How Do I Get Started?. 446 What about Print Publishing?. 448 What Does the Process Look Like?.
449 Not Only Text. Book WBT Project .455 The Meeting Tutorial .461 Low-Level Project. 464 Medium-Level Project. 466 XXVI CONTENTS Resources.
468 High-Level Project. 473 Sample WBT Presentation. 475 Small Organization Budget. 479 Appendix II HTML Tutorial.
481 Defining a Web Page. 484 Typical Web Page Setup. 493 CONTENTS XXVII <div></div>. 509 Text Line <input type="text">.
510 Text <textarea></textarea>. 510 Checkbox <input type="checkbox">. 512 Radio <input type="radio">. 513 Menu <select></select>.
514 Button <input type="submit">. 515 Password <input type="password">. 515 Anchors and Hyperlinks. 516 XXVIII CONTENTS <a href=" "></a>.
516 Example Web Page. 517 Viewing the Web Page Source. 519 Appendix III SMIL Tutorial. 523 Markups in Head.
527 Streaming Media Markups. 533 Markups to Organize Presentations. 541 Appendix IV Resource List. 543 Acknowledgments In the 1980s and early 1990s, many early pioneers in digital multi- media did experiments with training, education, and entertain- ment, which first found their refined expressions in multimedia presentations on CDs.
The Web unexpectedly preempted CDs as a venue for such presentations. Educators, schools, trainers, and training organizations have come a long way since the beginning of Web-based training (WBT) in 1995, but they had a firm founda- tion on which to build, a foundation laid by the early pioneers in digital multimedia. At the North Bay Multimedia Association (NBMA) in the San Francisco Bay Area, we first did an experiment running three courses, for tuition, on the Web in 1996. At that time there was very little activity in education on the Web, and we proved that students would pay for education delivered via the Internet.
Our offering was crude and certainly wasn’t the first, but it was a suc- XXIX XXX ACKNOWLEDGMENTS cessful early experiment thanks to my fellow members of NBMA who worked on the project. Many thanks to the early pioneers in digital multimedia and to my fellow members of the NBMA who were a deep resource for learn- ing about and understanding the potential of the multimedia medium that is the Web. My thanks also to my co-authors Lani and Joe who added a corporate prospective to the presentation of education via the Web and contributed practical knowledge that many readers will find useful. My appreciation also to my family Brook and Tommy for their toleration, however strained, of Dad’s workaholic activities necessary to writing this book.
I also appreci- ate Lani’s support, as a wife, for the time I spent on this book. As always I appreciate the efforts of Carole McClendon, my agent, and the folks at AMACOM, Jacquie Flynn and Mike Sivilli. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the readers of this book, pio- neers too, who will take a few ideas from it and just do something; that is, they will create something useful for students and deliver it to students via the Web. I hope that will be every reader.
Sinclair As a former teacher and lifelong educator—in both the academic and corporate worlds—delivering training over the Web was not an idea I warmed to naturally. It took a great deal of prodding by my husband and “technical” colleagues to convince me that train- ing on the Web can be an effective way to impart knowledge. My thanks to my darling husband, Joe Sinclair, and my col- leagues, Steve Durgin and John Kasley, for continuing to encour- age me in this new way of delivering training. And to my colleague, Sue Hawco, whose tireless dedication and devotion to online learning carried me through my first project, thanks Sue for your encouragement and friendship.
I Creating Web Pages This Page Intentionally Left Blank 1 Web Pages Web pages are the stuff of Web-based training (WBT). Web pages are also the stuff of websites. You might conclude that WBT is like a website. Indeed, a WBT presentation works just like a website and could be a website or part of a website.
Both WBT and web- sites are collections of Web pages linked together. A WBT presen- tation is devoted to training or education. A website presentation can be devoted to almost any purpose. For each, Web pages are the basic building blocks.
3 4 CREATING WEB-BASED TRAINING Web Pages and WBT A Web page is the fundamental unit of WBT. It is what people see when they view a WBT presentation. Most often a Web page is composed of simple text and images but may contain other media such as audio or video. Behind the scene of every Web page is Hypertext Markup Language (HTML).
The HTML is not dis- played for people to see. It does its job unseen, holding the differ- ent elements of text and media together and enabling a Web browser to display them as designed. HTML also enables users to move from one Web page to the next through the use of hyperlinks (links). Your WBT presentation will consist of a collection of Web pages.