The purpose of this article is, in short, to outline the ways in which a piece of paper is not the same as a computer screen. Let’s start with the basics: When you read a book, you turn the pages, left to right, in the order in which the clever publisher has had them neatly bound together inside an attractive cover. If you’re doing it right, you read the words in the order the author wrote them, left to right, top to bottom, from chapter one through to the end. While you can do that on a computer, the point is that you don’t have to. More than that, you really shouldn’t.

The Internet can be defined as a network of networks; a community of people who use and develop those networks; and a collection of resources that can be reached through those networks. That is, it’s not just another computer-thing: it’s a vibrant, interconnected community of resources and information. That makes it quite an educational tool. The most recent in-depth statistical analysis suggest that, conservatively speaking, some 28.8 million adults in the U.S. alone have access to the Internet; 11.5 million use the world wide web regularly, and a little over 1.5 million people have purchased something throught it. (That statistic alone is worthy of further discussion: with all those potential customers out there, why are so relatively few people actual customers? An interesting question for web-entrepreneurs.) Along with marketing, entertainment and pornography, education and training are growing areas of Internet use.

One of the significant downsides of the proliferation of websites and the growing popularity of the Internet as an educational tool is that far too many educators, caught up in the thrilling discovery of a new, attractive and effective tool for reaching students and conveying information, fail to make the intuitive leap from paper to screen. Word processors haven’t helped much, because what you key in on your keyboard get displayed on your monitor as if it were a piece of paper: typing with a stream of electrons rather than messy ribbons. The Internet, however, is much more than a lavishly high-tech copyholder: it’s literally a whole new world of educational opportunity. But like any other whole new world, it has its own rules, its own expectations and its own demands, many of which its discoverers have yet to notice, much less understand. Here, we’ll examine some of those, and consider the challenge of taking the printed teaching material you’ve used for years and uploading it onto the web in the most instructionally effective way possible.

A word about what this article won’t do. We aren’t going to discuss the nuts-and-bolts of authoring systems, upload procedures or HTML. We will not address the comparative virtues of the various browsers, or how many megs can dance on the head of a pin. While it is certainl vital for a web-based instructor to understand the technology behind the design, here we will deal with the design itself, and the theory underlying it.

II. CONCEPTUALIZING WEB-BASED INSTRUCTION

It might help to step outside the realm of high-technology for a moment, to not think about the lightening-fast stream of 0's and 1's whipping through your modem and hurling themselves into the global network of interconnected computers that is the Internet. Instead, think for a moment of a languid pond, shimmering in the shade of the pine trees, the warble of birds and the rustling of squirrels. Think of that pond as a piece of paper, lying flat. Traditionally, the reader gets information from a printed document like a bird (say, a swallow) that swoops down and skims the surface of our pond, barely breaking though the placid surface. A document on the Internet, on the other hand, is approached by a different kind of hunter, who dives in and finds food underwater, like a kingfisher or eagle. Web-based students are diving hunters: they can re-enter the pond at different points, going to different depths, until their hunger (whether for creepy-crawlies or for instruction) has been satisfied.

This is not the usual way educators and trainers deliver information.

Obviously, the instructor is giving up a good deal of control when offering course material over the Internet. In a classroom setting, using traditional printed materials, the instructor can call the shots: when chunks of material should be read, in what order, and at what level the discussion should be held. The instructor can control how much "nice to know" information is included in a discussion of essentials, and lead students through the material point by point in an order carefully designed to build, piece by piece, toward comprehension. Supported by reams of photocopied worksheets and handouts to supplement a comprehensive textbook (also conveniently ordered in the traditional building-block manner), the instructor is in the enviable and attractive position of being the omnipotent single source towhich students look for enlightenment.

No such luck on the Internet. A well-designed Internet course will have a number of special characteristics, all of which run exactly counter to the expectations of traditional classroom learning. Let’s consider some of them.

1. Multiple Points of Entry

Students must be able to start and stop their instruction at virtually any point. Of course, in many circumstances (and particularly in real estate) it is essential that one concept be mastered in order to understand the next, and the course can be designed to do that. However, insofar as it is possible to do so, the course must permit the student to essentially structure it himself or herself.

One way to do that is by breaking the content up into separate, self-supporting modules that can be accessed by the student in any order. Another way is by providing hyperlinks.

In the classroom, the instructor is bound by constraints of time and logistics. There may be fascinating historical, theoretical or otherwise interesting but nontested information that the instructor would love to share with the students, but the demands of clock, calendar and commission force the instructor to stick to the essentials. Of couse, supplementary handouts can be prepared and distributed "for further reading," or recommendations can be made for additional study, but the students are operating under the same chronological and content restraints as the instructor.

For instance, you might want to put examples of a concept in separate files, or the text of legal opinions, or relevant segments of the license law. After reading the basic rule, a student who wanted to know more, or who needed examples to fill in his or her understanding, could go to your hyperlinked files. Other students, who were clear on the concept from the text alone, could proceed to the next topic.

Nonetheless, research has shown that adult learners still want a sense of place, even in a hypertext environment. The "look-and-feel" of the course should be consistent throughout all levels of interactivity, and the user should always have a clear path back to where they started (i.e., recurring directional and "home" buttons).

Thus, there are two fundamental (and somewhat contradictory) characteristics shared by most adult learners in an electronic environment, referred to by researchers as the desire for autonomy (self-direction) and the desire for affiliation (a sense of structure). Users need to be "in control" of the course to the greatest possible extent, while at the same time have access to support and information from credible, reliable sources, and to continuous positive reinforcement of a sense that they are going in the right direction.

Course developers must not create too many options for users, or relinquish so much control over content that the courseware becomes little more than a web browser or search engine. While learners may appear to be empowered by high levels of user-directed content delivery, the basic learning objectives of the course may be lost if there are no specified directions.

A 1992 study showed that in an interactive hypermedia learning environment, the highest scores were achieved by learners who were free to browse the content at will, with an interactive plan consistently available to them. In the same study, however, students of "lower academic status" demonstrated greater retention of learned content when their interaction with the system was limited to a strictly sequential presentation. These conflicting results suggest that the more flexible courses (those capable of accommodating different learning needs) are the most effective.

All of these navigability goals can be achieved by consistent screen design, clear content and positional mapping and multiple user choices. Screens should be designed to achieve the "ACE" standard: Attractiveness, Clarity and Efficiency.

Aesthetic beauty is a subjective thing, but in the world of computer-screens, there are some basic, standard measures. On the Internet, a screen is attractive if it (1) downloads quickly and (2) doesn’t make the viewer squint. The most brilliant content is going to go unread if it’s embedded in a screen full of garish, flashing colors and a confusing array of frames.

The screen should be pleasant to look at: use large, uncluttered typefaces; use color to highlight rather than dazzle; design the elements of your screen to work on the "sideways" layout of a screen, rather than the 8½ by 11 standard book page. Other than that, remember that context always dictates appearance (in Miesian terms, form follows function). Don’t include elements just because you can; include elements because you have to in order to get your information across to students. And remember: the fancier your site, the long it’s going to take for a student to see it.

One of the most important things to remember in designing electronic courses, whether software-based CBT or Internet-based learning, is don’t overload the screen. In printing, costs are often page-related. In electronic education, you are liberated from the printer’s costs. Remember that computer-based learners don’t want to spend more than a quarter minute lingering over a single screen, and a typical screen should contain no more than thirty lines of legible text.

The corrolary to the don’t overload rule is don’t create a page-clicker. That is, you don’t want to put your web-based learners in the position of click-click-clicking their way through an endless parade of nearly identical screens. The scholarly term for that is "reactive pacing." Reactive pacing is the electronic equivalent of page-turning. It runs precisely counter to the interactive character of web-based education: it’s a waste of the capability of the resource, and will definitely affect the attractiveness of your product and its profitability.

Don’t confuse your students with running banners or obscure icons. Functionality on a web-based instructional screen should be clear and consistent: if your icons are at the bottom of the screen on the first page, they should stay there. Viewers should know where to look for a particular element. The icons themselves should be obvious, require too much in the way of interpretation or guesswork, and should not overwhelm the page. Avoid the temptation to use icons as puns.

The same goes for other features, too. Studies have indicated, for instance, that the use of audio "may become a contaminating variable because of its interaction with visual elements."Audio may also "contaminate" effective design if it fails to provide elaborative or supplemental content, is purely decorative or distracting or slows file access times. Relying on audio to deliver content unsupported by screen text or graphics is dangerous, too, because your students’ computers or speakers may not be capable of handling the material. (Or, from a diversity standpoint, reliance on audio delivery of important information is unfair to hearing impaired students.)

Perhaps most important from a cost-benefits standpoint, audio files take up a lot of memory. Like any other special feature, audio will slow down the delivery of content. If content delivery is slowed noticeably, your students will lose interest.

Sadly, the same principle is true of graphics, particularly animations. It is comparatively easy to include animated graphics in an internet-delivered course. The question must be, however, does the animation contribute to the learning experience, or detract the learner from the content?

An animation that illustrates, for instance, the process of a foundation settling, has more instructional value than gaily-colored little fuzzybears dancing across the bottom of the screen. While less charming, the foundation graphic takes up memory space for a reason. The bears, while cuter than concrete, do not serve an objectively useful function for students. Sometimes, the bears just have to go.

Efficient.

Remember that sometimes (and particularly in web-based instruction) enough is enough. Despite the high-tech whizzbang of the delivery system, you are still engaged in delivering content. Make they delivery as efficient as if you were doing it in a book. The fact that students are empowered to access that content in a more-or-less free manner is immaterial. Think of it as a dictionary in which all the pages have been randomly ordered. Even though a user rarely reads a dictionary from front to back, it will be much more difficult to use efficiently if the publisher decided to order it nonalphabetically; say, in the order in which some editor most frequently looks for words. Don’t overanticipate how students will access the information.

This is a popular word, and much bigger than its six syllables suggest. It also gets thrown around a lot these days, applied to topics from books to software to voicemail systems, so we ought to pause for a moment to consider what it means in a web-based context. Webster’s tells us that interactive means "mutually or reciprocally active" (thanks a lot, Webster’s), or "of, relating to, or being a two-way electronic communication system that involves a user’s orders or responses." Nice, but limited. Let’s look a little further in the same source. The prefix inter means "between or among." The adjective active means, among other things, "productive of action." Put them together this way, and you have a new definition of interactive for our web-based context:

Note that this definition is broad enough to encompass the Webster’s defintion, which is limited to two-way interaction between user and machine, as well as more complex levels of communication. The point is, interactive is an active word, one that requires both an actor and a thing acted upon. More important, the "thing acted upon" must be an actor, too.

That is, interactive does not mean typing in an order for a bestselling novel and sending it to Amazon.com with a mouse click. Interactive means submitting your order and getting back a confirmation message, or a request for more information that demonstrates that the information you’ve sent has been received, analyzed and questioned.

Remember how the Internet learning experience can be compared to the hunting habits of various birds? Here’s a more urban metaphor: Interactivity is not a two-way street: it’s a narrow one-way street with two big cars headed directly at each other at high speeds from opposite ends. The point is, interactivity requires contact: cause and effect, action and result, decision and consequence. Anything less than interactive is called a page-turner, and simply means that the user is scrolling down through your on-screen text just like they would with a book. That’s a tremendous waste of a resource’s potential.

But here’s where money is a factor. Interactivity isn’t free: good, compelling, interactive educational experiences are expensive whether their focus is a computer screen or an instructor. There are, however, ways of achieving interactivity on the cheap.

The question-response-feedback loop (QRFL, or "querful") is the most common structure of online instructional material. In QRFL courses, the student in presented with a screen or two of text, followed by a question screen. These are typically multiple-choice, although true-false and fill-in question types are well within the range of possibility for most instructional designer’s technological and budgetary limits. The student selects an answer (by either clicking on a "radio button" -- a on the screen next to each possible answer -- or by typing in the letter) and receives immediate feedback. Usually, the feedback is in the form of an immediate notification of the answer’s status (correct or incorrect), followed by a rationale: an explanation of why the chosen response is correct or not. These rationales may be as detailed as you like.

While characteristic of a low level of interactivity, nonetheless creates the appearance of a higher degree of interaction between user and content. "The instructional rigour of the judging will determine the extent to which the update or feedback provides a meaningful response to the user." That is, a rationale that simply says "Correct! Good for you!" or "Bummer! Try again" is of little use to a learner. A rationale that says "Correct!A fixture is personal property that has been so affixed to land or a building that, by law, it becomes part of the real estate" reinforces the student’s understanding by repeating the correct answer. By comparison, the rationale, "Your answer is incorrect. A fixture is personal property that has been so affixed to land or a building that, by law, it becomes part of the real estate" explains why the student’s answer was incorrect, but misses the chance for reinforcement. It would be better to respond: "Your answer is incorrect. Remember: a fixture was once, but is no longer, personal property. Please review the choices and try again." This explanation tells the student he or she was wrong, but does not disclose the correct answer. By giving additional information and sending the student back to the question to try again (a process called looping), the student profits even from an incorrect answer. Be sure that any authoring software you select includes the capability to construct such question structures.

Perhaps the best way to discuss the transition from print-based to web-based education is to use a concrete example. From here to the end of this article, we will illustrate how a brief section of a book can be transformed into an Internet-based lesson. Here is the text as it might appear in print:

Fixtures. A fixture is personal property that has been so affixed to land or a building that, by law, it becomes part of the real estate. Examples of fixtures are heating systems, elevator equipment in high-rise buildings, radiators, kitchen cabinets, light fixtures and plumbing. Almost any item that has been added as a permanent part of a building is considered a fixture.

During the course of time, the same materials may be both real and personal property, depending on their use and location.

Legal tests of a fixture. Courts use four basic tests to determine whether an item is a fixture (real property) or personal property.

Although these tests may seem simple, court decisions have been inconsistent. Property that appears to be permanently affixed has sometimes been rule to be personal property, while property that seems removable has been ruled to be a fixture. It is important that an owner clarify what is to be sold with the real estate at the very beginning of the sales process.

In its print form, this passage could be flowcharted as illustrated in Figure 1. Note that the flow is one-directional, indicating a high degree of instructor (or author) control over the order in which information is released to the student.

Now, assume that you have decided to upload this lesson onto your Internet website as part of an on-line course offering. The first step is to "chunk" the printed material into discreet concepts (see Table). The biggest part of preparing a print course for Internet delivery has now been done. By breaking the text down into basic concepts, you have created your screens. The chunk numbers (in the left column of the table) could be your screen numbers.

So now we have chunked content. The next step is to flowchart the lesson as you want it to appear, including any links or jumps. Do you want the student to be able to skip the lesson and go directly to the mastery test, if he or she already understands the concepts? If so, you’ll have to build that option into your course. Do you want to include links to a glossary or other sites? If you do, you need to plan for it. By flowcharting (or storyboarding) your Internet-based lesson, you keep your course’s focus, keep yourself organized and illustrate clearly how the "physical" design the lesson supports your instructional design goals. to create a flowchart that maps out for you the physical structure of your course. Your flowchart should include everything: content, graphics, links, tests and all. Figure 2 shows part of a flowchart for this example.

If you’re converting your print-based material into HTML and uploading it yourself, a flowchart or storyboard will provide you with a useful map. If you’re using a commercial service or third-party designer or programmer to upload, the storyboard tells them exactly what you want, and will make their services more efficient and cost-effective.

IV. CONCLUSION

Just as the user should be able to enter the information flow at any point, depending on his or her needs, the user should be able to select the level of information required to achieve the goal of the course. Your on-line course must have depth. That is, a user should be able to pick up just the essentials required to pass, or delve deeper into a specific subject area, or totally immerse themselves in the minute details of your topic. For the instructor, this means that a web-based course will contain much more information than a classroom-based course using printed materials.The up-front development work on an Internet-based course is intense, and the greater content depth required creates more work.

But remember: just because a course is being offered on the Internet doesn’t change its fundamental character: this is a course like any other, with a set of learning objectives and a basic comprehension goal. Given the Internet’s capability to provide hyperlinks from here to eternity, it’s easy for both students and developers to get lost in the ooh and ahh of it all. Even as the instructor gives up a certain degree of control over the delivery of information, he or she must exercise significant control over the basic design of the course. Like so many other technological wonders that promised the elimination of education as we know it, the Information Superhighway is just another road for educators to drive on.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Evan M. Butterfield, MA, JD, is the Online Education Products Manager at Dearborn Financial Publishing, where he is working to design and develop Dearborn’s Internet presence. A certified instructional designer, he has taught writing and technical communications at the university and community college level, and designed and facilitated workplace training programs in Washington, DC, Chicago and for sailors at sea in ships. He is the co-author of a now embarassingly useless computer textbook published by DC Heath in the early 1980s, Computers and Applications: An Introduction to Data Processing, which does not mention the Internet even once. This makes him wonder what we’ll say about all this Internet stuff twenty years from now.