3.6 ISSUES IN DEVELOPING COURSEWARE FOR WEB-BASED EDUCATION

Developing a web site to teach an engineering design course requires dealing with a number of problems and technological challenges. These problems along with potential solutions are discussed in this section.

3.6.1 Information representation

Information can be provided in the form of a) written texts, b) pictures, c) sound, and d) animation with increasing difficulty as we go from a to d. Most web-based materials today are in text and picture forms. But, the latter two are finding increasing applications. The course web page may include an on-line syllabus, course materials developed by the instructor, frequently-asked questions, and hyperlinks to other relevant and useful sites.