Web Teaching Guide: A Practical Approach to Creating Course Web Sites (Hardcover)

~ Ms. Sarah Horton (Author)
Key Phrases: movie data rate, computing support staff, specified typeface, Terran Interactive, Most Web, Biography of John Milton (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This is an original, concise, and practical approach to the subject of Web design and implementation for university faculty." -- Laura J. Gurak, University of Minnesota

Product Description

This helpful and up-to-date book is written to guide educators through the process of designing and implementing an effective academic course Web site. Multimedia specialist Sarah Horton focuses on practical matters related to creating Web- based instructional materials and shows how a Web site can enhance teaching, enrich course content, and provide new opportunities for collaboration and customization.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (October 11, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300087268
• ISBN-13: 978-0300087260
• Product Dimensions: 10.3 x 7.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,000,831 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An essential resource for creating Web course sites., December 29, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Web Teaching Guide: A Practical Approach to Creating Course Web Sites (Paperback)

Horton provides thoughtful, real-world advice for educators who want to create useful and enriching online resources to support their classroom instruction or to create distance education courses. The book is full of detailed, practical advice for creating well-designed and media-rich sites, with a pragmatic eye on the limited resources and technical support available to most teachers. The book includes many examples of educators who created excellent sites without spending a fortune, without lavish amounts of technology, and without a supporting cast of Web design professionals. Best of all, Horton avoids the breathless "revolutionary" boosterism and pretentious rhetoric of most other references for creating online teaching sites. Horton assumes that her audience already knows *how* to teach, and provides a broad overview of the Web technology and techniques useful for K-12 teachers, college professors, and corporate trainers. If you teach on the Web, you need this book.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Concise, well focused guide for teachers, June 14, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Web Teaching Guide: A Practical Approach to Creating Course Web Sites (Paperback)

I really liked this book for its tight focus on the best design and technology methods for creating educational materials for the Web. Ironically, I like Horton's book for the same reason the previous reviewer didn't: it's tightly focused on Web teaching techniques.

I've been teaching for years; I don't need the bloated, wandering discussions of teaching philosophy and academic computing policy issues that clot so many books on teaching and technology. Just give me a clear, concise, thoughtful overview of what's possible on the Web, and *I'll* decide what's best for me and my students. Horton does that--very well.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Sort of, but not quite..., June 4, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Web Teaching Guide: A Practical Approach to Creating Course Web Sites (Paperback)

This book was written Sarah Horton, the co-author of a very (and deservedly so) popular Web Style Guide, and its accompanying website. Unfortunately, unike its predecessor (which still is a 5 star read), this book disappoints. It's not that it is not useful -- it might be for some people -- but it's nowhere near the quality of the previous title. Technical issues add little new material.

A notable, if somewhat surprising, drawback of this book is that it seems to have been written from the perspective of a technology administrator (or "technology specialist", if you prefer), and not a faculty member experienced in teaching in a non-computer-related discipline. It noticeable e.g., in the sections which discuss copyright issues. The author emphasizes the publishers' interests and bottom line, and includes a few tables with restrictive interpretations of "fair use gudelines" (in the form similar to those encouraged by various publishing consortia whose revenue is at stake here). But often there is a difference between what most publishers would like us to, and what the actual letter and intent of the law allows us to do, and, to benefit students and instructors, this fact should be discussed and clearly explained in a book like this (it isn't). There is a rather cursory mention of protecting faculty's own authorship interests in developing the sites, and no specific analysis of existing institutional policies on this issue is included, although they have been widely discussed and often recently adopted at some universities (the mention of those issues on pp. 101-102 is indeed vague). Students' rights to their own work are discussed in mere 12 lines on p. 105. There are other problems. Parts of the book deal with impractical and arcane issues which will require some server management expertise (e.g., using streaming media) or graphic design and programming expertise. It is unlikely that faculty members will need this information (at least in the form in which it is presented), and even less likely they will be able to use it without extensive professional support and very substantial funding.

In summary, for practical advice on how to meaningfully and wisely incorporate technology into college teaching, I much prefer the concise chapter in the "The Chicago Handbook for Teachers" (Chicago UP, 1999) with advice better integrated with other teaching-related issues, clearly written from a college instructor's perspective. For technical advice on how to build a stand-alone class website on your own, a general web design book such as R. Williams's excellent "Non-designer's Web Book," or even Horton's own "Web Style Guide," seem to be better choices.