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Editor’s Note: This paper is a statistical study of course Web sites. It provides a valuable snapshot of “state-of-the-art” features, pedagogical values, and areas waiting for development. It explores use of authoring programs, institutional support, password access, and the basis for faculty decisions including time, options available, and institutional support.

Course Web Sites: State-of-the-Art

Svitlana Grankovska and Jesse Heines

Abstract

230 course Web sites were visited to assess state-of-the-art characteristics based on 16 key factors. Analysis of these sites revealed that most provide only one-way communication from instructor to students. Few provide ways to send feedback to the instructor other than via e-mail, and even fewer provide ways to interact with other students. Faculty at various institutions were surveyed on course Web site development and maintenance. That survey revealed that time is the biggest obstacle to improving course Web sites or having them at all, even when using commercial tools. Most faculty develop and maintain their own sites, even when help is available from a university Web office.

Searching for Information on Course Web Sites

Course Web sites have not been discussed at length in either electronic and paper publications. We therefore performed an extensive Internet search to try to identify their state-of-the-art. The majority of sources found were guides and books with guidelines for creating course Web sites.

Course Web Site Design Guides

The University of Oregon [10] offers an online document that discusses the anatomy of course Web sites and provides a general overview of the content of selected sites. This guide provides tips on design and a simple step-by-step process for creating a course Web site.

Similar publications are available from other universities. Dartmouth College [1] offers a set of articles on course Web site design as well as an online guide. Important questions about online teaching in general, and course Web sites in particular, are considered from many perspectives. The authors discuss how to create sites, issues of privacy in online classrooms, student online forums, etc. This set of articles is a valuable resource for both novice and advanced course Web site designers.

Patti Shank [9], at the University of Colorado, Denver, has posted a tutorial entitled How to Build a Course Web Site. She provides a number of Macromedia Dreamweaver templates and easy-to-follow directions on how to use them to get a site up quickly and painlessly. This tutorial can help an instructor new to this technology get up to speed and put his or her own site together quickly. The introduction provides insight into the importance and versatility of course Web sites and encourages professors to provide them for their courses.

We found similar tutorials on Web sites at the University of Michigan [5], the University of Washington [11], Berkeley University [4], and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology [7]. All of these share several common features, such as a short overview of the typical components of course Web sites, useful templates, and a list of tips and directions for using tools like Macromedia Dreamweaver. Example course Web sites are also available in most cases to enhance understanding and provide ideas for one’s own site.

A more extensive tutorial, entitled Web Style Guide: Basic Design Principles for Creating Web Sites, is available from Yale University [6]. This guide incorporates a separate chapter dedicated exclusively to course Web sites creation. It is comprehensive and provides detailed examples, templates, and explanations. Lots of options are presented for choosing the type of site a faculty member may want and how to make it most effective for students. The guide also addresses more subtle aspects of Web sites such as readability and ease of use.

Papers on Course Web Sites

We found very few formal papers that discussed the different aspects of designing course Web sites. Heines [3] analyzed student grades to evaluate the effect of a course Web site on student performance and surveyed students to assess the utility of a site’s various components. The study demonstrated that a readily available course Web site “significantly enhanced student’s learning of course content.” Based on these results, one might conclude that course Web sites can improve overall teaching effectiveness.

Gehringer [2] discussed the issue of password-protected access to course Web sites and debated whether or not such sites should be so restricted. The author conducted a survey of faculty members at several universities and suggested a number of reasons for protecting course Web sites with a password. Gehringer concluded that it is difficult to decide whether to restrict course materials on the Web. On the one hand, public sites can make it impossible for a university to commercialize these sites. On the other hand, restricted sites can make it impossible for prospective students to familiarize themselves with a course of study and thereby aid their decision about attending the university. Perhaps it is best to partially hide information, making general information public but allowing professors considerable discretion in deciding what resources to make available only to current students.

Reeves and Dehoney [8] analyzed the content of class pages and interviewed professors about such content. They weighted the importance of different Web site components and concluded that the outcomes of using course Web sites exceeded expectations seemingly in proportion to the degree to which instructors used the unique qualities of the Web. Collaborative forms of instruction appeared to be one of the strongest points stressed in the interviews.

Analysis of Existing Course Web Sites

These sites were scrutinized on the presence of 16 categories of information, some of which had subcategories (see Table 1).

Our analysis revealed that nearly 100% of the sites (229 out of the 230) have course syllabi that include a course description, grading policy, and instructor and teaching assistant contact information and office hours. This appears to be the minimum content for a course Web site. It allows students to familiarize themselves with the course before enrolling, fostering wiser curriculum choices and better preparation for class. About 87% (201) of the syllabi we viewed post weekly course schedules, while the rest seem to prefer to set only tentative class schedules to allow flexibility for changes and updates as the semester progresses. Although knowing the schedule ahead of time appears desirable, adaptive schedules can more easily take diversity of student interests or the volume of material actually covered in preceding lectures into account.

A majority of sites (178, 77%) post homework assignments and 62% (143) provide online access to lecture notes in HTML, PowerPoint, or PDF formats. Quick and easy access to these components is highly desirable not only for students who miss class, but also for those who have trouble keeping up and even those interested in delving deeper into subject matter not covered during normal classes. In addition, such components are of great help to foreign students whose language skills impede their understanding of lectures.

Table 1. Summary of Web Site Analysis Results.
(N is out of 230 Web sites examined.)

Information Category	N	%
1. course syllabus with:
a. grading policy ................	223	97.0
b. course description ............	229	99.6
c. weekly schedule of topics .....	201	87.4
d. instructor and TA contract information ..........	229	99.6
e. schedule of office and/or help hours ..............	229	99.6
2. assignments .........................	178	77.4
3. lecture notes .......................	143	62.2
4. additional documents and/or resources:
a. class handouts ...................	161	70.0
b. links to resources on this site as well as others .	201	87.4
5. FAQ page ............................	16	7.0
6. grade display program ...............	42	18.3
7. interactive lessons .................	3	1.3
8. sample tests ........................	75	32.6
9. sample student work .................	69	30.0
10. course BBS ..........................	37	16.1
11. class roster containing:
a. student e-mail addresses .........	21	9.1
b. student pictures .................	1	0.4
12. suggestion box (anonymous or not) ...	12	5.2
13. course announcements ................	55	23.9
14. course mailing list .................	10	4.3
15. the site development tool and technique (if discernable):
a. commercial development tool (as opposed to home grown) .........	41	17.8
b. team development (as opposed to an individual effort)	14	6.1
16. two-way communication (as opposed to one-way) ...	59	25.7

We found that the prevailing format for online lecture material is Microsoft PowerPoint. Even though this format is convenient for presentations, its file sizes are typically large, creating problems in downloading if a student has only a slow or unreliable Internet connection. Converting this material to HTML would require additional time, but might make it more accessible.

The vast majority of sites (201, 87%) post links to resources located on other sites that provide additional information to interested and/or advanced students. This useful feature can breach gaps in subject matter understanding and promote creativity and independent thinking.

We found frequently asked questions (FAQ) pages to be quite rare on course Web sites. Such pages can: (1) replace one-on-one student-instructor meetings, releasing students from trying to catch their instructor during short office hours and cutting down the number of times commuting students need to come to the university, (2) provide a way for students to find answers to their questions before posing them to the instructor in person, hence avoiding multiple questions of same nature from different students, and (3) save class time by referring students to FAQ pages for administrative issues. Questions and answers can be accumulated over the years and evolve into fruitful discussions with useful examples and explanations from different angles.

Only 18% (42) of the sites we visited had grade display programs, and only a handful of those offered password protection to control access to grades on a per student basis. Most simply presented a list of last names and corresponding grades. A grade display program can also indicate a student’s relative class standing during the semester. Unfortunately, the source code for sophisticated programs is not readily available, and creation of such a program can require considerable programming skills.

Next we considered the availability of interactive lessons. We found that most professors who teach their courses “live” do not provide the same material online in interactive form. While interactive lessons can be quite useful, their effectiveness is highly sensitive to both learning environment and quality of material presented. For instance, a lack of examples designed to demonstrate a concept can lead to shallow understanding. In general, it takes a great deal of talent, imagination, and understanding of human psychology to create easy-to-use yet informative and helpful online lessons. For example, student-instructor dialogs are an important tool for achieving overall comprehension of a subject. These are usually present in live classrooms, but they can be difficult to duplicate in online classrooms.

Since most courses have tests and exams, advanced information on upcoming tests and/or examples of problems and their solutions or hints appear to be another useful feature of course Web sites. However, some faculty intentionally remove such information at the end of the semester for various reasons. Only 30% (69) of all Web sites we examined provided such information. Sample homework solutions from previous years or solutions to similar problems also fall into this category. Although this component is not a critical one, a considerable number of instructors adhere to the teaching axiom of providing students not only with theoretical knowledge, but also with solutions to numerous practical problems that demonstrate application of the theories.

As the Internet has evolved, new and advanced features such as interactive forums have appeared and gained wide popularity. Forums support discussion by a group of people and can serve as an information database, even though retrieval of the answer to a specific question may be difficult. Few sites (37, 16%) have this feature. One possible reason for such limited use of these forums may be their initial cost, as relatively few instructors have the time or skill to build their own. Nevertheless, forums provide a great opportunity for students and faculty to continue information and data exchange during non-class hours. They also encourage students to share their knowledge with each other in a convenient form, especially when someone who has a question posts it online and someone else who knows the answer (or where to find it) replies to all who may be interested.

Few sites (21, 9%) post the course roster and students’ email addresses and other personal information on Web so that it is available to public. Roster listings can help students get to know each other and lead to more interaction and shared learning. On the other hand, some consider such listings an invasion of students’ privacy.

Even fewer sites (12, 5%) have anonymous or non-anonymous suggestion boxes. Suggestion boxes give students a good chance to provide feedback to instructors during the semester. Anonymous suggestion boxes allow shy students to speak out even if they are outshone or intimidated by others with more straightforward or bold personalities.

A handful of sites (10, 4%) offer a class mailing list. Such a list can serve as an alternative to a FAQ page by making the instructor’s responses to student questions available to the entire class. This way, those not participating in the discussion still see its progress and result. A mailing list can also operate more quickly than a FAQ page. Furthermore, a mailing list is convenient for limiting distribution of information to current students. On the other hand, a FAQ page preserves discussion threads for future students and hence can reduce the stream of questions and answers by letting students search the existing entries.

In most of cases, it is difficult to determine whether a course Web site was created through personal effort of a single instructor or his or her staff (if any), or if it was created using templates provided by the academic department or the university. It is worth mentioning that many universities do provide their faculties with the choice of using standard templates for course Web site development or implementing their own site with any features and options they deem useful.

Faculty Survey on Course Web Sites

For the second part of our research we created an online survey, posted it on the Web, and advertised its URL to all subscribers of the ACM SIG CSE list server (approximately 750 people), all University of Massachusetts Lowell faculty (approximately 425 people), as well as approximately 100 other known faculty members in various institutions. 150 people completed the survey, a response rate of approximately 12%. The survey is shown in the on-line version of this paper referenced above. A summary of the results is shown in Table 2.

125 (83.3%) of the faculty who responded to our survey indicated that they have course Web sites, while 25 (16.7%) indicated that they do not. Most (73.6%) of those who have course Web sites have them open to public, allowing their information to be shared over the Internet. 19 (15.2%) have restricted access to their Web sites for various reasons, including the availability of grade displays, answers to quizzes and exams, etc. (See [2] for an in-depth discussion of this issue.)

Of the 25 faculty who do not have course Web sites of their own, 17 (68.0%) expressed the desire to have one in the future, while 5 (20.0%) have no such desire. The reasons provided by the latter group included an unwillingness to spend time creating and maintaining a site and a lack of confidence that such effort would be of significant aid to the students in the courses they teach.

A majority of faculty surveyed (93/150, 62.0%) responded that their institutions have a Web development group to assist them, but only 14 of these 93 respondents (9.3%) indicated that they took advantage of that group’s services.

25 of the respondents (16.7%) reported that their institutions have guidelines for constructing course Web sites, while 97 (64.7%) stated that their institutions do not. Such guidelines typically provide faculty with clear ideas for the content, layout, and implementation. This information can help reduce the time needed to create sites and make development efforts more efficient and helpful to students. In addition, well thought out guidelines can make the structure and organization of course Web sites more consistent across a university.

Table 2. Summary of Survey Results.

The average percent of course Web site content that faculty reported they developed themselves was 89.1%. They also claimed to have developed an average of 83.9% of the infrastructure themselves. These figures may be interpreted to demonstrate a large need for flexible course Web site templates. Such templates might save faculty considerable time and foster greater consistency. Furthermore, they might simplify the use and navigation of the sites by students.

20 of the 125 faculty who have course Web sites (16.0%) use commercial tools specifically designed for course Web site development such as Blackboard and WebCT. Others provided several reasons why they shied away from such tools, including cost and support. 28 of the 125 (22.4%) use general purpose site development tools such as Dreamweaver or FrontPage. (There is some overlap in these numbers, i.e., some faculty use both types of tools.) Six (4.8%) used locally developed tools. The majority (94/125, 75.2%) reported that they do not use any development tools at all. The reasons reported for this approach include the lack of access to such tools and a lack of time to learn how to use them.

One of the most telling aspects of our survey was that we asked all respondents, regardless of whether they have course Web sites, to indicate which of a series of factors were “serious obstacles to making their course Web site everything they want it to be” or “a significant part of the reason why they do not have a course Web site.” Overwhelmingly (122 of the 150, 81.3%), respondents identified lack of time as the major factor. The second factor was lack of know how (21.3%), followed by a lack of technical assistance (16.7%), and lack of tools (14.7%). Lack of recognition for efforts spent on developing course Web sites by promotion and tenure committees was identified by 12.0% of the respondents, as were “other factors” (also 12.0%). Only 3.3% said they lacked the interest to create a course Web site, and only 2.7% indicated that help with content was a factor.

Discussion of Survey Results

Based on our discovery of so many publicly available course Web sites, many college faculty obviously consider such sites an important, helpful aid to their students. We did not find any college or university or department that required its faculty to develop course Web sites, but our survey confirmed that many see them as important teaching accessories. The majority of responding professors who did not have course Web sites expressed a ready desire to have one in the near future. Explanations for not having Web sites varied, but a majority cited lack of time, insufficient knowledge of creating Web pages, and sparse technical resources and assistance as the main factors.

The survey also revealed that only a handful of universities provide their faculty with guidelines for creating course Web pages. Among these, Yale University and the University of North Carolina provide some of the most detailed guidelines. Computer services or academic departments of some universities also offer useful templates for course Web site development. However, these templates are typically not available to the general public. Such templates provide a fast track to creating sites for professors who are not familiar with such techniques: he or she can get started simply by filling out a number of fields and uploading some files specific to his or her subject.

The level of institutional support for creating and maintaining course Web sites varies greatly from strong guidelines and extensive templates to no support at all. As a result, one can find sites that vary from simple pages that present only course descriptions and syllabi to those that list lecture notes, homework assignments, sample tests and exams, solutions to selected problems, elaborate graphical user interfaces, and sophisticated interactive forums to support online student discussions.

Further progress in course Web sites development will emphasize the importance of invoking Internet resources to increase productivity and the effectiveness of instruction. Interactive visual presentations may help students comprehend the subject, get familiar with what is to be taught in future classes, and broaden their knowledge by reading additional materials or analyzing solutions to problems. Interactive discussion forums provide a great opportunity for students to exchange knowledge and help each other advance their understanding.

About the Authors:

Jesse M. Heines is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, where he specializes in implementation and evaluation of graphical user interfaces. He holds a B.S. in Earth Sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an M.S. in Science Education from the University of Maine, and an Ed.D. in Educational Media and Technology from Boston University. Prior to joining UMass Lowell, Jesse spent ten years with Digital Equipment Corporation, where he founded the Computer-Based Course Development Group. He has done post-doctoral work at The Open University in Great Britain, Brown University in Rhode Island, and most recently at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was a Visiting Scholar in the Center for Educational Computing Initiatives. His e-mail address is heines@cs.uml.edu.

Svitlana A. Grankovska is a graduate student in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. She holds a B.S. in Financial Management from Kharkiv University in the Ukraine. Her interests include Web-oriented design and programming, particularly applications that involve JavaScript, Java, JavaServer Pages, and XML. She has been working with Prof. Heines for the past 12 months. Her e-mail address is sgrankov@cs.uml.edu.

References and Web Resources Cited

[2] Gehringer, Edward F. To see or not to see: access restriction on course Web sites. Proceedings of the American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference and Exposition (2002).

[8] Reeves, T. C. and Dehoney, J. Cognitive and social functions of class Web sites. WebNet World Conference of the WWW, Internet and Intranets (1998), Orlando FL.