Online Making Web Content Work

T+D, July, 2003 by Patti Shank

I design and build instructional Websites, so you'd think I'd be enamored of them. Truth is, most Websites, including instructional ones, are hard to navigate and their content is hard to use. As Steve Krug, in his Web usability book Don't Make Me Think, says, "It's not rocket surgery." But Krug also says that even though usability is common sense, it's not always the obvious choice.

Making Web Content Work, from Information Mapping, is an intriguing online course that addresses usability in Website design. I recently took the company's course Developing Business and Technical Communications and thought it was valuable for making information more readable and understandable. Still, I wasn't sure how to apply everything I learned to instructional information on the Web. Making Web Content Work helps to close that gap. It covers content and audience analysis, page and site design, and organization of different types of Web content. Here's a list of modules:

* Planning Your Content (two modules)

* The Design Principles

* Organizing the Content Hierarchy and Designing the Navigation

* Types of Webpages

* The Information Types, and Presenting Procedure and Process on the Web

* Presenting Principles, Facts, Concepts, and Structures on the Web

* Testing the Site.

This online course is instructor-led and encourages contact with the instructors and other learners. Much of online training seems to consist of dull self-paced courses with little or no ability to interact with others even when interaction is critical to instruction. But this course provides many opportunities for reflection and sharing insights.

Each week-long lesson culminates in an activity that requires the learner to work on a Website or part of a Website design. The activity is uploaded to the course so that the instructor and other learners can view it and provide feedback. The lessons provide many examples of real Websites and opportunities to test users' understanding. Even though much of the information wasn't new to me, the review was helpful. In every lesson, I gained critical and useful insights about a module of an online instructional technology course that I'm re designing. I was pleased that each lesson gave me an opportunity to reconsider problems learners have experienced with that module and come up with better solutions.

This is a good and useful course. The content is chunked and easy to follow, there are lots of examples and printable summaries of all online lessons, you can see other learners' work, and the instructor feedback is timely and helpful.

Minuses? At times, the course tries to cover too much. Designing navigation alone could be an entire course. I would've preferred to spend the eight weeks on the organization of different types of Web content and how to use the mapping techniques I learned from the first course on the Web. But that may be because I have a lot of experience with the other topics. The two weeks on organizing content were good; I just wanted more. I hope Information Mapping will provide additional courses to address the other topics in depth.

Learning online in a well-designed course is convenient if you're motivated to do the work without someone cracking the whip. I'm an independent, self-motivated learner, so the lessons and assignments were manageable despite the fact that I'm busy. The content was compelling, and I didn't want to miss anything.

Recommendation

If you develop online instructional materials and need to know the basics of how to make them more usable, this course should do the trick. The content is immediately applicable, though it's characterized more by breadth than depth. If you already know a bit about the topics, it may not be as helpful. In general, the Information Mapping method is fantastic.

Making Web Content Work

****     Holds user interest
*** 1/2   Production quality
*** 1/2   Ease of navigation
****           Interactivity
*** 1/2     Value of content
***      Instructional value
***      Value for the money
*** 1/2       Overall rating

Patti Shank is an instructional technology consultant and a writer and speaker on instructional technology topics. She is the managing partner of Learning Peaks, a distance learning consulting firm, and can be reached through her Website; wwwlearningpeaks.com.