1. WCET 2012
San Antonio, Texas
November 2, 2012
Effective Course Design Panel
Ruth Markulis, Instructional Technologist
2. Effective Course Design Agenda
Welcome! I am happy to be here with you today to share
experiences and have an interactive discussion.
Your Course Design Challenges
Cybersecurity Case Study
Developing a Mobile Strategy
5. Managing Complexity
• Curriculum
Interactive Modules
Case Studies and Virtual Labs
Capstone Simulation
• University-wide effort of collaborative teams
• Integrate efforts from many disciplines and
skill sets
6. Effective Project Management
Strategies That Worked Well
• Weekly Excel Project Plan Tracking Sheets
Staffing, Tasks, and Due Dates
Completed Items
Pending Items
Yellow and Red Alerts
7. Effective Project Management
Strategies That Worked Well
• Weekly Project Status Reports and Meetings
Delayed Tasks and Milestones and Impacts
Accomplishments
Pending Items
Concerns and Recommended Actions
Remarks
8. Effective Project Management
Strategies That Worked Well
• Making all assumptions explicit
• Explaining dependencies
• Flexibility
Adding or realigning resources and contingency plans
• Sharepoint as document repository
Version Control/Archive
9. Effective Project Management
Strategies That Worked Well
• Details!
Include a deadline in the subject line of emails for
time-sensitive materials
Urgent-Please respond by date
Include vacation schedules, holidays
Scheduled check in conference calls
14. Subject Matter Expert Support
Strategies That Worked Well
• Subject Matter Expert Training Workshop
Policies and Procedures/Roles Expectations
Research and Writing
Unique, Accurate Master’s Level Content
Case Study and Simulation Ideas for Critical Thinking
Best Practices and Current Thinking in the Field
Quality Assurance
15. Review Teams
Strategies That Worked Well
• “Bug Sheets”
Content, Graphics, Technical
• Active Discussion in Wimba/WebEx
• Lead SME has final word
• Requested changes/clarifications
• Continuous quality improvement
16. Review Teams
Strategies That Worked Well
• Initially a long process
• Became streamlined
• Led to proactive change in design/process
Moved editorial review and intellectual property review
earlier in process
22. Faculty Support
Strategies That Worked Well
• Model classroom
• Orientation each semester
• Faculty classroom for discussion/questions
• Ongoing meetings as needed
• Teaching/lab assistants
23. Going Mobile-Best Practices
Has your campus experimented
with mobile devices to deliver
content?
Please share your experiences.
24. Going Mobile-Best Practices
• Feature Phones- 12 keys, digital camera, media
player
• Smart Phones-Third party applications for
productivity
• PDAs-QWERTY keyboard and stylus for
organizational tasks
• iPads-More features for light work,
presentations, interactive learning
25. Going Mobile-Best Practices
How many mobile devices are
there worldwide?
What impact is this having on
educational institutions?
26. Going Mobile-Best Practices
Gartner Group 2011
•5.6 billion mobile phones worldwide
•80% of world’s population
•$315 billion in revenue
27. Going Mobile-Best Practices
The State of the Mobile Web in Higher Ed
February 2012 (267 institutions)
59% provide a mobile solution (37% in 2011)
39% plan to develop a mobile solution
2% no plan
29. Going Mobile-Best Practices
The State of the Mobile Web in Higher Ed
February 2012 (267 institutions)
56% plan a dedicated mobile Web site
26% plan to develop device-specific apps
30. Going Mobile-Best Practices
The State of the Mobile Web in Higher Ed
February 2012 (267 institutions)
73 % developed by faculty staff
20% developed by vendor
65% no special budget for mobile
31. Going Mobile-Best Practices
Develop a Mobile Strategy
•Why are you going mobile?
•Determining appropriate content
•Interactivity-solving a real problem
Checking sports scores
Checking weather, directions, maps
Flight reservations
News updates
32. Going Mobile-Best Practices
Develop a Mobile Strategy
•Balance business goals vs. constraints
•How does mobile presence help organization achieve its
goals?
•Audience goals-What does user want to accomplish?
What is the value-added proposition?
33. Going Mobile-Best Practices
Develop a Mobile Strategy
What do you think would be appropriate
educational content for mobile devices
based on these commercial applications?
34. Going Mobile-Best Practices
Good Mobile Design
•Designing for mobile devices is different
than designing for the Web
•Don’t take an existing Web page and make
it smaller
•Limit content and plan content categories
and navigation carefully
36. Going Mobile-Best Practices
Design Challenges or Constraints
•Variety of devices and browsers
•Older devices
•Screen size and keypad design
•Embedded objects and scripts not supported
•Frames not supported
•Flash not supported
37. Going Mobile-Best Practices
Design Challenges or Constraints
•Pop-up windows not supported
•Linking to external resources adds time and
cost to page views
38. Going Mobile-Best Practices
Good Mobile Design
•Must be device specific
Target devices
•Must render properly
128 X 160 pixels
•Must load quickly
•Must not crash the browser
39. Going Mobile-Best Practices
Good Mobile Design
•File sizes are small, under 10 Kb
•Customization
Site should remember user information and
preferences and load them when user returns to site
40. Going Mobile-Best Practices
Good Mobile Design
•Handset detection-serving correct version
of mobile content
http://deviceatlas.com
•Dynamic content formatting
•URL redirects
•Register domain names
41. Going Mobile-Best Practices
Developing Standards
•W3C Initiatives
Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group
Device Description Working Group
Consistent, complete User-Agent Profiles (UA-Profs)
•Open Mobile Alliance (OMA)
42. Going Mobile-Best Practices
W3C Mobile Web Working Group
•XHTML Basic and XHTML MP 1.0
Character Encoding-UTF 8
XHTML MP 1.0 Doctype-tells browsers how to
render content
List of MIME types on server-add XHTML
43. Going Mobile-Best Practices
W3C Mobile Web Working Group
•XHTML Basic and XHTML MP 1.0
Search engines use page titles
Wireless CSS stylesheets lower page size
•Use Wireless Markup Language (WML) for older mobile
browsers
•HTML 5 and Java
44. Going Mobile-Best Practices
Design Considerations
•Use <div> or <dl> tags, not <table>
•Use server side includes (SSI), not frames
•Place navigation in content page
•Use accesskeys (numbers on keypad) to link to content
and limit links to 10 or fewer per page
•Prioritize links by popularity
•Use brief forms if at all
Use radio buttons and drop-down menus rather than text boxes
45. Going Mobile-Best Practices
Design Considerations for Images
•Image width should by under 120 pixels
•Avoid images containing dense information
•Specify pixel height and width so these do not have to be
calculated by the device which increases rendering time
•Omit image maps as there usually is no pointing device
•Always use alt tags
47. Going Mobile-Best Practices
References and Resources
W3C Mobile Web Best Practices Basic Guidelines
•http://www.w3.org/TR/mobile-bp/
Global Authoring Practices
•http://www.passani.it/gap/
mobiReady Tool evaluates your Web page
•http://ready.mobi/launch.jsp?locale=en_EN
48. Going Mobile-Best Practices
References and Resources
Dot-mobi domain approved by Internet Corporation of
Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in 2006
•http://news.cnet.com/2100-1039_3-6075779.html
Mobile Web Best Practices, Case Studies, and Statistics
•http://www.mobithinking.com/
Open Mobile Alliance
http://www.openmobilealliance.org/