• Background
• CLASS Project
• CLASS Staff
• General Insights
• Questions & Considerations
• Content
• Development Teams
• Content Acquisition
• Assessment & Grading
• Design
• Introduction
• Modeling
• Presentation
• Interactivity
• Navigation
• Assessments
• National Standards
• Quality Assurance
• Courses
• Features
• Courses
• Copyrights
• Technology
• Building a Course
• See and Say
• There are Limits!
• Influence and Change
• CLASS Courses
• Content
• Extras Designed
• Extras Linked
• Class Assessments
• A Bit of Dreamweaver
• Proofing
• Graphics
• MOUs
• Detailing Treatment
• Course Credits
• CLASS Style
• Publications

Organization and Navigation of the Course

In the beginning, CLASS™ designers tried to create courses with an “open” type of navigation. This followed a pattern of what we saw on the Web—links to click on for further information and paths to follow to see where they lead! Students could have more control over their learning paths and follow where their interests took them at the time. The first CLASS™ course, Global Perspectives: Bosnia, was set up so that students could decide where they wanted to go first and what topic areas they wished to explore further. Within each of the “Knowledge Webs” (the clever name for the three sections of the course), students could make choices.

In Web I, students could learn about the people involved in the conflict, the past history of the region involved, the events that had occurred recently, and how the world was involved—in any order they chose.

In Web II, students had choices of “Explorations” (another clever appellation!) for their in-depth study. Students need to complete at least five assignments in preparation for their final Project, which is “Web III.” As the background material for the course had

been covered in the first part of the course (Web I) students were free in Web II to explore their areas of interest. Much of the information that would be gleaned from this part of the course was intended to be from research on the Internet. A major objective of this course was using background information and research to organize and present a final project. For this reason, this course was billed as a senior level “capstone” course, which meant that it was college prep.

English courses lend themselves well to an open type of navigation. In American Literature 2, students can complete the units and lessons in any order they choose and can also read the selections within the topics in any order. Visual links on the course pages lead to the topics. In the Nature lesson, the topics include: Conservation, Harmony, and Struggles. By clicking on the books, students can go to these course sections.

Not all courses lend themselves to choices in navigation. In the courses where learning builds upon itself, such as some math, most sciences, and all languages, a more linear approach was adopted. The International Business course is also presented in a linear fashion. Even in the courses that were non-linear, a linear content outline was available in the Course Guide for students who wanted to see the direct path through a course. Even though the Web can present its users with choices of where to go and when, many students tend to feel somewhat lost when the goal is a grade and credit for a course.

There seems to be a very different level of tolerance for ambiguity when the setting changes from “surfing the Web” to “taking a class.” Students want to be sure they haven’t missed anything, that they have completed all the required tasks, and that they can complete the course in a timely manner. They don’t want to get lost! They don’t want to wander around! They don’t want to worry about navigation in addition to worrying about learning the subject matter!

Some students like choices; some would rather be told exactly what to do. The problem with choices in assignments is to make sure that choosing one assignment over another doesn’t leave a student short on pertinent information. As “mapping to education standards” became more of a priority, designers had to be more concerned that all students would have access to the same information, and that this information would cover the standards. With that in mind, choices in assignments were scrutinized more closely. More choices in assignments means more assignments that must be written into the course—hence, more time involved in course creation.

As designers were experimenting in the beginning, they tried different types of organization and navigation to see what worked best. As with anything, there is not just one way to accomplish a task. Students are different, and they have different ideas about how they want to go through a course. No student wants to feel frustrated or lost.

When a non-linear approach was used in certain courses, there was a list of the course contents that students could follow in order. The “Contents Viewer” (pictured below) was placed on the toolbar, which made it available at all times to the students. The ‘Contents Viewer’ is a click-on “open and shut” outline that expands to show the contents of the course in a linear format.

A ‘Contents Viewer’ concept was necessary to ease student use. It was also necessary to standardize the ‘Viewer’ for ease and speed of production. A more standardized format for organizing the courses would give students enrolled in more than one course the feeling that they know how to get around in the course. (Every course wouldn’t be a totally new experience in navigation!) It would also allow standardization of the programming for the Contents Viewer and the left-hand navigation toolbar.

For this reason, it was decided that courses should be divided into units, lessons, topics, and then pages. This “standard” made it much easier for the production team and made the courses more consistent for the students.

Some courses began to include a “content map” as the first page of the course. This feature also became a standard in all later courses. It served as a visual outline of the course contents.

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