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HTML versus Object-orientedThe question whether to build courses
is a vital decision that is an extension of the learning management system (LMS) argument. Some LMSs will allow you to use a database-structured environment, while most only use an HTML-based system. The differences are massive -- from instructional design to implementation to maintenance. Just as with the LMS system, CLASS’s™ choices were limited in 1995. HTML was the only real method to approach building on-line courses. As a result, courses were built in HTML 3, then HTML 4 by the grant's end. However, for reasons discussed below, it is our recommendation that people building courses today look into building courses based on a database. The Internet largely (although not always) displays information in one of two ways. The first is through the use of Hypertext Markup Language, or HTML. In its original incarnation, HTML was designed to mark information with specific codes that would describe its content. Over time, however, HTML became a formatting language; some HTML codes described a page's font, others stated where images would go, while other codes created hyperlinks to other pages. HTML's amazing flexibility and ease-of-use made it the Internet's standard way of presenting information by the mid-1990s. Technophiles and technophobes alike could slam HTML code together and create a personal, professional, or educational Web page without having to know any advanced programming. Innovative entrepreneurs took HTML's simplicity a step further and created word processing-like programs that would enable a user to create a Web page without even knowing the most rudimentary amount of code. These programs, called WYSIWYGs (an acronym for What You See Is What You Get), made a simple language even simpler. All was well with the Web. But there was trouble in paradise. For all its glorious plainness, HTML is incredibly limited -- largely in that once a page is created, it remains etched in Internet stone until someone comes along to edit it. Type in the date on an HTML page and it remains that date until the end of time, regardless of what the actual date is. Type in that the President of the United States is Grover Cleveland, and that's the way it will remain. While casual Web page creators shouldn't really see this as a limitation, content-driven site creators found this to be a dangerous weakness. For example, e-business sites rely on constantly changing information, as do most federal sites. Although you may think that e-learning sites are exempt from this information-hunger, you're wrong. Let's say that you're developing a civics course. Throughout the course, you discuss the wisdom behind setting the voting age in the United States as 18 years old. Then, one bright day, the Supreme Court changes the voting age to 12. With HTML, you now have to seek out and alter every mention of an 18-year-old voting age requirement. Good luck. Enter the second way that information is presented on the Internet--namely through the use of databases. Following in the footsteps of more traditional computing languages such as Basic and C, by the late 1990s, Internet-based computing was switching to object-oriented programming, or OOP. Instead of static, never-changing-by-itself HTML, pages could now be built from objects. What's an object, you might ask? For the Internet, an object could be anything…a paragraph on quantum physics, a back button in a civics course, an audio file, video file, etc. These objects are stored in databases, which can then be pulled into the end-user's Web browser via a programming language, such as ASP (Active Server Pages). This new, revolutionary way of building Web pages allows for constant updating, easy maintenance, and amazing flexibility. As you probably discerned from the explanation above, HTML was never designed to do what it ended up doing, but its flexibility and shallow learning curve allowed even novices to create fully-functioning Web page within minutes. Sadly, these pages are "dumb." They remain the way that they were created until the end of time, regardless of the user's platform, browser, screen size, and a host of other client-related factors. However, as stated previously, there is a white knight on the horizon in the form of OOP-based Internet languages. Building courses based on database structures--whether ASP or the recently emerging (and eminently promising) Extensible Markup Language (XML)--grants unlimited flexibility. Do you want to build your material once, but have the flexibility to adapt its presentation based on whatever system, platform, browser, etc. that the client has? Do you want to be able to update a simple fact (like the current President's name) once, but have it immediately updated in every course that refers to the President? Databases are your answer. Unfortunately, flexibility comes with a hefty price. In this case,
the price is expertise. Unlike HTML, which has a broad spectrum of
WYSIWYGs, most database-related languages have no easy-to-use interface--the
exception being ASP, which can be entered, albeit in limited form,
using Macromedia's Dreamweaver™ Ultra Development XML, which
in all likelihood will usurp HTML as the next language of the Web,
is a complex, rich programming language with a dizzying amount of specifications
and aspects to consider. Unlike the days of one or two people being
able to create an HTML course, XML will demand specialization. Copyright 2004 - University of Nebraska Board of Regents - All Rights Reserved |
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