Create a Web page of international information for workers and managers who are planning assignments in a country of your choice. Attach that page to your response to this discussion topic #1, with a brief explanation as to how you developed the page.

See the "Guide for Participation" for this course. You'll be posting your comments here in the discussion thread, so they should be legible and grammatical.

Specific guidance:

Limit your page to just one country
While you can include some general information about working abroad, most of your information should be specific to the country you focus on
Consider some of these topics: history, politics, geography, culture, money, living accommodations, transportation, business practices, and so forth.

I have to write a paper on how to properly analyze a Web Page. Research how to properly analyze a web page.

Search the Internet to identify a Web site intended as a resource for human services and analyze the site. This is the website that I have chosen: http://www.weblocator.com/attorney/ca/law/c14.html#cac140100
Title page: California Elder Law (AGEISM)

Do a web search using "evaluation criteria of websites", a wealth of information will appear, be sure to read the information to come to your conclusion about reliability. (THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT).

Write a 700-900 word paper in which you discuss your findings.

Include a discussion on the value and relevance of this site to clients or human services agencies. (THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT)

Format the paper according to APA style. Correctly site all sources, including the web pages you used to learn how to analyze a web page.

AGAIN - Correctly site all sources, including the web pages you used to learn how to analyze a web page. (THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT)!!!!

AGAIN -
Do a web search using "evaluation criteria of websites", a wealth of information will appear, be sure to read the information to come to your conclusion about reliability. (THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT).

I am asking "ISAK" to write the paper

My Major: Human Service Professional

4 Page Paper, double space, New Times Roman (12 pt) Font
Find one or two web pages that are associated with a general topic in psychology and critically analyze them. If you are not sure that your web page is appropriate, you should speak with your T.A. or Dr. Chute. Your evaluation should be approximately 4 pages in length and include a brief description of the page or pages. It is more important for you to evaluate the content of the page rather than the look of it. Your major task will be to determine if the information contained in the chosen pages is reliable. It is not enough to say that you agree or disagree with the information, you need to support your opinions. You should be asking yourselves how the content compares with information that you have learned from the text and class lectures. Although you are only evaluating one or two pages, you may have to use other sources in order to effectively determine reliability, make sure that you cite these references appropriately. You may also download portions of the page onto your hard drive and insert them into your evaluation. You will find other tips that will help you with your evaluation below.
Identify the source
Is the site meant to be educational or informative?
Is the site trying to sell you something?
Check the ending, is it a .com, .edu, .org, etc. Educational sites use .edu and many non profit organizations use .org, this may make a difference in the reliability of the information presented.
Evaluate the content
How useful is the site?
Is the information current?
Does it give information from just one source or perspective, or does it draw from many?
Does the author of the site differentiate fact from opinion?
Check the references
Where is the site getting the information from?
Does the site have a bibliography?
What is the reputation of the source material?
Look at the links, is the site comparable with related sources?
What is the reputation of the site author? Do they give you contact information?

Answer the following questions in approximately 175 words, use the web as a resource and cite the web page on the works cited page.
1)Sketch out a treatment plan for one experiencing anorexia. Make sure to take into account both the immediate and long-term treatment needs.
2)Alcohol is certainly misused or abused in the U.S. more than any other drug. What about alcohol promotes physical and psychological dependence? What are the long-term problems associated with alcohol abuse? Finally, please describe one widely used form of therapy for those struggling with alcohol abuse.
3) Using the information you received from question #2, imagine that a 20-year-old friend has expressed a desire to receive treatment for alcohol abuse. What form of treatment would you recommend your friend look into, and why? Please detail the strengths of the form of treatment you would recommend, along with its possible weaknesses.

MY RESEARCH PAPER IS ON WEB DESIGN.1. need aleast 1 quote.Quotations must be identical to the original source. Quote only words, phrases, lines, and passages that are particularly interesting or unusual and keep all quotations as brief as possible. Must attribute all quotes to the original author.If quotation runs to more than four lines in your paper, set it off from your text by beginning a new line, indenting 1 inch from the left margin and typing it double-space, without adding quotion marks.2. NUMBER OF SOURCES: I need 5 sources to come from books and 3 sources to come from internet web pages. I have included by fax: 4 chapters from 4 different books that you can use any of the information in the research paper where ever you can put it.3. body must have 3000 words. 4.must include outline, body and works cited page 5. new times new roman font, 12-font size, 1" margins at the top, bottom, and on both sides, indent the first word of each paragraph one-half inch from left margin. 6.Must include a Outline-place title in the center of the top line of the page, double space after title and, flush with the left margin, type the word "Thesis", follow it with a colon, then state Thesis. A thesis statement is one sentence that sums up the entire paper. Double space after the thesis statement to begin the outline. Must have a minimum of 3 main headings, all listed with capital roman numerals. Each main heading must have at least two sub-headings, all listed with capital letters. Each sub heading may have details/ examples listed with Arabic numbers. Outlines are sketetal; save the elaborate details for the paper.7. works cited page: underline/italicize all titles of books,periodicals, and software. Titles of articles/chapters are placed in quotation marks. Arrange all sources in alphabetical order by the first letter of the entry, ignoring a, an and the. 8. must include summary-summarizing involves putting the main idea(s) of a passage into your own words. Summaries are significantly shorter than the original because they are limited to only the main ideas. 9. PARENTHEICAL CITATIONS-for each entry in list of works cited, must have at least one corresponding parenthetical citation within the body of paper.
There are faxes for this order.

We will offer more for this one!!!

___________________________________________________________________
I am planning to design an online membership and payment management system
on the web.
It will have a back-end and a frond-end. The back end will be using MS SQL
server 2000 for my database.( My front ?end I will be using is Microsoft
Visual Studio c# .net.
_________________________________________________________________

my research topics is: Principles of web design
Have a look at this web site : http://www.mlc-wels.edu/jgrunwald/page.html
& http://www.merit.edu/~tmwhite/webdesign/ it explains the 6 basic Basic
Principles of Web Page Design & http://mason.gmu.edu/~montecin/webdesign.htm
. Just to get the Idea

For example:
1. Include essential elements on each page.
2. Use appropriate navigational aids.
3. Keep page lengths short.
4. Use appropriate text fonts and styles.
5. Use color appropriately.
6. Keep graphics small.
What things do I need for my web site from the perspective of web designing?

STRUCTURE AND LAYOUT EXAMPLE

The structure should be something like this:

1. Introduction
2. ?????..
2.1 ???..
3. ??????
3.1 ????..
3.2 ?????
3.3 ??????.
3.4 ??????.
3.5 ??????.
3.6 ????

4. ?????..
4.1 ?????..
4.2 ?????..
4.3 ?????..
4.4 ?????..
4.5 ?????..
4.6 ?????..
4.7 ?????..

5 ?????..
5.1 ?????..

THIS PART VERY IMPORTANT
6 Critical Evaluation
7. Conclusion
8. Reference
___________________________________________

These are examples write whatever is appropriate for the research topic

PLEASE TRY to make it simple and easy English structure so I can understand

Try and get different opinion and ideas form different authors

YOU can make full use of any source material, which would normally be an
occasional sentence and/or paragraph (referenced) followed by your own
critical analysis/evaluation.


USE minimum 15 reference
Reference from academic journals, books and other useful resources. It would
be best if you can find GOOD ACADEMIC JOURNALS.

BEST TO USE GOOD ACADEMIC JOURNALS
Please make the effort to look at the web sites you will find them very
useful

THIS ARE same websites to help you find same journals
http://portal.acm.org/portal.cfm
http://www.scirus.com/srsapp/


http://www.mlc-wels.edu/jgrunwald/page.html

This site is a good one
http://www.useit.com/
ANOTHER INTERESTING WEB SITE
http://www.webstyleguide.com/index.html?/
Use proper Harvard reference very important
For more information about Harvard reference please visit this web site:
http://asp.wlv.ac.uk/Level6.asp?UserType=6&Level6=1524
e.g [Anderson, 1997, p.200] even page number so I can trace it.


Format or citation style: Harvard

HCI(human computer interface) ? Research: principles of good web design


No reference from Websites. REFERECE ONLY FROM ACADEMIC JOURNAL or Articles
from famous people or books

Web site to find academic Journals:
http://portal.acm.org/portal.cfm
http://www.mlc-wels.edu/jgrunwald/introhci.html

LAYOUT

1.Introduction
..
..
2.Principles of Good Web Site Design

? 2.1 Have a clear purpose in mind.
? 2.2 Know your intended audience.
? 2.3 Have a structured site.
Example: it would like this but more words explaining in detail
Many authors such as Marcus (1990), McFarland (1995), Andleigh and Thakrar
(1996), and Levi and Conrad (1996), mention that a user interface needs to
communicate clearly with the intended user. In order to communicate clearly,
a user interface should be well organized and structured (Vaughan, 1996).
Web pages within the site should have a consistent and predictable
appearance, so that it will be easier for users make sense out of the web
site. The best approach is to consistently apply a few basic design
principles to each web page in the site (Lynch, 1995).
? 2.4 Make your site easy to navigate.
? 2.5 Keep your site current.
See an example web site how it should be:
http://www.mlc-wels.edu/jgrunwald/site.html

3. Basic Principles of Web Page Design
? 3.1 Include essential elements on each page.
? 3.2 Use appropriate navigational aids.
? 3.3 Keep page lengths short.
? 3.4 Use appropriate text fonts and styles.
? 3.5 Use color appropriately.
? 3.6 Keep graphics small.
See an example web site how it should be:
http://www.mlc-wels.edu/jgrunwald/page.html

IF you want to see same site reference go to:

http://www.mlc-wels.edu/jgrunwald/referenc.html

Evaluation

Conclusion

USE minimum 8 reference (ACADEMIC JOURNALS)

Use proper HARVARD reference very important
For more information about Harvard reference please visit this web site:
http://asp.wlv.ac.uk/Level6.asp?UserType=6&Level6=1524
e.g [Anderson, 1997, p.200] even page number so I can trace it.

? preface a quotation with a short introduction and after the quote make
your analysis of why this persons belief is right (or even wrong!!)

? Quotations,
? A statement made by some person with a great understanding of the subject
area!!
? Put text between quotation marks and in ?italics?
? Prefix the quote with a short introduction and after the quote your
conclusions on the ramifications
? Citations
? appear at the end of quotations and any statements made by the student
involving re-wording of the literature.

Focus on community and Web analytics. It is assumed that you are planning to incorporate community into dondatecreeps.com. Write your plan for incorporating community and Web analytics that discusses:

1. The form that this community will take, that is, the type of community you plan to incorporate. Explain why this form is appropriate.


2. The interactive features that you plan to incorporate into the community. Explain why these features are appropriate.


3. The approach that you plan to take with Web analytics to include selection of a vendor. Explain why this approach is appropriate.


This is what I have so far

1. The following pages will focus on detailing certain aspects regarding the future activity of DontDateCReeps.com, an Internet dating website. DontDateCreeps.com intends to enter the Internet dating services market following an aggressive strategy that will allow it to gather as many clients as possible. In order to reach this goal, DontDateCreeps.com must provide its customers with more than the usually required services.
The Internet dating services market is in full expansion at the moment, as current trends show that people continually use dating and social networking sites to make new friends, meet new people. Because of the extreme popularity of these sites, many webmasters are entering into the dating site arena (Webmaster Journal, 2008).
DontDateCreeps.com is an online dating services website. Obviously, the main product traded between the website and its clients can be described as information. In other words, the website provides specific information that its clients require.
This information is provided by different suppliers. The most important suppliers are the users that register and use DontDateCreeps.com. The whole idea is for them to offer truthful information on themselves in order for other users to contact them through the website, if the case.
Other information providers for DontDateCreeps.com include public records and publicly available data bases maintained by municipal agencies and government records. Such information sources will be used because access is public. Another reason for selecting these information sources is the fact that they are usually accurate.
2. Regarding order fulfillment and logistic processes, things are not very complicated for DontDateCreeps.com. Traditional trade is significantly modified under the influence of Internet. Changes refer to both marketing channels and logistics.
The online business environment has determined certain intermediaries to emerge, called platform companies that are situated in the distribution channels between producers and buyers. The functions they fulfill consist in designing web pages, advertising, affiliating to a secure system for payments and organizing the delivery process.
Certain features of online distribution can be observed in comparison to physical distribution. Certain types of products allow for all logistics operations to be performed in a virtual environment. This is the case of DontDateCreeps.com, which deals with trading information. Once the customer has paid for the respective service through his credit card, he will immediately receive the requested information on his computer. The Internet offers the possibility of direct relationships between vendors and customers, and of personalized services for a great number of customers (Bowman, 2000).
When using DontDateCreeps.com, after paying a certain fee users can benefit from real time access to the required information. Of course, each service required by customers will be paid for separately, so that users only pay for the information they specifically require.
In order to benefit from the services of DontDateCreeps.com customers must effectuate their online payments through credit cards supported by VISA and Mastercard. The payment process in the case of DontDateCreeps.com is similar to the majority of online dating sites and e-shops.
3. A very important aspect in any business, no matter its size of activity domain, regards customer satisfaction, since customers are the target of any companys efforts. DontDateCreeps.com makes no exception, on the contrary, since the site deals with satisfying personal needs of customers through the information it provides.
The site does not commercialize physical products, and therefore, the issue of handling returns cannot be taken into consideration. Once the customer has purchased a piece of information, has paid for it, has received it, and obviously viewed it, he cannot claim a refund, in case the information provided by the site did not satisfy the customer in any way. If the site cannot provide certain information due to certain facts that was required by the customer, the site will notify the customer that his request cannot be fulfilled and therefore, there will be no payment.
This issue is related to another, dissatisfaction regarded the provided services. As mentioned above, there may be situation when DontDateCreeps.com will not be able to fulfill certain requests. This could only happen because of the lack of information in the respective case. Therefore, it is only fair that the customer has to be informed that the requested information is not available. If the site cannot offer complete information requested by the customer, the site will not charge the customer for incomplete information. The customer will be informed on this situation and will be advised to choose another offer, if the case.
The access for this site is real time. Also, the information requested by customers will be received by them immediately after making the full payment required for that specific information. Certain technical difficulties that will not allow requests to be processed instantly will rarely occur, as it is expected. Other than this, there are no other dissatisfaction issues related to other matters.
4. In the case of online dating services the legal issue is of extreme importance. Therefore, DontDateCreeps.com must pay special attention to issues regarding trust, security, and privacy. In other words, any dating services site must take into consideration the following aspects: online agreements, age verification, copyright protection, trade name protection, promotional liability, obscenity, indecency, and free speech concerns, employees, wages, and taxation, website development issues, shareholder issues.
One of the most important legal aspects concerns the implementation of well-drafted online legal agreements. This way, users and members should be required to adhere to a set of Terms and Conditions which outline the relationship between the site and the users and members, and address such issues as disclaimers, waivers, limitations of liability, assumption of risk, dispute resolution, attorneys fees, intellectual property, and a host of other legal and practical issues (Walters, 2004).
Another important legal aspect concerns age verification. Online dating sites usually address users over the age of 18, and DontDateCreeps.com makes no exception. Therefore, the use of age verification te3chnologies will be applied in order to avoid any legal issue of such kind.
In addition to this, the sites assets are protected by registering all available copyrights with the United States Copyright Office. Regarding promotional liability, the Federal Trade Commission laws regarding competition and trade practices are applied.

PhD Research proposal - Cross platform application installation - by Barak Avraham

Introduction
Despite the spread of software development and software usage, we has very few cross-platform applications which run on PC operating system, web browsers and mobile as well. Since technologies are no longer different from each other in todays era, we can develop such application with ease.

Our proposal is to undertake the deployment of one such cross platform application. For web browsers this application will make it possible to install widgets\mobile applications on a websites user view without communicating with the website owner. The application or widgets installed on the site users view will be non modifiable by the user. The widgets installed on one site cannot be used in another site. The user will be able to install mobile applications on Desktop OS as well and vase versa.

Our proposed kind of proposal will expose how it is possible to install these applications and widgets on the users site view without communicating with the site owner by installing a platform on the site users operating system which will provide services to all user web browsers. This platform (micro engine) will set the location, the size and the site user by parsing the incoming HTML stream and reformat it to the desire presentation. The user will have the freedom of choosing the desired applications or widgets from the set of available applications in the markets existing today with no relation to the platform he run on his machine and install them on his own site view. As well for Mobile application installed on Desktop OS. This will open such market to new customers which will consume applications with no relation to the platform he run and increase market monetization. My understanding and experience in Mobile and Web2.0 Applications market will help me to bind them together and to open more monetization options. Unlike developing a cross platform application here we are focus on install cross platform application (deployment) on cross platform environments without changing the or interrupting the application source code.

Specific Objectives of Research

Our Objectives are as follows
1. The researcher wants to expose how it is possible to install the widgets\mobile applications on the web site users view without even communicating with the web site owner. A widget's end user experience is solely controlled by a widget\mobile applications manager which is part of the widget\mobile micro engine manage the applications the user installed on his site view. The widget\mobile application manager will manage the application source and private parameters such as registration username and password if needed.

2. The researcher aims to develop a micro engine which will manage the installed applications, the positions, sources and the conversion from such platform to a web application stream. This micro engine which can be effectively implemented in a cross platform environment will serve the system and the web browsers using the HTTP stream by interpreting to HTML and JavaScript application. The micro engine will bears several advantages such as flexibility, strength, staff, location and operations, hence the same micro engine will be developed for multiple platforms covering web browsers elements, personal computer Operating Systems and mobile Operating Systems speed, resolutions and unique components such as GPS and Rotation.

3. The widgets\mobile applications installed by the users cannot be modified by the other net users and the widgets\mobile applications installed on one users website view cannot be used by the other user in her/his website view over the net. The Choice of the widgets\mobile applications to be installed will be made by the user and will depend upon the set of available widgets\mobile applications in the market with no relation of platform dependences.

4. So instead of having multiple environments the researcher wants to have a common environment for running applications or widgets for almost any platform be it a mobile phone, a web browser or Windows desktop. There will surely be Application Programming Interface (API) and Data Object Model differences (DOM) differences to extend the micro engine system to support more capabilities and new incoming technologies. For example Windows widgets allow access to Windows Management Instrumentation (or WMI) so that an application having all the system functionality provided by WMI can be use these resources, but the mobile is limited to web-services based development and really basic DOM, but even though HTML/JavaScript/CSS can be used as a standard for running cross platform applications.

Related Work

1. The idea of putting web-application as widgets right on the desktop was invented way back by Microsoft in 1994 (in Windows Nashville which was to be released in 1996). You could use an HTML and JavaScript page as you desktop background which would be running in the Internet Explorer. Microsoft even had a set of Active Desktop widgets.

2. One more technology that played a role in inventing desktop widgets is HTA (HTML application) which runs as a standalone application for that you were required to put you VBScript or JavaScript code and style in a single HTML file and rename it to .hta extension.

3. Netvibes has developed its universal widget API (UWA)[6] which is a free and elegant widget framework that uses XHTML for its structure, CSS for styling and JavaScript/AJAX for Data Object Model control. UWA has support for all the major widgets platforms e.g. Netvibes, iGoogle,Windows Vista, Mac OS X, iPhone.

4. The Fox Interactive media has developed a widgets platform called SpringWidgets[9] which works on most of the websites as well as the desktop in contrast to the widget platforms which work today on either websites such as Google Gadgets4, WidgetBox[10] or desktop such as Yahoo Widgets[3].

5. Opera Widgets are also set of widgets which are self-contained and are built using standards such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript. These are cross-platform and cross-device, which means they can be deployed anywhere from desktop to mobiles to TV[3].

6. The Opera has also proposed a draft to W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)[11] called widgets- the concept of small HTML/CSS/JavaScript application running inside a browser.

Research Methodology

1. Literature review on how the other cross platform widgets or applications make use of the available cross platform development techniques and APIs such as Netvibes, FLTK, wxWidgets, iPhone, Android, Google Gadgets, etc.

2. Collect appropriate amount of cross platform application code from open source repositories such as SourceForge.net, Free Software Foundation and Apache Open Source Foundation.

3. Compare the literature on how these cross platform applications make use of the available APIs and toolkits versus how these APIs and toolkits are actually implemented.

4. Identify the problems and opportunities that exist with the way cross platform applications are actually written using several available methodologies, patterns and standards for designing and programming.

5. Evaluation of the tools for deploy the application for different platforms. The mobile may use for example two platforms one will be iPhone for which the researcher will be using objective-c. The reason for which this language is selected by apple for the development of applications for mac and iPhone is justified by a website http://www.roseindia.net/iphone/objectivec/why_objective_c.shtml as it is an object-oriented extension of ANSI C and hence any C program can be used with this framework. It supports an open dynamic binding which will help in creating a simple architecture to interactive user interface.[8] To write an iPhone application, I will have to use Xcode and the iPhone SDK.[16]

6. For another mobile platform which will be Android, the researcher will be using Java. This scenario will make use of the Android SDK which provides tools and APIs necessary to begin developing appications on Android platform using Java programming language. Andriod has the potential for removing the barriers to success in the development and sale of a new generation of mobile phone application software.[15] Here Ill be using the concept of AppWidget host which is a component that can contain widgets. Android allows applications to publish views to be embedded in other applications. [13]

7. These views are called widgets and are published by AppWidget providers.[14] These application widgets will be the set of available widgets in the market from which user can choose the desired ones.

8. The desktop widget application will be developed only for one platform Windows which will be coded using c#. The IE can be proved out to be a perfect host for desktop widget applications. By modifying its User Interface, I can create a generic widget container. The customization of embedded IE browser can be done by removing the scroll bars and 3D border by implementing the IDocHostUIHandler interface[2].

9. For the web widgets or even the desktop widgets (for windows vista or later) a manifest file needs to be created with the gadget settings and the HTML file with the gadget code, CSS styles and JavaScript; then zipping them into one archive and renaming them to .gadget or .wgt extension makes them eligible for getting installed on windows platform, these widgets use Internet Explorer 8 core to run them, so I can get full support for CSS2.1 and the goodness of JavaScript.

10. The standard configuration of the widgets within the micro engine will be maintained by the use of a config.xml file which will specify some configuration information.

11. The cross platform testing of all the widgets will be carried out on each and every platform. The testing strategy will be decided at a later stage, depending upon the design pattern used.

12. Discussion of the testing results will be carried out.

13. Report on the results will be generated by writing a thesis.



References

[1] Retrieved on March 29, 2010, from Boomi Atmosphere website
A Widget end user's experience is completely contained with the Widget Manager. From the Widget Manager they can setup and provision new Widget instances and manage existing Widget instances by editing the configuration and viewing execution activity...
http://help.boomi.com/display/BOD/Widget+End+User+Experience

[2] Retrieved on March 29, 2010, from Code Project website
Desktop Widgets are small applications that provide frequently used functions such as an alarm clock, a calculator, a text box linked to Google etc. They can also decorate the desktop.
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/dotnet/DesktopWidget.aspx

[3] Retrieved on March 29, 2010 from dev.opera website
Opera Widgets are self-contained Web applications built using open Web standards such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript...
http://dev.opera.com/sdk

[4] Retrieved on March 29, 2010 from Google gadgets website
Gadgets powered by Google are miniature objects made by Google users like you that offer cool and dynamic content that can be placed on any page on the web...
http://www.google.com/webmasters/gadgets

[5] Retrieved on March 29, 2010, from NetVibes website
Netvibes has opened its platform to allow publishers and developers to benefit from our technology. Netvibes Universal Widget API (UWA) is a free and elegant widget framework that uses XHTML for structure, CSS for styling and JavaScript/Ajax for behavioral/DOM control ; it can also use iframes and plugins such as Flash.
http://dev.netvibes.com

[6] Retrieved on March 29, 2010, from Ozibug website
The demand for cross platform development and test environments has increased dramatically in recent times. This is due directly to the influence that Java has had on the software development process. Where once an internationalized, multi-platform application was complicated and expensive to develop, Java and the technology available today (and perhaps its cost) has simplified the process.
http://www.ozibug.com/www/cross_platform_devel.html

[7] Retrieved on April 17, 2010, from Droleary Subsume website
Although gcc compiles ObjC as well as C and C++, you don't commonly see ObjC programs out there. As far as I know, AgentD is the first one developed under and released for Linux. What follows is not an indepth comparison between languages, but the reasons I came to use and like ObjC.
http://droleary.subsume.com/agentd/whyobjc.html

[8] Retrieved on April 17, 2010, from Mac OS X Reference Library's website
The Objective-C language is a simple computer language designed to enable sophisticated object-oriented programming. Objective-C is defined as a small but powerful set of extensions to the standard ANSI C language.
http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/cocoa/conceptual/ObjectiveC/Introduction/introObjectiveC.html

[9] Retrieved on March 29, 2010, from SprigWidgets website
a collection of a spring widgets
http://www.springwidgets.com



[10] Retrieved on March 29, 2010, from WidgetBoxs website
Widgetbox makes the complexities of sharing your ideas and experiences on the web simple...
http://www.widgetbox.com

[11] Retrieved on March 29, 2010, from word press website
Look, Opera has proposed a draft to W3C called Widgets ??" the same concept of small HTML/CSS/JS application but running inside a browser...
http://sharovatov.wordpress.com/2009/05/13/html-css-js-widgets-future-crossplatform-environment

[12] Retrieved on March 29, 2010, from Yahoo Widgets website
Yahoo! Widgets help you save time and stay current by bringing an always-updated, at-a-glance view of your favorite Internet services right to your desktop...
http://widgets.yahoo.com

[13] Retrieved on March 29, 2010, from Androids website
Android API documents, show the packages
http://developer.android.com/reference/packages.html


[14] Retrieved on March 29, 2010, from Androids website
Android allows applications to publish views to be embedded in other applications.
http://developer.android.com/reference/android/appwidget/package-summary.html

[15] Rick Rogers, John Lombardo, Zigurd Mednieks and Blake Meike. (2009). Android Application Development. (chapter 1, page 3).
When Google announced the development of Android, the field of mobile platforms was already well established. Even in the narrower category of open source platforms, a number of viable alternatives were being pushed by proponents.

[16] Stephan G Kochan. (2009). Programming in Objective C (Chapter 21, page 460).
A powerful yet simple object-oriented programming language thats based on the C programming language, Objective-C is widely available not only on OS X and the iPhone/iPad platform but across many operating systems that support the gcc compiler, including Linux, Unix, and Windows systems.

[17] Rajesh Lal and Lakshmi Chava (2009). Professional Web Widgets with CSS, Dom, Json and Ajax (page 120).
Wrox's Professional Widgets with CSS, DOM and Ajax is the first guide to building web widgets - tiny applications that can be embedded in a web page or on the desktop and have exploded in popularity in recent months.

[18] Sterling Udell. (2009). Pro Web Gadgets for Mobile and Desktop (page 96).
The miniature web applications known as gadgets (or widgets) are a key component of the Distributed Web and an ideal way to publish your content far beyond the reach of your own web site.


[19] Jeff Heaton (2007). HTTP Programming Recipes for Java Bots (page 340).
The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) allows information to be exchanged between a web server and a web browser. Java allows you to program HTTP directly.

[20] Mark Pilgrim (2010). HTML5: Up and Running (page 114).
If you don't know about the new features available in HTML5, now's the time to find out. The latest version of this markup language is going to significantly change the way you develop web applications, and this book provides your first real look at HTML5's new elements and attributes.

This is a web project. First, this need not be a lengthy of difficult project. I am looking for 2 pages (if written on 8.5 x 11 paper) in length. Nothing other than internet "research" needs to be involved.

Here's what I would like you to do: pick up a topic (either a theme, like "feudalism", "knighthood" "slavery in Ancient Greece", a person, an event or a place from the time parameters of this course, that is to say Western European civilization (including the Greeks and Romans) from about 750 B.C. to 1500 AD. When you have decided on a topic, you must let me know what it is first by email. I want to make sure you are selecting a "do-able" topic: one that is neither too small or overwhelmingly large.

Then you will "research" your topic by searching on the internet (Yahoo, Google etc; any basic search engine will work) to find 4 websites or full-size webpages (a two sentence "mention" doesn't count) which are about your topic. Read them all. Then write your essay. Your essay should address the following questions:

Does the website or webpage have the basic facts about this person, event, theme correct?
To whom is the website directed? Is it for middle school kids? high school students? Is it for people who dress up in medieval costumes and are "Medieval Times" restaurant wannabees?
What specific point of view or perspective does the site represent? After all, it takes time and effort to create a website, so it is safe to assume that everyone has a "purpose" or an "agenda" in putting a website out there. A classic illustration must be the hundreds of crackpot theorists who claim that William Shakespeare could never have written all those great plays. Some claim they were really written by Francis Bacon. I am certain there is somebody out there who claims that his plays were written by aliens from outer space. In fact, I am so sure of this last, that I will award ONE BONUS ACTIVITY POINT TO THE FIRST PERSON FOR SUPPLIES ME WITH A LINK TO A WEB PAGE WHICH CLAIMS SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS WERE ACTUALLY WRITTEN BY ALIENS!
Who is responsible for the website? This may take a little bit of good detective work. Is it a single individual? Does it represent the views of a specific group or institution? Is this webpage part of a larger web project? You may have to click your way through a number of links (sometimes at the bottom of webpages) to trace your way back to find actually who is responsible for the website.
As an example, without even breaking much of a sweat, I found the following four websites which deal with Attila the Hun, simply by searching under "Attila the Hun" on Yahoo.com; each of the four represents roughly the amount of content I would expect you to use for each of the website references.

http://www.royalty.nu/history/empires/Hun.html

http://www.realm-of-shade.com/zarathustra/attila.html" target="_self">http://www.realm-of-shade.com/zarathustra/attila.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attila_the_Hun

http://www.hyperhistory.net/apwh/bios/b3atilla_p1dz.htm

The last requirement of this assignment is that at the end of the essay you do provide with the internet addresses as a hyperlink so that I can visit the websites you used right from your essays. Let me know if you do not know how to put a hyperlink in a Microsoft Word document.

Now all the above may sound like a lot, but I am convinced that each of you could knock off this assignment in one evening of work if you had to, although I would prefer you took your time with it. This is a new kind of assignment for me to require as well: this is the first semester I have tried this. A good thing to keep in mind is this: this assignment is in place of the midterm exam. So which would you rather have: the freedom to do a little internet investigation on a subject of interest to you or timed essay on the "decline of the Roman Empire"?

please let me know if it could be done?

Topic: How does browser incompatibility impact web applications?

In the mid-1900s, Netscape had about a 90% share of the browser market. By the end of the decade, Microsoft had the 90% share. In the years in between, these two companies battled it out, each one trying to come up with the proprietary browser features that would lure customers to their side, then copying the most popular features of the other browser into their browser, often with an implementation that seemed deliberately designed to make web pages NOT work in the other browser. With each successive release of new versions, features would be inconsistently implemented even within each company?s browsers. How does this affect web application developers? Is the situation any better today? What?s a good strategy for dealing with the incompatibilities?

This assignment is a persuasive essay, written to a project team headed by the CFO of a medium-size company (about 500 employees). The CFO is technologically savvy, but has no time or patience for overly technical details unless they are relevant to the business. The paper should be 500-600 words long, with an Introduction that states your thesis (the stand that you take), two or three paragraphs to support the point you want to make, and a Conclusion. It should be written to present a couple of points of view but you should take a stand and defend your stance. Include relevant personal experience where possible, and cite outside evidence from at least two sources. Follow APA formatting, use a cover sheet, and include a reference section in addition to the inline citations.

Write a 1500 word summary of assessment for the following three web sources.
http://allaboutexplorers.com/
http://www.cimms.ou.edu/~doswell/Conference_papers/SELS96/WoO.html
http://www.bigredhair.com/boilerplate/index.html


Comprehensive introduction that include a clear and concise summary statement with respect to your findings.
Summaries of assessments for each of the three (3) web sources chosen from above.
Concluding remarks ??" include your comments on what you knew going into the assignment and what you have learned as you completed the assignment

Apply the assessment criteria outlined in the MRAC and create an HTML report presentation document of your findings.

Minimal Reliability Assessment Checklist
Below are 5 categories and associated examples of typical questions to consider for the assessment.
A. Authorship
Who produced the web page?
Who is the author?
Is the author an expert or otherwise relevantly qualified?
Is there a link to further information about the author?
Sponsor - If the site is sponsored, who is it? How reputable are they?
Is there a link to further information about the sponsor?
If there is neither an identifiable author nor a sponsor, is there any way to determine the original source of the document?
B. Currency
How current is the information?
Is the document dated?
Has the document undergone any updates?
If there are links, are they all actively maintained?
C. Reportage
How well does the document cover the topic(s)?
What are the topics covered?
Is the web page organized logically and easy to navigate?
How does this web page distinguish itself from others like it?
D. Objectivity
How fair is the treatment of the topic(s)?
Is there an attempt to minimize biases (descriptive)?
Or, is the document intended to be persuasive (with an agenda stated or hidden)?
Does the document contain advertisements? If so, do they imply any bias at all?
E. Accuracy
How good is the information?
Is the information reliable and truthful? If not, why did you consider it?
Is there someone credible that verified the information?

Fill the plan statement(the one that I will send with the same format) according to the files that I will send.
The files that I will send are my thoughts for my future career and the plan statement will be about my thoughts and the research project that I want to do.

The file named; Activity report was my first draft, which was my idea.. however you will find that my idea changed when you read the persona.

The second file is named; activity repost continues

The third file is the persona. In the persona you can find all the information that I want to do in my future career. Its an online business that I want to start very similar to gilt.com but better (I explained everything on the document, while creating the persona who wants and needs to use my website)

This persona is someone who is buying woman clothes from a website similar to gilt.com. thats the website I created and it calls Luxuriousimplicity.com and it is about the actions while the persona is buying something from that website and explains why she chooses luxuriousimplicity.com besides gilt or any other competitors similar to gilt. I explained what gilt city.com is lacking and what my website has more so that this persona choose to buy it from my website. I tried to improve what gilt is offering. Changed it. Made it in a new way. (gift packaging)

In the plan statement it says Preliminary Findings What I know already and drawing upon from D&M.
D&M is design and management program in Parsons university, relate to it please. Basicly its more like a management program in many universities with design elements and tools included.

You can skip the diagram section
However fill the description part of what the image could be (probably the first page of the website of luxurioussimplicity.com)

For the schedule, basically write the process for each week(it can be short) You can add things that you wrote in the research plan section.


For my activity report the teacher wrote the comment below; (please consider this while collecting data for the project and write them down)
(give example of some books and write why I need to read them, whats in them. (but only the books that I can find online in google))
(give some examples of blogs etc, and write why I need them)
( you can also add who I can interview and why)

--- TEACHER: I have reviewed your submission. This will not be as successful project if you do not do some up front research. I urge you to go to the library and look at trade magazines and writing especially in the retail merchandising sector to find the best sources for your topic. There is so much going on in this area. It would be a mistake to interview anybody until you have some current and relevant perspective. I also urge you to collect newspaper items and other media like blogs, social media, photos and put them into your web pages. Immerse yourself in the content and the process. Phone conversations will not get you where you want to be without qualitative content. This is an interesting subject that is so competitive, there is great content out there.

Since my English is not my native language use simple words. Thank you. If you use sources please make citations and put the website link.(if needed)

There are faxes for this order.

You are to write a 1-page paper, Summarize the article below. When quoting from article use APA format. Do Not Use Outside Sources.

Developing Text for Web-based Instruction: Davis
One of the major issues that faculty encounters as a design when these courses is how to incorporate the vast amounts of factual materials commonly in college-level courses. This is ample evidence to suggest that the use of tanks at least in any substantial quantity is problematic for online instruction. Faculty are told that learners seem to prefer to read textual materials in hardcopy form and will print to read in even the online instructional texts. In these cases the web-based becomes the text file dissemination device for online or web enhanced courses. In those instruction in higher education regardless to pedagogical approach requires use of text. Whether an instructor is providing course enhancement through the Web work a complete online course texts will be an integral part of the instruction.
The electronic text comes in a variety of forms some authors differentiate between hypertext, which is characterized by embedded links end nodes, and serial text which is designed to be read in a linear, sequential manner. Distinguishing between hyperbase, browsable databases that can be freely explored by the reader and hyper- documents that intentionally guide readers through an information space controlling their expiration a long lines of a predetermined structure. The term hypermedia typically refers to hypertext that incorporates other media such as audio, video, and graphics. For the purpose of this chapter the term continuous hypertext is used to refer to the kinds of texts we are most likely to encounter in web-based courses. This term is adapted from Muter 1996 to refer to hypertext that is intended to be used in a manner predetermined by the designer and that may or may not include graphics, audio, or video. In examining research and practice in the area of online tax this chapter does not focus on technical elements of web page design such as typeface, spacing, and use of color. Nor does it look at the design navigation system per se except as design relates to Pacific concept under discussion.
A great deal of information is available on the design of good web sites and it includes guidelines on the use of text. We are told to keep in short, use bullets, and highlight important information, and so on. Most of us perhaps especially those of us would teaching colleges and universities find these guides to be antithetical to academic writings downs and to the way we communicate to students about our disciplines. Nevertheless if we ignore the advice and upload our best lectures and commentary we know the students are likely to print them out and we are merely providing a different delivery mechanism for our print materials. If we assume that our students will print to read and therefore provide our textual materials in print or in a printable files he lose the opportunity to use in embedded links, illustrations, and activities some of the key instructional utilities of the Web that lead us to in the first place. All these options fail to exploit the Web's potential to encourage learners active engagement and Internet activity with the contents of our courses. Research on the use of online text for instruction although limited does offer some insight that can assist the developers of continuous hypertext for instruction.
One message that has a familiar amount of research support is that learners to nine the lengthy text online. For example in a study on use of web-based lectures found that two thirds of their students immediately printed the online lectures and most of others to read the first at the computer been printed lectures. Only two of 48 that they ran and study the documents on the computer. Other studies support this observation of learners behavior. There's also evidence to suggest that online reading is problematic for student studies comparing online with current reading have indicated that people read electronic text more slowly and that it is more tiring than reading from print. Web-based designer should interpret this research with caution keeping in mind that the Web is relatively new instructional medium, steel in the model T. stage of development. Most recently of the article suggests that modern technology has eliminated many of the problems that contributed to his lower and more tiring reading of computer screens and indicates that screen reading now can be as fast as reading from printed text.
Many of our current and potential online student regularly use the Web for recreation and commerce. They have come to expect sites that are so easy to browse pages that are so easy to scan and concise messages that enabled them to reach their goals as quickly as possible. With time and experience it is reasonable to some the students expectations and thus their defective Web learning strategies can devolve to accommodate different kinds of electronic text designed for different purposes. Just as students have learned to approach the reading of textbooks differently than the approach reading a magazine we can expect that they will learn to read their outline course materials differently than they read a.com web site experience and expectations are important determinants of behavior. The fact that students are more likely accustomed to reading academic text in it is printed form may in part explain their tendency to print and electronic course materials in order to read them. Others have observed in their studies that of online lectures the students seem to have been trying to replicate the conditions of the traditional lecture system and failed to adapt their study methods to the new system. Elaborates on this theme and described new forms of multimedia and metamedia literacies required for the 21st century. Just as students are not yet accustomed to learning from online text the faculty are not yet experienced in its development. There were so many examples of early faculty attempts to duplicate their printed materials online that the term shovel-wear evolved to describe the phenomenon. The early materials fell to take advantage of the interactivity of the wear and it is not surprising that students merely printed them out to read off-line. As faculty became more experience in the design and the use of continuous hypertext they are developing course materials that optimize use of the Web as an instructional tool materials that therefore include embedded incentives for and use online.
A fair amount of inquiry an observation supporting today's common knowledge about offering online Texas focus not on the use of the Web for injunction but rather on is used for commercial and recreational purposes. Many of the best guys were rating on the Web both online and in print are intended for the design of attractive and defective commercial web sites. Information about the design of good web sites is useful and important but its ability to be generalized to the design of goodwill courses is limited not in the least because of the difference is in purpose. Purpose or the task at hand and most mostly the complexity of the task has proven to be crucial factor in research on the efficacy of hypertext. Task complexity in their meta-analysis of experimental studies on interconnecting with hypertext. The fact that so much more is known about creating good web sites ban is known about creating good with was probably reflects the reality that there are more sites than it courses study. That this reality is changing however is evidenced by Campbell 2000 in her review of the period based architectures and frameworks for web design and in the examples of good practice she provides. Another problem of overgeneralization is the failure to distinguish between research and observation about different types of computer-based text. Some of the best articles on the use of electronic texts are based on hypertext systems designed for searching. These are collection or nodes of searchable information distinguished my frequent use of links and referred by as hyper-bases. Some of the findings from research on hyper-bases seems easily generalizable to a more linear structure of continuous hypertext of interest in this chapter. However hyper base research typically focus on the systems searchability then when used for instruction on students ability to locate answers to specific questioning using the system while continuous hypertext is used for overall comprehension. Just as caution is warranted in generalizing results of research on printed text to electronic texts so should we be cautious in applying the conclusion of research on one form of hypertext to the design and use of form created for an entirely different purpose. Limitation in our ability to learn from research point out that the inquiry, observation and experience that will form the foundation for the design and development of continuous instructional hypertext is yet in an infancy. Overgeneralization should not discourage others from trying to develop, evaluate, and improve instructional texts for web-based courses.

Purpose people seem to learn more effectively and efficiently when they approach the learning activity with specific purposes in mind. They need to understand why they are reading project with text for example and what kind of information they should be looking for as they read through it. Given the greater potential for traction via links or scrolling for example this principle is critically important for online texts. Well designed instructional text should include early on a rationale explaining the function of the tax and should convey what the instructor expects to learn from it. This is not to suggest that the students will fail to learn other things from the text but rather that they are more likely to learn what the instructor intends them to learn from it if those expectations are known. Some text authors communicate readers purpose by including specific objects at the beginning of the text however that learning objectives are more defective and more likely to be read it linguistically interesting are embedded in the natural flow of the text.
Structure one of the most persuasive themes in literature on text comprehension is the most importance of structure others point to research suggesting that structure may be even more important in electronic text because of the lack of physical cues regarding length of the document and its parts. Links to multiple text with differing structures I had to the naturally ill structured nature of some hypertext. Discussion of text designed for distance education emphasizes the importance of clear concise writing for text comprehension regardless of medium. To explain the importance of structure in electronic text points to research that shows that a reader's ability to understand and remember a text to construct a mental model of it depends upon its degree of coherence which has shown to be facilitated by a well-defined structure and rhetorical cues that reflect the structural properties. To the values of structure and reducing cognitive load -- clear consistent structure enables the reader to focus more mental comfort on reading and comprehending text. Strategies for providing structure in electronic documents include use of table of contents, overviews, headings and subheadings, graphical maps, and stable screen layout. That readers respond to global structures indicators such as headings, menu order, and underlining when they are reading complex expository texts to synthesize information. The use of continuity overviews in text designed for distance learning continuity overview shows relationship between previous readings and the new reading assignment. Research on the potential value of graphical maps for overcoming lower abilities in spatial relations, an ability that seems to have a more influence on one's efficiency in using hypertext than variables was such as cognitive styles and learning styles. It is important to note here that the use of Web browsers to display structure may be in it adequate. The use of a graphical browser to show text structure did not increase recall for comprehension of the materials nor did it increased recall of the text structure. It did however increased the actual amount of text that was read. For examples the use of page format as opposed to scrolling has been shown to enable users to develop a better sense of text. Stable screen layout, visualization of structure, and descriptive links increased document coherence and reduce cognitive load. Use of embedded closed screens information nodes that open and close within a document but does not exit the document helps prevent reader disorientation and retains the text structural coherence. Carefully selected metaphors such as file cabinets, bookshelves, or shopping malls, also have been used successfully for structuring and navigating hyper base. Metaphors may also have application for more linear instructional text particularly for organizing multiple reading in a section for across the entire course. One could easily imagine how content Reverend metaphors could be used to add structure to academic reading such as a museum display for a history or an anthropology course or a street scene for a course and social psychology. Metaphors have the added advantage of providing opportunities for students activate prior knowledge and relate it to current learning as they consider how the metaphor relates to the new information. That having students create their own structure for information is a viable learning a. However this technique is used as a synthesizing task that that's to already has read or browse the content materials so would be useful as an end of reading activity. Regardless of the strategies selected clarity and document structure is of paramount importance in the design of continuous instructional hypertext. Great care should be taken explicate and reinforce that structure in order to reduce cognitive load and facilitate learning comprehension.
Interactivity probably the single greatest advantage of electronic text over printed materials in its capacity for interactivity. With online texts students can access related information through links, visual through dynamic applets, and answer questions and receive immediate feedback. Instructors can in hand student motivation and learning through the use of application exercises, feedback, and a variety of media in their online text. In short the interactive nature of electronic text offers instructors the opportunity to increase the powerful educational effect of active learning. Moore 1989 describes three types of interaction in distance education, learning content interaction, learning-instructor interaction, and learner-learner interaction. Each is reverence of the discussion of web-based course design but the emphasis here is on learner -- content into action as affected by the design of continuous instructional hypertext. It is interesting although perhaps not surprising that experienced in distance education instructors rated asynchronous learner -- material interaction more important for learning than either synchronous teacher -- learner or synchronous learner -- learner interaction in distance education courses.
Text-embedded questions can be used to reinforce students perception of structure as well as to enable them to assess their own comprehension of content. Questions and other embedded activities can be used to break larger sections of text into smaller more manageable pieces thus potentially alleviating concerns related to extensive scrolling and reading online. Course management systems with their built in quiz functions, facilitate the use of embedded questions and feedback. Instructors can use surveys in quiz tools for pretesting to prop relevant prior learning and students enter a new topic or content area. Text embedded questions should elicit higher level as well as low-level learning. The importance of providing specific space to answer with text embedded questions. Students in that study who worked without a printed guidebook really took notes while reading even though they were directed to do so in answer to only those questions for which space was provided. Explicit directions for reading may help to overcome any natural reluctance or preconceived ideas the learner may have about reading online. Because students may expect to scan web-based materials or to print them for closer reading and because the instruction may intend for different textual materials to be used in different ways instructors should include specific directions about how students are expected to use electronic text. Specific directions for use of online materials can be combined with the meta-cognitive prompts suggesting for learning strategies, questions about perceived comprehension, or reminders of prior learning to improve reading comprehension and performance. Graphs, diagrams, and multimedia illustrations again with appropriate direction about the intended use can facilitate comprehension of ideas presented in the text. Some of the emerging capabilities and limitations of electronic graphics and animation offer a thorough and thoughtful explanation of the need to develop theoretical propositions to explain how and why graphical presentations are effective for learning. Possible explanations include aiding comprehension through visualization, reducing cognitive load, and better simulation of the real world. Multimedia materials will increase interactivity to the degree that we designed them to do so and should be accompanied by specific assignments that require students to interact with the materials. In designing continuous textile web-based courses great care should be taken to avoid the need for learners to install files and perform in the downloads unless these activities are warranted by the instructional value of the material. Graphics, animations, audio, and video should be use judiciously in web-based courses with the recognition that students may be accessing the course through a modem. End of reading problems and activities provide further opportunities to encourage learner content into action through applications, synthesis, and evaluation of the content. A major advantage of the Web is the instructors can design these activities to be completed individually or collaboratively, with the latter providing opportunities for interactions with other students as well as the content of the course. Problems and exercises are more effectively when they are graded and feedback provided. Interactivity is a primary pedagogical benefit of online text. A less interactivity is a major goal there is little reason to use continuous instructional hypertext rather than print for learning/teaching materials. The strategies can be used to effectively increased learner-content into action in web-based distance and distribute learning courses.
Summary
this chapter argues the continuous hypertext can be used effectively in online and Web enhance courses. Evidence is emerging to counter early warning systems are able to read anything but the briefest most convinced texts in an online format. Online course text can be carefully designed to incorporate what we have learned from research on electronic text although the research still is limited. The slowly emerging popularity and availability of e-textbooks and readers will provide opportunities to create and evaluate new versions of instructional hypertext. Distance education faculty should be encouraged to add to the current body of knowledge in this important area of study.

At the end of week three, an approximately 1200 word report is due that summarizes your research of a company based on its web page, and your idea for a web page of your own.


Your report should have two main sections:
The first section should be titled, A Report on the Product/Services/Promotional Strategies Offered by XYZ Company (select one of the companies to report about from the list below, OR one of your own choosing).

o For the section titled, A Report on the Product/Services/Promotional Strategies Offered by XYZ Company, briefly describe the products/services you found at your favorite company's web site, and indicate what you believe their promotional strategy is (Who they are targeting, what their central message is, what needs are being appealed to, etc.)
o I have provided a listing of some websites below; however, feel free to pick your own favorite site if you choose.
o This section should be about 600 words in length.



The second section should be titled, My Own Web Page.
o For the section titled, My Own Web Page, think about a business you would like to start, and how you would advertise it on your own web page (you can use ideas you obtained from reviewing different web sites).
o Provide me with information on:
Your company
Your product
How you would develop a web page for it
How you would promote your company with the web page (how you would reach your target market with your web site and how you would promote your product/service to your target market via the Internet)

o Also, please provide the following information under this same heading:

Define your product market using the four part description on page 72 of the text. Below is what is on page 72 of text.



What: 1. Product type (type of good and type of service)
To meet what: 2. Customer (user) needs
For whom: 3. Customer types
Where: 4. Geographic area

Define your target market in terms of the segmenting dimensions in exhibit 3-10 on pages 81. Below are the segmenting dimensions.

Exhibit 3--10 Possible Segmenting Dimensions and Typical Breakdowns for Consumer Markets

Behavioral

Needs Economic, functional, physiological, psychological, social, and more detailed needs.

Benefits sought Situation specific, but to satisfy specific or general needs.

Thoughts Favorable or unfavorable attitudes, interests, opinions, beliefs.

Rate of use Heavy, medium, light, nonusers.

Purchase relationship Positive and ongoing, intermittent, no relationship, bad relationship.

Brand familiarity Insistence, preference, recognition, nonrecognition, rejection.

Kind of shopping Convenience, comparison shopping, specialty, none (unsought product).

Type of problem-solving Routinized response, limited, extensive.

Information required Low, medium, high.


Geographic

Region of world, country North America (United States, Canada), Europe (France, Italy, Germany), and so on.

Region in country (Examples in United States): Pacific, Mountain, West North Central, West South Central, East North Central, East South Central, South Atlantic, Middle Atlantic, New England.

Size of city No city; population under 5,000; 5,000-19,999; 20,000-49,999; 50,000-99,999; 100,000-249,999; 250,000-499,999; 500,000-999,999; 1,000,000- 3,999,999; 4,000,000 or over.

Demographic

Income Under $5,000; $5,000-9,999; $10,000-14,999; $15,000-19,999; $20,000-29,999;
$30,000-39,999; $40,000-59,999; $60,000 and over.

Sex Male, female.

Age Infant; under 6; 6-11; 12-17; 18-24; 25-34; 35-49; 50-64; 65 or over.

Family size 1, 2, 3-4, 5 or more.

Family life cycle Young, single; young, married, no children; young, married, youngest child under 6; young,
married, youngest child over 6; older, married, with children; older, married, no children
under 18; older, single; other variations for single parents, divorced, etc.

Occupation Professional and technical; managers, officials, and proprietors; clerical sales; craftspeople,
foremen; operatives; farmers; retired; students; housewives; unemployed.

Education Grade school or less; some high school; high school graduate; some college; college
graduate.

Ethnicity Asian, Black, Hispanic, Native American, White, Multiracial.

Social class Lower-lower, upper-lower, lower-middle, upper-middle, lower-upper, upper-upper.

o This section should be about 600 words in length.

Note: DO NOT do much research on or provide a lot of demographic information right now.


Report # 2 will provide you with ample opportunity to discuss in depth, your research with respect to various segmenting dimensions.



COMPANY WEB SITES that you may want to use


Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream at http://www.benjerry.com/index.html


KFC at http://www.kentuckyfriedchicken.com


Pepsico at http://www.pepsico.com


Wendy's at http://www.wendys.com


Disney at http://www.disney.com/DisneyWorld


Coca Cola at http://www.coca-cola.com


Chrysler at http://www.chryslercorp.com


Nintendo at http://www.nintendo.com
Nike at http

Assignment: Design Summary Assignment Due date Sunday Midnight -July 18, 2004

Assignment Information
Maximum grade: 20
Due date: July 18, 2004
Instructions: Design Summary This section of the design summary includes the rationale and motivation for developing a product. (A web quest that teaches 5th grade students how to build a web page using Microsoft Word>) It should include: Goals - What is the purpose of your product and what are the results that should occur based on the use of your product? (Look for examples of goals on the "Goals and Objectives" page of the course content for ETEC 601.) Needs Assessment - This is the discrepancy between the desired state of knowledge and the present state of knowledge. The needs analysis establishes a need for the product based on data, interviews, personal knowledge, curricular mandates, etc. Section II: Performance Objectives - This section of the design summary includes statements of observable, measurable behaviors needed to provide a means for determining whether the instruction relates to established goals. The performance objectives provide a focus for planning lessons based upon appropriate conditions of learning and measuring learner performance. Learners can use performance objectives as guidelines for studying. For this product, include at least three performance objectives that you develop using the five-component style that will be taught, tested, and evaluated through your product. Section III: Learner Analysis - This section of the design summary examines entry behaviors and learner characteristics. To be effective, your product must evaluate the intended audience. Consult official school data. Consider the learner's age, maturity levels, traits, and abilities at entry level, etc., that are critical to the success of the product. Describe what the learner must know before using your program (skill sets, reading levels, etc.) and any special abilities required to achieve success (keyboarding skills, content knowledge, etc.). Section IV: Instructional Analysis - Also referred to as Task Analysis or Procedural Analysis, this section of the design summary lists the steps and skills used at each step in the learning procedure. Include a flowchart or other chart/list that defines and lists the steps required to meet each performance objective. Section V: Criterion-Referenced Test Items - This section of the design summary describes the assessment (e.g., pretest) used to evaluate student needs, document student performance or progress, and determine effectiveness of the educational product. This phase of design should be considered in the formative stages design, in relation to the accomplishment of the objectives.

In the past only the most cutting edge organizations had web pages or took advantage of the Internet. Today, even local public schools have extensive web pages.

? Does Starbucks have a web page? If not, why has it chosen not to have a web page? If so, what kind of web page does it have?

? How do employees at Starbucks use the Internet? Is Internet usage encouraged at Starbucks?

? How could the Internet be used to make Starbucks more efficient?

Navigate through the WebMD.com Website as a consumer making purchases, joining chat or discussion rooms. Make a detailed list of the specific legal and regulatory issues in the B2C site. Navigate through the WebMD.com Website as a buyer looking to put your companys information onto the WebMD.com website. Make a detailed list of the specific legal and regulatory issues in the B2B site for hosting your content on WebMD.com and describe what was found and how it relates to the lecture.

Lecture 4

The Internet was created for government purposes known as ARPANET. The designers had no intention of it becoming a commercial place to perform business transactions. Because of this security was never considered being a U.S. government network.

In the past few years the Internet has seen a growth of new e-businesses. Many of these businesses may not be viewed as legal or ethical. Some examples of these businesses are:

On-line Gambling
Prescription Medicine
Adult Entertainment

The U.S. Government has made On-line Gambling illegal. Many of these businesses setup their web and transaction servers in countries that permit On-line gambling such as Aruba, the Bahamas, and the Caymans. Unfortunately, U.S. regulation has not updated the Wire Act to include transactions over the Internet. It is this loophole that companies are taking advantage of. One of the next pieces of legislation to be created in Congress is an update to the 1999 Telecommunication Act that will address these types of activities.

A question is raised. Should U.S. regulation affect businesses outside of the U.S.? Many people view gambling as a legitimate form of business as seen in places such as Las Vegas and Atlantic City. Who is to say what is legal and what is not?

Prescription medicine has grown dramatically over the Internet primarily due to the high cost of non-generic drugs. Many companies have set-up storefronts to sell their medicine. In the U.S. prescription drugs have to be issued by a licensed doctor. To support this law, companies have hired real doctors to write prescriptions immediately over the Internet to full-fill this requirement. These doctors have not seen these customers nor have they fully evaluated their medical condition. Many times a few simple questions are asked prior to creating the prescription. Is this legal? Is this right?

Along with the many positive events the Internet has brought, there have also been some negative affects. One of these affects is SPAM (not the food you eat). Many of us have un-willingly approved third party customers to send us this mail when we have purchased items or registered on-line. Is this legal? An ethics question is raised when a child mistakenly views a pornographic picture for an adult content website. In the U.S. pornography is enforced until the age of 18 in most states. Is the law broken?

As you can see many of us will have different views as to what we believe is ethical and in some cases even legal. A better question needs to be asked that if we believe that laws need to be written to prevent such activity, how is it enforced. This class does not have the answers to these questions, but only raises the questions for discussion.

Below is support information for this weeks lecture. It is to be used as a guide.


OBJECTIVES
Identify the legal, ethical, and regulatory issues of eBusiness



I. Identify the legal, ethical, and regulatory issues of eBusiness

Ethics
Privacy
Intellectual Property
Other
Accessibility


Ethics

Principles of Right and Wrong used by Individuals
Value Judgements about what Behaviour is Good or Bad
Ethical Issues can be categorized as follows:
Privacy the collection, storage and dissemination of information about individuals
Accuracy authenticity, fidelity and accuracy of information collected and processed.
Property ownership and value of information and intellectual property.
Accessibility right to access information and payment of fees to access it.


Ethical & Legal Issues
Many of the ethical issues are encountered in the legal aspects of e-commerce. However, There is a difference between the two.
An unethical action is not necessarily illegal.

Ethical Issues of E-Commerce
Electronic commerce policies may include:

A clear, explicit statement of the organizations privacy policy
A policy statement addressing situations in which a persons permission must be secured before his/her ID, photo, ideas, or communications are used or transmitted
A clear policy stating how the company will inform customers of the intended uses of personal information gathered during an online transaction and how to secure permission from customers for those used
A statement that addresses issues of ownership with respect to network postings and communications
A policy of how the company monitors, or tracks, user behaviors on the Web site.

Legal Issues - Setting up a Website
Choosing a Domain Name
Ensure that other trademarks are not infringed
Distinguish the domain name by including type of service/product.

Selecting the content of the web site
Documents and trademarks may be protected and rights must be acquired.

Protect the content of the site and trademarks.
Decide whether to allow employees to set up their own Web pages on the company intranet.

Decide on standards of acceptable text and graphics.

Ensure that the content standards are explicitly clear and are consistent with other company policies on sexist and racist behavior.

Encourage employees to think about who should and shouldnt have access to information before posting the information on the Web site.

Remember that Web site content policies are an extension of other Netiquette guidelines, social etiquette, and common decency.

Legal Issues Advertising

Advertisement and Contractual Content
The content of the advertisement becomes part of the contract unless specifically excluded

Product Quality and Performance
The product must perform as per described by the seller.
Further information
Should be provided to encourage trust and confidence, e.g details of professional bodies, VAT Reg. No.
This information should be available on the site as soon as the consumer enters the site:
Description of goods and services
Prices
Delivery costs
Get out clause
Legal Issues - The Contract

The minimal scheme that matches the best practice and the proposed directive on e-commerce is:

e-catalogue, presented by the e-supplier.
first click, drag or similar action for ordering one or more products.

recapitulative page (Brief summary).
second click, drag or similar action for acceptance.

acknowledgement of receipt from the e-supplier
Shortening this process could be acceptable, only for professional purchasers, by prior agreement.

Privacy

The Safari text discusses some issues regarding privacy that we should be concerned with:

There are valid reasons to be concerned about privacy on the World Wide Web:

Cookie software: A site visited by a user can add a small text file to the visitor's browser that identifies the user to the site. The cookie is used for password authentication so that people are not required to type in passwords each time they visit sites to which they subscribe. They are also used, if a site has the person's e-mail address, to send personalized research or news leads to users based on their cookie. Sites can track customer behavior based on cookies. The cookie, however, does not divulge site users' e-mail addresses. Those are provided voluntarily via on-line registration, purchases or contests.

On-line registratin and contest forms: Telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, and home and business addresses are collected from on-line forms to various sites. These are frequently put into demographic databases and sold to direct marketers.

Powerful databases: Companies such as Lexis/Nexus and Database Technologies offer on-line services where, for a fee, direct marketers purchase personal data about consumers.

The "wired" universe: The rise in communicating computers makes databases available to anyone with a modem and a PC. People buy access to lists or they hack into computers containing personal information. As systems acquire more sophisticated security, hackers increase their own break-in capabilities. In 1996, hackers broke into the Department of Defense's computer system. Consumers are aware that computer systems are vulnerable to hackers and are leery of leaving private information on the Internet.

But what is Privacy? According to http://www.its.bldrdoc.gov/projects/devglossary/_privacy.html
Privacy is defined as, privacy: 1. In a communications system or network, the protection given to information to conceal it from unauthorized persons having access to the system or network at large. Synonym segregation. 2. In a communications system, protection given to unclassified information, such as radio transmissions of law enforcement personnel, that requires safeguarding from unauthorized persons. 3. In a communications system, the protection given to prevent unauthorized disclosure of the information in the system. Note 1: The required protection may be accomplished by various means, such as by communications security measures and by directives to operating personnel. Note 2: The limited protection given certain voice and data transmissions by commercial crypto equipment is sufficient to deter a casual listener, but cannot withstand a competent cryptanalytic attack.

Many people have the following view of privacy when using the Internet:

Right to be left alone when surfing
Privacy: people have the right
- Not to receive unsolicited commercial messages. (What about SPAM???)
- To object to the processing of his or her data for commercial purposes.
- Personal data can only be collected if consent has been obtained.

There are others legal issues that need to be addressed when building your website. Many of these legal issues are applicable to advertising and print media. Many of you may have heard of these issues, below is a brief description:

Intellectual Property:
Intangible creations protected by law

Trade Secret:
Intellectual work or product belonging to business, not in public domain

Copyright:
Statutory grant protecting intellectual property from copying by others for 28 years

Trademark:
Legally registered mark, device, or name to distinguish ones goods

Patent:
Legal document granting owner exclusive monopoly on an invention for 17 years


Conclusion

The legal issues of the Internet are to be resolved by U.S. court judges. Their judgments can only be enforced within the United States. Because the Internet is global, restricting web sites from other countries that do not comply to US laws will be difficult to enforce. For example, an Internet surfer can telnet (log-in) to a different companies server and view illegal content or perform illegal activity that technically is not illegal where that server resides.

It is up to the individual to control what they wish to see and do on the Internet. Until there is a global acceptance on policy, only the surfer can control what is legal and ethical.


There are faxes for this order.

I have chosen to write my paper on Computer and Web Ethics. I chose this paper, because I think it is important to understand this area, because with computers we have the ability to reach across cultural boundaries as well as we have an open door to our homes, and our children. Just think of those individuals that entice young men and women just to do them harm. It is sad to say, but in person people?s moral standards are easier to adhere too, whereas behind a computer screen in the privacy of one?s home those morals are more easily broken. Computer programmers have the ability to manipulate the numbers on web pages to make it seem like more people have visited than have actually have. This is unethically and not moral by any means, but do they do it? These are areas that need to be addressed. Yes this is an example that is minuscule, but it is a great example of manipulation and unethical behavior.

The type of document requested is Business Report

The Topic of the Business Report is:

Your college has decided to offer each student the opportunity to establish a Web presence on its server through a personal home page. As the head of media and information technologies, it's your job to develop clear and understandable directions for students who want to create their own Web sites whether they use HTML or any of the popular Web-page-creation software programs. After carefully analyzing your audience's needs and investigating your college's regulations about content and security, present students with a set of directions.


Written Report Parameters:

This report is that it must assume a business setting. You must incorporate at least THREE visual aids into the body of the report; one must be imbedded into the text of the document (between two different paragraphs):

1. You must use both primary and secondary research
2. You must incorporate at least ONE interview into the written report and oral presentation and cite the interviewee comments with proper format.
3. The report must be typed, double-spaced and contain a minimum of:

-Cover/Title page
-Memorandum for transmitting an internal report
(or Letter for transmitting an external report)
-Table of Contents page
-List of Figures/Illustrations page
-Executive summary
-Introduction section of the report
-Body section of the report
-Conclusions & Recommendations (this can be presented together
or separately)
-Works Cited page: use MLA
-Use at least 5 sources for your report
-Proper use of page numbers, headings

Be sure to use the 3x3 Writing Process for Reports:

Step 1: Analyze the problem and the purpose.
Step 2: Anticipate the audience and the issues.
Step 3: Prepare a work plan.
Step 4: Implement your research strategy.
Step 5: Organize, analyze, interpret, and illustrate the data.
Step 6: Compose the first draft.
Step 7: Revise, proofread, and evaluate.

This paper needs to be about creating the website only. Which fonts to use, how many items on the web page, etc. This is not about how to use. Only about how to create.

You are to write a 4-page paper. Read the article below and answer the discussion question. State the question first and then continue to answer. Do Not Use Outside Sources. Use APA format when quoting from reading. ***Carefully reflect on Garrisons viewpoint, whicih is at the end of the Moore/Kearsley article. ***

Question:
1.What do you think may be the advantages of the different technologies for teaching at a distance?

Moore/Kearsley
Instructional System Design
In addressing these questions, most organizations follow certain steps commonly referred to as ISD, or instructional systems design. Instructional systems design emerged after World War II, and with his origins in the pressure for designing training more efficiently during the war. It is a product of several their radical perspectives on learning and teaching; these include system theory, behavioral psychology, and communications and information theory.

Stages in Instructional Design
The central idea is that the development of instruction can be divided into a number of stages, each of which requires certain critical design decisions. In the analysis stage, the designer must conduct some form of task or job analysis or in an academic area must analyze content to identify the specific skills that are involved in the task war job war to identify performance that would demonstrate mastery of the subject matter. Another step in the analysis stage is to identify the current wrist of the learner and the learning environment, and to find out what the students need to know if they are to be able to perform the desired behavior at desired the level. In the design stage, the required performance of students as a result of the course and each of its components are articulated as learning objectives in very specific terms. Learning objectives have been classified my educational psychologist such as Bloom (1956) and Gagne et al. (1992). Blooms hierarchy lists six levels of objectives in the cognitive domain: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evolution. Gagne describes five types: intellectual skills, cognitive strategies, verbal information, motor skills, and attitudes. A learning object of consist of behaviors, the conditions under which it should be evaluated and a criterion for its measurement. Thus, test items matching the objectives can be created in the design stage. Since each objective designs a specific behavior, the media are selected to communicate the information to student needs and to provide opportunity for them to practice that particular behavior. If, for example, a college wishes its students to know Hamlet, this goal will have to be broken into many specific objectives; for each it will have to be decided what can be achieved by reading, by listening, by viewing, and by practicing (e.g. speeches). Testing and feedback will have to be designed to ensure student eventually can perform, in writing or orally, what is specified in each objective. Course designers must invest in an exhaustive effort to articulate what they believe their student should learn and how that learning will be demonstrated, as a result of their study in every module (typically the most gross division of a course), every unit, every lesson, and every part of each lesson. This does not (as some people think) limit distance teaching to merely lower-level, easily measured cognitive objectives at the expense of the learner creativity, learner involvement, or even learners self-direction; nor does it deny the development of problem-solving skills or knowledge and sensitivity in the affective domain. All these and similar high level learning provided it can be defined by subject specialists can be articulated to the students and their instructors in terms of what the learners will be able to do and what learners will be able to present as evidence of their accomplishment, by the end of the module, unit, lesson, or part of the lesson. If as is sometimes just that the behavior of a successful student in a given subject truly cannot be described, and the ending indeed it would be difficult to specify a learning object of, then it is equally impossible to construct a teaching program when it is not known what it is that one is trying to teach! Fortunately there are very few such cases; more often than not, the inability to define learning in terms of student behavior is a result of lack of knowledge about the procedure by the instructor(s). when help to achieve such specificity regarding their goals, most and shoppers appreciate the better quality that such clear vision brings to their teaching. During the development stage, designers and producers create the instructional materials that communicate what is needed for achieving the learning objectives. They include web pages, films, study guides, books, audio tapes and teleconference outlines. Teachers and staff may also need training at this stage. The implementation phase is a bit like the performance of a play that has been written and rehearsed; the audience (i.e. students) arrives. They register; finished functional materials are delivered, and the Interfax with their instructors and perhaps other students, based on the materials and teaching plans so carefully design in advance. Evaluation activities include ongoing (formative) testing and grading, unit by unit, module by module, at the implementation stage, as to whos worked through the course, as well as occasional investigations to assess the effectiveness of which include course materials and procedures. The result of this formative evaluation can lead to intervention to change the analysis, design, or development procedures; but mainly it leads to change in implementation, when results of the students test showed the need for intervention with particular instructors. Summative evaluation at the end of the course may lead to improvements in any of the phases of the model when the course is offered in the future.
A Planned Approach
The instructional systems design approach emphasizes planning. As little should be left to chance or ad hoc decision-making in the implementation stage as possible. Each stage of instructional systems design cycle results in a product that must be delivered in order that later steps in the instructional systems design process can move forward. For example, in the design phase, it is the statement of learning objectives that enable the development of an evaluation plan that outlines how the course will be assessed and how learning will be measured. Planning the teaching strategies, such as how information will be presented and what activities learners will be expected to do, cannot begin until the objectives and evaluation plan have been prepared. Each of these different stages of course design in a subsystem, linked together into a system. The five stages are shown as a cycle, since this is an ongoing process. For example, even though the activities of analysis are conducted at the beginning of a development effort, they could be revisited in any time if there is a question or problem about the validity of the instructional needs, learners, or the learning environment. Evaluation of one course or part of the course is very closely related to the analysis of need for a subsequent course. The extent to which some or all of the procedures are followed in each stage of the instructional systems design cycle depends upon several factors. One is the understanding of the educators involved, another is the commitment of the teaching institution to the instructional systems design approach and the extent to which the institution is actually organized to support it. It is a time-consuming process and can be expensive. It is difficult for an individual teacher to follow the model except officially because of the time needed. Open universities, large corporations, and the Department of Defense tend to employ instructional systems design approaches more extensively and more intensively then do traditional universities or home study schools. This is party a result of the training that is given to employees of those institutions; partly the greater funding they often have; and partly the way he that such organizations are organized to support a total systems approach to education and training. Many academics resist the discipline and the supervision implied in working in a systems way. However there is very little doubt that there is a direct relationship between the time and effort put into the instructional systems design and the ultimate quality of the distance education program.
The Development Team
On several previous occasions, we have suggested that designing in teaching he distance education core should be a team effort. The size of the team may be small, with a view as two individuals (the author editor model) or may be a large group of 20 or more people (the course team model). The size and nature of the team depends mainly on how the providing institution has organized its distance education program, which in turn reflects its mission and the policies of its management. Developing a course by using only one or two people is far less intrusive on the mainstream activity of a dual mode institution then developing a course with a course team.
The Author Editor Model
The authoreditor model was the usual method of course development in the correspondence instruction , when the a subject matter expert rule the draft of correspondence study guide and an editor polished it up in readings for production. The course development process is a matter of getting reviews from other experts and perhaps potential students, obtaining copyright clearance, designing page layout, proofreading, making corrections, and printing or duplicating the text. Although the author-editor of approach developed as the favorite way of producing printed correspondence courses, an analogous practice occur with some web-based instruction, were an academic forefront of content experts provide the subject matter, which a Web designer in authors for placing on a server. Which is usually missing in these arrangements is an instructional designer and the investment of time that the instructional systems design approach requires. At best, the author or web designer must try to influence the author to produce learning objectives, evaluation criteria, and teaching strategies, which some content specialists are willing and able to do, and others are not. The familiar patterns is for a content expert to think of learning objectives as content to be present, rather than what learners will be required to know. Such experts invariably present a volume of materials in excess of what a student can learn in the time available. A competent instructional design always ascertains the study time available, and in Taylors the content accordingly! Sometimes a web designer can achieve these Indians, but in real life, editors and Web designers are outranked by authors, and the authors will usually prevails.
The Course Team Model
The single mode open universities use the team approach to course design, and the UK open University provided the best-known examples of this model. Each course is designed and produced by a team that might consist of as many as 20 oh more people, in which every member is a specialist. At the stage design of the in traditional systems design process, a group of academics who are specialists in different aspects of the subject rights outlines the what should be taught in their particular specialties, and it engaged in extensive negotiations regarding the allocations of the students time budget for study in the course. They produced drafts of learning objectives and conscience of each unit and modules into which the course time budget dished ruptured. As well as taking responsibility for content in the study guide, the academics assemble books of readings; make audio and video recordings, plan web pages and web-based activities, and design test and exercise, all with the assistance of specialist in these tasks. These technical experts include: where producers, text editors, graphic designers, radio and television producers, instructional designers, librarians, and even a specialist photoliberian. On every team are one of more specialists in the adult distance learning process, people will close contact with the ultimate users of the course materials. Ash draft course outlines and objectives are debated, decisions are taken about teaching strategies, such as, for example, were proportion of time is it to be spent on readings versus audio or video materials. From the first expiratory meetings of experts and practitioners in the field to divine the object is in content, the process depends on many formal and informal meetings, a lot of telephone and e-mail consultation, and a great deal of argument. In the teams Ritalin meetings to review each component of the course as it is designed, arguments may be fierce regarding what content to include, and especially on what is to be left out, with subject experts defining their own territory against their rivals. Criticism of the draft materials is also intends. They are written and rewritten, to take into account the various criticisms, and must be approved by the whole team before finally been approved for production. Eventually after several separate and drafts have been presented (in the case of UKOU practice there are three), a prototype for the study guide on that subject emerges. Then photographs or artwork can be commissioned, audio and video components can be scripted, and the production process can begin; with audio and video programs being carefully integrated with the printed study guide and even the discussion questions for tutorial at study sinners or online being planned to fit well with the audio, video and text materials. Copyright clearance must be octane for materials from secondary sources, for which purposes the single mode institution is likely to maintain a specialist copyright office. Manual for instructors who will implement the course include guidelines about what is required in each assignment the vital student product that forms the basic formative assessment. Finally, meetings are held in the field with representatives of students, tutors, and employers to test the course materials and assure they are effective. Managing the course development process and of course team is very complex business, with many tasks to be accomplished by different people. It is usually desirable traversing your academic to head out the team and steer the process, and an administrator to be responsible for ensuring that each task in the development schedule (which often last 1-2years) is completed on time.
Strengths and Weaknesses
Both the author-editor and course team approaches to the development and delivery of distance education have their strengths and weaknesses. The author editor model is a great deal cheaper than a course team, and results in relatively quick development and modification of courses. In American universities work out which he have other responsibilities at least as great as those preparing courses for distance teaching, it has proven, so far, impossible to find an organizational structure that can successfully demand more of their time than that required by the author editor model. There are disadvantages with this, however. Neither the content specialist nor the editor/web designer is an instructional designer, but if one of them has instructional design skills, the content and teaching strategies are derived from the knowledge and experience of only one or two people. The greater wealth of knowledge and experience in the course team almost inevitably means the course materials will be superior. Furthermore, the course thing, since it has representatives of different technologies and media, encourages the use of multiple media; whereas the author-editor model typically results in teaching been delivered by a single medium the medium that the editor is an expert in. The course team, approach, however, is very labor intensive and therefore expensive,and it involves an empty development period. It can be justified for courses with large enrollments having long-term use, where is it would not make economic sense for a course with very small enrollments or short life expectancy. To obtain the benefits of the team approach at a cost effective level, it is necessary for administrators to organize the presentation of courses to a larger population, and dust or paint economies of scale that make the team approach viable. This takes us back, yet again, to the underlying problem of wheat organizational structures are rising from week institutional and national policies that often prevent the application of the best practice. In the US, virtual courses of specialist from different institutions have been assembled by some of the consortia.
The Lean Team
In dual mode institution were courses have not only been delivered by correspondence, but also by television, video conferencing, or the Internet, the author-editor partnership has sometimes expanded to include a member of other specialist, though not on a scale comparable to the course teams of the single mode institutions. Some special skills and attitudes are needed to be a successful member of a design team, and these are not the skills and attitudes normally associated with University academics. First, it has to be recognized that no individual is a teacher in this system, but that indeed it is the system that teaches. Even the content is not owned by a professor, but is the product of group consensus. Team members have to be willing to bury their eagles and relinquish decision-making control to the team, to be willing to compromise and to it here to decisions taken by consensus. A hearing to procedures and policies established by the group is essential if the work is to flow smoothly. For example, if a standard format is established for a study guide or for a web site, course writers and designers cannot prepare the materials in any other format, or there could be an oval run in the time allocated for editing and layout of the guide.
Designing Study Guide
Almost all distance education courses are based on a study guide, which provides a map of the course and the framework for the other materials to rest on. Much of the presentation of information, and analysis, explanation, and discussion that an instructor might make in face-to-face settings can be put into the study guide. Traditionally the study guide is distributed in printed form, but it may be placed on an Internet server. A typical study guide contains the following: an introduction to the course and a statement of its goals and objectives, a calendar and schedule of when specific lessons or activities are to be completed, a map that makes the structure of the course clear, guidance about how to use the time allotted study, a substantial presentation of information relevant to each objective, with the instructors commentary and discussion, explanations of relationships between conscience of reading and other media, directions for activities and exercises, a set of self testing questions to be answered or issues to be discussed for purpose of self evaluation, an explanation of the grading scheme and other course requirements, directions and advice regarding the preparation and submission of written and other assignments, an annotated bibliography and other references, suggestions for application work or other activities outside the course, suggestions regarding good study techniques, and information about how and when to contact an instructor or counselor. The study guide is quite different from a textbook war looks of readings. These are intended primarily to communicate information; the study guide is intended to communicate teaching. It has sometimes been referred to as a tutorial in text. Even an online course can be considered a tutorial in text.
Creating Lessons or Units
The information and activities that are communicated in distance learning mature should be organized into self-contained lessons or units. One other reasons a person enrolls any distance learning program, rather than simply research the subject alone, is that a course of study provides a structure of the content and the learning process. The place to start is to lay out how the team will use the number of hours for student is to devote to the subject. If, for example, the courses 150 hours in land and there are 15 weeks for completion, the course can be constructed in 15 units of 10 hours. Then the amount of reading, writing, viewing, listening, practicing, and testing can be designed within this time budget. Each unit might correspond to a single instructional objective, and includes some or modify you wish an activity that allows students to check the extent to which they have learned the materials. Some teams might want to break each unit into 15-20 minute segments of study. In this way, a unit could correspond to what would be done in a 90 minute classroom session, but consist of six separate activities. For one period the student may read the study guide; then be told to make some notes, then to listen to an audiotape or online audio clip next to do a self tests, and finally read the study guide again. In distance education courses that involve teleconferences, each unit of the course guide could correspond with separate teleconference. In an online course, the design is my budget a period of time for searching the web in an individual or group project and sometime maybe given to participate in the discussion forum. Although some academic purists made express the view that breaking the course material into many small units makes it choppy or disconnected, there are several reasons why it is good to brick the course down into a series of units and short lesson segments. For one thing, it makes it easier for the student to fit study into the normal, active adult life cycle; covering three segments of the unit might use up exactly the time of a daily railroad commute, or the time that is available when the chow is in day care. Short segments also help the student to concentrate, and makes information easier to assimilate and to integrate. Segmenting the content and activities allow students to stop when they want to, providing a sense of closure and progress. It is also easier to identify student problems with the materials is divided up this way, since they can be localized to a specific objective or learning activity. Instructional designers should aim to bring integration into the pieces by discussing the relationships among content in the introduction to each unit and in summaries, as well as by designing evaluation activities that require the student to make their own comparison and linkage.
Writing Style
Although all authors can be encouraged to develop some personal writing styles, it is important that study materials be written in a conversational rather than a literary or scholarly tone. This means using the first person rather than a third person, and using a simple vocabulary as the subject and level of student allows. The study guide is meant to substitute for the normal explanations given by an instructor in a classroom or instructors office, and the language should reflect this. The way in which difficult concepts are recognized as such, the use of personal anecdotes or examples, comments reflecting different opinions or disagreements with the texts or readings, and rising of questions for students think about, all helped to establish a more institutional atmosphere in the study guide. Ideally, the design team can project finished up his personality into the study guide, so the student have a sense of being taught by a specific individual. Although this may appear to be inconsistent with the point made earlier about a distance education course being told by a team, it is not. This course is designed and delivered my team, but at the point of interface of the learner with the system, designed to provide a named and knowable human face, which humanizes the experience from the students point of view.
Layout
ust as the experience classroom teacher has a repertoire of aural and visual techniques for drawing attention to certain points, ways of planting questions or ideas in the students mine, and techniques for provoking responses and for helping students bring synthesis and closure, so all these must be accomplished by designers are teaching at a distance. One of the techniques for doing this is the creative positioning of text and graphic on the printed page for online screen. Probably the most important factor in organizing printed text is allowing ample white space in the document so it is visually attractive and avoids overloading the learner with too much information at one time. White spaces in the text literally give a student space to think. Online, the same principle applies, with care taken not to put too much information in one screen. In the same way, choices of typefaces, indentations, graphics, and headings all play pedagogical roles in the study guide, whether in print for online. Use of color can be helpful bowled in inch dropping the content as well as producing an attractive an interesting document or web site, but successful application depends on professional understanding and judicious selecting from among alternatives.
Designing and Audio-Conference
Audio conferencing is an excellent technology for delivering small-scale distance education since it can be used with a minimum of technical assistance and is cheaper than other forms of teleconference. It can also be a valuable part of a multimedia delivery system. Unfortunately it is now overshadowed by enthusiasm for text based online conferencing, which is a pity because an audio conference can be a very nice complement to the text. The first step in designing a course base and audio conference is the creation and you should be of the study guide, readings and other recorded materials. The series of audio conferences will provide opportunity for elaboration, explanation and exchange of ideas, and bring a long life and color to the learning experience but they have to be designed to complement the distance and density of information that can best be communicated by a textbook or other readings. Therefore it will still be necessary to provide a study guide that gives the background information necessary to understand the content and to participate in the discussions. As mentioned before and outlines the guide can be an excellent complement to the audio conference technique. Every audio conference must have a structure. The structure is more open than that of a radio program and probably more open than a videoconference. However although from the point of view of the student in the conference and there may appear to be no type structure and there may appear to be considerable freedom to be spontaneous in participating, the instructor should have a firm understanding that all times of where the students are in the sequence of planned events and where they are going next. For this reason, one of the most important design steps is to prepare an outline of the planned audio conference that identifies the segments and student activities against schedule. In most programs are typical segment is usually to be about 10 to 15 minutes in length and correspond to a specific learning objective. So segments the ideally correspond to the segments in the study patterns as discussed previously except the material in the audio segment consist of comments, questions, or ideas intended to promote interaction. It could involve an interview (live or taped), panel, debate, role-playing, brainstorming or simply a short introduction by the injector. It should never consist of a simple reading from bills or a text. A very valuable technique is to organize students to make brief presentations of assignments or their own projects. A third preparatory step is for the instructor to prepare a class roster with background information about each to lose that can be you referred to easily during an audio conference. This lousy and structure to add specific students questions related to the interest or experiences and enables the instructor to control both excess and inadequate of inputs by different individuals. This class roster can be distributed to all students as well as facilitate interaction. As we have stated before the reliability of the communication technology is an absolutely central prerequisite for a successful teleconference. Students should never have difficulty hearing even in an audio conference that is more important than seeing. The technology should be made as transparent as humanly possible the simplest way of ensuring this is to test the connections and sound quality before the students arrive. But not only once. An hour before the class may be too late to fix a serious problem. Our practice is to test a month before the beginning of the sequence of the teleconference been a week prior to the first event and then the day before, and finally the before. After the course is underway and things are proper written smoothly we can test the day before an hour before the class. In this way we has been able to avoid the embarrassment and disillusioned we have witnessed were in shelters have simply plunked in the audio equipment, experience noise or the problems and had a disastrous session usually blaming the hardware when in fact the basis of the problem was the failure to set up and tested it adequately.
Designing a Satellite Video-Conference
Satellite video conferences are frequently one-off events but they can also be organized in the sequence similar to the audio conference discussed previously. Similar design consideration to those listed for the audio conference apply but there is likely to be more supporting personnel involved in the audio conferencing. This brings its benefits but also adds the responsibilities of the insured. A typical satellite videoconference is 1-3 hours in duration, originates from one site, and is broadcast in many locations nationally or internationally. Usually video images transmitted to the distant sites and communication from the sites to the transmitting stations by audio (i.e. telephone). Most successful video conferences involving local component (e.g. panel of local experts or small group discussion sessions), which helps participants applied to the content of the program to their own settings. A satellite videoconference is a more structured event with less into action then an audio, audio graphic, or two-way videoconference for an online discussion forum, because of the large number of sites and large number of people involved. The balance between presentation and interaction in a satellite video teleconference leans more toward the presentation than the interaction.
Components of a Satellite Teleconference
Here are the major components in activities that have to be designed for the satellite video teleconference: locating and preparing site coordinators. Good site coordination can make or break a teleconference. In some organization this is an official job responsibility though probably not a full-time art in some cases someone will be designated for will volunteer for the role. Since it must be assumed that the site coordinator me not have much experience it is important to provide detailed guidelines checklist are ideal for task that should be performed, their progress in the following these guidelines should be checked by telephone. The site coordinator identifies local experts were willing to participate and also arranges for technical support, equipment needed facilities, and catering. And selecting the teleconference dissenters and moderator. Popular presents readers are usually experts in the field but also have the kind of dynamic personality that projects well in television. Once the presenter have been selected they must provide materials for graphics, video tape segments and the participants package. The moderator should have conscience expertise as well as television and conferencing experience. The moderator must manage the presenter deal with partcipants questions aimed any discussions that occur as well as followed the instructions of the director or producer. It into action is considered important in a particular program and it is the moderators job to ask the questions and stimulate discussion. Preparing the satellite teleconference announcement and participants materials. The teleconference announcements plays a critical role in attracting participants in establishing their expectations about the content. Announcements provide details on the originator, date and time of transmission, satellite band, rationale, objectives, intended audience, content online, credentials of presenters and their topics, registration fees, which Chechens on taping and reuse, and cancellation policy. Site coordinators should provide posters, press release and promotional videotape to help the market the teleconference locally. Participant materials presenters biography, readings, bibliography, resource lists insure that participants have all necessary reference material to prepare themselves for the teleconference. In order to do should be them to the sites in a timely fashion is necessary to prepare them and well in advance this means finalizing all details of the teleconference quite early typically 6-9 months before the teleconference date. Preregistration/registration participants must usually preregister for the teleconference and be provided with details about the location, agenda, background experts, and relevant readings. Typically, participants receive packages of materials when they register. One site registry she should begin well before the teleconference starts 1-2hours. Preconference activities: rehearsal. A well executed video teleconference is a complicated undertaking and it must be with her stick everything is to go smoothly. The moderator should go through the complete script with the producer/director and practice each segment. Presenters should run through their segments a number of times so they are comfortable with the timing, camera angles, and use of graphics and video tapes. Panel discussion and calling questions can also be practice with the site coordinators they will not be the same during the teleconference but the general nature will be the same. Before the teleconference begins participant should have an opportunity to meet each other as well as the local experts. This meeting may take place in the form of an informal coffee hour or formal presentation by the local experts in a panel. The tests, in the hour before the teleconference, technicians checked out the settling signal as well as a television monitor, speakers, and microphone or fax to be used for questions. The teleconference a schedule should be prepared according to principles illustrated in the various sections regarding the audio conferencing. This will be particularly important at the transmitting site where camera work is needed to cover a variety of events and technical person theyll need to know what is to be expecting. With other systems that force the instructor to manage cameras and other equipment having a well-prepared schedule is even more critical. Interaction during the teleconference there should be opportunities for participants at each site to ask questions and make inputs. This has to be managed by the local site coordinator in conjunction with the originating site. Participants may pastor questions directly or give them in written form to the site coordinator to ask or even to fax. Backup arrangements have to be playing to deal with transmission problems during the conference a satellite link is more likely to be interrupted than an audio link. Post conference activity after the teleconference the local experts may be asked to comment or answer questions. Participants might break into working groups or discuss specific issues. Alternatively the teleconference may be followed by a social event that allows informal discussions. Wrap up and evaluation the moderator should summarize the main points of the teleconference and any themes that emerge in the Post conference discussion. And evaluation questionnaire should be completed by participants to access the effectiveness and the value of the teleconference.
Design and Development of Web-Based Courses
Web-based injunction can be invaluable component of the multimedia course work the course can be delivered on the Web alone. It is an increasingly common practice in conventional teaching institutions required about to take on a small number of students at a distance, teaching a course designed entirely by the classroom instructor. Among the drawbacks to this is the weak quality of most and do-it-yourself instructional design and especially the inability of Internet to deliver good-quality video and sound even if the injectors able to design audio and video program. Whether the web materials are designed by the classroom should go or by a web designer on behalf of the course team there are at least three approaches to the process of design and development. They are by use of authoring tools, by designing materials as Web documents, and by using integrated learning systems. Some of the best-known authoring tools for designing introduction to be delivered on computers are authorware, toolbook, director, and flash. These tools allow the designer to create interactive sequences, animation, cats, and multimedia presentations. Although powerful these schools are not easy to learn. They were designed prior to the emergence of the Web although they all can be used to produce where programs this is a relatively complicated process. In the simplest way to produce web-based learning materials is to create them as Web documents in HTML format using a web editing programs such as Microsoft FrontPage or Macromedia Dreamweaver. Also the latest version of Microsoft Word and PowerPoint can save documents directly in Web format. They can then be uploaded to a server and the URL provided to students to allow access. Links can be placed in documents to allow movements throughout the documents or to access external documents. However it is not possible to develop interactive exercise or cast without using the Web programming language such as JavaScript or Java. Most do it yourself instructors uses approach to put syllabus, so the guys, readings, handouts and other course materials online with your students.if an online courses being delivered fire and integrated learning systems such as blackboard or web C. T. the content can be designed using the editing capabilities of the system. The system provides a structure for the creation of the course materials, and the instructors decide which of the options provided they want to use. Content can be typed indirectly or cut and paste from other documents. Editing devices are also provided for the creation of exams and surveys. Although it takes a little more time to Keith used to creating course via an integrated learning system most than shelters are comfortable using them with in a few weeks. Although use of integrated learning system makes it relatively easy and quick to develop an online course it does not allow for the creation of interactive activities or multimedia. For that authoring tools must be used. Regardless of how content is created for online courses the same kind of creativity must be put into the layout and design of web pages as we discussed earlier with regard to print. Although Web design principles are similar in some respects to those for print design, they are additional factors to be considered due to the nature of screen display and use your controls. The most important consideration are reliability, usability, and information complexity. Like print documents screens must be made as easy to read as possible. This depends upon typography, layout, writing style, and organization. Web sites must also be easy to use (i.e. to navigate) because they become too complex, most users will get agitated and stop using them.
Designing for Accessibility: Students with Disabilities on the Web
U.S. Census data idicate that 20% of the Americans about 27 million people have some kind of disability. Online courses are both a boon and a bane to disabled individuals. On the one hand they provide learning opportunities free from the complications of attending classes. On the other hand many web-based courses present new problems, for example, screens that are difficult to view, sites that are difficult to navigate, color they cannot be distinguished, and audio that cannot be heard. The promises and pitfalls of online learning for disabled individuals are discussed by Cantor (2001); Kim-Rupnow, Dowrick and Burke 2001; and Robertson 2002. Designing online courses so there are accessible to disabled learners is more than merely the right thing to do. Section 508 of the US Rehabilitation Act mandates that all government-funded information technology which includes web-based courses designed by any Federal or department of defense agencies must be fully accessible to persons with disabilities.
Designing student participation
Regardless of what form of distance education is being designed one implement that must be uppermost in the designers mind is to the extent of student participation that is needed and how to engineer. In an audio, video, computer-based or web-based course that is usually achieved by setting of discussion groups, or making students contribute their own presentations. More structured activities such as quizzes, role-play, or simulations can also be arranged. Students need to be given a chance to ask or answer questions and in the most subjects need an opportunity she to express opinions. Participation in this kind of activity can be integrated with a print base course or video telecourse by the addition of a teleconference or by setting up student discussion groups at local sites. People are naturally more cautious at a distance especially when theyre not able to see the other participants and more so in asynchronous rather than synchronous communication. For this reason whether the form of communication technology used participation is not likely to happen unless it is well-planned and the structures have training to facilitate it. It is not possible to provide an interconnect technology and study is limited to recorded material such as the printed study guide or audio/video tapes getting the student into a pact with the subject is even more challenging. One way course designers can achieve some degree of student participation is to present questions or problems that require response for example, at the end of each unit such items can be multiple-choice or open-ended questions with the answers as close as a part of the narrative texts were recorded media. Although some students will skip the self test more will take advantage of the opportunity to shake their understanding of the materials. In most distance education courses students have a hand in assignment for evaluation and communication technology used for this allows them to ask and receive responses to questions. Giving feedback in this way allows the instructor, moderator, or the tour to establish some sense of participation in the course. Although many students can tolerate sums it laid most people like feedback to be immediate and few people find one-way communication with no feedback to be given, the subject of interaction between student and instructor, students and students.
Self-directed Learning
The ability to undertake all or most of the design of ones own learning to evaluate ones performance and take a justice of quarterly arent you attributes of a self-directed learning. People who arent good self-directed learners are able to design their own learning objectives, identify resources that will help them achieve their objectives, choose learning methods to achieve the objectives, and test and evaluate informants. Distance education is easier for people who have some degree of ability to direct their own learning that it is for people who will are very dependent on futures direction, encouragement, and feedback. Desires of distance education material like other educators must keep in mind the desirability of encouraging and supporting self-directed learning while its same time giving the sport needed by people at different stages of silk directness. The range of ability to see self-directed and the exercise to learner autonomy is the key concept in distance learning. The most important thing to remember is that more on anonymous, self-directed learners need less into action with instructor and needless instructor materials and people were less capable at managing their own learning. Very in mind that interaction costs money and time it becomes important for the decided to give to estimate the extent to which their students are able to hold independently and the extent to which they need interaction with instructor and teaching situation.
Monitoring and Evaluation
In distance education because the learner is separate from the instructor and instructors usually separated from the administering agency success of the whole enterprise depends on an effective monitoring and evaluation system. For instructor it is not only by using very which matures and procedures designing web pages institution that they can know if there students are experiencing difficulty. With the right kind of evaluation data it should be possible to determine precisely what kind of help is needed by a particular individual. It is the monarchy system that provides data. A good monitoring system also tells the ministries of our problems experienced by the shelter as well as a student and indicates if delays or breakdowns occur in the communication system while theres still enough time to take a remedial action. Effect of monarchy requires a network of indicated that picked up the necessary data about learners performs instructor performance this must be done rapidly and routinely in the data has to be relayed with a similar routine to a control center where it can be evaluated. Evaluation in this context is the process of analyzing the feedback data gathered by the monitoring system, reviewing it, and making decisions about well the distance education system and its various parts are operating as learners, instructors, designers, administrators, and communication resources work together to accomplish short and long-term goals. For an educational system the most important of these goals are learning outcomes however the articles are legitimate and may be monitored and evaluated e.g. maintaining cost-effectiveness or rectifying demographic imbalances in the student population. One of the few generalizations one can make about any distance education program would ever the communication technology use whatever the level of the content is that a good monitoring and evaluation system is likely to lead to the excess will program while a poor systems almost certain to lead to failure. What, then, are some of the features of a good system? There are three key features.
The first is the preliminary specification of the learning objects is that were mentioned earlier. From the beginning of the course design process until the final summation evaluation of the project and no matter how large or small the course for how long or brief is duration the central questions arent the same, namely :did each student produce evidence of having learned what was required as a specifiedin the learning objectives, and if, why not? All evaluations must mostly address the question and whether or not be of value waiters can show whether the project was effective will depend mostly on how well the object is of the project have been stated at all levels of course. The second key to success monitoring and evaluation is the construction and later the handling of the product submitted by the students were trainees as evidence of learning, commonly referred to as assignments. It is the assignments that provide indicators that were referred to earlier they are the source of feedback signals that should alert authorities threw out a system whenevr a problem arises. In most courses the assignment is a written document handed to an instructor in person at a steady site or sent by mail either electronically or hardcopy format. It may be an essay, map metal compilations, a report observation of natural phenomenon, an experiment, or social event; it could be a multiple-choice tests, and analysis of the case that he, the solution to a problem, it could be it a work of art, poem or a piece of music. Use of tape recordings, audio or video, allows the students report or an even wider range of learned accomplishments and then text alone permits. All that is necessary in designing interests and swore Simons the size a crystal-clear awareness of the learning that the students expected to straight is a created interest in the task worth stating because it is often missing when people constructing a course understand content far more than process and an appreciation of the instructional value that really interests and challenging assignments add to the course. A related awareness the absence of which explains many unsuccessful assignments is that of time limitations. Every lesson in every course has to be completed within their defined period of student time and that budget has to be included the time needed to complete the assignment if course designers asked for in an assignment that can be accomplished within the time budget obviously there will be a greater or lesser degree of failure though no fault of the student or perhaps the instruction. When failure occurs evaluators need to look at several remedies, as will be discussed shortly but it is worth saying here that one remedy is to consider whether the assignment itself is unachievable in the allotted time.
Many years of research provide some snippet in knowledge about assignment and a Simon handling. We know that distance learners are more likely to continue and complete a course if they have frequent assignments. We also know there is a close relationship between students propensity to continue or dropout of a course and the length of delay between assignments submissions and returns. We know that early success in assignment completion is expressed important and that the capacity to tolerate agitation with assignments grows with experience as a distance learner. From such research and experience we know that in a typical course it may be desirable to require submission of a Simons as prickly as once a week. When this is the casein sharpener has two responsibilities to respond weakly to the student and to make weekly reports of results of the assignments to the agencys administration. This leads to the third key to good monitoring and evaluation which is a good data gathering and reporting system. Whether weekly or less frequent after the introductory value waste assignment instructor must have procedures and documents report such data as the date of receipt of assignment and scores or grades given. In a major distance education system theres likely to be a regional administration as well as a central administration so that reports have to be provided for evaluation and a regional as well as a central level. The region review reports from a sure person submits composite reports or reports to exceptional instance to the center. In a dual mode institution reports of student progress may be presented to both the academic department as well as distance teaching department. Whatever the particular administrative culture however what is common is the necessity for reports to review by senior staff in the system were able to recognize symptoms of system failure. At higher levels i.e. beyond the instructor marching is a default system, regional and central administrators do not normally review satisfactory assignments or looked in depth that instructors or study sites were students show evidence of satisfactorily meeting learning objectives. Like a pilot in the cockpit who looks with a red lights not green their interest is not primarily in the indicator showing where the system works i.e. the students are learning to look for the warning signals that indicate some part of the system is inoperative or operating below expectations. More specifically if a student fails to complete an assignment while other students evaluated by the same instructor do so, the inch Drucker is alerted to identify and rectify the problem experienced by the particular student. However if all or many students of the same inch dropped or have difficulty with an assignment and students of other instructors to not evaluators must ascertain what circumstances cause difficulty for the particular group of students. Perhaps the instructor is misinterpreting evaluation criteria perhaps the group of students did not receive a package of learning materials perhaps an incorrect interpretation was given at the study site tutorial meeting. At a more general level steel if all the students in the region failed to complete the assignment and those and others do it successfully there is a suggestion of a regional breakdown perhaps Internet connections failed, or television broadcast that reached other regions was not received in the region in question; perhaps assignment packages arrived late and assignments were rushed, etc.; perhaps a briefing or training session was missed in that particular region. Finally, evaluators have to deal with the situation in which large number of students across the whole system perform badly on an assignment, the administration then has to investigate if the teaching materials were inappropriate, the objectives was unattainable, or the assignment itself was an ineffective measure of the objective.
With clearly specified learning objectives and instructional materials and procedures developed to help students and trainees to achieve those objectives with a Symons designed to test exactly no more or less what is expected from the learning program, and with a network of people knowing their roles in the monitoring system, where failure can be identified quickly and efficiently the monitoring and evaluation subsystem plays a critical part in success of any good-quality distance education Project.
Copyright
Everyone who designs in structural materials have to comply with copyright laws. In general this means obtaining permission from a copyright owner i.e. authors, publishers, institutions to use or reproduce their work in teaching materials, and paying a royalty were licensing fee if requested to do so. Although teachers in the classroom may be able to claim the protection of the fair use exception when they use copyrighted materials this is hard to justify when the materials are packaged and distributed to students. Online makes copyright compliance is even more problematic since it is so easy to copy and paste text or graphics from a web site. In 1998 the Digital millennium copyright act was passed to address the copyright implications posed by Digital media. However this act was quickly found to be to reach tricked up for teachers and institutions engaging in distance education. To rectify the situation and provide more flexibility with respect to the use of materials for distance learning courses, in 2002, the technology, education and copyright harmonization act, commonly known as the TEACH act was passed. The size the issue associate with copyright compliance this educational institutions are concerned about ownership rights were online materials. The long-standing tradition in the academic world has been for ownership of what a person writes to belong to that individual but with any online courses being developed by teams and paid for by the institution distal longer seems so appropriate.
General Design Principles
It should be apparent from the preceding section of this chapter that although there are different design considerations associated with the various technologies and media used in distance education there are some general principles that applied to them all. These includes: good structure the organization of the course and its components must be well defined and uderstandable for the student there must be internal consistencies among the different parts of the course, students should at all times know what they have to learn, what is expected of them to achieve the learning, and when they have arrived at the goal. Clear objectives only when a course has clear learning objectives unambiguous statements of what the student should be able to do as evidence of having learned can instructional designers identify the most suitable learning experience, make a good technology and media selections, and design appropriate evaluation instruments. Small units the content of the core should be broken down and presented in small units each of which might correspond to a single learning object. Plan participation a fundamental mistake by inexperience educators will become involved in distance education to assume that students will participate. Participation and interaction have to be structured. Questions and assignments must be prepared to ensure that students interact with the instructor, other students, and the subject matter itself. It is not good enough to simply ask any questions? completeness course materials are for more than a textbook or informative web site, and should contain instructional commentary, activities, and illustrations and Mr. those that would be provided, often contemporaneously in a traditional classroom setting. Repetition unlike some other media applications in teaching it is acceptable for the text, audio, video, or computer-based systems sometimes repeat key ideas and information e.g. in an online closure summaries to provide reinforcement and to compensate for distractions and memory limitations. Synthesis in porn ideas expressed in the materials or contributed by students should be woven together especially in summaries. People do not learn as well as from being told as when they discover for themselves and then are helped to synthesize organize what they have discovered. Stimulation and variety through the use of interesting formats, content, or guests, course materials need to capture and hold the attention of students. Information should be presented in a number of different formats and by different media to appeal to varying interests and backgrounds on the students open ended assignments, examples, and problems should, where possible, be open ended to allow students to adapt content to their own interests or situations. Feedback and evaluation student should receive read with feedback on their assignments and general progress in the course. The effectiveness of media and the structural method should be routinely monitored and evaluated.

Garrisons Viewpoint
In distance education designed by an individual teacher, it is normally not possible to satisfy all of these design considerations fully, if only because of time and budget limitations. However the more factors that can be addressed; the more effective of the course is likely to be. In single modeand some dual mode distance education institutions there is enough money and specialist personnel to attend more fully to all the design features, which is mainly why they are able to develop higher-quality courses.
It is time to seriously consider how we design and deliver educational experiences considering the widespread adoption of communications technology in society at large. To date, these developments have not significantly impacted traditional educational institutions.
The current challenge for administrators, policymakers, and faculty of higher education institutions is to acknowledge and accept that there have been significant and irreversible changes in societal demands, funding shortfalls, competition, technological innovations, and student demographics. In higher education we must and can to do better than lecturing to students in a 300-seat theater. As has been demonstrated by some leading institutions, once there is clear policy and leadership, the transformation will be rapid. The only question is whether educational institutions will position themselves as leaders or risk their demise.

This paper needs to be on any small to medium business that is or could be using e-marketing. This company needs to be identified and used as the example.

The paper need to focus on how the company uses e-marketing to target their customers...what works...what may not work well. What is currently being done...and what could work going forward as they grow.

A web page is only a part of E-Marketing. The paper should focus on what goes on beyond the web page.

There also needs to be a marketing analysis (SWOT) on the company.

The paper needs to be 6 pages along with a work sited page using at least 4 sites.

The paper should be 5 pages in length, double-spaced and using APA style for the references.
Use your favorite search engine to find the answers to the questions below. Copy and paste the web address from the Web page where you found the answers. Some questions may have more than one answer.
1.Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator are the two more popular Web browsers. What is the name of the first graphical web browser?
2.What cable company was established in 1858 to carry instantaneous communications across the ocean that would eventually be used for Internet communications?
3. What American president in 1957 created both the interstate highway system and the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA)?
4. Where is the location of Microsofts headquarters?
5. How many Web pages is Google currently searching?

The internet has provided the opportunity to access encyclopedias online. One of the more comprehensive encyclopedia research sites is Encyclopedia.com. Visit this website and then use your word processing program to answer the following questions.
1. The sites home page lists the top five searches for the day. What are todays top five searches? Click one of these links. What magazines and newspapers contain information about this topic?
2. Type World Wide Web as the keyword in the search text box. How many articles discussing the World Wide Web are found on the Encyclopedia.com Web site?
3. In the search results click the first link. What is the definition of the World Wide Web according to the first sentence of the article? Who is the American computer consultant who promoted the idea of linking documents via hypertext during the 1960s?
4. Type multimedia as the keyword in the search text box. In the search results list, click the multimedia link. What hardware typically is required to work with multimedia according to this article? What are some optional hardware devices?
5. Type personal computer as the keyword in the search text box. Click on of the personal computer links, review the material and provide a 50-word summary of the information you read.

Provide 3 page APA format Case Study analysis on Business Case: MidWest Financial Banks on Content Acceleration. Document is included below.

Utilize headers and case study analysis report format example below. Paraphrase, quotation and cite in APA format. Prefer a writer that has Computer Science background.


Case Study Analysis Report Format

Title: Case Study: MidWest Financial Banks on Content Acceleration

I. Introduction
? Briefly describe the organization. What is its mission?
? Describe current network and IT system
II. Problem or Need
? What is the organization concerned about? Focus on the business case not the technology
? Relates to purposes and goals of organization.
? Is of reasonable dimensions.
? Is supported by statistical evidence.
? Is supported by statements from authorities.
? Is stated in terms of clients or beneficiaries.
? Is developed with input from clients and beneficiaries.
? Is not the "lack of a method" (unless the method is the only solution).
? Doesn't make assumptions.
III. Objectives
? Must be specific and measurable to improve the situation described in the Problem.
? Describes problem-related outcomes of the project.
? Describe the Objectives in numerical terms, if at all possible.
IV. Their Solution
? Clearly describes program activities.
? States reasons for selection of activities.
? Describes sequence of activities.
? Describes staffing of program.
? Describes clients and client selection.
V. Unanswered Questions
? If you could ask the organization some questions, what would you ask?
VI. Last Word/Conclusions
? What final thoughts do you have regarding this case study?
? Use your imagination. If you think the methods and chosen solution, say so. What would do different? Speak your mind.


Reference

Carr, J.(2003, May 5). Business Case: MidWest Financial Banks on Content
Acceleration. Retrieved February 16, 2005, from http://www.cconvergence.com/shared/article/showArticle.jhtml?articleId =9400003




Business Case: MidWest Financial Banks on Content Acceleration

When MidWest Financial Credit Union's dial-up customers started complaining about slow response times on the company's Web site, the firm turned to server-side acceleration to rev up performance.

By Jim Carr

Business Profile: MidWest Financial Credit Union
Headquarters: Ann Arbor, MI
Web address: www.midwestfinancial.org
Industry: Financial services
Project leader: Mike Stevens, CIO
Technology in Focus: Content acceleration
Size: Approximately 16,000 members and more than $111 million in assets

Business Challenge: MidWest Financial has been providing online banking to its members since 1997. Within a few years, members were able to perform tasks such as access information regarding their accounts, transfer funds between accounts, and open certificate accounts via the Internet. In 2000, MidWest Financial eliminated its dial-up service, based on the assumption that a majority of its members used high-speed broadband connections to access its site. But after making the conversion to Web-only access, the company discovered that roughly half of its members were still using dial-up. It didn't take long for these members to begin complaining about slow response times. To keep members happy, MidWest Financial started looking for ways to accelerate delivery of its Internet banking services to dial-up users-specifically, delivery of dynamically generated content, such as account balances and information related to transaction processing.

Solution: After considering a number of different technologies and products, MidWest Financial deployed Packeteer's AppCelera ICX to reduce the time it takes for Web pages to load. The product combines three techniques-compression, content transformation, and rich and large file graphics conversion-to improve the performance of content delivery over dial-up connections. The AppCelera also offloads Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) processing to increase the performance of Web servers. The company considered other approaches to the problem, including a caching appliance. But this system was targeted toward static content as opposed to the type of dynamic content his members needed to access. Another prospective device cost double the amount budgeted for the project.

CIO Mike Stevens says members have seen a performance improvement of about 50 percent since system deployment. Although the company hasn't performed a formal Return on Investment (ROI) calculation, Stevens says the $25,000 spent on the system was well worth the investment.

When it comes to e-business, the customer is always right-unless she's using a dial-up connection to the Internet. Then she's probably mad as hell about the poor quality of service she's getting, and is just as likely to take her business elsewhere as visit again.

This problem is particularly vexing to organizations in the financial services arena, where just about every bank, savings and loan, and brokerage firm offers its stable of products and services via the Web. In this market, to be perceived as a full-service financial institution, the company's Web site must be able to serve up account information such as checking account balances, payroll deposit history, and loan information, as well as handle fund transfers quickly and efficiently, says Mike Stevens, CIO of MidWest Financial Credit Union. The MI-based organization, which has more than $111 million in assets, provides its 16,000 members with online access to their accounts.

When your Web site can't meet customer demands for timely downloads, you're naturally going to get complaints (and some rather unhappy customers). So when you're Internet banking pioneer MidWest Financial and a significant number of your customers start grumbling about how poorly your Web site delivers the "goods," you pay attention-and you take steps to correct the problem.

THE DIAL-UP DILEMMA

MidWest Financial was one of the first financial organizations to make its services available to members electronically, offering dial-up banking as early as 1997 through proprietary client applications that ran on the customers' PCs. When Internet usage subsequently increased dramatically, MidWest Financial added Web-based banking to its services.

In 2000, with virtually every type of business imaginable migrating to the Web, MidWest Financial eliminated the dial-up service, relying solely on the Internet for connectivity to its offerings. During that transition period, MidWest Financial made some assumptions about how its customers were connecting to the company's site.

"When we looked at traffic to the site, it generally picked up at 8:00 in the morning and tailed off at 5:00 or 6:00 in the evening, Monday through Friday. And weekend and evening traffic tended to be pretty low," recalls Stevens. "So our assumption was that most of our members connected to us while at work, with high-speed connections."

It turns out that this assumption was off-way off. In truth, after switching to Web-only access to its services, MidWest Financial discovered that about half of its members still relied on dial-up Internet accounts-not broadband-to access the site.

In retrospect, it was no big surprise that problems began to surface in late 2000 when the credit union began adding features to its online banking services. "We started to get comments back from members that our Internet banking was slow," says Stevens. "The response times they were seeing were unpredictable across the board.

"When we asked our members for more information, the common element was they were connecting to us through a dial-up session," he explains. The performance problems were particularly irksome to members accessing the site via AOL, he adds.

Members accessing the site via dial-up connections, often as slow as 28.8Kbits/sec, were seeing slow response times at pretty much any time of the day. "We thought at first that maybe our servers were getting overloaded," says Stevens. "But we found that when people dialed in, they had a slow experience whether it was 9:00 a.m. or 9:00 at night or 3:00 a.m. It was just simply slow for them, and didn't seem to matter how much traffic MidWest Financial was experiencing."

With about 40 percent of the credit union's membership signed up to take advantage of Internet banking, the service's popularity only amplified the scope of the problem. But the reasons for this increase in popularity were clear: With the ability to review their account activity, make fund transfers from one account to another, obtain credit line advances, and open certificate accounts, MidWest Financial's members can access a broad range of services conveniently from their PC, without ever having to drive to the credit union or make a phone call.

Moreover, MidWest Financial's membership base draws heavily from medical professionals within the University of Michigan health care system, some of whom frequently travel overseas. This demanded that the credit union provide access to banking services from anywhere in the world-that is, via the Internet.

In addition, the secure, dynamic nature of the financial information being delivered to users via the Web can lead to formidable traffic loads. "Every member gets his or her own personal information-their own balances, histories, and the like" when they log in to the MidWest Financial site, Stevens explains. Providing such information, which is drawn from databases, significantly increases the potential for delays, especially for those on dial-up Internet links.

To analyze why members were experiencing such poor performance, Stevens signed up for several dial-up Internet accounts, including those from AOL and Earthlink, to test the connection speeds between the MidWest Financial site and his home PC at various times of the day and night. What he discovered wasn't pretty.

"I would get response times of 70 seconds from when I entered my account number and password before the page refreshed with my own account information," he confides. That was simply too long for members to wait, and Stevens realized he had a problem on his hands.

"We were adding members, with more using the system, so we felt we needed to improve our performance," he says. "I didn't want us to be significantly slower than the major brokerage houses."

PUTTING THE PEDAL TO THE METAL
There are a number of approaches for tackling Web performance problems like those experienced by MidWest Financial. In an effort to speed up page delivery to their visitors, most high-traffic Web sites rely on caching technologies such as those offered by Content Delivery Networks (CDNs), including those from Akamai, Digital Island (now Cable & Wireless, www.cw.com), and Inktomi, or proxy caching appliances from vendors such as Blue Coat Systems (www.bluecoat.com, formerly CacheFlow). These types of solutions can help Web sites deliver some content faster, but at a cost-for instance, Akamai's EdgeSuite for cached delivery of government-related content starts at about $15,000 per month.

But as dynamically generated content-for example, on-the-fly requests to databases or live Webcasts-becomes more prevalent, caching of static content, such as graphics and other images, becomes less effective in speeding up delivery of Web pages. Since many performance problems are due to poor server response times, more organizations are deploying devices that offload various CPU processing tasks from the server, such as TCP session management and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) processing. These so-called server-side accelerators can be a cost-effective alternative to CDNs, freeing back-end Web servers to perform the tasks they're designed to do-that is, processing orders and handling database queries. The result is faster content delivery to site visitors.

Analysts expect server-side accelerators to become increasingly popular in the future, although the market for these devices has only recently started to pick up. According to the Aberdeen Group, sales of server-side accelerators reached about $85 million in 2002, but will climb eightfold to $730.7 million by 2005.

One of the primary reasons for the increase in popularity of server-side accelerators is, of course, the flip side of the predominance of corporate applications with browser-based interfaces.

"Some very high-value, mission-critical enterprise applications, such as CRM customer relationship management and ERP enterprise resources planning, now have Web front ends," says Michael Hoch, research director for the Internet infrastructure group at the Aberdeen Group. While this eliminates the need to install special client-side software on end-user PCs, the ease of access via a browser comes with a performance penalty. End-user response time "goes from three milliseconds in client-server mode to more than 10 seconds in the browser mode, and I've heard of 30-second response times," says Hoch.

"A majority of the slowdown in Web site performance is due to server response times," says Hoch. "Each transaction has to go back to the server, where in client-server environments, most transactions can be handled on the local desktop."

One of the primary requirements in MidWest Financial's case was the ability to speed up dynamic content, says Stevens. "What I wanted was something that would accelerate dynamic content instead of just caching it," he says. "A lot of caching devices accelerate static content, such as graphics and images, but not dynamic content." Stevens notes that efficient handling of dynamically generated information is critical in Internet banking. "Everyone's data is different, to the extent that the text they see within their browser is different."

MidWest Financial chose the server-side acceleration model, opting for Packeteer's AppCelera Internet Content Accelerator (ICX). The system uses a combination of techniques, including compressing dynamically generated content and caching static images, to speed up Internet connectivity sessions, particularly for users of dial-up Internet access services.

There are a number of server-side acceleration devices on the market, including FineGround Networks' Condenser Accelerator Suite, NetScaler's Request Switch 9000 iON Series appliance, Redline Networks' T|X Web I/O acceleration appliances, OptView's NetCelerate and SiteCelerate appliances, and XCache Technologies' XCache software and XCompress appliances. But these systems work via different mechanisms. Redline's T|X Web I/O accelerator, for example, manages sessions with clients itself and multiplexes the requests into a few dedicated connections to the back-end Web servers, thus freeing the servers from this resource-intensive task. This off-loading of client connections frees up server CPU resources such as RAM and processes for other activity.

Packeteer's AppCelera ICX takes a more client-focused approach. The AppCelera ICX is a standalone appliance that sits between a server farm and the LAN in intranet applications or a Web site's Internet connection. The system is designed to reduce the amount of time it takes for Web pages to load. It accomplishes this task by monitoring each user's connection rate to the Web site, while also tracking the capabilities of the visitor's browser. In operation, the product combines three techniques to do its job-compression, content transformation, and rich and large file graphics conversion.

First, the AppCelera ICX compresses objects requested from the server via the open-source data compression protocol gzip, matching objects to the specifics of the user's environment. When the connection is fast enough, the unit passes the requests from the Web server to the visitor without compressing them.

But when a user comes into the system via a slow dial-up connection, the AppCelera sends highly compressed, lower-quality, smaller images, which reduces their loading time and allows users to receive them sooner. The system detects connection rates dynamically, so if a user's session rate improves, it automatically increases image quality while continuing to load images quickly.

The AppCelera also compresses the HTML files that call up the image objects, further reducing load times. Once it creates compressed versions of the Web server objects, the system caches them to achieve an even greater reduction in future load times.

In addition to compression, the device performs a process called content transformation. This technique allows for more efficient transport of images over the Internet by converting an image file to a smaller version of similar quality. For example, the device can convert a .jpg to a smaller .png file for browsers that support this type of file.

Packeteer also uses a proprietary image-optimization algorithm to reduce the size of images by as much as 50 to 75 percent, with little discernible difference to the user. This scheme works by selectively removing bits from a file in areas of low contrast, where it would be undetectable by the human eye.

Finally, the AppCelera offloads the considerable processing overhead associated with using SSL to encrypt and decrypt Internet traffic.

TIMING ISN'T EVERYTHING

Although MidWest Financial ultimately decided to go with Packeteer's approach, the AppCelera ICX wasn't the only product it considered. In fact, Stevens looked into two other options, but ran into some issues along the way. For one thing, "I wanted something I could deploy relatively cost-effectively," he says. "I had a budget of $25,000, and one of devices was more than twice that, so that put it out of our price range right away."

The second candidate was a caching solution from Network Appliance (www.netapp.com). This device was focused primarily on caching static content, says Stevens. "And the company they had a partnership with was focused on SSL acceleration, which wasn't my primary requirement," he notes.

Rather than a "must have," Stevens calls SSL acceleration more of a "nice-to-have" feature. This reflects on the nature of his customers' connectivity problems.

"Remember, our members were experiencing slow response times over dial-up connections regardless of the time of day," he explains. "That told me that SSL overhead wasn't really the problem I had to solve. If response times were just about as slow during heavy use periods, when SSL overhead could have been part of the problem, as they were when usage was light, when SSL overhead was unlikely to be an issue, then I had to focus on something other than SSL acceleration.

"I also compared this to higher-bandwidth connections and noticed that response times, which were good regardless of time of day, were very similar," he says. "These things taken together meant SSL wasn't the bottleneck. The bottleneck was the 'lagginess' of the low-bandwidth dial-up connections."

Still, Stevens says the company does use the AppCelera's SSL encryption and acceleration feature. "Because it's available, I'd be foolish not to use it, even if it only slightly speeds up response times," he says. "Every little bit helps."

LOSING WAIT

When the company decided it was definitely interested in the AppCelera, Stevens asked for and received an evaluation unit from Packeteer in early 2000. "At the time, Packeteer executives were interested in working with a financial institution, so they shipped an evaluation unit out."

The subsequent installation and configuration process was relatively straightforward, Stevens recalls. Of the various options for installing the device, Stevens selected what he calls the simplest-an inline configuration. This puts the AppCelera directly between the credit union's Internet connection and its Web servers, with a firewall controlling access to the AppCelera (see figure).



During his 60-day evaluation period, Stevens recalls having to take the AppCelera offline at least twice for connectivity problems. Pages weren't showing up when visitors asked for their account information, he says.

Each time the problem occurred, however, Packeteer executives took the issue seriously, says Stevens. "I was able to communicate directly with engineering, and they would come back in a timely manner with a fix for it. They were definitely interested in getting the AppCelera working in a financial environment."

Since its deployment, the AppCelera "just sits there and does its job," says Stevens. By that, he means it's managed to cut members' waiting time in half. "We've seen access times cut down to 30 to 40 seconds, so while it's not as zippy as a broadband connection, it's a lot faster than before." MidWest Financial's dial-up customers have seen about a 50 percent improvement since deployment of the AppCelera, says Stevens.

"From our perspective, based on what I'm seeing, MidWest Financial's Web site response times are in the same league as the major brokerages," he adds. "I don't want us to be significantly slower than, say, a Merrill Lynch." The proof in the pudding is the fact that member complaints about the site's performance have gone away.

According to Stevens, the only drawback of the system is that its management interface is "a bit clunky." "It generates three sets of log files-one for clients, servers, and cache-each day, and they're a little cumbersome to work with because we have to go in and manually clean them out regularly," he explains. "I don't necessarily need to go back and track activity for six months ago, but I have to go through and manually click on every single log file to delete it."

THE BIG PAYBACK

With the AppCelera now in place, Stevens says about 30 percent of the MidWest Financial Web site traffic comes in via dial-up Internet service accounts. While acknowledging that the AppCelera probably doesn't benefit that 70 percent of his members who connect via broadband connections, he says the $25,000 spent on the device was well worth it. "It benefits enough of our members that it makes financial sense."

This fact alone overshadows any concerns about the Return on Investment (ROI) most IT executives look for when assessing capital equipment. Stevens, in fact, admits that he didn't do an ROI calculation for the device.

"Because we're a financial institution, we looked at this as more of a service improvement for our members," he says. Perhaps the customer is always right, after all.