The Dogwood community is most evident in the site's new Discussion Board. Unlike many Discussion Boards on the web, this one is heavily used by members of the Dogwood community, whose commitment to developing a worthwhile resource is evident from the number of thoughtful postings about each other's work. In fact, the Discussion Board is so active that I would suggest making it a more prominent part of the Dogwood site. At present, it is tucked into the "Mentoring" section; why not place a discrete link to the Discussion Board on each of the sections' home pages, with an invitation to "learn more" or "ask a question"?

Another strong aspect of the site is the amount of content that has been added in the past year. The "Pedagogy" section contains a wealth of information, including useful guidelines on how to integrate electronic discussion assignments and student web projects, as well as thoughtful discussions about how to grade work submitted electronically. The "Mentoring" section includes a similar trove of guidelines on how to use the various software tools available to educators, and the "Resource Sites" section provides excellent models of educational websites created by faculty in support of their online courses. Especially strong, though, is the "Courses" section. I especially like the uniform front page for each course site, which clearly states the relevant instructor, course requirements, fees, and registration information.   

With so much strong content, issues of design will continue to weaken the site until its navigational system is improved further. Fortunately, much progress has been made in this regard, and only a few minor changes will improve the navigation system of the site greatly. 

For instance, the "First Time Users" page can be eliminated entirely by adding the brief descriptions of each section of the site that are found on this page to the corresponding links on the Home Page. This would simplify the site and address a persistent design concern of the overall site. These brief descriptions of the links on the Home page would also serve to clarify distinctions between the various sections of the site. For instance, it is not immediately clear that the "Pedagogy" section contains information about how to integrate technology into the classroom, as opposed to the "Mentoring" section, which seems devoted to more technical information about how particular tools work, or work best. There is a similar problem with the "Resource Sites" and "Courses" sections. Some of the Resources seem to be closely tied to items in the Courses section. The text on the Home page under each of these links could spell out (briefly) what this relation is--that the Resources were created in support of particular courses, but that they also stand alone as informational sites. These are important distinctions for users of the site who are looking for particular kinds of information, and should be made clear on the project's Home page.

It also might be useful to have very brief text descriptions on the front pages of the different sections. For example, on the "Pedagogy" page, while it might be clear that the "Using Web-Based Discussion Forums" will take one to a page describing how to implement discussion forums, other links, such as "Student Projects," are not so clear--will these pages contain examples of student projects, or a discussion of how to design and implement student projects? A simpler way to address this problem is to use uniform phrasing for the links on this page (and others), i.e., "Designing Student Projects" instead of simply, "Student Projects."

Overall, the Dogwood site is developing in a professional and (most importantly for the educators who will rely on it) useful direction. The developers of the site should maintain the principles upon which it was launched, while continuing to wrestle with issues of navigability. Too, the designers of the site should consider broadening further the notion of "community" that is developing at the site, perhaps by making room for limited contributions by non-NVCC faculty and institutions. Room might be made in the Discussion Board for a thread for outsiders seeking advice, for instance; or in the Resource Sites section, in order showcase sites put together by other community college instructors in support of the courses they teach. These types of changes, however, will have to grow organically in response to the needs of the site's participants, who seem actively engaged enough by now to have a strong voice in the site's continued development.