Overview
Dogwood is "an interdisciplinary, web-based,
virtual learning environment of teaching and resource materials for the
faculty, staff and students of the Virginia Community College System."
From the existing evidence, the site is well poised to achieve this purpose.
There is a good range of courses available from the Courses page, and these
appear to be high-quality offerings. Overall, the site should help
to build communities of learners and educators for the Virginia Community
College System.
One important point that is not clear,
however, is how this site will communicate with VCCS registration systems.
Is it possible to register for these classes online, through the Dogwood
site? Can this site offer any assurances to a student at NVCC that he/she
will receive credit for a course taken from an instructor at another college?
To what extent is this site designed to smooth VCCS's entry into the distance
education market--will non-VCCS students be able to take courses through
Dogwood? The designers of this site may take such issues for granted, but
inexperienced users or casual visitors to the site will have these questions
in mind and want them addressed.
Design Considerations
A first-time user of any site wants certain
questions answered immediately. In the case of Dogwood, a preliminary search
for answers is made frustrating for two reasons:
First (and I realize this is a minor point),
the Dogwood logo is a little confusing--what does the name Dogwood represent?
Should this logo to be used as a navigational tool (always sending the
user back to the index page, for instance)? As is, the logo seems to disappear
after the index page.
Second, the site's Introduction page immediately
refers the user to yet another page (proposal.html), rather than actually
introducing the user to the site, its goals, its audiences, its vision,
etc. The information that does appear on the Introduction page would more
properly appear on an "About this Site" page, which should not be one of
the major links from the site's home page, but rather a smaller link akin
to the Site Information link that currently exists on the home page.
Also frustrating is the fact that the Site
Information page is incomplete--a first draft, it seems. (Note: change
the html title of the Site Information page from Help to Site Information).
I suggest the site's designers move the
information that currently resides on the Introduction page to an About
page; rename the draft of the Site Information link to something like "Technical
Information"; and draft a new Introduction page that more clearly addresses
the site itself.
Page Design
The designers of the Dogwood site wisely
chose a simple design for the individual pages of the site. The pages are
mainly text, so they load quickly (an important consideration for the site's
primary audience--modem-access community college students). Although less
attractive than graphics-rich websites, the predominance of text, and the
use of tables to organize information, will help users find the information
they are looking for, even as the site grows over the years.
Ease of Navigation
The Dogwood site uses a very simple navigation
bar to help users find resources and return to pages of interest. I much
prefer a simple text navigation bar such as this one, to the maddeningly
complicated graphics used by some sites. However, I did experience some
confusion in trying to make this navigation tool match up to the menu of
items I encountered on the site's home page.
First, the home page includes a link to
User Resources, but the navigation bar lists User Services; only after
much clicking can I conclude that the index page is mistaken--that the
site's designers probably want to change the home page link to read, "User
Services." I would also suggest changing the Menu link in the navigation
bar to "Home," or "Index," as this nomenclature is the more standard on
professional web sites. (Alternatively, you could incorporate a smaller
version of the Dogwood logo, such as that on the Search page, in every
page on the site, and inform your users that this logo will always serve
as a link to the site's index. This would further simplify the navigational
toolbar). Also, the site's designers need to be more uniform in the order
in which they list the individual pages of the site: the list on the home
page is in a different order from that on the First Time Users page, and
both are different from that in the navigation tool bar. Making these minor
changes will drastically improve the overall coherence, and navigability,
of the site.
The designers need to be aware of a further
complication inherent in the current navigation toolbar. This bar changes
when a user enters into a course from the Courses page, but the change
is not graphical, so users will again experience this as inconsistency
in the navigational setup of the site.
Potential for Growth
The potential for high-quality online
learning environments is large. As more faculty develop online versions
of traditional course offerings, the need to integrate these courses and
their respective learning resources into a single site will grow. Given
this, the designers of the Dogwood should consider the following issues
as they develop their site:
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Discussion environments are an essential ingredient
of the online learning experience, and at present, the Dogwood site does
not seem to include them. Ideally, some sort of conferencing system should
be added to the site, so that instructors can create discussion boards
and chat rooms on a course, group, and thematic level.
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Beyond their academic uses, online discussion
environments can build community. The designers of Dogwood should consider
additional ways to make their site a community- like environment. For instance,
they might consider including community events calendars for regions served
by VCCS--calendars to which all users could post events. Another example:
the developers may want to work with local booksellers to offer textbook
purchasing through the Dogwood site.
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The trend in online education is toward a
system of "modular learning"--allowing students to piece together a single
course out of several available modules or units. The courses currently
offered through Dogwood all conform to the traditional catalogue model--
discrete courses offered by individual instructors. The designers of the
site should create potentiated space within their site for modular course
offerings.
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The designers of Dogwood should be aware of
commercial software that can automate many of the site management issues
that will arise as the site grows. Blackboard, WebCT, and TopClass are
working on "enterprise-wide" products that can integrate academic and non-academic
information in the way that Dogwood aims to do. Although expensive, these
companies' products should be investigated as a possible route toward Dogwood's
goals.
Suggestions for Improvement
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One obvious need is to populate the site with
more diverse course offerings and learning resources. The authors of the
site clearly are aware of this, as specific mechanisms for training and
dissemination are already in place.
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More specifically, there needs to be a clearer
distinction between generic resources made available from this site, and
resources and tools that are specifically tied to one of the courses listed
on the site. For instance, if one clicks on the First-Time Users link from
the site's home page, and then the Resource Sites link, one might then
be interested in the "Roosevelts & the American Presidency" site, by
Jud Sage. But the site one finds after clicking this link includes "information
on paper #2," and "information on final exam"--clearly, material specifically
aimed at students in Sage's class. Other examples of resources listed on
the site lead users down similar paths--and will be a cause of confusion
unless some instruction, or better descriptions, are provided along the
way.
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The site will require a more robust search
tool as it grows. A present, the Search page does little more than present
an alternative table of contents for the site.
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Finally, the maintainers of the site should
employ link-checking software, as many links (especially within the Courses
area) were broken when I investigated the site.
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