Next Steps

Second stage instructional Web design has as its implication the higher involvement of your audience. What started out as a text-based communication and educational tool during the early days of the Web and continued into the visual exploration of ideas during the years that followed, today is turning more and more into a total immersion, multi-sensory learning space. With such shift your tools will change, and your own involvement in creating material will grow dramatically. Second stage design will be rich in metaphor, experimentation and interaction. The initial concept of getting "word" to your students shifts to a partial if not fully reciprocal relationship with them--as part of a collaborative effort, it will be your students now who will take the initiative in both the design and creation of course projects. They will be the ones exploring new ways; they will be the ones dictating their own pace and directions. For you, in order to facilitate such role reversal and in order to be able to lay down a framework, within which your students can contribute material and can expand their knowledge, a judicious understanding of new tools and concepts is necessary.

The Wired Professor, chapter 5