"Creating an Effective World Wide Web Site to Enhance Student Success"

Student Success Strategies conference: Portland, Oregon February 8, 1996

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high water jpg Due to road closures and flooding, we were not able to drive from Eugene to Portland to deliver this presention.

Here's a "virtual" version of "Creating an Effective World Wide Web Site to Enhance Student Success".
(You might want to "bookmark" this page so you can return to it after you've linked to our Student Servces page).

We have attempted to present Lane's Student Services in a way that students and prospective students can easily find the information they need. We do this by providing a "home page" with a narrative description of services that puts the services in context and encourages "browsing" through all the services.

Services are organized around those that assist a student to get started, be successful, and earn a degree. An alphabetical list is also provided for those looking for a particular service by name. A frequently updated Student Alert page highlights important deadlines.

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Here are some key points regarding developing a successful web page:

A. Team Approach

At LCC, there is a Web Steering Committee composed of representatives from Computer Services, Instruction, Community Education, Institutional Advancement, and Student Services. This committee coordinates development of Lane's web pages. We asked for responsibility to develop the Student Services portion of the college's web site.

 Tim and Rich received an LCC Instructional Technology Initiative Grant which provided some release time to do this development work.

The Counseling Department donated support service staff time for Vicki to convert catalog information into web pages. Ginger adapted her New Student Information Session materials into a "Self-guided web tour".

B. Essential Tools

We realized that most of what we wanted to post on the web was already in electronic form. The catalog had most of the student services information that we wanted, and it was available on a floppy disk. The remaining new items (e.g., the Student Services home page), were created with a word processor. After word processing, the files were prepared for the Web using the following:
  1. HTML Editor. This is software that allows you to insert HTML code into a text document. Web browsers, e.g. Netscape or Mosaic, view files that have been created using HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) codes. We used "HTML Write" for Windows computers, and "High Tea" for Macintosh computers. These are both shareware, available from a variety of sources. There are many HTML editors available.


    2. The Maricopa Center for Learning and Instruction has several excellent resources, (especially "Writing HTML") for Web site developers. We consult this page often and appreciate the tools that Alan Levine provides at Maricopa.
     
     

  2. Web Browser software. We used Netscape, the most popular browser. You can obtain a free copy from Netscape Corporation's home page:


    3. Use Netscape to preview your files as you create them. It works fine on your local machine. Just use "File: Open..." command in Netscape and select the HTML file you are working on.

  3. HTML conversion software (optional). These are programs that convert an entire text file into HTML code in one step. Examples are the Internet Assistant for Word (free download from http://www.microsoft.com/), Beyond Express, Page Maker conversion "plug-in", RTF to HTML conversion software, and PageMill. We found these to be helpful in converting files that already existed before we began this project (e.g., the catalog pages). In many cases, however, we found it just as easy to open a text file in our HTML editor, and put in the specific HTML codes ourselves.

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C. Next Steps

  1. Test your web pages on a variety of computers to ensure they look OK on other machines.
  2. Have students and other staff preview your pages and make suggestions on how they can be improved.
  3. Coordinate with your webmaster to have your finished pages installed on your college's web server, and linked from the college's home page. Our webmaster at LCC, Bill Fletcher, has made it possible for us to maintain our pages using the collegewide network. This efficient system allows us to keep our pages up to date.
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We are excited about the potential of the Web for the delivery of information about our college and it's services. Please contact us if you discover useful web sites or resources. If you have comments or questions about any of this information, you can contact us by EMAIL:

Tim Blood bloodt@lanecc.edu
Rich Freund freundr@lanecc.edu
Vicki Doughty doughtyv@lanecc.edu
Ginger Yamamoto yamamotog@lanecc.edu

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Return to Lane CC home page / Student Services / top of this page

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©Lane Community College
Revised: Feb. 12, 1996 (tlb)
URL http://www.lanecc.edu