Principles of writing for e-ducation

Style and Appearance

Although web is a textual (as well as visual) medium, it is not friendly to dense text. This presents a problem for most educational purposes. So, Less is Best? Clear typeface, layout, design essential, with plenty of white space. Succinct and clear writing important

Structure

'Nested' structure in which the first level is written in a chatty, light, even magazine style with hyperlinks down to next level, which is more detailed and has links down to next level which is more detailed, dense, difficult still. And so on, as necessary.

The idea here is to give students the option of engaging with material in their own time, on their own terms and in ways that are useful to them, without overwhelming them with text and detail until they are ready for it.

Obviously other links to bibliographies, resources, etc. can be included as, and where required.

This is a time-consuming way to do it and, so, likely to be expensive. But preferable to just throwing up great slabs of text onto a computer screen.

Authored by Graham Seal, Institute for Australian Studies, g.seal@curtin.edu.au If you are going to use this page please give appropriate acknowledgment. page last modified 4.x1.01