An eLearning website contains several multimedia elements, such as text, audio, graphics, and simulations or animations. – Text and Audio Each topic in an eLearning course contains several pages of text or concepts. Additionally, it may contain voiceover for some or all frames depending on the client’s requirement. For example, questions and practice pages may contain audio. Because e-learning sites are displayed on many different machines, there are only a small set of fonts that can be guaranteed to be available, a standard font and a type written font (e.g. courier) with bold and italic versions in different sizes. However, the difficult thing to balance fine turning the appearance of the text on one platform with making it is readable on all. Another issue of the use of text in e–learning sites is the color use which may consider great importance for design elearning site, but it is often abused .First a significant proportion of the potential viewers of the page will have problems with color [10]. Users also bring a deep rooted emotional interpretation to colors. One common mistake is to put colored text onto a similar colored background so that it becomes nearly invisible. – Graphics Graphics not only make the course interesting but add value to the text and enhance recall and retention. Depending on the level of learner knowledge and the type of course content, a course can use static graphics, animated graphics, conceptual graphics, screenshots, or real-life photographs. While graphics and icons tend to play a significant role in elearning design, their use should be carefully thought out. Graphical images take longer to load than text, and this may become a problem. Both GIF (graphics interchange format) and JPEG (joint Photographic Experts Group), the most widely used web graphic image formats, can be saved in forms that allow to be progressively transmitted. This means that images appear as a whole, but very blurred, version that becomes gradually sharper, rather than appearing in perfect resolution a line at a time. – Simulations or Animations Different types of simulations or animations used in eLearning courses are software simulations, social simulations, virtual reality, and video simulations.
RESPONSE TIME IN E-LEARNING WEB SITE
Speed is a significant factor in all models of user satisfaction. Interactive speed Make web pages load quickly and minimize the variability of delay [3]. With rapid advances in hardware speed and data communication bandwidth, one might not expect to have to deal with issues such as response time and system performance. But these issues remain a very real concern today. As system become more powerful, the e-learning web sites become more complex as users expect more functionality and richer information. Users today face similar system response time issues that faced users a decade ago. As web developers experience slow response times due to lengthy downloads of graphic intensive material, they are redesigning the e-learning sites to minimize this overhead. As the use of the Internet and electronic learning is growing at a significant rate. Lengthy system response times may cause lower satisfaction and poor productivity among user [4]. Lowered user satisfaction is significant because it may lead to discontinued use of an e-learning web site or force the user to find alternative sources of information, especially in discretionary applications such as those found on the Internet [4]. To deal with this fact the developers of e-learning site have to design their pages with speed in mind. In fact, speed must be the overriding design criterion. To keep page sizes small, graphics should be kept to a minimum and multimedia effects should only be used when they truly add to the user’s understanding of the information. However, Conservative use of graphics does not imply boring pages. Much can be done by colored table cells and creative use of different fonts. In particular, style sheets can be used to improve page design without incurring a download penalty (Nielsen 1997). In addition the optimize use of graphics is not the only issue that need to be consider , e-learning web site consist of other elements such that text formatting ,and link formatting (see figure 2). All of these elements should be use properly to gain speed in e-learning web site.
Recent Comments