Didactical activities and strategies in the use of WWW-based course-support environments: Design guidelines for instructors.

New developments in educational technology at the University of Twente are providing instructors with a set of tools and templates for WWW-based course-support environments. Those templates can be used by the instructors to fill in learning activities and study material for all students, both local and at a distance. The task for the instructional designer is to create these general templates and make them suitable for different kinds of teaching situations. To guide the instructors in how to use those tools and templates, a series of design guidelines for the use of the WWW have emerged for each of the following didactical activities: face-to-face sessions, self-study activities, assignments, monitoring and feedback. Those guidelines are based on the experience of the Faculty of Educational Science and Technology at the University of Twente with the implementation of approximately 44 courses supported by WWW-based environments in the context of the TeleTOP Project ( http://teletop.edte.utwente.nl/ ) as well as on instructional principles that predate WWW use. The paper concludes by noting the need for a course (re-)design model which combines the guidelines into an overall perspective.