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Online Publishing for Scholars, Educators, Publishers, and
Communications Professionals
by TC Record - May 18, 2002These materials accompanied the mini-course on online publishing offered at the 2002 AERA Annual MeetingOnline Publishing
- For Scholars
- For Educators
- For Publishers
- For Communications Professionals
Course Objective:
To consider the basic issues involved in developing an online
publishing program
Major Topics
- Planning to Meet the Needs of a Particular Organization or
Audience
- Conceptualizing Online Publishing as an Educational
Activity
- Developing Content and a Content Model
- Developing or Selecting Publishing and Content Management
Tools
- Conducting a Program of Research and Evaluation to Guide
Improvement
Introductions
Course Staff
Course Participants
- Name
- Organization
- Online Publishing Goals/Audience
Logistics/Assumptions
- 4 Hour Meeting
- No Pre-Course Activities
- Post-Course Activities
- Emphasis on general issues and discussion today
- Specific information can be shared beyond today
TOPIC 1
PLANNING TO MEET THE NEEDS OF A PARTICULAR
ORGANIZATION OR AUDIENCE
Clear Goals
Online publishing opportunities are
very broad and diverse This makes it particularly important to have
clear goals
Sample Goals
- To make my work available to my students and others
- To represent my organization
- To meet the needs of my readers
Scholars
- To make research available
- To students
- To colleagues
- To members of the press
- To the general searcher
Educators
- To prepare electronic texts for students
- Contexts:
- Courses
- Programs
- Workshops
- Outreach
Publishers
- Taking an existing publishing program online -
- Advantages: content available, development process in place
-
- Dangers: locked into print program, need to satisfy immediate
business demands
Tension
- Needs of sponsors vs. needs of audience
- Sponsor - publicity, authorship, revenue
- Audience - ?
Defining Your Audience
- Who?
- How many are they?
- What do they do?
- What will they do with your content?
- What is the rhythm of their use?
Audience
- What does usability mean for your audience?
- What is compelling about your content for them?
- What alternative sources do they have?
Audience
- Utility of your content to your audience has implications for
your revenue prospects
- Moving information into the decision-making flow yields higher
value to your audience and greater potential to generate
revenue
Design Digression
- Audience needs - simplicity, predictability, clarity,
speed,
- Web developer needs - complexity, novelty, flash,
obsolescence,
- What do you need?
Sustaining Online Publishing
- Mothership model
- Marketing other services
- Subscriptions
- Pay Per Item
- Advertising
- Sponsorship
- Content Syndication
- Hobby
Testing Assumptions
- Fortunately, online publishing allows you to learn a great deal
about your audience with relatively little effort and expense
- This makes it easy to test the assumptions you are making about
your audience
- You can experiment with different revenue possibilities
Key to Sustainability
- Minimize operating costs
- Integrate online publishing operations into other
activities
- Keep technology costs under control
- Don't over invest
- Justify costs in terms of services to audience
- grow the business, not the operation!
TOPIC 2
ONLINE PUBLISHING AS AN EDUCATIONAL
ACTIVITIY
Online Publishing as an Educational Activity
- Why?
- Education is a powerful technology
- Education is increasingly attractive
- You already know how to do this
Online Publishing as an Educational Activity
- What does this mean?
- For the way you think about your audience
- For the way you think about your own activities
Online Publishing as an Educational Activity
- Consider your audience or readers as learners
- What are their learning needs?
- What are their learning styles?
- What do you want them to learn?
- What do they want to learn?
- What lends itself to the online venue?
Online Publishing as an Educational Activity
- Consider yourself an educator
- What do you have to teach?
- Don't overlook the obvious
- What are you teaching?
- What are you learning?
- What are you doing?
Online Publishing as an Educational Activity
- Employ traditional educational planning strategies
- Identify learning goals and objectives
- Specify scope and sequence
- Consider diverse activities to meet the needs of diverse
learners
- Activate members of your audience as teachers and learners
Online Publishing as an Educational Activity
- Consider non-traditional possibilities
- Less complete interaction
- More continuous interaction
- Less immediate feedback
- More detailed feedback
- Less flexibility to change course
- More design control
Educational Approach
- Consider community education approaches for your online
community
- reaching entire online group
- Include focused formal educational opportunities
- Workshops, classes, mini-lessons
Curriculum Frameworks
- Creation contexts - "Join me in my work"
- Transmission contexts - "We're back in school"
- Application contexts - "Let me join you in your work"
Convergence Possibilities
- Teaching
- Scholarship
- Publishing
TOPIC 3
DEVELOPING CONTENT AND A CONTENT MODEL
Developing Content
- Online publishing changes only two things: Space and Time
Space
- Space appears to be unlimited - a world of abundance without
page limits
- Initially it appears that you can just keep adding
- But there is something that is limited - attention
Space
- Placement is also limited
- Direct access is limited
- The computer screen is very very small
A Design Digression
- Page Design
- Keeping things "above the fold"
- Scrolling vs. clicking?
- Standard placements
- Deep linking - virtues and dangers
Managing Space
- Managing space is more complex in online publishing
- The increased power and flexibility of linking mean that you
have more power to do things wrong
- We don't have the hundreds of years of print conventions to
count on and neither do readers
Managing Space
- Planning content with space management in mind is
essential
- Following online trends is important
- Consistency is key
Time
- Like space, time initially appears unlimited
- You can publish a new "edition" every day or every hour
- You can run 24/7
- But in the online world the limits of time are very severe
Time
- Users have great expectations for the use of time online
- They are unlikely to give any one site a great deal of
time
- There is more competition for reader time online
- Any time spent must be repaid
A Design Digression
- The competition is brutal - Yahoo loads in 7 seconds at
28.8
- Implications for you
- avoid elaborate designs that require time to load
- avoid flash and splash
- avoid heavy graphics
- segment content where possible - IHT example
Examples of Good Design
- News.Yahoo
- http://news.yahoo.com/
- A pure news site
- Easy to navigate, superb organization, loads fast
- Content from Reuters, AP, NYT, USA Today - all in one
place
Good Design
- International Herald Tribune
- http://iht.com
- Superb content presentation
- Excellent use of JavaScript to enhance the reader's
experience
Good Design
- New York Times
- http://www.nytimes.com
- Lots of content handled very well
- Great job of archiving
- Note the content collections
Good Design
- Washington Post
- http://washingtonpost.com
- Well organized
- Less extensive top level display than NYT
Good Design
- CNET: news.com
- http://www.news.com
- Very well organized
- Great design
Bad Design
- Slate
- http://slate.msn.com
- Great content, terrible design
- One notable feature - keeping material from past week available
from home page
Bad Design
- Salon
- http://www.salon.com
- Difficult to find your way through all of the content
- Too many places where too many categories are presented to the
reader
Bad Design
- Food TV
- http://www.foodtv.com/
- Very poorly organized
- Search is very effective so the user can ignore the rest of the
site
Bad Design
- Martha Stewart
- http:/www.marthastewart.com
- Hides most of the valuable content
- Looks pretty, but is not functional
Bad Design
- AERA
- http://www.aera.net
- "Where to begin?"
- "Hard to find content or anything else you might want."
Where does this leave us in terms of content?
- You needs lots and lots of content that is well structured and
well organized to make good use of limited space and time
- You need a content development process
Content Development
- The more content you will produce, the more you need a
well-structured development approach
- The more content you will make available to readers, the more
you need a content model
Content Development
- Where will you get content?
- Write it yourself
- Invite authors, commission, assign students
- Engage readers
- Link to other sites
- Purchase content services
Structuring Content
- Developing a content model
- What is a content model?
- A standard way to structure content elements
Structuring Content
- Every article, paper, book, etc. has a set of more or less
standard elements
- Least structured approach - every content item is treated as
one element
- Move toward structuring - identifying more elements and
handling them in a uniform way
Content Pyramid
--Title--
---Author---
--Publication Info--
---Short Description---
----------Abstract----------
------Executive Summary------
------------Full Text Body------------
----------------References----------------
--------------Related Materials---------------
Content Model
- No one correct approach
- Evolving meta-data standards - Dublin Core, SIF, GEM, DOD,
etc.
- More elaborate models require more overhead o Models should
allow you to do what you want to do with the content
Working with Content
- Present - display in whole or part
- Analyze - learn how it is being used
- Archive - store for later use
- Manipulate - re-configure or re-use
- Exchange - export, import, share, trade, sell or buy
TOPIC 4
DEVELOPING OR SELECTING PUBLISHING AND CONTENT MANAGEMENT
TOOLS
Tools
- Range from:
- simple html pages
- to
- million dollar plus content management and publishing
systems
Tools
- What influences what you will need?
- Size and scope of your effort
- from a single scholar's web page to the publishing site of a
multi-national publishing company
- amount of content, frequency of publication, number of actors,
expectations of audience, revenue potential, etc.
Tool Options
- Do it yourself Html pages
- Home organization services - university, corporation, etc.
- Commercial free services - isp's etc.
A Digression on IP
- Ownership of intellectual property is increasingly a
concern
- Be sure to understand the ip implications of using any facility
- who owns the content?
Tool Options
- Build your own or buy?
- Files vs. database organization
- Multiple tools vs. an integrated system - content mgmt,
publishing, workgroup, etc.
- Services vs. software (asps vs. run your own)
- Proprietary vs. open source solutions
Tools Investment Considerations
TOPIC 5
CONDUCTING A PROGRAM OF RESEARCH AND EVALUATION TO GUIDE
IMPROVEMENT
Research
- On your audience
- On your content
- On your audience in interaction with your content
An Aside on Promotion
"If you build it they will not come."
An Aside on Promotion
- Strategies to Promote Your Online Publication:
- Print Advertising/Advertise Content
- Link to your own print publication
- Position with Search Engines
- E-mail newsletter
Special Challenge of the Invisible Web
- Content in databases is not readily accessible to search
engines
- Design solutions - content collections on your home page to
show major themes
Research
- Who are the members of your audience?
- Membership models
- Membership registration
- Membership surveys
- Individual movement on your publication site
- Statistics on traffic - hits, page views, member visits, member
visits over time
- Problem reports, search data, etc.
TCR in 2001
- A look at one online education journal's audience
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