SPAN 696

Fall 1998

 

Web Site Evaluation

Por Rosalba Pimentel

 
           Sílabo  Tareas  Información    Gramática    Conexiones    Video    Pruebas de cultura

Source:  World of Lecture Hall
              Spanish and Portuguese
              Intermediate Spanish ( Span 107 University of Delaware)
             http://www.udel.edu/cubillos/span107.html
 

Content Educational Value:
 

This online course provides various components that can be of excellent educational value not only for the Intermediate Spanish student, but also for any person who takes the time review it.  It provides a well structured syllabus that explains in detail the various components of the course (Course goals, background requirements, grades, determining components, course schedule, etc...)  It also provides online activities that expose students to authentic material.  For example, there are eight homework assignments that are directly linked to the web.  The homework for chapter four, for instance, concentrates on "La comida" and students are linked to a page where learn about Laura Esquivel, the author of "Como agua para chocolate".  Students are then required to answer the questions provided by the instructor and send them via email to the instructor.  The homework for chapter one is about "La familia".  For this assignment, students are linked to pages where they look at various famous paintings that have the same theme.    Students evaluate each painting and try to choose the one that best represents the traditional Hispanic family.  These homework exercises are great because they provide authentic material and expose students to culture and art.
The  CD ROM that is included with the textbook for this course is used to review the grammar.  The student is expected to use it to review before an exam.  The "Conexiones" part is a unique component of this course because it gives students access to various daily newspapers and magazines from different Latin American countries and Spain.  This provides users with authentic reading material, which can be of great educational value.
Finally, the "Video" component is also interesting.  This part is basically a video schedule provided by the instructor.  Students are required to watch various television shows at home through out the semester.  This helps to expose students to the language outside the classroom.  This online course lends itself perfectly to become a replicable model.  This same online course format can work for language courses of all levels.  The fact that students can interact outside the class via email gives this course a sense of closeness and a sense of community.  Unfortunately, it does not share student work.

Design Qualities:

This online course uses a web page design that is user friendly.  First of all the way in which the layout was designed makes the information easy to access.  For instance, the main menu reappears in every page to allow students to go back to any of the page components without getting lost.   The instructions are well written and all icons perform their intended function.  This web page also makes great use of graphics and art.  Additionally, the text size and color makes reading an easy task.  All of these design qualities make this web course very easy to navigate.

Technical Qualities:

The technical qualities of this page are fairly acceptable.  This page does not require any special codes to access it.  It is available to any web user and can be loaded very rapidly.  The majority of the parts are working.  However,  some of the web sites in the homework assignments took to long to load.   Besides this, all other parts work.  It is also possible to reach this site at any time.
 

Effective Communication Tools:

This web site uses various tools for effective communication.  For example it provides students access to email to maintain constant communication between instructor and student, between students and resources and among students as well.  In the  "Conexiones" component of this course, students have access to various newspapers and magazines from all over Latin America and Spain.   If the user has any questions or comments they can be directly connected to the publishers via the web.   This course also makes use of a CD ROM for grammar review.  All in all, this online course can be considered a multimedia course.
 
 

JS-Powered Online Web Site
   

Grammar Exercise            Dialogue Exercise        Cloze Exercise        Vocabulary Exercise

Exercise Type:  Multiple choice

Objectives:  Clear

Instructions: Clear

Value: Relevant to the learning objectives.

Reusability:  The reusability of these exercises is excellent.

Comments:  These English exercises are great for the EFL Learner.  Ronald Green, the provider of these exercises, however, ties them directly to his textbook. But since its reusability is excellent, instructors can develop similar exercises that go along with their own textbooks or lesson plans.