Uni of SA's Designing a Web for Learning - A good overview of some basic design principles that can be used when designing a web site. Integrates various authors such as Nielsen into easy to use guidelines.
Evaluating the Quality of Internet Information. Details research by the University of Georgia that developed a list of 125 indicators of website quality that may be useful in evaluating sites.
The no significant difference web site - A site that catalogues the results of media comparison studies from as early as 1930 to the present day. The overwhelming evidence is that there is no difference between the effectiveness of different media when used with the same instructional approach.
Links from our webforum
The Virtual Classes home page of the Open Training and Education Network (OTEN) based in New South Wales. A good example of an online learning environment, which uses a graphical school-yard based metaphor. The personal homepages are an effective way of building a sense of community. Julie Gibson has written a good evaluation of a trial of teaching using the Virtual Classes in a paper for Ausweb 96
Creating Effective Instructional Materials for the World Wide Web A paper presented at Ausweb 96 that argues 'learning achieved through use of the WWW depends not only on the quality of the learning materials but also on the ways they are used by the learners and are implemented by the instructor.'