Guidelines for Online Course Conversions

Text

• Text submitted for course conversion must be in final, edited, print-ready format.
• It is assumed that it will be necessary to modify some of the text to fit the online environment but the course developer shouldn't have to do any major editing of sentence structure, grammar, punctuation and spelling.
• Minimize the use of complex sentence structure. Parentheticals, asides, comments, etc. complicate the conversion to online text that is easy to read.
• Text should be submitted in RTF (Rich Text Format) or ASCII (text-only) format. This speeds the conversion process and minimizes formatting issues that arise when moving the text from a proprietary word processing document (Word, WordPerfect, ClarisWorks, etc.) into HTML
• Section Headers should be separated from the body of the text with double spaces.
• Use bold formatting (not italics) to format key words, phrases, etc.
• Bullets , numbered lists, indented text should be indicated in this format

  numbered list (or bulleted list or indented text) follows:
  text of point 1 followed by a line break (enter or return key)
  text of point 2 followed by a line break
  text of point 3 followed by a line break
  end numbered list

HyperText Link Formatting

• Any embedded links should be in this format:
  Title of Website http://www.name.edu
• List both the name of the website and the actual URL.
• Do not enclose URL's in ( )'s, < >'s, quotation marks, etc. as that dramatically slows the process of building the live links
• Avoid the use of long cgi-generated URL's such as
  http://www.northernlight.com/nlquery.fcg?si=&cb=0&cc=&us=025&qr=gps
  The root address with a short description of text to be entered in the search query dialog box is recommended.
• Verify that all URL's are active links

Graphics

• Graphics should be submitted in .gif or .jpg format with a descriptive title in the standard 5.3 format. Example: image.gif or logo.jpg
• Placement of graphics should be indicated by the exact title of the graphic with the appropriate format suffix. Example: insert logo.jpg here
• Banners or logos should be no larger than 600 pixels wide with a recommended height no larger than 75 pixels
• Scanned images should be scanned at a 72 or 75 dots per inch resolution. Higher resolution is not possible in web graphics.
  

Website Formatting

• The course developer will submit to the course publisher a recommended website design template (layout, graphics, font family, navigation, etc.)
• The course developer will submit to the course publisher representative sample documents converted from the delivered text to the recommended online format
• Course conversion will begin when the course publisher and course developer have reached agreement on the website design and document conversion format.
• No formatting changes will be made after the conversion process begins.