LESSONS FROM THE WEB

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The Four Corners of the Academic Website World

William Slomanson, Thomas Jefferson School of Law

         This inaugural Lessons from the Web column summarizes and offers suggestions about the four basic ways to develop Web sites for classroom teaching. My ultimate objective is to demonstrate the benefits of becoming a "do-it-yourselfer," as opposed to using various university or commercial website-development services. I will proceed from what I would characterize as the least to the most complex of the four options. The more complex the website construction option, the more one can accomplish with the website.

         ".edu" Option: Most US law schools now have, or soon will have, their own websites. Therefore, the simplest and, for many, the most sensible alternative for would-be website creators is to let your law school make your Web site for you. Typically, each school website contains a separate page for every faculty member. For example, see my law school home page which is linked to my faculty member page. At present, many of these individual web pages - generally comprised of a picture and an institutional biography - lie dormant, with some faculty not even aware of their existence.

         If you want do more with your ".edu" website, you will probably have to rely on your institution's technical staff to post substantive content which you create (unless, of course, you're one of the relatively few law professors who have direct server access from their desktops). But relying on technical support staff may not be as "doable" as it sounds. Some law schools without servers depend on outside Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to create and modify the content of their faculty members' websites. This may result in substantial delay. For example, after the faculty member creates or modifies his/her page content, an in-house staff member sends this data to the ISP. When the ISP uploads it to that faculty member's Web page depends on the priorities of the ISP. For schools with Web servers of their own, the time lag between creating and posting should be reduced. Your in-house technician can upload your content and edits without having to wait for an ISP to receive, process, and upload your changes (and those of other faculty members who may be competing for the same staff member's timely assistance).

         But beware: whatever your school's technical process for giving you a website presence, your priorities as a faculty member and the institutional priorities of your law school must be substantially the same for the ".edu" option to serve both you and your students. Otherwise your sense of innovation will be stifled--like the days when one had to wait for a faculty secretary to retype one's manuscript--and your existing web content and the content which you desire to be uploaded will literally not be "on the same page,", thus compromising timely teaching and timely evaluation.

         I recall the amazed "rush" in the audience at the January 1997 Association of American Law Schools Conference in Washington, D.C., when a librarian from Syracuse responded to a question regarding the number of in-house computer support personnel available at that school: seven! If your institution is not as well staffed, then you must consider what will happen when you have to make last-minute changes to your web course materials--as is always necessary when working with new technologies and different levels of student experience. As of this writing, I have completed my first fully electronic (paperless) class. I made numerous changes and added many resources, sometimes on a daily basis. Before undertaking this venture, I fortunately anticipated a potential frustration: if I delegated such details to my school's technical computer staff , I might be considered too much of a "high maintenance" faculty member to preserve my smooth working relationship with those staff members. Thus I began my quest for another website hosting alternative.

         "TWEN"\"WCB" Option: In mid-1997, the West Group completed beta-testing its new electronic Web-based classroom enterprise, referred to as The West Education Network (TWEN). Released to fifty subscribing US law schools this past August, TWEN helps law professors at those institutions create Web-style course pages, which are then hosted and password-protected by West. The system integrates various West features so that students can more fully incorporate WESTLAW and other West products into their law school learning experience. One long-term objective of TWEN is to encourage eventual reliance on West's Firm Site Home Pages program.

         Like any new system, TWEN is currently on a learning curve. The TWEN online Help does not answer questions regarding how to create course content for the Web. TWEN's e-mail reply to my own request for assistance stated that "[i]f you are not able to post the material in the manner you wish, either because the directions are not clear, you are having technical problems, or [if] TWEN does not allow you to create the desired format, please let us know. We welcome your questions and suggestions."

         This is a common method for tapping the market--to learn its needs, and to thus increase demand. If you need further guidance, you may turn to your law school's TWEN representative. This is a West-employed law student, however, who will not be in a very good position to advise you on technical matters beyond the core TWEN feature--the "threaded" e-mail discussion group. (Messages may be "threaded," meaning grouped by subject matter, or some other form of content-specific linking for your e-mail messages, as opposed to appearing in your e-mail queue by date).

         There are some other limitations. The TWEN web templates do not allow you to insert graphics (".gif" files). There are no color features. Most importantly, you cannot link between TWEN pages as you might between pages on the typical website. According to the TWEN technical staff, this means that if you should choose to divide your TWEN site into several more specific and more manageable pages you and your students will have to exit one of your pages (say, your "Syllabus" page) and then open another desired page (perhaps your "Keys Cases/Statutes" page) in order to access the information stored in both locations.

         Unlike the existing webpage limitations, the threaded e-mail discussion capability is an excellent feature of the TWEN system. If, however, you share my own concern about inducing Pavlovian student reliance on a particular commercial vendor, you can accomplish roughly the same e-mail discussion group objectives now, with no technical expertise beyond what it takes to send an e-mail message--and, at no extra cost. (TWEN is free at present, but is expected to cost $20.00/student who uses it in academic ‘98/'99). The Address Book function of most (if not all) e-mail systems conveniently permits every professor, student, and graduate to create and participate in as many e-lists as desired. Existing e-mail technology permits you to dispatch messages to all list members, with only one address in the "Mail To" line of the e-mail message. If your e-mail system is not this advanced, you or your students can still generate messages to even the largest of classes by sending "bcc" copies to all list members. (You can address such e-mails to "LIST," or yourself. Then place the name of the particular class or discussion group at the beginning of the Subject line of the e-mail message. Then copy all class members' e-mail addresses from your Address Book into the "bcc" field.) Careful instructions to your students about the Subject line can accomplish about the same degree of threading as is available via TWEN. For further details, you can explore the method to my madness at my website (click on "e-Discuss").

         My final point for those of you who are using or considering TWEN is that it uses "cookies". In the business world, a "cookie" can be bitter-sweet. It is a program which a company--in this case, West--dispatches from its website. The "cookie" inserts itself into your computer in order to acquire information about the browsing habits of you, the site-user. West can then develop a profile of your (or your students') likes and dislikes. This may give rise to understandable concerns about privacy.

         Lexis' answer to TWEN is "Web Course in a Box" (WCB). Unlike TWEN, this system has no cookies, costs, or contracts. See Lexis-Nexis Xchange (then sign on or register with your password). In creating WCB Lexis drew from a pre-existing university web template, modifying that to provide e-mail and webposting services for law teachers. One might surmise that because the Lexis WCB alternative will always be available at no charge, West might drop its plans to charge for TWEN--notwithstanding its 3.5 million dollar R & D costs--and might even consider abandoning it altogether (not unlike the aborted West Bar Review venture) as personal website construction gains in popularity (see "Do-it-yourself" below).

         ".com" Option: The large ISPs offer "free" websites as part of their strategy for encouraging subscribers to select more costly service packages. For example, I upgraded to the unlimited Internet access option with my own ISP (AT&T) in order to obtain a host for the academic website which I was planning.

         I quickly learned that there were two significant limitations to this alternative. First, there was no telephonic technical support available, although there was some support for accessing and using the Internet and the ISP's e-mail system. A related problem was that the ISP's website FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) was virtually useless--and AT&T was dubbed the best ISP this year by PC Magazine! Second, the ISP's template for creating a website (that it would host for me) was so basic that I would have been embarrassed to use it as my personal website for a trendy, state-of-the-art law school e-class.

         On the other hand, some professors I know have used America Online's commercial website templates and have found them to be a satisfactory alternative for their courses. One of them advises me that AOL now has its own website publisher software, and various help forums. He advises that AOL claims that its "Personal Publisher 2 lets you create a customized web page in 60 seconds or less." See AOL Member Pages.

         "Do-it-yourself" Option: This is the classic instance where one picture is worth a thousand words. If you wish to visit my website, you can quickly ascertain the value of breaking free of all of the commercial website "cookie-cutter" templates in the existing venues which I have described above. It's your blank screen, and your needs only, which determine the entire website's appearance and content. Most importantly, you can build and manage your own website--with no double set of priorities to limit your creativity.

         Those without the time or the inclination to learn HTML code (very technical Hyper Text Markup Language) can use a commercial HTML editing program to avoid much of the drudgery of inputting HTML coding to create a website. Adobe Page Mill 2.0 is the most popular program for "do-it-yourselfers" like me. I was thus able to limit my HTML coding to only those comparatively advanced features I desired--and then, only when necessary to edit out a few glitches. The Adobe telephone technical support was outstanding--to the point where it was Adobe personnel, rather than my current Internet Service Provider, who showed me how to overcome technical barriers created by my own ISP (AT&T)! One downside is that Adobe's phone support is rather expensive, @ $2.00/minute!

         One technical "limitation" with this "do-it-yourself" option is that the free (or very inexpensive) websites, offered by commercial ISPs like AT&T or AOL, are limited to a 2M (megabyte) maximum capacity per account. However, the very extensive website that I have created--consisting of twenty-five linked web pages and hundreds of on and off-site links--used only fifteen percent of my 2M limit. For a few more dollars per month, I can upgrade to 5M, which would arguably recharacterize my site as "commercial" rather than "personal."

         Another advantage to operating your own website: my school's web server crashed for more than one week in October, 1997, supposedly because of a website virus which had attacked our server--after being accessed by an individual PC on our network. Needless to say, an inarticulable level of frustration drenched the work environment for days on end. If I had opted to operate my e-Class from either my school's website, or my office TWEN website, my class and various e-discussion groups would have been disrupted--maybe beyond repair (although TWEN support advised me that I could "probably" operate TWEN from home). Of course, the same problem could theoretically plague a commercial provider such as AT&T or AOL. You might consider, however, whether a ".com" provider is as likely to have the same kind of down time as a ".edu" system.

         Once you choose which corner of the website world is best for you, you can obtain some free building blocks and advice on academic website development. I am aware of two Web authoring sites where law professors can obtain materials which can help them enhance their existing course Web pages. [Editor's Note: see JURIST's new Internet Toolkit section for a third.]

         One is Cornell's Building Blocks website. Since 1992, Cornell has distributed electronic materials designed for legal educators. This site provides downloadable and CD-ROM-based materials for virtually all core courses. The authors offer you a great deal of substantive information which can be used for building the size and content of your personal academic website (regardless of which alternative method you choose). To request more information, send an e-mail to Cornell.

         Web authoring assistance is also provided by Professor Patrick Wiseman, at Georgia State University College of Law. You can visit his Virtual Teaching Tools Web site, which includes an e-mail discussion list with a web-based archive feature, and a cooperatively editable webpage. I especially recommend visiting his informative Design Considerations page.

         In 1965, Gordon Moore, then President of Intel, predicted that the transistor density of semiconductors (which affects the performance capability of PCs) would double every eighteen months. The geometric acceleration of semiconductor development and PC capabilities makes it easy to predict that early twenty-first century websites will be considerably more "doable" than current configurations. Relying on educational and commercial institutions, rather than "doing it ourselves," will become an outmoded alternative which will not survive scrutiny--once personal websites are as commonplace as the personal computer.

© William Slomanson, 1998
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The views expressed in this column are solely those of its author, and do not reflect those of JURIST, its Advisory Board, its staff or its host institutions.
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