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More About Using This Web Site for Teaching
Bob Alden's On-line Courses in Electric
Power Engineering
- You can use this site and give any of these courses at your
academic institution (more info).
- You can read Bob Alden's paper on How to Put
your Course on the Web.
- The rest of this page deals with using and modifying the html pages
when an instructor has registered to use this site for teaching one of
these courses. The level 3 (graduate) course does not use these additional
instructional features.
Sample Home Page
- There is a sample home page for each course offered on this
web site.
- Each instructor can create a unique home page (on the institution's
server) for use by all students, teaching assistants, and the instructor
as the local focal point for this web based course.
- This page should be copied into a suitable directory on the
instructor's server, and edited to display the institution's course
number and the current year. (this is to indicate the status of this
page during the annual changeover when links and dates must be changed).
- I recommend that the instructor always edits the date at the
bottom of the page whenever a change is made to the page, and that a
mailto is inserted so that students can easily contact the instructor by
e-mail.
- Remember to keep the link to the index page on the "bobalden.com"
server so that the notes can be accessed.
- There are additional links that you can either delete or implement
to display a News page, a Class Schedule, and so on.
Other Sample Pages
- The following links are for sample pages that you can download,
edit and use (these were used in the power devices and systems course).
News ,
Class Schedule ,
Lab Schedule ,
Lab Grading System
Use of JavaScript
- there are two uses in some of the Power Devices pages
1 - to create pop-up windows for news, schedules, etc. -- you may
wish to replace this code this with a simple link or to copy the code
from another page and insert it
2 - to display a count-down to an important date (e.g. the exam, or
term test, or end of term, etc.) -- the javascript code can be edited to
correclly indicate the number of days to the date - note that the digits
indicating the month and date have a value "1" less that the calendar
number because 0 is day one, 1 is day 2, etc.
Notes Index Page
- This display uses frames (narrow left frame and wide right frame)
- Right Frame The index page appears in the wider right frame and
contains double links for each lecture (the printable notes, and
portions of those notes - reformated for classroom projection). The
latter link, called "presentation" contains material that has been
formatted to be shown by a SVGA projector connected to a PC which, in
turn, is connected to the internet by a high speed link. You need to
make sure that you have off-campus access in your classroom location
(some teaching institutions block off-campus access but can grant
off-campus access by special arrangement).
- Left Frame The narrow left frame contains two sets of links that
can be used by the instructor during projection.
- The top set are links to skip down the page (to avoid scrolling).
- The bottom set are used to display graphics in small pop-up
windows that are positioned to complement the presentation slides.
Those with a red star are "always on top" - you should never open
more than one of these at a time!
Use of a Cordless Mouse
- I recommend using a cordless mouse during the on-line lecture (as
opposed to using the computer keyboard to advance slides or move the
cursor). I use the Logitech
TrackMan Live.
Laboratory Experiments
- These are very useful to provide students with hands-on experience
- if laboratory facilities are available at your institution.
- Information is provided (on-line) for performing six 3-hour
experiments using Lab-Volt equipment (which
I have used over a fifteen year period). You may use the sample laboratory
experiments as a basis to develop your own.
- You can use the provided photographs (on-line) of experiments and
equipment as learning aids (in place of OR in conjunction with experimental
facilities).
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