Web page design and development

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Introduction

Vista University is known in South Africa as a historically disadvantaged or black university. It is a multi-campus university (it has eight campuses throughout South Africa) and caters for learners from historically disadvantaged backgrounds. The Department of Mathematics and Statistics holds an annual meeting to coordinate the activities in the department across all eight campuses. Attendance is compulsory for all lecturers from all the campuses. Every year the same problem arises, which is to have examination papers drawn up that will be of a uniform standard across all the campuses.

Analyse

Before any application is developed, it is essential to ascertain whether such an application is really necessary. During a meeting of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics (Vista University) it was decided that a database of questions must be developed and made available on-line. As one may expect, such a database of statistics questions already exists on the Internet: DASL claims to “provide data from a wide variety of topics so that statistics teachers can find real-world examples that will be interesting to their students” and the question arises whether the language of instruction (English) and the culture/background of the first-year Vista student can be seen as major obstacles with the result that they cannot identify with these « real-life » examples.

Comprehensive reading

In statistics the student must interpret the analysis done in terms of the problem. Most of the time the interpretation is written in disjointed, jumbled sentences. This agrees, even in 2001, with the findings of Lanham (1986): “…research shows that it is quite possible to go through the motions of reading and to apply the product of such reading by passing a conventional comprehension test based on a text which is actually nonsense; in other words, not really to understand the text.”

Graphics

The author also suggests that strategies to create background knowledge must be used: pictures, titles and event-orientated words in early sentences can help the reader to raise to a level of conscious awareness of the background knowledge needed for understanding the text.

Chapter 1: Introduction
Background to the problem
The aim of this study
The research problem for this project
Chapter 2: Literature Review
Introduction
Stage 1: Analysis
University of the Western Cape: A high correlation between home
language and language of instruction
Comprehensive reading
Different cultural and life experiences
Graphics: a word of warning
Reasons for difficulty in understanding English
Stage 2: Design for Usability
Database design
Basic Steps
The purpose of the database
Tables
Fields
The primary key
Relationships
Web page design
Introduction
The design process
Information design
Interaction design
Presentation design
Web page-database interface design
Forms
Design: Final remarks
On the use of colour
On the use/misuse of fonts
Stage 3: Development for usability
Database development
Web page development
Introduction
Development tools
Web page –database interface development
Introduction
What is an operating system?
Examples of operating systems
What is a Web server?
Examples of Web servers
Operating systems and the required programming
Stage 4: Evaluation/testing
Introduction
Testing database-driven Web sites
Introduction
Types of testing
Testing Web page usability
Introduction
Pilot testing
To get started
Who to invite
How many?
Test procedure
Analysis
Chapter 3: Design and Development
Introduction
Database design and development
Web page design and development
Database-interface development
Chapter 4: Usability Evaluation
Introduction
Participants in the usability evaluation
Feedback
Test procedure
Results
Presentation
Interaction
Information
Chapter 5: Conclusions and Recommendations
Summary
Recommendations
Conclusion
References

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The usability of a computer-based