SIGIA-L Mail Archives: Re: SIGIA-L: QUESTION: semantics of GUI
Re: SIGIA-L: QUESTION: semantics of GUI for courseware tool
From: lori.klepfer_at_marchFIRST.com
Date: Wed Sep 13 2000 - 13:56:48 EDT
How about a descriptor for the menu options that says:
Select your role: Instructor
Student
Teaching Assistant
You may want to consider allowing them to select all three or a combination.
Your users may want to see all their committments at a glance instead of one
role at a time.
Lori Klepfer
Manager
marchFIRST
Lori.Klepfer_at_marchFIRST.com
Leslie Johnston <johnston_at_gsd.harvard.edu> on 09/13/2000 11:24:46 AM
To: sigia-l_at_asis.org
cc: (bcc: Lori Klepfer/Whittman-Hart LP)
Subject: SIGIA-L: QUESTION: semantics of GUI for courseware tool
All,
We're in the process of completing an administrative web-based tool for the
dynamic creation of course web sites internally, and we're at a bit of a
loss as to how to best identify certain function in the GUI.
The scenario is that any of the people in the school can have any of three
roles in relation to a course: instructor, teaching assistant, and
student. Any person might have more than one role across a number of
courses: for example, students take courses, act as TA for courses, and
sometimes teach courses. All of the data comes from a central system that
maintains information about all of the people affiliated with the school,
as well as all of the courses and rooms.
Our decision for the interface was to have a person log in and be taken to
a screen where he or she selects from a menu bar for three options -
courses that you teach, courses that you are the TA for, and courses that
you are taking. Selecting one takes you to an administrative area for the
courses that you are associated with in that role. These are the three
options that we are having some semantic disagreements about on the team.
How to best identify these? Words like instructor, TA, and
student? Awkward constructions like courses you teach, courses you TA for,
and courses you are taking? One suggestion is to have it be fully iconic,
but there really aren't icons that are really understandable for these roles.
Unfortunately I can't include a URL here for people to view, as it's on a
development server that's closed at the router to anyone outside our domain.
If anyone has any thoughts I'd like to hear them.
Thanks in advance,
Leslie
------------
Leslie Johnston
Head of Instructional Technology
Harvard Design School
johnston_at_gsd.harvard.edu
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