Let’s address some of the preparation issues in an Internet-based course. After you decide on a model of instruction, the question comes up of how to put your lectures on the Internet. There are some standard features that you will want to consider incl uding in an Internet-based lecture, because they capture the nature of the Internet. In other words, these features use the capability of the Internet for instruction to it’s best ability.

These features include (1) having an iconic basis to your lectures. Using graphics captures the attention of the students more so than outlines. (2) providing a written narrative to accompany your icons. This narrative should convey the key message of the slide and be succinct. You should consider including hypertext links within the narrative. This will further strengthen the iconic nature of instruction, and provide another source of information for the student to explore related to the featured it em. (3) Using all of the features of the Internet. The Internet is not just the World Wide Web. Consider including e-mail, discussion groups, or FTP capabilities in your course. As an example, statistics courses use FTP functions to obtain databases fo r use in the class.