Tag Archives: WordPress

WordPress Habits of Mind (Part 1)

WordPress stickers
Photo: WordPress Stickers Everywhere / teamstickergiant / http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

We are big fans of WordPress here at ITG. It’s highly customizable with thousands of free themes and plugins. However, such flexibility can sometimes result in confusion, especially when you are dealing with an open-source product like WordPress: the interface may change with certain themes, some functionality is not built-in when we think it should be, or sometimes we’re just plain overwhelmed with all of the options.

We understand your frustration! Our “WordPress Habits of Mind” series will explore the skills and knowledge that we find lead to more productivity and less frustration in WordPress. They are relevant no matter which theme you are using for your site and, I would even venture to say that they’re applicable to other educational technologies as well.

This first post will start off with a few general tips and best practices. (Feel free to share your tips in the Comments area!):

  • Save! Be mindful of saving your work. This not only goes for posts that you write, but also for pages, widgets, and plugin settings. If you’re changing the settings on a widget, make sure to check and see if there is a “Save” or “Update” button. If you’re making a change to a post, make sure to click “Update” or “Save as Draft.”

  • Play! Don’t be afraid to test things out, especially when you’re using a new theme, widget, or plugin. Create test posts and pages to see how they interact with your theme, widgets, and plugins. You won’t know unless you try! Think of mistakes as learning opportunities and remember, you can always delete or un-publish a post or page.

  • Start small. When testing or troubleshooting, focus on changing one variable rather than everything at once. Make the change, save, preview, see what’s different (if anything). Focusing on one variable at a time is safer and also helps you to easily pinpoint the issue.

  • Take HTML baby steps. A little HTML can go a long way in WordPress. If you find that the formatting options in the Visual Editor are just not cooperating, you may want to switch over to the HTML Viewer. Although you don’t have to know HTML to use WordPress, it will certainly give you more formatting options. W3 Schools has tons of free resources for learning HTML.

  • Tag! Get in the habit of creating tags when you’re creating posts. It will give you and your audience more options for organizing and searching through your content.

  • Categorize! Take a few minutes when you’re creating your site to think about how you might want to categorize posts. Create the categories and use them as much as possible. You can always delete a category, add a new one, or reassign posts to different categories. Ultimately, categories provide you with more options for how to arrange your site. You can create pages of specific category posts, use them in menus, and many plugins and widgets build off of categories.

Stay tuned for more “WordPress Habits of Mind” posts. Next up, we will share our strategies for navigating themes.

New to WordPress? Check out the “Getting started with WordPress” section of our website for free resources, or request a face to face consultation with ITG by sending an email to itg@emerson.edu.

Part 2 of 2: Syllabus – Options for Posting Online

Here are a few easy ways to post your syllabus online. (Read Part 1 of this series for some reasons on why to post your syllabus online.)

1. WebCT – Upload a file
If you already have a syllabus in Word or pdf format, the easiest thing to do is to upload the file to WebCT.

Click on Course Content page, Add File, and Browse for Files:

Then, select the My Computer icon. (You may get a warning prompt about letting WebCT access your desktop. Be sure to allow access. Otherwise, you will not be able to access the My Computer icon.) Find your document and click Open.

2. WebCT Syllabus Tool
If you do not have a syllabus created, or would like to start fresh, you can use the WebCT Syllabus tool to create an online syllabus. To do this, you’ll need to activate the Syllabus tool from the Tools menu.

To access the Tools menu, click on Manage Course icon from within the Build tab:

Once you’re in the Tools menu, check off Syllabus then click Save:

This will make a Syllabus tab appear under Course Tools. To create your Syllabus, select the Syllabus tab while in Build mode:

Choose “Use built-in syllabus” then click Select. A drop down menu will appear that allows you to select and fill out different components of your syllabus.

Alternately, you may choose to upload a Syllabus in pdf or Word format from the Syllabus tool (similar to what you did in option 1). To do this, select “Use File” instead of “Use built-in syllabus.” Whether you “use built-in syllabus” or “use file”, students will need to go to the Syllabus tab to access your Syllabus. It will not appear in Course Content unless you add a link to it. Similarly, if you have added a syllabus file to the Course Content area, it will not appear in the Syllabus tab. One option is not better than the other. It all depends on how you choose to organize your course site.

3. WordPress
Finally, if you just don’t like the look and feel of WebCT, another option is to use WordPress. Although WordPress is a blogging platform, it allows you to create pages using an easy to use visual editor. This can allow for your syllabus to become more of a living document that you can edit without having to upload and download a file each time. If you’re interested in using WordPress, contact itg@emerson.edu to set up a consultation.

ITG wishes you the best of luck in planning your spring semester and we are here to help along the way. Email us with any questions or concerns at itg@emerson.edu, or stop by our office at Walker 403. Or, share your tips for posting your syllabus online by posting a comment!

More WordPress Tips

Hello Emerson! I am excited to be writing my first blog as the newest member of ITG. Last month I attended NERCOMP’s conference on WordPress. Panelists, including ITG’s own Monty Kaplan, shared their college’s WordPress initiatives.

Although there was a lot of tech jargon, there were also great examples of effective pedagogy using WordPress. Here are a few key points that resonated with me from Baynard Bailey’s presentation, “WordPress in Teaching and Learning”:

  • Blogs are a great way to support active learning. In addition to discovering how a widely-used blogging platform works, students are also reflecting on their individual learning process and making the content their own.
  • Grading blogs can be an easy way to get students motivated and engaged—just be sure that you are clear about your expectations. If this is a direction you’d like to go in, you may want to check out Mark Sample’s ProfHacker post, “A Rubric for Evaluating Student Blogs.”
  • Vary posts and comments. In addition to encouraging students to comment on each others’ posts, choose a few posts each week that you will comment on. This shows students that you are engaged and interested in what they have to say.
  • Consider alternating when students submit their posts so that not everyone is posting at once. If you have a large course or are covering a lot of content, this allows you and your students more time to read posts and write more meaningful comments.
  • If it makes sense for your class content, have students write for a broader audience. Students tend to get excited and more aware of their writing when they know the outside world is reading it. It also builds awareness around how to write for different audiences and how to establish an online presence. See Educause‘s “7 Things You Should Know about WordPress.”
  • WordPress is an extremely powerful tool. Don’t feel limited to a generic blog. There are a variety of genres to choose from  – travel blogs, personal blogs, review blog, news blogs, etc. WordPress can also be a great tool for digital portfolios, collective research logs, or a basic Web site.

For more tips on Word Press in Teaching and Learning, check out Baynard Bailey’s “10 Tips to Make the Most Out of Your Blog.”

If you are interested in learning more about WordPress at Emerson, check out our Blogging page, or schedule a consultation with ITG.

References
Baynard Bailey, “10 Tips to Make the Most Out of Your Blog.”
Educause, “7 Things You Should Know about WordPress.”
Mark Sample, “A Rubric for Evaluating Student Blogs.”

Best Practices in WordPress Accessibility Design

Accessibility word cloud

Web accessibility word cloud / itjil / CC BY 2.0

Why:

Designing for accessibility means that you end up with a site that is clear and helpful to everyone.

More information on Universal Design in higher education

Colors:

  • Background images or colors should be subtle.
  • Make sure that colors used are high contrast. Try to use light backgrounds with dark fonts. Don’t use red and green together.
  • Try testing your site here: http://graybit.com/main.php

Web Style Guide: Visual Design

Layout:

  • Allow ample white space
  • Use sans-serif fonts

Improving Accessibility Through Typography
Font Accessibility

Content Organization and Markup:

Images:

image alt text

Include short descriptive alt text for all images! This is the most common accessibility error. Use the description field for complex pictures or charts.

WebAIM has a guide for appropriate uses of alternative text.

 

Video:

Closed caption logoIf you are embedding or linking to video, be sure that it is captioned and it can be controlled through keyboard commands. YouTube can be controlled by keyboard commands. Median cannot yet (other than the space bar to play/pause), but captions and keyboard commands are a requested feature for future updates.

To learn more: YouTube captioning

YouTube keyboard accessibility

 

Formatting:

screenshot of formatting buttons in wordpress

  • Use the visual editor as much as possible to organize your content. The BOLD, ITALICS, LIST, UNDERLINE and BLOCKQUOTE buttons will take care of making sure that the html is accessible to screen readers.
  • Similarly, instead of messing around with font size and style to create emphasis, use the built in styles: HEADING 1, HEADING 2, HEADING 3, etc. The theme you have chosen will take care of the font choice and size, but using these buttons will make sure that your content is properly marked up for screen readers.
  • Always use heading structures to aid in navigation
  • Structure, color, font sizes should be consistent across pages

Best Practices for Accessible Content

 

Links:

  • Your link names should be as descriptive as possible in case they are read out of context. “IMDB list of documentaries released in 2010 (opens in new window)” is better than “Click Here”.
  • Note when when you’re directing to a non-html resource: “Survey results (PDF)”

Accessible Links

 

PDFs, Word documents, and PowerPoints:

  • You can upload these to WordPress, and then link to them from your blog post. When a viewer clicks on the link, they will most likely download the file (though some browsers will open PDFs within the browser window). Make sure that the documents themselves are accessible!

PDF accessibility
Microsoft Word accessibility
PowerPoint accessibility

 

References: