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Peer Review

HTML Interactive Tutorial

Reviewed:

Feb 25, 2004 by Business
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Ratings

Overall Rating: 5.0 stars
Content Quality: 5.0 stars
Effectiveness: 4.9 stars
Ease of Use: 4.9 stars
Overview:

This is a practical guide for a novice to build Web pages. Practicality is the key. The ordering of the mini-tutorials is such that it is the logical flow for someone who is creating their initial Web pages and materials are presented in the order in which their topics would come up in the development of an entire Web page.

Other sites such as W3Schools.com, www.webreference.com, and Tutorials for Web developers (http://www.wdvl.com/Authoring/Tutorials/) are more in-depth and have greater reference value. This page is a practical walk-through for the true novice.
Type of Material:

Tutorial
Recommended Uses:

I would assign this as background homework in preparation for an assignment to create a Web page. There is very little need for the instructor to go over or review this material with students. The material is presented in such a way that it is comprehensible to novice students with very little interaction from the instructor.
Technical Requirements:

Notepad, browser
Identify Major Learning Goals:

The interactive tutorials cover basics: tags, links, images, lists, tables, etc. The major learning goal of each is to provide a novice a way to learn how to create and publish a Web page.

There are also tutorials on the site to find hosts, learn about advanced topics (CSS, Web design, JavaScript, etc.). Goals are always the same: get a novice quickly from zero to a hosted page.
Target Student Population:

Students in high school or freshmen in college will benefit the most from the tutorials. If a user has *any* experience in developing a Web page, it will diminish the value of this tutorial.

The tutorial can be used as a "jump start" to a class that addresses Web pages or has a project to build a Web page as part of the class requirements.

You do not need any prior experience in making web pages to take this course (although the tutorial will assume you know how to do some basic things with your computer, like use a word processor.)
Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:

This tutorial is aimed at a novice without any knowledge of HTML, but the
tutorial can be completed much faster if the user has some HTML or web page
background.

Content Quality

Rating:
Strengths:

This is an excellent tutorial for novices. There is a standard and
an advanced tutorial. There are also links to extra topics such as colors and ftp.

There is a good section on Copyright which is not always included in such a
tutorial. The author uses good examples. The information is up to date. The
tutorial also refers to Linux and Macintosh, not just Windows. As a bonus, the
author also has other related tutorials like web design and Javascript.
Concerns:

Students with some knowledge of HTML will get very little from the tutorial.

The advertisements at the top and bottom of the pages are annoying. The pages
are rather slow to load, which could be a problem for someone using a dial up
modem to connect to the internet. There seemed to be an unusual number of pop
ups.

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool

Rating:
Strengths:

This is a well constructed, self-contained set of mini-tutorials that do not require much instructor intervention.

There is no need to write assignments for this tutorial; appropriate mini-assignments are integrated into the tutorial itself.
Concerns:

The tutorial is complete but the tutorial could be difficult if the user is not
very computer literate. The tutorial does not appear to be designed to be used
in a teaching environment. For example, there are no assignments.

Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty

Rating:
Strengths:

The design of the tutorial is professional even though it was created by a high school student. That caveat being stated, the reason the tutorial works so well for novices may be that the writer himself has affinity for those novices.

The tutorial starts with simple topics and gradually builds to more complicated
topics.
Concerns:

Since the site is commercial (although free), there are a number of pop-up ads that can be distracting.
Other Issues and Comments:

On the same web page as the HTML tutorial, the author has links to a CSS
Tutorial, Web Design Tips, Javascript Guide and Internet 101. This is a very
useful web page.
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