Massasoit Libraries: Course Guides Template Instructions: Course Guide Essentials

Things to Remember!

Add alt-text to your images
Reuse links and widgets as often as you can. This keeps the site consistent and make it easier to implement changes.
Check Boxes for Reuse for other items you might want to add to your guides.

Top Things to Keep in Mind

English speakers look at websites in a 'F' shaped pattern

Know that "Eyetracking visualizations show that users often read websites in an F-shaped pattern: two horizontal stripes followed by a vertical stripe."

Write for the Web with easily scannable text

People scan, they do not read on the Web. Change your writing style to maximize what students get from your guide. Visit the Content page for details.

Construct guides around tasks, i.e. your user's goals

People want to find the answer quickly or they will look somewhere else.

Create Focused Guides

Stay focused on a topic, a course, an assignment, an outcome. If you find your guide getting unwieldy - you have many, many pages and are wishing for sub-sub-pages, for example - maybe it's time to break it up. Narrow the focus of your guide and create a separate guide with the other info.

Note on Comp I, Comp II, & Speech Guides

The guides for Comp I, Comp II, and Speech have all been consolidated due to the similar nature of the guide content. If you have a class with a specific assignment or resources, you can add a subpage to the Find Your Class page on each guide with the professor's last name as the page title.

Course Guides Template Instructions

On This Page

Things to Remember!

Top Things to Keep in Mind

Note on Comp I, Comp II, & Speech Guides