This file can be viewed at http://www.math.neu.edu/~porter/barebones.htm

A Bare Bones Approach to Getting
Your Syllabus on the Web

Since students are using the web on a regular basis, it is important to make course materials, such as your syllabus, available online. People teaching single-section courses and especially those teaching multisection courses are strongly encouraged to make a copy of their syllabus and course policies available on the web through the Mathematics Department Web site. While the primary target for these materials are students, there are other target audiences as well, such as fellow course instructors (for multisection courses), prospective students interested in seeing what's going on, future students looking for sample exams, etc.

The material below takes a minimalist approach to getting your syllabus onto the web and available to students.

First print the Beginner's Guide to HTML and look at the course materials already on the Web by going to the Math Dept Home Page and clicking on Course Materials.

The steps for creating a syllabus for the web are:

  1. Create a version of your syllabus in HTML (the hypertext markup language used by web browsers);
  2. Add links so students can get to your syllabus and from your syllabus to your Home Page;
  3. Place your file(s) on the Math Dept web server and have a link added from the course materials page to your syllabus.

These three steps are described below.

Create a version of your syllabus in HTML

There are a number of options:

Morphing: Web documents are not copyrighted; you can copy the source code and perform replaces/additions in relevant places. A good example of how the technique works can be found at MTH 1101 modified to become MTH 1223. The Beginner's Guide to HTML may be helpful here.

While this is a reasonable way to start, you should look forward to adding your own style to syllabi and materials to add a sense of diversity and richness to our web site.

Write your file in a form that a machine can translate into HTML---examples include Word, plain TeX, and LaTeX. The version of Word on NUNET has a save as HTML option. There two programs-- tth and latex2html---available on the department unix server Mystic for translating tex to html. To run programs on mystic, you need to set up an account (the procedure is explained at the Mystic site), and then telnet to mystic (or run mystic locally from the unix machine in the faculty computer room).

(See Approaches to WWW Mathematics Documents for a quick overview of approaches to mathematics on the web and a comparison of tth with latex2html.)

Expect tth and latex2html to produce files that will need some fine tuning of the HTML code. For a concrete example of a latex2html translation see the post-processed file at 1230 final exam; the raw latex2html file can be seen for comparison at raw output. Good LaTeX coding upfront helps a lot to minimize post-processing, especially when lists and tables are involved. The Beginner's Guide to HTML and the course materials should have all that you need for post-processing. You may also find it helpful to have a program validate the HTML coding in your document and report any errors. This can be done at Doctor HTML. Select Single Page Analysis, give the address of your document and the doctor does the rest.

Add links so students can get to your syllabus
and from your syllabus to your Home Page

The minimal links are:

Place your file(s) on the Math Dept web server

Login on to http://www.math.neu.edu, connect to the WebSTAR directory and then to the subdirectory, /~yourlastname. Upload your files to this subdirectory. Now use your browser to check the page(s) you uploaded and check ALL links including the link from the Math. Dept. Home page to your personal Home Page. Send e-mail to Alex Suciu at alexsuciu@neu.edu to request a link from the course materials page to your syllabus. (Note. It may happen that the material you view on the web does not reflect recent changes or additions, this is probably due to the old stuff still being in the cache. If you are using Netscape Navigator and press the Reload button while holding down the Shift key (Option key on the Mac), navigator retrieves a fresh version from the network.)

Technical support

This is a transitional quarter as we aim to get syllabi online for multisection courses. If you cannot make it through all the steps above, go as far as you can and then pass what you have on to me and I will take it from there. I need (i) an e-mail or note letting me know the stage you have reached (ii) a file that is as far along in the above process as you got, and (iii) a print out of your syllabus. The file can be handled as follows:
(a) put the file on a disk and placed it in my mailbox---label the disk with your name, the filename for the syllabus, and indicate whether this is a Mac or Dos disk;
(b) place the file in my syllabi directory: ftp://ftp.math.neu.edu/Pub/faculty/Porter_Rick/syllabi. Send me e-mail at rdp@neu.edu with the filename(s); otherwise, the file(s) will just sit there.
Note: The file structure on our Web site is in transition to accomodate an increasing number of syllabi and course materials. Alex alexsuciu@neu.edu and David dmassey@neu.edu will keep you up to date.

Rick

Created January 1, 1998
Last modified January 4, 1998
Send comments and corrections to: rdp@neu.edu