Design Guideline 3: Explanations and Tasks
Short, clear and personal style
Try to write your explanations and questions in a short, clear and conversational style. Use the term ‘you' within the text and try to address the students directly.
Small number of questions
Limit your number of questions or tasks per worksheet to three or four to avoid scrolling. If you want to ask more questions, create a new worksheet.
Use specific questions
Avoid general questions like ‘What is always true about X?' and make clear what the students should do, e.g. `What happens to X when you move Y?'. We recommend that your students should take notes while they work with a dynamic worksheet. If you want them to write down their answers on paper, say so on the worksheet.
Refer to your applet
Your text should support the use of your interactive applet. For example, try to explain a new term by referring to your applet instead of using an isolated textual definition. Additionally, you can color certain keywords to match the formatting style of the object they refer to. This makes the text easier to read and helps your students to find corresponding representations of the same object.
Your audience are learners
If you want to provide information for other educators (e.g. lesson plan, solutions) do so in a separate document (e.g. web page, pdf-document). Your students should not be distracted or confused by such information.
Demonstration figure
If your interactive figure is meant for presentation only it might be better to have no tasks or questions on the web page. If you include text, it should be understandable for students as well.
Try It Yourself...
Task
Suppose you own $30, how many items can you buy if each of them costs $7. How does this number change if the item is on sale and costs only $4?