Abstract These are some books that you might find useful as you start (and continue) building your course webs. Some I use frequently, others I keep around for the occasional reference or have found to be good general reading. Most I recommend or lend to friends and colleagues getting started with web authoring.
Many people working on and with the web have their understanding and expectations limited by their experience with HTML. Jakob Nielsen's Multimedia and Hypertext: The Internet and Beyond, from AP Professional, provides an excellent overview of the history and possibilities of hypertext and hypermedia.
I'll admit that I no longer keep any HTML references on my shelf; I much prefer online references (particularly the Bare Bones Guide to HTML). If you want a reference, I would suggest the following strategy for picking one. Spend a few weeks building your web pages. Make a list of your questions, particularly the ones that you found difficult to answer. If you have a nearby bookstore with a good stock, look through the books available to see how quickly you could find an answer, and how good their answer is.
For those who like to be overwhelmed, O'Reilly and Associates have a book/CD-ROM combination called WebMaster in a Nutshell that has some useful components.
I'm a big fan of the PeachPit Press books on design. They're usually short, with good tips, and relatively non-technical descriptions. The ones or give to others who don't understand me when I talk about typography and design are The Mac is not a Typewriter (or the PC version) and The Non-Designer's Design Book, both by Robin Williams.
An interesting overview of what it means to be a designer in the modern digital environment can be found in Clment Mok's Designing Business: Multiple Media, Multiple Disciplines, from Adobe Press. It doesn't say a lot about web design, but it does provide a good start to challenging you to think in new ways.
I find that the EdMedia/EdTelecom conference proceedings, available from AACE (the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education -- http://www.aace.org) given a good overview of what people are currently doing. Not everything is perfect, but there are some excellent papers each year.
Wilbert McKeachie's Teaching Tips always remains close at hand when I'm thinking about pedagogy. I find it a good overview of past research. It's also challenging to think about how some of these issues can be reapplied in the electronic realm.
On the odd chance that you're building a commercial site, rather than an educational site, you probably need to consider promotion. There are also reasons to promote your educational sites. A good, cheap guide to web promotion is Getting Hits: The Definitive Guide to Promoting Your Website by Don Sellers, from PeachPit Press.
Jakob Nielsen has an interesting bibliography of books on web design available at http://www.useit.com/books/.
This page written by Samuel A. Rebelsky.
This page generated on 50 by SamR's Site Suite.