Creating HTML Pages for Web Delivery with Microsoft Word

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The language of the Internet is HTML. If you work in HTML, this will provide you the greatest control over how your content pages appear on a web server or in a course management system (CMS) Since you have already created your master document for your lesson or module, you will now be using those file names, the content that you have developed and the titles for your pages to create HTML pages.

Your master document for your lesson or module was developed using a word processor such as Microsoft Word. The main reason for developing content in a word processor is that this is one less program you need to learn.  This tutorial will give you a very brief overview of how to save files as "web page filtered" in MS Word to illustrate how you can create individual HTML files.

Now that you have created your MS Word document, you will want to save it as a web page, filtered. From the file menu in MS Word, select File Save as web page.

Now that you have created your MS Word document, you will want to save it as a web page, filtered. From the file menu in MS Word, select File Save as web page.

The following screen will now appear.

Confirm you are saving to the correct folder (CCDM). When you created your master document, you created a folder. Save your pages to that folder so you have your master document along with the files that were made from the content contained in your Master document all together in one place.

Check to see that the Page title for your page is correct; see item #1.  If it is not or if it is too long, click Change Title.  To set the page title, type in the correct title; see item #2. Then click the Ok button; see item #3.

Your Page title now appears and is displayed correctly. From the drop down menu, "Save as type" select Web Page, Filtered and then click the Save button. Web Page filtered is the file format of choice to save your file since saving the file in this manner will remove a lot of extraneous code. This process occurs naturally when using this file type and is transparent so you do not have to take time to do anything other than save the file in this manner.

You have now saved your file as a web page. Go to the folder on your computer where you saved this file. In this example, the file was saved to My Documents in the CCDM folder.

Open the folder and find the web page filtered that you just created.

This file can now be uploaded to your Blackboard course as part of a learning unit or by adding an item.

Repeat as Often as Necessary

The actual development of the lesson in Word frees you from developing in another software program. If you choose to do this conversion from Word to HTML, you first develop your content (one or many single pages of content that make up a lesson or module) in the master document and then all you have to concentrate on is the use of MS Word to create your HTML pages. You do not have to be concerned with content development because that part was completed when you created the master document.

Getting your course on the web presents you with three very different challenges:

By segmenting the development of your course into three parts, 1) development in Word 2) preparing content for presentation in HTML, and 3) uploading content and displaying files on a web server or in a course management system, you can concentrate on one task at a time and hopefully not experience cognitive overload by learning too many new tasks/programs at one time.

All Those Files

Now that you have created all of your content page(s) in  HTML, what are you supposed to do with them?  The simple answer is to upload your pages to a web server.

If you are going to upload your HTML pages to a course management system go to the ISU Faculty Tutorials page here and review the tutorials that will assist you in uploading your content/lesson to Blackboard. In Blackboard, you can upload single pages by using Add item and placing the items in a folder. You can also use the Learning Unit if you wish to display a group of pages as a sequential (or non-sequential) unit.

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