Beyond Word: simple website creation via a support tool for web based communication, publishing and teaching

Daniel Barnes, Web Publisher, SET Portfolio. Email: daniel.barnes@rmit.edu.au

Linda Pannan, Director, Online Learning - Development & Research, SET Portfolio. Email: linda.pannan@rmit.edu.au

Neeraj Arora, Consultant Programmer. Email: narora@narora.net

ASSETT Research Group, Advancing Scholarship and Science Education through Technology, RMIT University, Melbourne, 3000.

Keywords

automated structured website, MS Word conversion, HTML production, web publishing tool, online learning, academic web publishing

Abstract

Amongst other problems, our experience of considerable volumes of large word documents needing conversion to navigable websites sowed the seed for discovery of a simple tool to transform MS Word documents to well structured, and indexed standalone websites at the flick of a few buttons. This paper describes the development and success of such a tool. It is now operational and provides an open web-based system that is fully scalable, and has no ongoing costs. The websites it creates are of professional quality as well as being searchable, reusable and fully customizable.

The aim of the work was to make the web more accessible to teaching staff, to allow them to publish academic standard websites without knowledge of HTML tools and to broaden the base of academic publishers on the web. Academics may use this tool to produce web based learning materials and it could be useful to them (and others) in publishing other materials such as academic papers on the web, although this is yet to be explored.