Ÿ       Your Mother Tongue does Matter! Translation in the Classroom and on the Web by Jarek Krajka

Ÿ         Websites' Role in the Promotion of Distance Education: A Case Study of Geteducated.Com by Gui Qingyang

YOUR MOTHER TONGUE DOES MATTER!
TRANSLATION IN THE CLASSROOM AND ON THE WEB [1]
by Jarek Krajka
Department of Applied Linguistics,
Maria Curie-Sklodowska University,
Lublin, Poland
jarek.krajka@wp.pl

Introduction

Looking back at the history of foreign language teaching, one can notice that there are few issues that have raised as much controversy as the use of L1 in the classroom. Within the Grammar Translation Method, the mother tongue played an extremely prominent role, and very often students learned about the target language in the source language, with translation being the most important language learning activity. On the other hand, the Direct Method almost forbade the use of L1, as the teacher's job was to immerse students in the target language, to use L2 in all situations, obviously, facilitating comprehension with gestures, demonstrations or visuals. Other language learning methods of the past and the present can be situated somewhere between these two extremes, shifting the focus from Teacher Talking Time (usually in the target language) to Student Talking Time (not only in the target language, but also in the mother tongue).

It seems that in the contemporary classroom there is an important role to play for the mother tongue, and its conscious use by students, orchestrated by the teacher, can lead to significant benefits in terms of the learning goals. In this context, the present article will be devoted to the issue of translation and its computer applications as part and parcel of the teaching process.

With L1 or without it?

What is L1 in the classroom? Prodromou (2002) provides a set of metaphors illustrating the meaning of the mother tongue in the language classroom. According to him, L1 is:

"1. a drug (though with therapeutic potential, it can damage your health and may become

addictive);

2. a reservoir (a resource from which we draw);

3. a wall (an obstacle to teaching);

4. a window (which opens out into the world outside the classroom; if we look through it

we see the students’ previous learning experience, their interests, their knowledge of the

world, their culture);

5. a crutch (it can help us get by in a lesson, but it is recognition of weakness);

6. a lubricant (it keeps the wheels of a lesson moving smoothly; it thus saves time)."

To start with, one could consider some of the reasons why learners decide to use L1 in the classroom, despite the teacher's efforts to encourage them to communicate in the target language only. Harmer (2002) claims that very often learners resort to the mother tongue when the choice of task is not compatible with their L2 level; as it is natural for them to use L1 to communicate, while the teacher does not create situations that would make it natural for them to use English; since the teacher does not use too much TL and, consequently, Ss feel comfortable to use their mother tongue as well; finally, as there are different learning styles and abilities that allow some Ss to use the TL more easily. Bawcom (2002), in her study on using L1 in the classroom, found out that in the group of learners under investigation, 36% used the mother tongue for affective factors (e.g. sense of identity, security, social interaction); 41% as a way of implementing learning strategies (e.g. checking comprehension, going over homework); for 18% of learners it was an example of expediency (e.g. translation of directions for activities and passive vocabulary), while the remaining 5% was unintelligible.

In the light of the above, it seems necessary for teachers to channel the mother tongue use into translation activities, helping to improve linguistic competence of students, and exploiting the power of mother tongue and target language use by drawing greater attention to linguistic accuracy.

Translation in a foreign language classroom

Translation is a complex process, and especially some of its aspects needs to be highlighted at the moment. Meaning is paramount, and the translation should accurately reflect the meaning of the original. Moreover, it is the form which should also correspond, of course, often it needs to be translated as well. The register and style are to be retained, with the translator not influencing the meaning by often unintentional choice of language structures. What is more, the influence of the source language, especially in the area of translating idioms and collocations, has to be controlled and limited.

Despite strong arguments for not using L1 in the language classroom (see Atkinson, 1993, Duff, 1989: 5), translation can be a vital resource for a language class, since its limited use can have a powerfully positive effect on many learners, especially if their previous experience has had very little L2 use and they have to be introduced gradually to the target language environment. Also, as Deller (2003) adds, the mother tongue should be used as a resource to notice differences and similarities between the two languages; to let learners develop and produce their own materials, including their own tests; to encourage spontaneity and fluency; to have a beneficial effect on group dynamics and to receive ongoing and meaningful feedback from learners. Duff (1989) adds that translation helps to better understand the influence of one language on the other, it is natural for people to translate in real life, translation activities invite speculation, discussion and evaluation of answers (of which there are rarely 'right' and 'wrong' ones), finally, help develop accuracy, clarity and flexibility of expression in the language. Finally, providing the rationale for the introduction of translation into the teaching process, Owen (2003) says that it is useful to increase learner awareness, not only of grammar but also of the pragmatic and stylistic devices and their effects. In this way, learners are empowered with a fuller understanding of what the L2 is capable of, in what ways it is similar to, or different from, their own language. Rather than an obstacle to real language use, translation might be viewed as a way of fine-tuning the language to be used in given situations and conditions.

In order to make a translation activity a purposeful element of a language lesson, there are some necessary precautions to be taken (after Duff, 1989: 9):

• all students should be equally involved in the task;
• the activities ought to contain as much oral translation as possible, with writing to be used as individual follow-up;
• the material needs to be short and varied, with longer texts reserved for out-of-class work on higher levels of learning;
• there must be time-limits set, in order to prevent students from getting stuck and to allow the time for discussion and feedback.

Translation opportunities on the Net

Nowadays, language learners, be it children, teenagers or adults, are more than likely to have contact with the target language out of class when surfing the Web. Thus, what they need to be provided with is a set of language tools that would help them make the meaning out if they desperately need it. For that purpose, one of many online translation services can be used, which take the message typed in, connect to an online dictionary site and produce a translated version. Of course, what learners must be made aware of (for instance, in a sample in-class activity) is that such online machine translators will not produce a perfectly accurate text, but rather come up with a piece of language that will allow a learner to make out the meaning on their own. Thus, they cannot serve as models for language work or as suitable homework help, and must be subject to human polishing in order to produce a text of satisfactory quality. When the source language and the target language are as substantially different as English and Polish, a machine-translated text may produce the output which is barely comprehensible, with problems of inflections, multiple meanings, idioms and multi-word constructions. On the other hand, such rough output can be useful to give students practice in editing, correcting, deciding on appropriate lexis use or inflections choice, which can be demonstrated in the activities given below.

The examples of services translating English-Polish or Polish-English are Poltran (http://www.poltran.com/) or Foreignword (http://www.foreignword.com/LTools/
TransNow/Polish/transnow.htm). On the other hand, with students learning two foreign languages such as English and German, French or Spanish, there are a number of other services providing automatic translation within these language pairs: Altavista's Babel Fish translator (http://world.altavista.com/); Dictionary.com, (http://dictionary.reference.com/translate/text.html); Free Translation (http://www.freetranslation.com/); WorldLingo (http://www.worldlingo.com/products_services/
worldlingo_translator.html) or iTools (http://www.itools.com/lang/). For even more links to similar services, go to http://www.humanitas-international.org/newstran/more-translators.htm.

At the same time, the services provided above allow users to translate not only individual words, sentences or blocks of text, but also entire websites. This can be done by going to one of the services given above (Babel Fish, Dictionary.com, Free Translation, World Lingo or iTools), finding a "Translate a Web page" box (or similar), typing the URL of the page one wants to translate, selecting the from and to languages and pressing "Translate". In order to facilitate the process, it is advisable to have two windows of the Internet browser open, go to a translation service in one and the page to be translated in the other, then copy the URL of the page and paste it to the translation service. Another reason why both the source page and the target page should be open is that due to the fact that the translation is automatic, non-contextual and prone to grammatical inaccuracy, there may be the need for the source text to be used as reference in order to make the meaning out.

T-Sail (http://www.t-mail.com/cgi-bin/tsail) is a service which performs the same function of letting surfers view websites in the language of their choice, machine-translated from a source language to a target language, however, without the need to use two windows to translate the page with the help of some online translator. When going to the page http://www.t-mail.com/cgi-bin/tsail (or http://www.t-mail.com and clicking "T-Sail"), one types the starting page in the "Start Sail'n at" box, then chooses a language combination from the drop-down box below, finally presses "T-Sail". The page will be machine-translated, and then the user can click links on the translated page with the next pages also automatically machine-translated. Of course, it must be kept in mind that since the process demands connecting to a translation service, processing the website and giving back the result, it can take a while to have a page translated.  

Adding translation opportunities to a website is another possibility for enriching the language classroom (see, for instance, Altavista's Babel Fish at http://world.altavista.com/ and click "Add Babel Fish translation to your site" at the bottom of the page, but NOT "Add translation to your personal or business site" on the right). Thanks to that, surfers visiting the website can translate passages of text or entire websites among many languages without the need to connect to an online translation service. Another functionality is that users are able to translate the webpage visited with just one click. In order to enable that, one should copy a code given on the page (http://world.altavista.com, then "Add Babel Fish translation to your site", or directly at http://www.altavista.com/help/free/free_searchbox_transl), open the class website in a webpage editor, add a code, save the page and upload it to the server.

Translating emails is another language opportunity provided on the Web (e.g., WorldLingo's http://www.worldlingo.com/products_services/
email_translation.html), which enables one to send and receive email messages (in this case, in 12 languages with Polish, unfortunately, not being one of them). Thus, to test the service and have one's email message translated from English to, for instance, Chinese, Dutch, German, Greek or Italian, go to http://www.worldlingo.com/products_services/
email_translation.html; type in the relevant fields in the form provided (your name, email and language, recipient's name, email and language, subject and message), finally, click "Send". In order to evaluate the translation capacity, it is advisable to send an email from one email address to the other the teacher has.

A similar email translation service is T-Mail E-Mail (go to http://www.t-mail.com, then click "T-Mail" again). This is a standard Web-based email service, which provides users with free-of-charge email accounts accessible on the Web after inputting the login and the password, however, apart from sending mail one can choose the language the message will be translated to and sent to a recipient. Thus, to use the service, go to http://www.t-mail.com/index2.shtml (or http://www.t-mail.com and then click "T-Mail"), click "Registered Users: Login" if you have already set the account up, then log in with your login and password; or click "New Users: T-Mail" to register for this free service. Once logged in, create a message, put in the addressee, then choose the target language and the source language. A good thing to do is to include your own email address in the "Cc:" field (Carbon Copy – send a copy to somebody else), so that you could see the translated output as it goes to the addressee.

Going one step further, learners practising other languages through English could use the opportunity of machine-translated chat. In this case, a user enters a real-time language translating chatroom, and can have their message translated to the language that other user/s speak in the chatroom (see Babelchat, http://www.babelchat.com or Word2Word Translating Chat, http://www.word2word.com/word.html or http://www.word2word.com and then choose "Word2Word Translating Chat" in the box and click "Take Me To"). In the latter case, on entering the chatroom by clicking either of the two chat entrances, one needs to adjust the language selection at the bottom of the chat window to the language being used in typing, as well as the language selection at the top of the chat window to the target language. Both languages will be seen in the chat history box.

Many Internet users communicate with each other with the help of Internet communicators, known also as instant messaging systems or messenger services (ICQ, AIM, MSN Messenger or Yahoo! Messenger, to quote just a few). Chatting with these can be facilitated by IM Translator (http://www.paralink.com/ims/index.html), a free-of-charge tool providing instant translation of messages and other texts while chatting with speakers of other languages. What is important is that the program performs both the function of a chat tool and a translation tool. Thus, after having downloaded and installed it, one needs to type a message and choose a language to be translated to, or, on the contrary, choose a message other chat users uttered to be translated to one's mother tongue (or the language one finds easier to understand).

10 language activities with online translation tools

What follows is the outline of ten language activities focusing on translation and using online translation tools. The main purpose of these is to give students the idea of the possibilities and limitations of machine translation, to make them notice similarities and differences between the mother tongue and the target language, finally, to encourage them to use language editing and polishing to improve the quality of their messages.

1. Take a coursebook text from the previous lesson, ask groups of students to translate it to Polish. Then have them use a translation service to do the same. After that, students compare the two translations, paying special attention to the proper use of selected grammatical structures.

2. Write a text in Polish based on the previous coursebook lesson/text, which will use the same vocabulary, however, in different sentence structures. Print the text out for students, then go to one of Polish-English translation services, paste the text and have it translated. Then give the result to groups of students, ask them to try and retranslate it back to Polish. Finally, give the source text, have students find differences between the two versions and discuss the differences with the whole class, drawing students' attention to the typical mistakes made by the program or the students.

3. Ask students to copy a short text in English from the coursebook to a translation service. Then they use the service to translate it into Polish. After that, students copy the result as it is and paste it again to the same translation service and make it translate it into English. Finally, students in pairs or groups compare the original text and the result of the retranslation, drawing conclusions on the differences, later to be discussed with the whole class.

4. Provide students with a text in Polish. Divide them into pairs and have each pair use one of the Polish-English services. Have students translate the same text in different services, then ask them to get into bigger groups and find differences between the two translations. Finally, get the whole class to exchange ideas and reflect on the problems encountered.

5. Give students a fairly easy text in Polish. Ask them to translate it, using all the resources they can (especially dictionaries). Once finished, have them use one of the Polish-English services to translate the same text. Then have them compare the translations, trying to find strong and weak points of both the computer and the student.

6. Write a text in Polish based on the language of the recent lessons. Then ask a teacher of another language taught at school (e.g., German, French, Spanish or Italian) to translate the text for you into this language. Then give both texts to pairs of students, and have them use different translation services to get the English translation from Polish and from some other language. Compare both translations, find differences and draw conclusions on the language differences between pairs of different languages.

7. Take the English texts, translate them into Polish using a machine translation tool. Have students compare the source and the target text and find true friends (words that have similar form and meaning in both languages) and false friends (words with similar form but differences in meaning). Make sure students learn them.

8. Take an English text with the words students have recently learnt (it is important that words be polysemous). Use the online translator to get the text into Polish, then copy the result to a word processor and highlight the polysemous words. Ask students to consider if they are correct, and, if necessary, provide the appropriate words. Let them consult the source text when in need.

9. Write a text in English, rich in phrasal verbs, idioms, prepositional phrases ('at first') and verb+particle phrases ('beware of'). Use a translation tool to get the target text in Polish. Before giving it to students, polish the translation so that it is only the translation of idiomatic phrases mentioned above that is imperfect. Then divide students into pairs, where one person is to reconstruct the original English phrases, while the other – come up with a 'more Polish' expression. After that, have students get together and compare the phrases.

10. Provide students with a text in Polish based on the recent language material. Then have them translate it into English, take the result from English and translate it to French, take the result from French and translate it back into English and finally the result from English back to Polish. Ask learners to compare the source Polish text and the target Polish text to see which elements remain unchanged, which, on the other hand, had meaning distorted.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it has to be kept in mind that translation has different layers, and depending on the language level students can work either on decoding the meaning of individual words or structures, mastering the language by finding synonyms, trying to paraphrase or explain concepts descriptively, or, perhaps, getting deeper into the essence of whole sentences and paragraphs. This, as Naimushin (2002) claims, is culminated with the moment when learners realize there will always be words and expressions they do not know but this cannot be an obstacle to successful communication, and that translation is not about word-by-word rendering of the original message in the target language but is communication-oriented, and with the equivalence of the entire message supreme to the equivalence of its segments.

Note

This article is dedicated to the fond memory of an excellent translator and interpreter, Pawel Wieclawski, my lifelong friend, who died tragically in a car crash on August 14^th, 2004. I am grateful to him for a lot of advice on the ideas and sites presented in this paper.

References

Atkinson, D. (1993) Teaching Monolingual Classes. Harlow: Longman.

Bawcom, L. (2002) "Over-using L1 in the Classroom?" Modern English Teacher, 11 (1).

Deller, S. (2003) "The Language of the Learner." English Teaching Professional, 26.

Duff, A. (1989) Translation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Harmer, J. (2002) "Please Speak English". ELT Forum, Classroom Management, Part 4, http://www.eltforum.com.

Naimushin, B. (2002) "Translation in Foreign Language Teaching." Modern English Teacher, 11 (4).

Owen, D. (2003) "Where's the treason in translation?" Humanising Language Teaching Magazine, January 2003.

Prodromou, L. (2002) "The Role of the Mother Tongue in the Classroom." Language Teaching Issues, 166.

WEBSITES' ROLE IN THE PROMOTION OF DISTANCE EDUCATION:
A CASE STUDY OF GETEDUCATED.COM
by Gui Qingyang
China Jiliang University,
Hangzhou, P. R. China
gqy118@hotmail.com

Introduction

The World Wide Web sites reflect a considerable variety of uses for computing and related forms of electronic technology in teaching and learning. GetEducated.Com, LLC, is an excellent non-commercial resource for everything that has to do with distance education. A large part of their mission is to help potential students ''get educated'' about online degrees including how to select a great degree for their needs among the hundreds of competing options now online in the U.S.A. The present author expounds websites' role in the promotion of distance education by conducting a case study of GetEducated.com, focusing on the possibilities it offers.

Background

GetEducated.com (http://www.geteducated.com/) has been online since 1989, with Vicky Phillips as its highly esteemed founder and CEO. Vicky Phillips served in the 1980s as Director of Academic Services and Registrar at Antioch University's San Francisco campus. Antioch is of course a pioneer in the U.S. in cooperative and experiential learning and had since the 1970s operated a ''University Without Walls'' distance learning degree program that allowed older disenfranchised learners (e.g. prisoners, rural residents, mid career changers) to design their own degree working with community mentors. Vicky has a master's in psychology and a counseling background, so she has always been aware that the psychological factors that motivate one to learn (or not) need to be addressed in order to create an environment that is conducive to learning. She also taught ''night school'' psychology to older learners studying to be therapists at the Antioch satellite campus in California. That experience introduced her about the need for a more accessible higher education system, one designed to accommodate older more knowledgeable learners. She left Antioch to design and launch the first online counseling center for adult learners in 1989 with an experimental company called The Electronic University Network. That group worked with colleges nationwide trying to get them to come online with their faculty and degrees.

Distance education has been around in the U.S. for a very long time in print correspondence and cable broadcast forms but until the Internet arrived as a delivery method most colleges considered distance learning a ''lesser form of education''. It is really amazing how the rise of the Internet and its popularity has made distance learning more acceptable among academic circles in the U.S. By 1995 Americans had started to use the Net for casual and leisure communication and home PC penetration was high enough for mass awareness to expand. That is when growth of interest and program availability began to skyrocket. In 1989, when Vicky Phillips first surveyed the field there were three distance MBAs available. Today, they track and profile 120 options in Vicky's free guidebook, GetEducated.com's Best Distance Learning Graduate Schools -Business & Management 2004 (http://www.geteducated.com/bdlgs_bm.htm). Internet delivery has made distance learning much more appealing to an American audience for several reasons. First, it is a much more interactive type of learning than print or cable TV correspondence and this appeals to both students and faculty. More importantly, according to their surveys, Americans adore technology and they respect it. An online degree just sounds better to most Americans than a correspondence degree.  

The Possibilities GetEducated.Com Offers

GetEducated employs a core staff of five and utilizes the services of a number of contract agencies in specialty areas ranging from database development to editing. Their slogan is: Don’t get frustrated. Get educated! As Rick Irish, a senior technical support specialist in the Production Services Division of BIS and a recent online student himself, put it,

'Today, many academic disciplines offer self-paced, home-study courses which result in a fully accredited degree via the World Wide Web. Some programs offer 'life experience' credit for job experience related to a chosen field, while others allow students to 'test out' introductory required course work. Some schools offer interactive multimedia training that varies from audio to video or CD-ROM to Internet online. Others offer resource assistance online including registration, course selection, research, tutorial assistance, chat rooms, and even examinations. Of course, none are free, but all offer varying levels of convenience. If you are really looking for a training opportunity, it isn’t very difficult to find. Check out the site used as the title of this article…www.geteducated.com…or try www.accrediteddldegrees.com as starting points. These are not complete or exhaustive lists but will give you a flavor of what is available. You are only limited by your initiative and imagination! ''

http://www.state.me.us/newsletter/backissues/
july99/wwwgeteducatedcom.htm

GetEducated website does offer a lot of help. The Adult Education and Distance Learner's Resource Center provides resources which include:

·         the Distance Learning and Accreditation FAQ;

·         a directory of colleges and graduate schools that offer online or other distance learning opportunities;

·         a weekly syndicated column on distance learning;

·         articles from publications;

·         and the links to three of the company's newsletters:

o        Virtual University Gazette (http://www.geteducated.com/vugaz.htm), a widely-applauded free monthly e-mail newsletter serving over 30,000 distance learning professionals and students at the adult, post-secondary levels. To subscribe it, you may just click Subscribe Me!

o        The Virtual University Business Digest, America's first newsletter for executives working in the Internet-enabled adult education movement,

o        and The Global E-Learning News, which covers the emerging global market for adult e-learning products and services.

The Distance Learner's Hall of Fame has real-life success stories of people like the founders of Ben and Jerry's ice cream.

What is most important, GetEducated.com screens all degree-granting universities and publishes The Best Distance Learning Graduate Schools. They operate the only clearinghouse in the USA dedicated exclusively to showcasing accredited online degrees. Unlike other online degree directories, college experts at GetEducated.com evaluate each and every program that applies to their site. We have noticed that unaccredited distance learning colleges are barred from their site. Online colleges accredited by bogus agencies do not appear on their site. Degree mills – fake Internet universities – are not allowed. They are, therefore, one of the safest places in cyberspace to shop for your online degree. This web's guides offer free basic listings to any qualified university. To qualify for a listing in the Best Distance Learning Graduate Schools series, a degree-granting university must be accredited by an agency recognized by the Council on Higher Education Accreditation.

Distance learning in the U.S.A. has been plagued by the growth of ''diploma mills'' or ''degree mills'' which  prey on consumer ignorance about accreditation and higher education. More than 20 thousand government officials in this country were recently found to hold degrees from fake colleges. In view of this, many of the resources of GetEducated.com, such as their popular FAQ ''Top Ten Signs You May Be Dealing with a Degree Mill'', serve to protect consumers from fraud and misconception in this now billion-dollar scam industry. They screen every college that submits to their site. One valuable service they offer free of charge is to respond to people's queries about particular colleges in regards to accreditation and quality. Their free guidebooks are:

Ø       Best Distance Learning Graduate Schools – Education & Library Science (http://www.geteducated.com/bdlgs_ed.htm), a free guidebook to 65 accredited online master degrees and distance learning doctorates in education and training;

Ø       Best Distance Learning Graduate Schools – Technology (http://www.geteducated.com/bdlgs_tech.htm), a free guidebook to over 85 accredited online degrees in technology, computer science, engineering and related tech areas;

Ø       Best Distance Learning Graduate Schools – Business & Management (http://www.geteducated.com/bdlgs_bm.htm), a free guidebook to o over 160 accredited online master degrees and distance learning doctorates in business and management;

Ø       Best Distance Learning Undergraduate Schools - Business & Management (http://www.geteducated.com/bdlus_bm.htm), a guidebook over 100 accredited online bachelor degrees and distance learning associate degrees in business and management.

Vicky Phillips and her colleagues have also worked with a number of American and Canadian enterprises. Throughout the 90's they did a great deal of work helping companies and universities blueprint online campuses - that is to develop new curriculum, degrees, and learning platforms that responded to what adult learners wanted and that tapped the interactive potential of the Net. In this capacity, they developed multimedia course prototypes, surveyed learners as they came online to learn their preferences (a function they still undertake today), and began to collect and disseminate free college guidebooks and FAQs that helped both faculty and a new generation of online students get educated about online learning.

The GetEducated website has also contributed a great deal to the promotion of the English language teaching and learning endeavor. Vicky Phillips herself has written a couple of articles related to the English language teaching and learning, such as Visions: Death of the Course, in which she said, "Cognitive Arts says they make e-courses; I’ll call their product something else. I’ll term them educational immersions. Office workers can learn business English as a second language using Cognitive Arts courseware. But the 'course' doesn't teach abstract principles. The course assigns learners the fictive role of business executive, then invites them to learn English by responding to fictional inter-office memos and reports left in the learner's e-mail in-box. This is not your father's ESL class. The course is dead. Long live learning." (2001, http://www.geteducated.com/vug/nov01/vug1101c.htm)

Suggestions of Rating the Functionality of GetEducated.com

GetEducated.com does provide professional, efficient online support, but there can be still seen some necessities of rating the functionality of this web site. Most of the students in my university enjoy visiting GetEducated.com and some of them have got much good idea of how to get on online in terms of studying towards an MA degree in Computer Science or Business Administration. But to some other students' disappointment, they do not see any language diplomas or degrees screened by GetEducated.com. That is to say, they can't "get educated" in whatever ways they want. Therefore for the netizens' sake (a netizen means a citizen on net), the website is well-advised to rate its overall design and functionality by broadening its scope of service. We don't mean this well-known website does not show any interests in promoting language teaching and learning. On the opposite, they have done very well, particularly displayed by Vicky Phillips' deluge of articles in different contexts. But I still think that Vicky will agree one of the questions we should ask most frequently is, "How can we get more people to look at our site?" In other words, how can we get our "netizens" better educated?

It is necessary as well to make GetEducated.com a bit more user-friendly. The goal here is to provide the user with the information they want in the fewest possible steps, and in the shortest time. Making information on the site easy to find encourages people not only to use the site, but also to suggest this site to others and to come back to it when they need information. Remember the 8-second rule! Most Internet users have about 8-10 seconds of patience while they wait for pages to load. Don't keep them waiting or they'll leave and never return. To know how the visitor feels about GetEducated.com, it seems practical that Visitor Feedback column should be established. Give the users a way to offer suggestions and make comments. Make it easy for the users to contact you. They are a valuable and free resource. 

Conclusion

"Great, I say, because of the excellence of the things themselves, because of their newness, unheard of through the ages, and also because of the instrument with the benefit of which they make themselves manifest to our sight." (Sidereus Nuncius) Online since 1989, GetEducated cite is one of the most comprehensive and trusted non-commercial higher education directories to accredited online university and college. Their expert advice on online degrees and distance learning has been featured in Time, The New York Times, Forbes, Fortune, US News & World Report, CNN, and CBS News, among others. We are witnessing the dawn of a new era in education. In the beginning it will look a lot like what it is replacing, just as early movies were simply filmed plays.

References

Phillips, V. (2004) "Online Universities Teach Knowledge Beyond the Books." http://www.geteducated.com/articles/hr98.htm.

Phillips, V. (2004) "Distance Learning, Accreditation, and Online College Degrees." http://www.geteducated.com/articles/dlfaq.htm.