Microsoft Word: A Swiss Army Knife for Professors

Microsoft Word is a Swift Army knife for professors. They use it to compose tests. They use it to grade e-papers, marking them up with track changes. They use it to compose textbooks, and draft email to colleagues.

Thus, it is little wonder that word becomes a tool that faculty are most comfortable with. This comfort level is so great, that when they are challenged with developing pages for a Course Management System, like Blackboard or WebCT, it is the software application that they gravitate to.

Nevermind that word produces dirty code that is not congruent with usability, or good mark up standards. Never you mind that a WebPage created in Word will take the first few sentences of the document which are normally rambling introductory statements, and make them the "title" of the page unless a user explicitly defines a title.

Word is what they know.

And since Word is what they know, it only makes sense to give them some tips to make working with Word, and a popular Course Management System like WebCT, or Blackboard a little "easier", or "better", and make that swiss army knife a little more efficient.

In the next few days, I will post a few tips to make your life developing e-learning content in Microsoft Word less of a hassle.