The following recommendations and guidelines are made by this paper in order to maximize learning in the ICARUS Project.

• The course material that is presented online must have examples to support the theory or show examples of how a particular technique is used in communication (e.g. the section on Resume Writing must include a few sample resumes).

• Although the course will be primarily online, there must be a contact faculty person for the students to get in touch with in case they have a question. This faculty person must be available have at least three office hours per week.

• The ICARUS Project should provide a web tool in which students can submit questions immediately while reviewing the course material. This tool must be in addition to the bulletin board/newsgroup set up for the class. The turn around time for the question-submittal system must be minimized to be within a reasonable range.

• There should be a provision to submit homework online. To protect the integrity of this system, a secure login and password system needs to be set up.

• The information delivered through lectures must be kept concise and pertinent to the goals of the class. Creativity must be employed to sustain the interest of the student.

• The first couple of assignments should be relatively easy, giving the students a chance to learn the system.

• Students preferred to see and hear their lectures, rather then read them. Therefore it is recommended that internet classes use audio to enforce what is written. Animation can also be used to enforce certain topics.

• Minimize the amount of material that has to be learned at a given time. One solution would be to only place on the internet current material and as the course moves on, slowly update the web site.

• Make the web site as clear and precise as possible. Skipping around the site is not an optimal approach. Students were unlikely to scroll through large amounts of material to find information.

• In order for the class to be effective, students have to be forced to participate regularly. Participation was a major factor for students and educators in learning the material. Promoting discussions and having students take turns leading those discussions made the courses more meaningful and beneficial.

• The design of the interface should not distract from the content. Limit your colors, fancy designs, and movement (i.e. animated GIFs).

• Keep the layout simple and clean.

• Make sure your page is easily read by everyone, no matter what their capabilities.

• Visitors should always know the context in which they are operating.

• Consistency aids in navigation through your site. As people become familiar with your site ("behavior" of page), they are able to predict how to perform tasks.

• Eliminate breaks, broken links, etc. that can make viewing the Web site frustrating and unpleasant.

• Be unique so learners know when they have entered/exited the classroom domain.

• Appearance should match the purpose of the page.

• Support a variety of visitors by having different page layouts available. This may not be necessary for ICARUS b/c in general, the learners will be specific group of individuals.

• Scantron and multiple-choice tests have the potential to be less effective than other methods of evaluating students.

• The creators of the test questions will have to take extra care to see that the questions they do provide are clear and will have a small chance of being misinterpreted.

• A system to appeal ambiguous questions should be established.