World Cultures: Instructions

Navigation Help

The site has been designed to maximize your choices in navigation; as a result, however, you may have some questions about getting around. There are several types of navigation tools:

Basic Menus

The courses, 110 and 111, have basic menus that outline all the components of the course:

Registration	This is a registration form for students who wish to enroll as correspondence or distance-learning students.
Instructions	You're looking at em.
Course Outline	The Course Outline provides detailed information on the nature and requirements of the course including philosophy, grading, and expectations.
Course Schedule	The course schedule breaks the course down into units of work and writing assignments; appended at the end of the schedule is the weekly schedule of units to be followed by on-site students. The course schedule has hypertext links to every reading, writing, and learning skills assignment. You can navigate the entire course and never start from any other page besides this schedule.
Course Readings	A hypertext table of contents for all on-line reading assignments for this course. The first table lists on-line reading assignments for the textbook, World Cultures, and the second table lists on-line reading assignments from the World Cultures Reader anthology. The first link will take you to an overall table of contents for World Cultures, and the second link will take you to an overall table of contents for World Cultures Reader.
Glossary of World Cultures	This link will take you to a directory of items in the world cultures glossary. Some items are general concepts or terms (such as "modern" or "philosophy") and some are culture-bound concepts. General concepts are in the first item ("General Concepts") and you can find specific concepts by choosing the relevant culture or historical period. You have two alternatives: you can select the link and follow it to another directory listing concepts and terms for that culture, or you can use the pull-down menus included with each directory category (on using pull-down menus, see the section on pull-down menus below).
Quizzes and Assignments	This will take you to a directory of all the on-line quizzes and assignments for the course.
Learning Skills	This will take you to a directory of learning skills assignments and learning skills information. The learning skills assignments are tied to individual written assignments.
Discussion	This will connect you with an on-line, threaded web discussion page. On it, you will find a form; if you fill out the form, your entry will be published as a web page and a link to that page will be included on the discussion page. Your question or query will also be mailed to the list-processor, "world-discussion@listproc.wsu.edu," and can be read by any subscriber to that particular list processor. There is another form on the discussion page that you can use to subscribe to the listprocessor.
Copyright	Stuff on copyright permissions.

Side Menus

The World Cultures textbook, learning modules, internet resources, and on-line reader, are all designed to keep the navigation menus available on the left side of the screen. In that way, you can always move to higher level elements, such as main directories, without having to hit the back button.

The side menus consist of three menus. The top window contains one and only one menu: the main menu. The bottom menu contains two menus: the browse menu and the exit menu. The browse menu allows you to go to three directories:

Contents	This is the main table of contents for a particular site or a particular learning module. For instance, the Contents button for "Mesopotamia" will take you to a directory that lists all the contents of the "Mesopotamia" learning module.
Resources	These are annotated links to Internet Resources that are not part of this site. None of the pages of World Cultures contains links to outside resources because they are undependable; if you want to look at other material (some of it is better) on the Internet, then just click on this link.
About	This takes you to a single page that discusses the general philosophy and learning outcomes of the particular learning module.

   The bottom left window also can contain an exit menu, which will take you to Washington State University resources outside the World Cultures texts and learning modules.

   In addition, the menu window at the bottom is the window to which footnotes will load. When you select a footnote reference in a text, the text of the footnote will load to the bottom window. You can return to the browse or exit menu by selecting these from the main menu in the top window. (You must be on Netscape Navigator 2.0 or above or Microsoft Internet Explorer 2.0 or above for Windows or 3.0 or above for Macintosh)    The top left menu, the "main" menu, allows you to go to the main menus or elements of the site. The top item, "Browse," loads the browse menu into the bottom left window. The bottom item, "Exit," loads the exit menu into the bottom left window. "Discussion" will take you to the discussion page, and "Help" will take you to a menu of possible help topics, including this one.

   The symbols to the left side of each menu item tell you which window the resources will load to.

	This indicates that the directory or resource will load into the large window occupying the right side of the screen; this is the "workspace" window.
	This indicates that the directory or resource will load into the bottom left window.
	This indicates that the directory or resource will load after the current window has been cleared of all its frames. This arrow indicates that you are "exiting" the set of frames that you're in right now.
	This indicates that the directory or resource will load into a separate browser window that will be overlaid onto the current window; in other words, you will now have two separate browser windows open.

Pull-Down Menus

Many directories and all learning module pages have pull-down menus. These are menus of hypertext links; you simply select the link you want and it will operate just like a regular link. You must, however, be using Netscape Navigator 2.0 or above or Microsoft Explorer 3.0 or above for these pull-down menus to work. (You must also change the selection in the pull-down menu; if you select a link that is already displayed in the pull-down menu, it won't work).

You will encounter these menus in several places:

At the top of pages that have many separate items or directories, such as the course schedules and instruction pages.
For every linked directory item in the upper level directories or tables of contents for World Cultures resources.
At the bottom of each page of a learning module you'll find a complete table of contents in a pull-down menu so that you can easily move around the contents of the modules.

Learning Modules

You can navigate learning modules by simply using the table of contents and selecting what pages you want to read. However, since the contents are often sequential (since they are based on historical continuity), the learning modules are also meant to be linear, that is, you're meant to go through their contents in a single sequence. If you want to follow that sequence, you will find at the bottom of each page a sign that says "Next" and the title of the page that follows. These are both hypertext links; if you select either the Next or the chapter title of the following page, you'll be taken to the next page in the sequence. At the end of the sequence, the last page will also have a "Next" sign followed by "Contents"; this will take you back to the contents page and the sequence of chapters is now concluded.

Some learning modules are meant only to be sequential modules, such as the "What is Architecture?" module. These modules will begin with a title page with a link to the next page in the sequence at the bottom. Keep selecting the links at the bottom of the browser window to move through the learning module. In the middle or near the end of the sequence, the full table of contents will be made available. These "sequential-only" modules do not include the menus in the two left windows.

World Cultures

The basic parts of the World Cultures site include:

Learning Modules	These are learning modules, like chapters in a textbook, on aspects of world cultures. They are divided into two types: general and specific. General modules deal with an overall topic, such as language, culture, or architecture, and discuss that topic across a variety of cultures and historical periods. Specific modules deal with particular cultures at a particular time period; some deal with particular aspects of a culture, such as "Chinese Poetry" or "Kabuki."
Courses	These are on-line courses that use the resources from World Cultures in some capacity or another.
World Cultures Reader	This is an edited and annotated anthology of primary readings from the cultures and historical periods covered in World Cultures. These readings are extracts primarily intended for university and college students in their first two years of study.
Glossary of World Cultures	This link will take you to a directory of items in the world cultures glossary. Some items are general concepts or terms (such as "modern" or "philosophy") and some are culture-bound concepts. General concepts are in the first item ("General Concepts") and you can find specific concepts by choosing the relevant culture or historical period. You have two alternatives: you can select the link and follow it to another directory listing concepts and terms for that culture, or you can use the pull-down menus included with each directory category (on using pull-down menus, see the section on pull-down menus below).
Internet Resources on World Cultures	These are annotated links to Internet Resources that are not part of this site. None of the pages of World Cultures contains links to outside resources because they are undependable; if you want to look at other material (some of it is better) on the Internet, then just click on this link.
Learning Skills	This will take you to a directory of learning skills assignments and learning skills information. The learning skills assignments are tied to individual written assignments.
About	The editors, authors, developers, and contributers to World Cultures; acknowledgements; general philosophy; instructions; copyright information.