HCI issues for web-based training course design

Use of Internet in education and training has been growing rapidly during last two years, training companies has recognized it's usefulness much faster than every other new kind of training before that. The short experience shows that WWW can be used in education and training in different ways and levels: from additional resource bank in face-to-face learning activities to carefully designed virtual classroom. In this paper we address design of Web-based Training (WBT), which we define as a form of distance education delivered via WWW.WorldWideWeb has all characteristics of an exellent distance learning environment: it's available everywhere, it has fast access to huge amounts of information and good communication tools. Designing and updating Web-based courseware is easy and not too expensive. It has caused "gold rush" within education and training community - many training providers are in hurry to set up on-line versions of their courses, without reasoning specific issues of Web-based course design. It's not enough to have just well-prepared content of the course or nice graphical design with streaming multimedia to make a good Web-based course.HCI design of Web-based courses is dependent on instructional design principles and decisions in one hand and on current technological capabilities of WWW environment in the other hand. In this paper we are going to open discussion on HCI issues of Web-based course design, based on the catalogue of WBT instructional tools. This catalogue has been prepared to support Web-based course design by presenting sets of available alternative solutions for every instructional event or functionality. At the end the paper is discussing the results of some Web-based courseware evaluation with respect of the catalogue implementation.