NCES), it was reported that the number of distance education programs increased by 72 percent from 1994-95 to 1997-98 and that an additional 20 percent of the institutions surveyed plan to establish distance education programs within the next three years (The Institute fi~r Higher Education Policy, April 2000). It was also reported that 1.6 million students were enrolled in distance education courses in 1997-98. A search for "Web-based courses" using Alta Vista in late 1999 resulted in more than 16 million hits, including actual courses being offered online, courses enhanced with Web-based resources, and sites concerning the issues surrounding WBI. The results also revealed that the Web is being used for learning purposes in a variety of areas, including business, K 12, and higher education. Increasingly, institutions and faculty members are feeling pressure to offer Web-based courses to meet economic and student demands. Companies such as Real Education (now eCollege.com), WebCt, and Blackboard have created environments to make the development of WBI easier for higher education. Despite the advertised ease of creating WBI using "Web course in a box" applications, faculty members and instructional designers working to meet this demand are discovering that the creation of WBI comes at a consider. able price in terms of time, effort, and resources. While there may be several reasons why the cost of creating WBI is so high, one driving factor appears to be a lack of guidance in "best practices" fi~r creating these types of learning environments. The literature base is beginning to develop (see, for example, Khan, 1997a); however, to date, there are not many resources that offer assistance in terms of guidelines for creating WBI on a course-by-course level. Many faculty are engaged in transforming their current traditional classroombased courses, using a "Web course in a box" application, to a Web-based