AUC Academic Conference 'From Virtual to Reality' The University of
Queensland 1996AUC Academic Conference 'From Virtual to Reality' The University of
Queensland 1996
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Paper Title:
Overcoming the "not built here" problem
for coursewarePresenter:
Chris Knowles, The University of Waikato
Authors:
Chris Knowles, Project Coordinator, Teaching Technology Group
Ann Melville, Assistant Director, Information and Technology Services Division
and Manager of the Teaching Technology Group
The University of Waikato
Keywords: CBL, Languages
Faculty area: Languages, Multimedia
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Introduction
At the University of Waikato, the Information and Technology Services Division has set up a multimedia Learning Centre in association with the language departments. There are many teaching packages available commercially but, often, these are inappropriately designed for the way in which a specific teacher wishes to teach. The Multimedia Unit within the division has worked with a team representing all the language departments, to design and implement software incorporating generic templates which are able to be tailored for a variety of teaching uses. This paper reports on the progress to date.
An historical perspective on language teaching support
at the University of WaikatoThe entire Teaching Technology Group has arisen from a one-technician support service for languages within the School of Humanities which was originally set up in 1975. The Teaching Technology Group has grown considerably over recent years It is responsible for audiovisual and multimedia courseware design and production, the support of students and staff using that courseware and using audiovisual equipment, and the design and administration of all the teaching rooms and lecture theatres on campus, some 160 presently, and growing. There are 25 staff.
The close working relationship between academic staff and the technical staff has continued through a period of massive growth both of the University and of the languages. In 1984, French, German, Maori and Japanese were taught, teaching has now expanded to include Chinese, Spanish and Korean.
In 1984 there was a pair of elderly Sony language laboratories based on older technology that began to fail with ever increasing regularity. In 1990, new, enlarged premises allowed TTG to install two Tandberg IS10 laboratories and, with an eye to future proofing, the machines in the main laboratory sat in wide desks suitable for workstations. The technology didn't seem quite ready or was too expensive at that time for what the university wanted to do for language teaching supported by computers.
Language laboratories fluctuate in use. During the mid-sixties, with talk of Telstar; growing European relationships; the emergence of a bright technological future; they were very popular. During the eighties, interest had slowed. At The University of Waikato, since installation of the new labs, they have proved increasingly popular with students and staff. In particular, the pressure to be able to learn to communicate with New Zealand's Asian neighbours and the ability to take interdisciplinary degrees combining languages with a variety of other fields of study eg International Management, has meant that student demand for language courses has risen dramatically.
This is happening at the same time as a number of other changes; the increasing use of ever-cheaper computers in teaching, teaching moving towards the constructivist model of learning, more flexible, open learning becoming a necessity for students, more flexible, open teaching becoming an economic necessity for universities and all at the same time as technology finally allows the creation of virtual environments for language students. However, one problem that is common to all institutions exists; whenever a new teacher arrives there's a total change in the teaching material, new text books, new audio tapes and new approaches. Clearly investment in learning hardware and software within new laboratories would have to have the flexibility to serve all the languages and be adaptable for all the teachers.
Last year, aware that the laboratories would need replacing again, a working party was formed comprising members from all language departments and staff from TTG. This time there was no doubt that TTG was ready to put computers into the laboratories. As a result of the group's deliberations, early this year, a 30-seat multimedia Learning Centre began a year's trial. The machines are PowerMac 7200/90s with 16Mb RAM and 500 Mb hard disks networked using Mac Administrator. Commercially produced software is able to be placed on the server by language staff and, since the Centre is now a 24 hour/7 day access laboratory, other departments have expressed interest in their students using the facilities provided by the video server capability.
The idea of a pilot year is important. Often in technology departments, there is a push to provide a service because new software or hardware has become available. When it is adopted without testing at a local level with real users, the ability to provide a stable working environment can be challenging, but sometimes impossible. The accompanying 'bad press' this creates can be avoided by declaring a trial stage during which errors, crashes and other problems can be more easily accepted as part of the development process.
Identifying a problem
The opportunities afforded by new technology enable teachers to combine the different elements offered by each medium as a way of focusing on types of activities or concepts. More recently there have been computer based packages released which support language teaching. Clearly, there are both advantages and disadvantages to using these packages. Normally they are not designed, or indeed used, as the entire teaching resource for a course within tertiary education, but are used as one of a number of resources to support teaching. Whereas language teachers could utilise one resource to emphasise a point effectively, commercial packages are built to appeal to a large market and as such the products tend to have a general purpose feel to them. Most teachers do not base their course solely on one resource. That is especially true when the students on that course differ from year to year, or the content of a course changes in response to the teacher trying different teaching techniques or wishing to include topical events such as those reported in news articles. The unsuitability problem of commercially produced material for local conditions is well known, and is often termed the "not built here" problem.
To look at how this problem could be overcome at the University, a development team was set up. The main aim of this group was to produce courseware to support language teaching. This paper describes how the development team approached the problem of designing multimedia language teaching material and the progress made to date.
A strategy for overcoming the problem
It was agreed that bespoke language teaching courseware needed to be developed to fulfil the diversity of requirements expressed by teaching staff. An informal requirements analysis revealed that the main function was that of providing students with an opportunity to practise material they had learned in class, or to become familiar with what was about to be taught in class. The focus of the material was to be split into learning vocabulary and grammar.
The next point was to consider frequency of use of the courseware. Clearly, if the main function is to encourage practice of the material, then the students would need to have the opportunity to practise regularly, perhaps weekly if it was to have any significant effect. The problem is that this also means that new exercises have to be produced each week, which has workload and deadline implications for staff. New content has to be introduced on a regular basis.
The way in which the learning centre courseware development team addressed these issues was to build generic templates, or 'shells'. The shells provide the mechanisms and structures required for language exercises with content supplied by the teacher to suit the student group using it.
Input-output media requirements
Following discussions with teaching staff from different language departments it was decided that a number of shells would be constructed. During the first year of the project different forms of exercises would be implemented for one language, with a second language set beginning development later in the year and a third language set being developed in the following year. There is a large learning curve for the development team and for the academic team in producing the material and also incorporating learning strategies appropriate to the aim of the exercises. Figure One shows the planned development process.
Figure One - Diagram to show the planned module development process.
The first step in the development process was to look at the degree of sophistication required for presenting teaching material. A major component was the type of input and output required, which also meant looking at the media which would be used to present information and to record user responses. Development of the courseware also made it necessary to look at presentation factors which would affect both the design appearance and underlying program structure.
The first language chosen was Japanese. This decision was made because of the lack of existing computer based teaching resources for that language, the high level of awareness of the teaching staff involved and their enthusiasm to pursue the use of multimedia technology.
Tailoring the design to suit the students
A principal aim of the project is to have courseware which is flexible. Part of that flexibility includes the need for speedy tailoring of the content material to respond quickly to students or outside events. This means that two programs have to be developed; one the student sees, the second the teacher uses to insert or edit content and to preview what the student sees. The teacher program has to have mechanisms which allow generation of input and output in the form required. For example, if the teacher wishes to give aural feedback the teacher's voice input has to be recorded and played back to the student. The Macintosh machines' own microphone input facility produced a perfectly acceptable recording and playback of feedback material for students, without the need for professional studio recording.
If the students are to record their input then there has to be a way of recording it and playing it back. In addition there would need to be a mechanism by which the teacher could listen to individual students' performance and discuss it with them without interrupting the rest of the class. This has always been possible with the audio tape based systems but there does not appear to be any computer software to support such monitoring at present. Therefore, it was necessary to retain the Tandberg audio laboratory system.
Design and interaction issues had to be addressed very early on in the planning and development stages. The most simple form for developing input and output is text. A much more complicated element for presentation and input of words presents with a non-English character set, such as in the case of Kanji.
There was a need for basic exercises involving word recognition and comprehension in the form of simple vocabulary and grammar modules. These simple word exercises could be varied using a number of different question and answer formats. One of the features of the vocabulary exercises included looking at concepts and features of concepts. So, multiple choice, cloze and concept map formats were used.
The target students were not necessarily computer literate or good at typing. They would be learning how to use the keyboard for Kanji character input at the same time as they were trying to focus on the content of the exercise. Multiple choice questions initially start with simple drag and drop mechanisms, rather than typing in answers. This means that students would be able to use the exercises early on in the course, rather than having to wait until they had learned how to use the keyboard to type in Kanji characters. The concept map idea was developed using two forms, one with three major nodes the other with four nodes. A node is the concept with which a number of words would be associated. The size of the maps were determined by the screen display area available. This was influenced by the Kanji character size and the size at which any character can be displayed and still be easily perceived.
The development schedule
Developing multimedia courseware can be expensive, it requires graphic design skills, technical implementation skills and instructional design capabilities. All members of the development team have experience in instructional design strategies. It was important that the design was perceived by the students to be as high in quality as a commercially available package.
The design look chosen was a simple, 'clean' one. This reflects aspects of Japanese designs which often portray a sense of quiet simplicity and space, understated but very effective. The attractiveness of the interface is a product of both the design appearance and of the way in which the design supports the interaction mechanisms. When the module design is simple, it allows the students to better focus on the content of the material without distraction. Each of the languages, for which modules will be developed, will incorporate a language- appropriate design style.
The interface adopts a relatively traditional approach, separating out the content from the navigation and feedback elements. An example screen from a concept map is shown in Figure Two. This approach ensures that there is a fixed content display area size. This is in response to concerns over student workload. Presenting material on a fifteen inch screen does require a different approach to that of presenting the same information on a rolling black board. The key lies in segmenting information sensibly and presenting what is necessary, at the appropriate time. By separating out the navigation, feedback and content areas the student knows where the questions will appear and where the answers should go. The question forms chosen for the first set of modules were conducive to this type of screen segmentation. If basic reading time estimates are added in plus an estimate of time taken to answer the question, then the teacher can calculate how long a student might take to answer each question.
Figure Two - Example screen from a concept map question.
Progress and the future
At the time of writing the application is half way through the pilot year and the first sets of vocabulary and grammar modules are being used in a semester course. Usability evaluations are being undertaken, with a view to feeding back comments into the next set of modules which will deal with picture input material. Although this has little effect on the student in terms of their interaction, moving to a graphic instead of a text input to a question does raise technical difficulties with the teacher input program. How are graphics to be entered and how will the 'spatial' differences between word size and graphics size change the design ?
Informal feedback from students using the modules is very encouraging. At the end of the very first sessions in which the modules were used students didn't want to leave! They seemed to enjoy using this type of material, particularly receiving voice feedback when they had selected the correct answer. The interface does appear to be relatively easy to use and it is expected that more formal usability trials will confirm that the interface is assisting effective learning. Teaching staff who are familiar with computer based teaching material have also commented favourably on the language modules. This further reinforces TTG's belief in the necessity for excellence in both the graphic and instructional designs, in order to encourage both staff and student acceptance of the program as a valuable teaching resource.
There are some aspects which need to be noted by anyone undertaking a similar venture. The first is that of staff workload. Having a package which allows teaching staff to produce new exercises each week, means that someone has to load that material. It also needs checking prior to use. For the first year this means a reasonable degree of forward planning is necessary. However, the same exercise can be kept and used any number of times for different groups, for students who want to practise out of scheduled laboratory class times, or for students in subsequent years.
The Multimedia Unit has found it hard, at times, to work with academic staff who had no concept of what capabilities the application had; for example, the program was set up, as requested, to drag and drop a word but a phrase was presented by the teacher.
There is an issue which arises in all multimedia development projects: the problem of increasing expectations. Multimedia-naive clients will not be as naive at the end of the project as they were at the start. This means that there is the constant threat of disappointment as the academic staff look again at the material and, with hindsight, think of additional features which could have been incorporated. This feeling of disappointment usually disappears when good student feedback is received.
It was noted earlier that having the technology available doesn't mean there shouldn't be any rules about how to use it. The appropriate technology should be chosen to provide the best medium for presentation of the teaching content; it should never trivialise it or use mechanisms which are simply gimmicks. For this project the aim has been to keep the courseware as simple as possible, concentrating on the best media for effective learning, increasing the level of sophistication in accordance with the increasing expectations of the teaching staff and students, and with due regard to the availability of teaching staff given their high workload.
Overall, the first stages in the development of the language modules have been a success and those involved feel greatly encouraged to move to the next phase.
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Chris Knowles, Project Coordinator,
Teaching Technology Group,
University of Waikato,
Private Bag 3105, Hamilton,
New Zealand.Phone: +64 (7) 838 4466 x7714.
Fax: +64 (7) 838 4491.Email: chrisk@waikato.ac.nz
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