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:
From Real To Surrogate School Experience And Vice Versa
The Creation Of A Technological Tool For Teaching
Presenter:
Cheng Teik, Lou, (Mr), Deakin University
Authors:
Cheng Teik, Lou, (Mr) & Cheng Choo, Khoo , (Ms)
Deakin University
Keywords: Hypermedia, Practicuum
Faculty area: Education
Introduction
The teacher training course structure at Nanyang Technological University varies slightly from program to program, but the courses nevertheless are designed to promote the professional and academic development of the trainee teachers so that they become effective teachers in the school system. An important component of the teacher training process is the practicuum. The practicuum provides the necessary initial contact with schools through school experience as well as teaching practice in order to ensure that the trainee teachers will leave the programs with sufficient confidence to adjust smoothly and quickly to the demands of the teaching profession.
The figure below shows the course structure for the Postgraduate Diploma in Education course conducted for graduate degree holders at NTU:
Fig 1.1 Structure of Postgraduate Diploma in Education (PGDE) Program
School Experience is a two-week program where the trainee teachers are posted to schools. There, they are briefed by the school principal and the cooperating teacher on the school facilities, teaching subjects and the primary school environment in general. During these two weeks, they are instructed to observe how the school system functions. It is hoped that by understanding the school infrastructure and climate, the trainee teachers would be better prepared for the impending teaching practice later in the course.
Due to the fact that the intake of trainee teachers will increased in the future, it may become an administrative nightmare to arrange for the necessary school experience. At that time it was also felt that a simulated school experience may help to expose the trainee teachers to the school infrastructure and facilities, school climate and also expectations from different groups of people in the school (ranging from principals, to cooperating teachers and to the students' supervisors when they are undergoing their training). Furthermore, with time and budget constraints, the arrangement for school experience may not be feasible at all. In fact, in 1993, trainee teachers in the Diploma in Education program did not have a two week School Experience. This deprived the trainee teachers not only of the valuable first-hand experience, it also denied them the chance of knowing what to expect when they are sent to the school for their teaching practice. Thus, there is a need for some kind of simulated school experience for these courses.
It was decided then by the Faculty that the solution to this problem would be to develop an interactive hypermedia program about a surrogate school experience to allow similar experiences to all trainee teachers.
Requirements and Design of the Surrogate School Experience Program
A small team was organised and the task was to draw up and propose a suitable and effective design for this interactive hypermedia Surrogate School Experience Program. It was agreed that the simulated School Experience Program should parallel the real school experience. The Program should satisfy the following criteria.
Provide a brief introduction to the aims and objectives of teaching practice. This would parallel the briefing the trainee teacher gets from a school principal during the start of an actual school experience.
Provide a self directed surrogate tour of the facility, plant and purposefully-built function rooms in a typical school. This exploration will enhance trainee teachers' understanding of the function and purpose of each of these rooms.
Allow the user to interact with key personnel in the whole teaching practice experience, namely the principals, the cooperating teachers and the NIE supervisors. Trainee teachers are able to obtain answers to school -related questions, particularly, to questions they want and need to know but were afraid to ask.
Provide trainee teachers with a conceptual framework of the necessary teaching skills. This would mirror the debriefing carried out at the end of school experience and to prepare Trainee teachers to take up the challenge of the real teaching practice.
After analysing the criteria it became clear that the requirements of the Surrogate School Experience Program should include the four modules listed below:
Figure 1.2 shows the Main Menu of the Surrogate School Experience interactive hypermedia program, trainee teachers using the program begin their surrogate tour here by selecting and clicking at a topic to access the corresponding information.
Fig 1.2 Modules of the Surrogate School Experience Program
Choosing the Right Computer Platform for the project
From the above conceptual design of the system, it became clear that a multimedia capable machine was needed for the project. A quick survey was made of the various available computer platforms. In 1992 when the Surrogate School Experience Program was developed, the multimedia technology on the PC-486 platform was still quite new. Audio and video integration were difficult as they used different formats for audio, video and animation. Standardization and compatibility were of major concern to hypermedia and multimedia development. On the other hand, the Macintosh platform presented a more attractive alternative mainly because they had built-in hardware that supported multimedia. In addition, the Macintoshes had other advantages such as the availability of software tools for multimedia development. For example, for:
Authoring Tools:
HyperCard, SuperCard, Authorware Professional, MacroMind Director.
Animation:
ADDmotion, MacroMind Director.
Graphics:
Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator.
Video:
Apple QuickTime, Adobe Premiere.
Also, compared to the PC-486, these applications running on the Macintosh had a common QuickTime video standard for seamless integration. With the QuickTime system extension, no extra hardware was needed to playback full-motion video on the Macintosh. And this was critical as we wanted to have digitised video clips for the interview with key personnel in the Surrogate Program. Program developed from any of these Mac-based authoring tools such as HyperCard, SuperCard or MacroMind Director was efficient and looked professional. Thus, all these factors contributed towards a decision to use the Macintosh platform for this project.
Selection of the appropriate Video Digitizing Cards
In 1992/3, PowerPCs with built-in AV cards were in non-existent, a video digitizing card was needed to digitize the video clips that would be used in the program. Generally, there were two categories of video-digitizing cards - one supported "live" video capture (in real-time) while the other supported "controlled" video capture (in non real-time). "Controlled" capture required a video source that resided on frame-accurate video decks or single-frame advance devices such as a laser disc. Such specialized recording equipment were not available on campus. Also, this project began by using borrowed computers and equipment , and had a very limited budget. The team evaluated several video cards for performance, speed as well as cost. In terms of price-performance ratio, the VideoSpigot was found to be able to do the job and was selected. The only major disadvantage of the VideoSpigot was its inability to adjust brightness and contrast during video capture. This, however, could be remedied by doing the appropriate adjustments on the video camera during the recording of the video clips.Selection of the appropriate authoring tools
The selection of appropriate authoring tools was next on the agenda. In order to ensure that the development work advanced smoothly, it was crucial that we selected a sophisticated and reliable authoring tool. Several authoring tools were evaluated. Authorware's iconic and non-programmer's approach to multimedia development was good for simple multimedia design but it became cumbersome when it came to complex operations and program design. SuperCard is actually very similar to HyperCard. Both products were designed around the concept of a stack of cards which are able to share common backgrounds and both allowed the multimedia developer to create interactive multimedia prototypes quickly. At the time of development of the Surrogate School Experience Prototype the early version of
Tools
HyperCard
SuperCard
Authorware
Professional
Authoring
Language
HyperTalk programming language.
SuperTalk programming language.
Primitive programming language, mainly iconic approach.
Pros
Objected-oriented design concept for creating interactive animated prototypes quickly.
Objected-oriented design concept with built-in colour support.
Non-programming environment for quickly prototyping and maintaining applications.
Cons
No built-in colour support.
Less authoring commands available compared to HyperCard.
Primitive programming language impedes flexibility during prototyping.
Fig 1.3 Comparing the different Authoring Tools
HyperCard i.e. 2.0 was used and when the development project was near its completion we switched to
HyperCard 2.1. Both versions did not support color well. Hypercard incorporating the Color Tools was introduced only in versions 2.2 onwards. SuperCard was not selected because it did not implement the full set of authoring commands as readily available in HyperCard. HyperCard was more powerful and the problem of colour could be overcome by using ColorizeHC and accessing it through external commands (called XCMDs), which are like plug-in modules that help to extend the functionality of HyperCard.
Selection of the appropriate Animation Tools
The team had also the responsibility of selecting an animation tool that is sophisticated and yet easy enough to master by one of us as we didn't have the budget to hire a programmer.
Tools
MacroMind Director
ADDmotion
HyperCard
Pros
Comprehensive package based on the very powerful concept of frames, sprite, cast and scores.
Simple colour animation package that works on top of HyperCard.
Simple animation commands.
Cons
Steep learning curve to get oriented to frame-based environment.
Animation loading time is excessively slow.
Primitive black and white animation only.
Fig 1.4 Comparing the different animation tools
Once the decision had been made to use HyperCard as the main authoring tool, it was thought that animation would also be handled in HyperCard. However, we were frustrated to find that the animation support in HyperCard was rather primitive. ADDmotion, a program grafted on top of HyperCard to allow for sprite-based animation was considered. However, when full-screen animation was needed, ADDmotion was excessively slow and because of this Addmotion was not selected .
MacroMind Director was finally selected. It was a very powerful authoring tool that allowed developers to create, record, store, and playback complex animation sequences. It could also synchronize playback of sound files, such as those created with the Macintosh built-in sound input jack, or trigger MIDI devices. Director provided a Paint window which could be used to create new sprites or cast members, and to import a wide range of graphics and sound files. As I personally had prior experience working with Macromedia Director, I took charge of the programming aspect of using Director in the project. The animation created in Director was then be activated from HyperCard by using XCMDs.
Back to top of pageDesigning a Friendly User Interface
Having taught several groups of trainee teachers on the same postgraduate diploma program on the use of computer in education and instructional design prior to the design and development of the Surrogate School Experience Program , the knowledge of the would-be users helped me to design the program that was targeted for them. The users would be a mix of experienced as well as novice computer users accessing the Surrogate Program. To cater to the different entry levels of users and to avoid thwarting or frustrating their learning experience, the Surrogate Program would provide options of either accessing information by clicking at the button icons or through the use of pull-down menus. In this way the experienced users need not have to go through the numerous submenus before they could access the required information. The new users, on the other hand, who were not familiar with the system could use the graphical button icons to guide them through the menus to access the information they need. This will enable them to focus on the learning rather than be confounded by the computer system.
A basic screen layout (Fig 1.5) was designed to ensure the deployment of a consistent user interface. This basic layout was used for all the screen layout in the program. This screen layout had several obvious advantages:
Firstly, the user could access the menu bar and pull-down menus from any part of the program, thus allowing the user to navigate at will to different sections of the program. It gave the advance users the option to skip the icon driven menus and use the pull-down menus to go straight to a module they wish to browse or learn.
Fig 1.5 Basic Screen Design
Secondly, the buttons, which were used for navigational control, are always located on the right side of the screen. The consistency in the design would help users in the browsing activity. For example, a user who had lost his/her way in the program through excessive hypersurfing could return to the main menu by clicking at the "Home" button located on the right side of the screen.
Thirdly, a prompt message located at the bottom part of the screen is displayed whenever the mouse moved over any hot spot on the screen. For example, when a user moves the mouse over the "Help" button, the prompt message displayed will be "This button brings you to the Help Menu".
Taking Photographs and Scanning them
Reconnaissance for photographs, photograph selection and scanning took up a large portion of the project time. Each photograph chosen were scanned using the HP ScanJet IIc, and its brightness and contrast had to be adjusted to suit the different ambiance of the Apple 13 or 14 inch monitor. It was found that better pictures resulted if they were scanned in at 24-bit and subsequently converted to 8-bit rather than doing them at 8-bit. This was because sophisticated image processing software like Adobe PhotoShop was able to perform colour diffusion based on the global colour table. The result of this process was an image with a fully optimized 256 Colour Look-Up Table (CLUT). With this, reasonable quality 8-bit pictures could be displayed on the screen without incurring the high processing and storage cost of 24-bit images.
Video selection and Digitizing Process
The video clips were first recorded into high band quality video tapes. The video clips best suited for this project were sampled mostly from the Sony Umatic 3/4" tape format, which offered good results at a reasonable cost. Besides looking nicer and cleaner the images also yielded better compression ratios.
During the digitization of the video clips, we had to test and select the best setting regarding the frame rate, pixel bit depth, saturation, contrast and audio sampling rate. Furthermore, transcoding is an important part of the process of generating reasonably good quality video content, which then can be played back from either the hard disk or the CD-ROM. During transcoding, compression was applied using Apple's QuickTime Video Compressor to reduce the movie size by a factor of five. At the same time, the transcoding process helped to ensure that the data transfer rates of the clips did not exceed 90 Kbytes/sec - the limit for playing back video clips from CD-ROMs or lower-end Macintoshes like the LC.
The Final Product - The Surrogate School Experience Program
After months of hard work, the final interactive hypermedia product began to take shape based on the conceptual design. The program had four basic modules. An additional file module was added so that a tracking system on how user(s) used the programcould be incorporated. The tracking system was mainly to cater for the research aspect of the program.
Fig 1.6 The Final Program Modules
The Final Program Modules
Files
This module enabled the performance of audit trial or tracking and other miscellaneous record keeping and printing tasks. A comprehensive set of commands had been written to enable the proper working of the log file. The log file's function was to keep track of the activities of the user, such as which rooms he/she had visited, and the duration of time they had spent exploring the rooms in the Program.
Introduction
This module gives the user an introduction to the purpose of the teaching practice experience. It explains the aims and objectives of teaching practice, particularly the application of educational theory to the actual classroom situation. The present version uses an animated textual display to convey information to the users. This mode of delivery will eventually be replaced by a talking head (using a NTU lecturer) to make the presentation more personal.
LocationThis module allows the user to engaged in surrogate travel to various locations in the primary school. The users could visit the first or second floor of the school building using the floor plan map. S/He could visit all in all 24 different locations. Animated dots are used to simulated the user's travel from one location to the next. On arrival at each room, a photographic picture depicting the actual layout of the room with voice-over helps to introduce the user to the function and facilities in that room. Clicking at the hot-spots would either present the user with more information or a close-up view of that section of the room with textual explanation.
Personnel
This is the question and answer section of the program. This module contains a set of questions and answers for each of the three key personnel (i.e. principal, cooperating teacher and supervisor to the trainee teacher) involved in Teaching Practice. For each category of personnel, there are six questions, each of which has three different answers given by three different people. This was done to provide a wider variety of opinions for the user to sample.
Skills
This modules serves as a revision or reminder to the trainee teachers of five major concepts that are important when they undertake teaching during Teaching Practice period. They are: planning, developing the lesson, communicating, managing and evaluating lessons. A voice-over helps to explain the concepts involved.
Problems Encountered in the Project
Like all other projects, there were problems encountered. Some of them are as follows:
During the initial part of the project, much time was spent in testing the technology, especially the use of Apple's new QuickTime technology in an older tool such as HyperCard. Also, for the QuickTime movies, a high frame rate gave better quality videos at the expense of disk space and vice versa. Hence, numerous trials have be carried out to find the best space-performance tradeoff when digitizing QuickTime movies.
MacroMind Director's frame based animation concept and its scripting language i.e. Lingo had to be mastered. Furthermore, the animation produced in Macromind Director had to be activated from HyperCard which involved the use of external commands or XCMDs. This interfacing between the two packages required a lot of time and experience in order to get it to work correctly.
The logistics of arranging for shots and video taping sessions were tremendous. In addition, content material provisions from the content specialists were often slower than the development of the project. This more often than not caused frustration on the development and testing of the prototype.
Large capacity hard disks were required to digitize the videos before compression was applied. However, the grant for purchasing a 200 MB harddisk was only received after making numerous justifications to the administration. Hence, the digitizing of the video clips were delayed in the process.
Compressing the video clips is a time consuming affair. Only 2 MacIIcis and 1 MacSi were used when the Surrogate Program started. However, the situation eased a little when a Quadra 700 was made available on a fixed period loan from one of Apples distributors, Diversitec Singapore.Limitations of the Project
Some of the limitations of the system are as follows:
This program was designed for mid-level Macintoshes with 8 MB of memory and a standard 13 or 14 inch colour monitor. Lower end machines meant slower processors and while dealing with colored graphical objects, the slow processing became more evident.
HyperTalk is an interpretative language and this makes it slower than 3GLs, C or Pascal programs which are pre-compiled.
Although QuickTime movies can be played at 256 colours using dithering, the actual movies were recorded in 16-bit depth (65536 colours). Hence, in order to playback movies in their full range of colours, 16-bit display card was needed and these were not standard Macintosh configuration.
Some results from users of the Surrogate Program
Two trials were conducted (18 Sept. 92 & 30-31 Dec. '92) on the use of the program. On each occasion, trainee teachers were assigned in pairs to each Macintosh. The trainee teachers have basic skills in the use of the Microsoft Windows graphical user interface and were asked to use the prototype product without any prior briefing on how to use it. No guidance or assistance was provided during the session on how to use the program, the aim being to assess the user-friendliness of the program and also to ensure that the program is bug-free. There was no time limit in both trials. The trainee teachers were free to explore the system at their own pace and time.
On average, each pair spent about an hour browsing through the program. All pairs expressed the view that they were expecting a text-based information system but were pleasantly surprised to find sound, graphics, animation and video clips instead. Furthermore, they expressed the view that the program presented a useful and practical information in an interesting way. All had no difficult at all in using the prototype. The common view expressed by most of the trainee teachers was that it was very easy to use. Other feedback from trainee teachers indicated that they had a better understanding of the school facilities. They also indicated that they became more aware of what principal's and the cooperating teacher's expectations of an effective teacher were. The trainee teachers echoed the view that it was good to listen to more than one point of view (i.e. from different principals).
It is clear therefore that the Program had met most of our objectives in providing the surrogate school experience to the trainee teachers. In addition, it was a worthwhile project as future trainee teachers would continue to benefit from using the program. Lastly, in the author's mind, it was a very cost effective way to provide both trainee teachers who have the luxury of the real school experience and those who were not so fortunate to experience the real school experience. Trainee teachers who did have the school experience could use the program as an enrichment exercise while those without the school experience could use the program as an eye opener to their future work place i.e. the school.
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Cheng Teik, Lou, (Mr),
School of Scientific and Developmental Studies in Education,
Faculty of Education, Deakin University
221 Burwood Highway,
Burwood, Vic 3125Ph: (03) 9244-6912
Fax: (03) 9244-6834email: dominic@deakin.edu.au
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