ABSTRACT
At Leeds software has been developed which allows teacher (or student) authors to specify interactions and presentation formats and to provide materials which when placed within these formats are automatically converted and compiled to run as Asymetrix Multimedia Toolbook programs. The system (the Interactive Document Compiler - IDC) is based on SGML-compliant markup techniques which indicate the functional and display attributes required by the materials. Using IDC applications have been produced in a variety of subjects including English, Medicine, Textiles, Biology, Pharmacology and Teaching Competencies.
More recently work has focussed on the production of visual authoring tools which support the authors in the structuring and organisation of their content. These tools enable the user to develop their materials and manage their resources (video, images, audio etc.) in a natural style whilst maintaining the resources in the form of markup for compilation (with IDC) and delivery as compiled Toolbook applications. Current work is concentrating on generalising these authoring tools and placing them within a WWW framework but more especially in developing the opportunities for delivering the materials within a WWW browser, initially utilising the Toolbook plug-in for Netscape Navigator but with the objective of supporting the user interactions with Java applets generated directly from the toolset's interaction styles. Delivery of materials within a WWW browser environment opens up ready access to, and integration with, other resources including WWW delivered documents, simulations and other learning environments implemented as plug-ins and can also provide consistent access to student records and many other services based on WWW technology.
This paper will describe the authoring methodologies and development tools which have been produced and used in Leeds (and elsewhere) using Asymetrix Toolbook as the delivery engine and demonstrate the advantages of the original strategic decision to generate deliverable materials from a common markup base.
Keywords: courseware development, authoring methodologies, document markup, multimedia, visual authoring tools.
By separating content from delivery the various elements of expertise required to construct worthwhile multimedia computer-based learning materials can be focused on those aspects of the work almost in isolation from the rest. Thus the subject matter expert can set out the content by writing text and specifying other assets (graphics, photographs, animations, video, and so forth). The various assets can be produced by experts in graphics, animation, video production and photography. The interface and delivery engine can be built by competent software designers. Each group will liaise as and when necessary with the pedagogical expert (the teacher or tutor) to check that what is being produced is educationally sound and acceptable. Changes which are perceived as necessary during the development phase can be brought about in one stream of the work without having costly knock-on effects on other aspects.
Up to now IDC has been used to produce hypermedia applications, banks of multiple-choice questions (MCQs) and has been shown to be capable of supporting a much wider range of courseware styles. The most significant of these has been an Introduction to Textiles which comprises over 70 hours of materials incorporating over a 1000 graphics, photographs, animations and video clips and some 800 screens of text as well as hundreds of MCQs. This material has replaced the traditional teaching on two one-semester courses. All the material was produced in an 13-month period with half of it being available and used by students after seven months.
The key activities during development in addition to the production of the assets and the writing of the text are the structuring and organisation of the text (that is the marking up of the documents) and the organisation and management of the assets. Those involved in these two activities are to a great extent the only participants who have (or need) an overall view of the project. We have considered their needs in respect of support tools, and although current word processors and multimedia management tools provide some help, these are insufficient to allow subject matter experts to contribute directly. Also we take the view that student projects can be the source of new (prototype) material and if students are to work efficiently and effectively in limited time then such support tools are essential. A pilot exercise involved undergraduate students (in the School of English) adding material to an existing application on Victorian periodicals, and we are currently working with students from the School of Medicine on producing computerised versions of their Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCEs) as part of a special study module for students doing a clinical attachment in Obstetrics and Gynaecology.
This work has highlighted a difficulty which we have yet to tackle. This is the problem of capturing the semantics of the delivery and interaction within the authoring tool and exposing this information to the user of the tool. The authoring tool can quite easily manage libraries of assets (image banks, video clips and so on), but it has, at the moment, to work entirely within the syntax of the marked up document. It has no way of knowing how a portion of text, or a linked asset will actually be used by the delivery system, or how the learner will interact with it. Such semantics are bound up in, in the case of IDC, the format. The format is essentially made up of objects and scripts, that is programming instructions. There is no external representation or specification of the interaction or delivery mechanisms which could be used by the authoring tool as a guide to the functionality of a particular format. In the present example all such information is hard-coded in the authoring tool, and if it is necessary to have the tool handle another format then extra procedures might have to be developed and coded in to handle the idiosyncracies of the new format. This is clearly unsatisfactory. In order for the tool to be general purpose then either it must be able to determine the interaction and delivery functionality, or it must have a library of procedures or gadgets which have a one to one correspondence with the features used to implement the library of formats with which it is to work. Our aim is to investigate the possibility of having some declarative way of indicating the delivery and interaction functionalities so that a single common authoring tool could be used. The MHEG standard and supporting tools addresses some of these issues, but there is a definite problem in systematically specifying interactions and the means by which they are meaningfully populated with content.
The possibility that multimedia computer-based learning material could be "authored" in such a way that it could be delivered by a variety of delivery engines running in various computational contexts seems entirely feasible within the WWW framework. At present it is possible to use Toolbook as an external viewer in which the Toolbook application may interact with a Web browser using the DDE protocol (Tosolini, 1995). The Asymetrix Neuron plug-in for Web browsers allows Toolbook applications, possibly of restricted specification, to be seen as a integral part of a Web document, but it is not clear what level of interactivity is supportable between the browser and the plug-in. In the future it should be possible to provide the equivalent interactivity to that provided by IDC and Toolbook by generating Java applets to support the interactions and with appropriate server-side support for the documents being re-structured or re-organised, for example, according to learner performance.
At present we are able to deliver IDC-produced material in stand-alone form for Toolbook 3.0 and 4.0 (with limited WEB access to assets) and are experimenting with the use of Neuron. Developments by Asymetrix (Toolbook II 5.0) may enable progress towards a WWW-integrated method of delivery, but this area has yet to be fully explored.
Our long term aim is to integrate both authoring and delivery within a networked environment with open connectivity and using open systems. The technology offered by WWW points the way forward. However there are some questions. Do we continue to adapt what we have developed to the Web or do we take a wider view and consider a more general solution? Do we use the protocols of the Web to access the assets? Can we adapt to the Web or other network technology without discarding the technique of compiling? Without compilation into a standalone application (with required assets), the system has to be capable of locating and delivering all assets quickly in order not to destroy the essential continuity of effective computer-based learning materials. When all the assets are locally stored this is no problem as Multimedia Toolbook demonstrates, once a network is involved there are a number of imponderables.
Tait K. (1995a) The Interactive Document Compiler (Version 3.02, Sampler 3.0c). IDC Technical Report 2, Computer Based Learning Unit, The University of Leeds, (May 1995).
Tait, K. (1995b) Are templates what we need? How to allow courseware to evolve. Proceedings of the UK Toolbook User Conference 94. Centre for Computing in Economics, University of Bristol, (March 1995).
Tosolini P. (1995) Web based Toolbook Applications in the Educational Environment with Susan Logue, UK Toolbook User Conference 95, Bristol, UK.
Kenneth Tait, is Principal Research Fellow in the Computer Based Learning Unit at the University of Leeds.
Andrew J Cole
Senior Research Fellow
Computer Based Learning Unit
University of Leeds
Leeds LS2 9JT
UK
a.j.cole@cbl.leeds.ac.uk
http://www.cbl.leeds.ac.uk/
N.A.WEB 96 - The Second International North America World Wide Web Conference http://www.unb.ca/web/wwwdev/ University of New Brunswick.