A Visual Authoring Tool for the Development of W3-based Teaching and Learning Materials
Type of Presentation : Poster
Phil Siviter,Department of Computing,University of Brighton,
Watts Building, lewes Rd, Brighton BN2 4GJ, England
Phil.Siviter@brighton.ac.uk
Drew Tyrrell,Department of Computing,University of Brighton,
Watts Building, lewes Rd, Brighton BN2 4GJ, England
A.A.Tyrrell@brighton.ac.uk and http://snowwhite.it.bton.ac.uk/
This project represents a convergence of, and will build upon, a number of other projects presently being undertaken within the University of Brighton, concerned with the use of IT in teaching and learning. Some of these projects are concerned with the
development of highly interactive learning materials designed to be delivered via a Local Area Network (LAN). Other projects are concerned with looking at how the World Wide Web (WWW) can be developed to provide student centred distance learning material
.
We propose to build an HTML authoring tool with functionality
specifically geared towards creating educational hypermedia resources.
This will require a specification of a lessonware(1) structure which is
general enough to support a very diverse range of educational styles, while still being precise enough to enable the development of tools which support the creation and manipulation of such structures. Such tools will communicate with multimedia databases containing lessonware components ( HTML, Video, Audio, Imagemaps, Forms etc. ) and will enable authors to configure and re-configure components within the generic lessonware structure. As this structure and the lessonware which it describes is specifically designed for use on WWW, we refer to it as W3L
essonware.
Objectives
To specify a generic W3Lessonware structure.
To specify an underlying architecture for W3Lessonware development tools.
To build an example W3Lessonware development tool.
To produce a lesson which demonstrates the generic structure and shows how to utilise the tool.
To create an interface between the tool and a multimedia database.
To widely disseminate the results and products from the project
Rationale and Background Information.
This project is concerned with the development of tools for authoring WWW-based hypermedia Computer Aided Learning (CAL) materials, henceforth referred to as W3Lessonware. The project is motivated by a number of observations:-
There is a growing trend of lecturers putting their lecture slides and handouts on local Web servers in hypertext format, coupled with a desire to expand these into more interactive learning materials, incorporating multimedia elements.
Large sums of money are being spent producing CAL using a variety of authoring packages, and the producers and consumers of these materials are increasingly considering how to make them available on WWW; i.e., how to overcome the problems of using the run time systems of the authoring packages over the net, or making the
"download and execute" scenario realistic within current bandwidth and security limitations.
HTML is evolving to include more interactive features, and becoming a more general purpose scripting language, although it has a long way to go before it can compete with any of the popular authoring packages.
At present there is no methodology, and there are no very high level tools, for taking multimedia elements and converting them into highly interactive web based learning material (W3Lessonware). Although developments in HTML (HTML+ and HTML 3) are turning it progressively into a general purpose scripting language it is still not specifically geared towards the production of educational resources; i.e., it does not (yet) possess the capability to produce highly interactive documents of the kind which are being produced in volume for stand alone or LAN based machines using authoring packages like ToolBook, Authorware, HyperCard etc. The outcomes of this project will include a W3Lessonware visual authoring tool which will produce HTML+ documents. In light of the rapid and ongoing development of HTML the project will take care to ensure that the W3Lessonware tools will be easily updatable to exploit these developments. As HTML acquires the facilities required to enable its documents to become more inter
active, the HTML authoring tool can be updated to take advantage of the new facilities. This will enable the production of suites of highly interactive, highly distributed WWW courseware, which can form a resource base for modular, student centred, distance learning courses.
There has recently been a rush of development of PC based tools to aid in
the production of HTML documents. A recent announcement from Microsoft
of their forthcoming Internet Assistant will, when transformed into real
software(!), undoubtedly speed up the development of on-line resources.
This, combined with a wide range of shareware facilities like HTML
Assistant and HotMetal, will provide valuable support for workers in this field. We consider these developments to be important starting points for our project and we would clearly wish to investigate their range of functionality. The results from our initial studies however have shown that support for Forms and the ability to graphically link documents and resources together are severely limited. The majority of the tools are either for conversion or simple HTML markups. Our project attempts to provide a more sophisticated range of support for the developer, in particular "visual" editing, enabling HTML features to be directly manipulated, and reducing the amount of direct HTML text editing.
Summary of Project Objectives
We propose to develop a generic, extensible structure for interactive WWW based hypermedia learning materials, which we refer to as W3Lessonware. The structure will include provision for the incorporation of all HTML+ supported features, including multimedia elements and Forms based widgets. Its extensible design will allow it to include more features as HTML evolves.
The W3Lessonware generic structure will be general enough to allow a very diverse range of lessonware designs and pedagogic strategies to be implemented, but it will be specified precisely enough to enable the development of authoring tools to support
authors in the building and maintenance of the W3Lessonware.
We propose to build an example authoring tool for the production of W3Lessonware. This tool will be multimedia database aware so that it can extract multimedia components for inclusion in the W3Lessonware.
We will create example W3Lessonware which provides authors with instruction on how to use the tool, and which will incorporate and demonstrate a number of instantiations of the generic W3Lessonware structure.
All of the technical specifications and example tools and materials will be made publicly and freely available on the Web to encourage feedback and innovation and the development of other utilities and applications.
We distuinguish between "lessonware" - a single item of computer
based learning material (e.g., a presenation of a single idea or concept)
and "courseware" - a large collection of such items which might
collectively cover a unit, module or course.