Martti Ala-Rantala
Tampere University of Technology, Tampere, Finland.
Email: martti.ala-rantala@cc.tut.fi
This talk presents ideas behind design for a Hypermedia-Based Learning Environment, HBLE for short. HBLE will offer tools and methods for course development, teaching, and maintenance and will support different learner-centered studying strategies. The system will also have information acquisition functionality for research purposes.
HBLE may be used either as learning material to supplement a regular university course or by an independent student. In either case, graded examinations will still retain their traditional form. The system will be integrated with our university's student registration and course enrollment databases.
The learning material is structured as a directed acyclic graph called knowledge graph. Information is divided into cells and arcs combining them - this structure lends itself readily to hypertext presentation. One cell teaches one simple issue whereas arcs define the prerequisite relations between cells; to fully understand the content of a cell one must understand all prerequisite cells. Strict prerequisite relation is suitable for deductive sciences like mathematics and, to some extent, computer science. The relations will become more versatile and expressive as experience is gained from using the basic model.
Cell comprise several types of material: theory, exercises, theoretical and practical examples as well as tests. Material is composed of arbitrary combination of text, graphics, simulations, audio, video, interfaces to mathematical software and other media types. The material is divided into difficulty levels. In addition, every cell stores measurement data about the student's progress in comprehending the cell's subject. Based on the measurements and the difficulty levels, the system adapts to the individual student's learning progress.
Another form of adaptation is learning strategy planning. The student is offered a selection of strategies, e.g., basic skills improvement and target-oriented studying. A set of special graph theoretical tools has been developed to produce an individual study plan based on the chosen strategy and the student's progress measurement data.
Interaction among students and the teacher is supported by a bulletin board style discussion forum. Individual interaction between a student and the teacher is also possible. Online discussion will not be supported in the first phase.
The underlying technology is WWW. On the client side, any Java-enabled Web browser with frame support and necessary audio and video plug-ins can be used. The system is intended for use via Web, but it can also be used, with limited functionality, from a CD-ROM. Java applets will be used extensively, for example, for user interaction and illustrative simulations. Learning material database will reside on the server side. HTML pages are created on the fly on the server side and partially by Java applets on the client side. In addition to the learning material, the server stores various usage statistics plus the students' learning progress data. The server side functionality will be implemented using CGI scripts written in, e.g., Perl and C++.
The high-level architectural design of HBLE is a distributed and modular framework facilitating future extensions like additional media types, enhancements to the graph theory and broader selection of subject matters.
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