ELearning! Magazine

BY NIALL WATTS

The University College Dublin School of Medicine and Medical Science (UCD) wanted to increase the quantity and quality of its e-learning materials without converting the lecturers into e-learning developers. By making greater use of images and digital media, it could encourage the students to reflect on their learning and develop case studies on the diagnosis and treatment of disease. However, the tool selected had to be suitable for use by medical lecturers with limited IT experience.

STEP 1:
EVALUATE EXISTING PRACTICE
Existing practice was surveyed by examining content in Blackboard, the institutional Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), and by interviewing lecturers.1 Most of the content in the VLBE was passive, consisting of announcements, lecture handouts and PowerPoint slides. Lecturers were aware of the limitations of these materials but mostly lacked the time and skills to produce more interactive content.

Typically, e-learning companies quote development ratios such as 276 hours to develop one hour of complex e-learning. 2 Amediarich simulation would be an example of complex e-learning.While this figure is based on stand-alone courses for industry, similar development times apply to the development of complex, blended learning resources for use in education.Of thoseUCDlecturers who developed e-learningmaterials, 64%spent an average of two hours or less per week on content development andmaintenance.

Of the lecturers surveyed, 87.5%described themselves as competent or highly competent inMicrosoft Office, but only 6.25%described themselves as competent or highly competent in authoring tools.Any new tool would have to be easy to use by those with reasonableMS Office skills but without specialized authoring skills. Having completed their investigations, the AudioVisual Center’s (AVC) role was to find a tool that wouldmeet the lecturers’ requirements for greater interactivity while being quick and easy to use.

STEP 2:
SELECTING A TOOL - BUILD OR BUY?
Good e-learningmakes use of themany possibilities the computer offers for student interaction and engagement.2 Themost commonmethod of interaction is to pose questions for the learner to answer. 5 Questions help tomaintain the learner’s attention, provide practice and self-assessment and encourage deeper learning. 5 Medical students who used an interactive, computer-assisted learning (CAL) tutorial showed significant learning gains compared to non-CAL users. 6 Therefore, the new tool had to be capable of generating a variety of question types,which could incorporate images and video.As academics have little time to spend designing or maintaining learningmaterials, it would have to support rapid content development and content reuse. The first issue considered was whether to license a suitable tool or build it.Were there suitable commercial or open-source tools available? The advantages and disadvantages of each approach are summarized in Table 1 (right). Two commercial and two open source tools were investigated. One open source tool seemed promising but was in the very early stages of development, while the other seemed to have been dropped by its developers. Of the two commercial products, one had insufficient features and the other was too costly to license. Therefore, the decision was made to build a tool in-house.

Figure I: Student view of a text entry question. The top and bottom strip are standard. The left and right panels can include text, questions and range of media.

STEP 3:
XML WITH TEXT EDITING
It was considered important to maximize the portability and potential reusability of any content created with the new tool. Therefore, the tool was to tag content in XML and be SCORM conformant. SCORM is a collection of standards and specifications for interoperability, accessibility and reusability of Web-based learning content. 3

To provide effective e-learning, the tool included a number of question types including multiple choice, multiple answer and text entry. The content for these questions was tagged in XML and stored in a text file. This file was imported dynamically into a Flash player which presented the content. The AVC developed such a Flash player and a tagging scheme.4 This design, based on Castillo, allowed for a wide variety of layouts and media types but lacked a simple interface. Content could only be entered or updated using a text editor.

It was felt that text editing would be too demanding for the target audience—lecturers. Developing an interface from scratch would be a major task in itself and beyond the resources of the AVC. Therefore, the AVC looked for a commercial product that would provide an interface for its templates. This tool selected was Flash Companion.

STEP 4:
SECOND TOOL FLASH COMPANION
Flash Companion provides a form template as an interface for building questions such as multiple choice, multiple answer, drag and drop, fill in the blank, etc. The form is written to an XML file, which is read by a Flash player. The XML files, any images or media used and the Flash player are integrated into a project. This project can be SCORM compliant.

Flash Companion is customizable. The AVC created some additional templates for Flash Companion that were originally developed for the first tool, for example, a two columnmultiple choice question, an open answer question with images or animations as part of the feedback. E-mail options were also added.

The online notebook is a significant feature as it can help to promote “reflection.” The concepts of reflection and reflective practice were originally developed from experiential learning theories. Boud 7 has described reflection as the processes where learners explore their experiences to gain a better understanding and appreciation of their learning. Reflection helps students to think and act like practitioners.

As teaching materials are created in templates, they can easily be updated and republished. SCORMcompliance means that Flash Companion projects can be shared with others and integrated in other VLEs.

Figure 2: Student view of a two column multiple choice question with the notebook open. The top strip has been adapted to the university branding; left panel contains the navigation while the right panel contains text, questions and media elements.

STEP 5:
RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS
The AVC and the School of Medicine and Medical Science have developed online learning materials in Immunology and Respiratory Pathology to evaluate Flash Companion and the AVC templates. The project generated interest among academic staff, who were interested in using Flash Companion to develop their own materials.

The AVC designed and ran two training courses on Flash Companion and the AVC templates for UCD staff. Half a day is spent on Flash Companion and half a day on designing learning materials for the online environment. Authoring using technology is now easy—the challenge is in the pedagogical design and usability of the materials. Our other challenge is to increase the number of lecturers developing interactive teaching materials for theWeb.

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NiallWatts of The Audio Visual Centre, Library Building at the University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland thanks the Higher Education Authority of Ireland for funding the project and Dr. David Dewhurst of the Learning Technology Section, College of Medicine and VeterinaryMedicine, University of Edinburgh as peer reviewer. Thanks to the UCD Audio Visual Centre and the School of Medicine andMedical Science including Helen Guerinm and Ken Doyle in the AVC and Prof. Peter Dervan and Dr. Peter Holloway in the School ofMedicine andMedical Science. The author can be reached at Tel. +353 1716 7035.

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