Multimedia courseware: Never mind the quality how much will it cost to develop?

This paper evaluates multimedia courseware costing techniques such as the US Airforce Interactive Courseware Method (Golas, 1993), CBT Analyst (Kearsley, 1985), CEAC (Schooley, 1988) and MEEM (Marshall, Samson, Dugard, & Scott, 1994) against the data from ten multimedia courseware developments. The Relative Error and Mean Absolute Relative Error (MARE) are calculated to allow comparison of the different methods

Template-driven teacher modelling approach : a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Information Science at Massey University, Palmerston North

This thesis describes the Template-driven Teacher Modeling Approach, the initial implementation of the template server and the formative evaluation on the prototype. The initiative of Template-driven teacher modeling is to integrate the template server and intelligent teacher models in Web-based education systems for course authoring. There are a number of key components in the proposed system: user interface, template server and content repository. The Template-Driven Teacher Modeling (TDTM) architecture supports the course authoring by providing higher degree of control over the generation of presentation. The collection of accumulated templates in the template repository for a teacher or a group of teachers are selected as the inputs for the inference mechanism in teacher's model to calculate the best representation of the teaching strategy, and then predict teacher intention when he or she interacts with the system. Moreover, the presentation templates are kept to support the re-use of the on-line content at the level of individual screens with the help of Template Server

Designing and Teaching Adaptive+Active Learning Effectively

To fulfill the promise of providing all learners with access to education, institutions of higher education are exploring personalized learning for individuals with different skills, abilities, and interests. These universities have turned to an instructional model that combines adaptive courseware and learner-centered instruction. This is often referred to as active learning. Despite growth in adaptive courseware and generous support through national organizations, successful implementation of adaptive systems is mixed (SRI Education, 2016). This article highlights the need for a systems approach and illustrates this approach through design and pedagogy decisions that have contributed to the success of adaptive learning at Arizona State University (ASU)

Personalised trails and learner profiling within e-learning environments

This deliverable focuses on personalisation and personalised trails. We begin by introducing and defining the concepts of personalisation and personalised trails. Personalisation requires that a user profile be stored, and so we assess currently available standard profile schemas and discuss the requirements for a profile to support personalised learning. We then review techniques for providing personalisation and some systems that implement these techniques, and discuss some of the issues around evaluating personalisation systems. We look especially at the use of learning and cognitive styles to support personalised learning, and also consider personalisation in the field of mobile learning, which has a slightly different take on the subject, and in commercially available systems, where personalisation support is found to currently be only at quite a low level. We conclude with a summary of the lessons to be learned from our review of personalisation and personalised trails

Desktop multimedia environments to support collaborative distance learning

Desktop multimedia conferencing, when two or more persons can communicate among themselves via personal computers with the opportunity to see and hear one another as well as communicate via text messages while working with commonly available stored resources, appears to have important applications to the support of collaborative learning. In this paper we explore this potential in three ways: (a) through an analysis of particular learner needs when learning and working collaboratively with others outside of face-to-face situations; (b) through an analysis of different forms of conferencing environments, including desktop multimedia environments, relative to their effectiveness in terms of meeting learner needs for distributed collaboration; and (c) through reporting the results of a formative evaluation of a prototype desktop multimedia conferencing system developed especially for the support of collaborative learning. Via these analyses, suggestions are offered relating to the functionalities of desktop multimedia conferencing systems for the support of collaborative learning, reflecting new developments in both the technologies available for such systems and in our awareness of learner needs when working collaboratively with one other outside of face-to-face situations

Assistive Courseware for Dyslexic Children To Increase Learning Abilities Based on Kinect Technology (ABCDyslexic)

It is well known that every child whether it be in pre-school or primary school have the difficulties to start to learn about language. They do not recognize the alphabet thus making them to read or write even a word is hard enough. Teachers will teach them and assist them in this situation and usually those children will passed from this stage after some time. But there’s a medical conditions where some children have the difficulties to even recognize the shape of the alphabet and effecting in further progress of the studies about language. Those children faced a language-based learning disorder that interferes with the acquisition of print literacy which refers to reading, writing, and spelling. This learning disorder called as Dyslexia which refers to difficulties in reading, writing, and spelling. There is a lot of technique that created special to assists dyslexic children that mainly based on multisensory approach. It optimizes the usage of all sensory organ of a student in learning process. Previous method may not be fully utilized because of the limitation of the apparatus that needed in optimizing the use of sensory organ. So the proposed system is a courseware based on Kinect to help dyslexic to improve learning abilities was presented. The propose system will help dyslexic children to improve their learning abilities by using Kinect that will maximize the use of all sensory organ and based on the English syllabus for primary school in Standard 1 and Standard 2, that officially prepared by the Ministry of Education. The objective of this study is to identify and limitations of the current ways of teaching English to dyslexic pre-school children. Extend its purpose to the investigation of the use of gesture-based learning approach for teaching & learning to dyslexic pre-school children. Then, it purpose also to develop a courseware that based on Kinect and also to conduct user’s perception study towards the develop course. It focuses on dyslexic children at the age of 5-10 years old. During the development process, the incremental and Iterative methodology is chosen. All the analysis, design, and implementation phases performed at the same time thus producing a prototype on each phase. The cycle repeated continually until the final prototype successfully meets the requirements. At first the system should be develop using Microsoft Visual Studio C# and Kinect SDK, but after a few prototyping process, the system has been changed and develop using Adobe Flash. The Kinect application also unattached between the applications as it will allow user that don’t have Kinect to run the application. User may use Kinect or Mouse as a controller for the application.Mainly the system consists of 4 main modules. Each modules dedicated to train in certain area start from Module 1 continue till Module 4. Module 1 focus on getting to know the letters and numbers. Module 2 design to train children with proper spelling. The third module focuses on the self-introduction. Then the last module is for shapes recognition which will train children to differentiate between letters and numbers. After the final prototype has been produced, the user perception study was conducted. The study results helps to support the develop application for further improvement and alteration to the application. The study was conducted on 5 primary school situated around Kluang, Johor. The final result shows good feedback on the application towards them. The application ‘ABCDyslexic’ has the abilities to help dyslexic children to improve their learning abilities thus improving their learning in other aspect. The development of this application will surely contribute to them and also at the same time provide guidance for teacher in assisting Dyslexic children in today learning environment. But further development on this application should be done to improve it even further such as making it compatible in other platform and improving the current modules to really cater and help dyslexic children to improve their learning abilities

A systematic review of software development cost estimation studies

This paper aims to provide a basis for the improvement of software estimation research through a systematic review of previous work. The review identifies 304 software cost estimation papers in 76 journals and classifies the papers according to research topic, estimation approach, research approach, study context and data set. A web-based library of these cost estimation papers is provided to ease the identification of relevant estimation research results. The review results combined with other knowledge provide support for recommendations for future software cost estimation research, including: 1) Increase the breadth of the search for relevant studies, 2) Search manually for relevant papers within a carefully selected set of journals when completeness is essential, 3) Conduct more studies on estimation methods commonly used by the software industry, and, 4) Increase the awareness of how properties of the data sets impact the results when evaluating estimation methods

Strategic Planning for Web-based Learning and Teaching at Tampere University of Technology

In: A.J. Kallenberg and M.J.J.M. van de Ven (Eds), 2002, The New Educational Benefits of ICT in Higher Education: Proceedings. Rotterdam: Erasmus Plus BV, OECR ISBN 90-9016127-9The purpose of this paper is to discuss the action to support the development of web-based learning and teaching in higher education. A central question is how web-based learning and teaching should be incorporated into the strategic planning of the University

Impact of attribution retraining with students enrolled in an Internet-based instructional technology course at a community college

This study explores the use of attribution retraining in a community college, distance learning course. Attribution training is a form of psychotherapy used in an attempt to shift an individual\u27s attitude, motivation, and locus of control (LOC).;Locus of control is a measure of how one attributes success and failure. Those with internal locus of control believe they are responsible and control their fate while those with external locus of control tend to look for fault outside of themselves.;The purpose of the study was to examine the impact of attribution training, which consisted of a multimedia, interactive intervention called Just Think It, on an online instructional technology course. The research questions examined the impact of attribution retraining on locus of control scores, grade point average, and course retention. Little research has been done on the use of attribution retraining to alter locus of control in a distance learning environment.;The participants consisted of students enrolled in the online course, EDU202 Instructional Technology in the summer and fall 2007 semesters. A quasi-experimental research design was used whereas treatment and control groups were each given a pre and posttest using Rotter\u27s LOC survey. The treatment group received the intervention and the control group did not. Results were compared along with final grade averages and course retention statistics.;Results indicated that no significant change existed as the result of the intervention for locus of control or grade point average. However, course retention rates proved to be slightly higher for the treatment group than those of the control group