Hypermedia Design Principles and Techniques - by Mathias Mailu

The objective of this topic is let you be able to:

• Know when to use a flowchart, a storyboard, and a script
• Recognize the five basic multimedia design paradigms
• Understand how the linear list design let the user move back and forth in a sequence of multimedia objects
• Understand how the menu design provides users with a choice of items, and how the hierarchical design provides levels of choices by linking menus to menus
• Realize how the multiple linking in a network design provides the richest form of interactivity
• Visualize how hybrid designs can incorporate lists, menus, hierarchies, and networks
• Define the content of an advanced application and adopt an appropriate navigational metaphor
  

Introduction

It is not unusual for an advanced application to contain hundreds or even thousands of multimedia screens. Your challenge is to present this material in such a way that the user will not get lost or confused. From the get go, you must have a clear notion of how the material will be organized and how the user will navigate from screen to screen.

This topic talks about hypermedia design techniques that will help you plan the development of a multimedia application. You will learn to visualize the flow of your application and imagine yourself running through it as a user.

Design Paradigms
There are five ways to design the flow of a multimedia application: - the linear list, the menu, the hierarchy, the network, and the hybrid.

Linear list
The simplest design is the linear list you see in Figure 1. as the user clicks the mouse, the application presents the information, one item after the other. Each object in the list can be a text, a graphic, an audio clip, a video, or a compound object consisting of more than one medium playing at once3, such as a text overlaid on a graphic accompanied by a sound track. The user can move back and forth through the list, moving forward to new materials or backward to review.

Menu
The second way to design an interaction is to create a menu like the one shown in Figure 2. The items in the menu can appear as lines of hypertext, graphics in hyperpictures, or a combination of textual and graphical triggers. When the user chooses an item on the menu, the item linked to it appears and stays on the screen until the user makes another choice.




Hierarchy
The third kind of design is the hierarchy shown in Figure 3. Each object provides the user with a menu of choices that trigger more menus with more choices. There is no limit to the size or number of menus and submenus you can have in such a hierarchy.





Network
The most complex design is the network shown in Figure4, in which objects can be multiply linked in any direction to any object in your application. The network design provides you with a rich set of navigation options.

Hybrid
Multimedia applications often use more than one design paradigm, employing lists, menus, hierarchies, and networks where appropriate. For example, a sophisticated network design may trigger a list of images in a slide bank with simple navigation that lets the user move back and forth through the slides. When the user gets to the end of the list, the network design returns to provide richer navigation options. Designs that combine paradigms are called hybrid. Figure5 shows an example of a hybrid design.

Storyboarding
A storyboard is a series of sketches that describe the content of a sequence of multimedia screens. Figure 6 shows a sample storyboarding form, which contains a frame for sketching the screen layout, and a space below the frame for making comments. To create a storyboard, you fill out such a form for each screen in an application. Inside the frame, you sketch the design elements that will appear on the screen. In the space below the frame, you write comments describing the screen’s function and purpose.

Use the storyboard to reflect on the flow of your application. Spread out the sketches on the floor, tape them to a wall, or tack them onto a bulletin board. Arrange the sketches in their logical sequence – the order in which the user will view them. Seeing your screens all at once can help you make design changes before proceeding to the more costly and time-consuming development stage.



Scripting
After you storyboard a project, you are ready to script it. A script is a complete specification of the text and narration in a multimedia application. Especially when you are using a team of people to develop an application, it is important to have a written script. Scriptwriting makes the team think through the project thoroughly. A written script helps team members communicate with each other, share comment on the design, and make adjustments prior to beginning the costly development stage. Having a script helps you role-play the application from the viewpoint of a user and identify missing elements.

Flowcharting
Multimedia applications often require users to make decisions. A flowchart is a logic diagram that illustrates the steps involved in an interactive decision-making process. Flowcharts are helpful when designing conditional branching and answer judging in a multimedia application. For example, you might present a test question and ask the user to select the correct answer. Depending on how the user responds, you will either give some positive reinforcement and proceed to the next question, or you will provide remedial feedback explaining why the answer was incorrect. Drawing a flowchart can help you visualize the answer-judging process.

Figure 7 shows the shapes designers use to create flowcharts. The most important shapes are the rectangular “process” box and the diamond-shaped “decision” symbol.


The flowchart shown in figure 8 uses these symbols to diagram the answer4 judging in a multiple-choice question. In the process box at the top of the diagram, the user is asked a question. If the user answers correctly, positive feedback will reinforce the correct answer. If the response is incorrect, the computer will provide a hint and repeat the question. If the user fails again, remedial instruction will be provided.

Reference
Fred T. Hofstetter, ©1997: Multimedia Literacy, 2nd Edition, pages 374 – 380.

The Utility of Screen Capturing Software as eLearning Authoring Tool

By: Dr.-Ing. Zelalem Hailu


1. Introduction

Screencasting is a process of creating interactive demonstrations and software simulations. You take a series of screenshots of a running application. The software records your actions and instantly creates a simulation or screencast. The movies can be in a variety of formats like Standalone EXE, Macromedia Flash SWF, AVI format or the Windows Media Video (WMV) format or as streaming presentations from a website. You can even burn the simulations / demonstrations on a CD for mailing them to the person who wants to acquire knowledge from them.

Screencasts can be used for describing software projects, reporting bugs, and explaining interactions. Just as a screenshot is a picture of a user's screen, a screencast is essentially a movie of what a user sees on his monitor. And if a picture is worth a thousand words, a movie is worth a thousand pictures. Creating a screencast helps developers of software show off their work. It is a useful skill for ordinary software users as well, to help report bugs (the movie takes the place of potentially unclear written explanations) or to show others how a given task is accomplished in a specific software environment.


2. Personal Experience with Screencasting Techniques

The idea of using a screen capturing software appealed to me as a means of avoiding repeated demonstration of the same topic to different audiences. I have a couple of instances in which I was able to use screen capturing techniques to practically implement the idea.

The Ethiopian Civil Engineering Association approached me and a colleague of mine with a request to develop a website for the Association. A series of meetings were held in which the Executive committee members of the association discussed with us the requirements for establishing the website of the Association. When it became apparent that other members of the committee also wish to hold similar discussion with us, I decided to prepare a video clip showing how the final appearance of the website would look like. The video clip is a screen capture of a sample home page of the association showing all possible pages and links to the page. The clip has also narration which explains what product the association should expect at the end. To enable any member of the association to view the sample home page and to give his/her comment on the home page, I uploaded it in a sub-section of my own website. For any one who wishes to see this sample page, the URL is as follows:

http://www.teknochain.com/intermediate

Unfortunately, the narration in the site is in Ethiopian National language i.e. Amharic. For that reason, eLDI_Africa participants from outside of Ethiopia could not listen to the narration but only see the cursor movement and the animated gif pictures on the home page which I developed using Macromedia Fireworks.

Yet there is another occasion where I used screen capture software effectively. One of the renowned Engineering companies in Ethiopia requested me to develop their website. It took me sometime to assemble the necessary resources to develop a hypermedia based website. I demonstrated how the website works to some of the top officials of the company. However, I soon realized that the website needs to be circulated among different departments for checking the consistency and relevance of the information in the developed website. At this stage I prepared a simulation of the website showing the full interactivity of the website. I then made several copies of the simulation in CD ROMs so that the different heads of the departments could watch the website offline at their own convenience. The idea worked fine and it spared me a lot of time of making explanation to each and every department head.

The above two cases are situations in which I was able to spare myself of the need to make unnecessary and repeated explanation about a web-based product. But, there are numerous occasions where it would be necessary to explain to people how to use simple application software like Microsoft Outlook, or some functions in text processing or spreadsheet software (like a tutor for MS-Word/Excel etc). By simply recording the required operations using screen capture software and sending the recorded clip to the person who wants to learn the operations is an important way of exchanging knowledge. This is specially so if you or the person who wants to learn the operation are unable to arrange a meeting for a face-to-face demonstration of the operations. A simple example, would be to record how the various features of the gc21 platform works, like the pinboards, the document pool, the portfolios and others. As participants of the eLDI_Africa workshop we were fortunate enough to receive a face-to-face demonstration of the functionalities of the gc21 platform. Imagine, if an online course were to start without a face-to-face session at the beginning, then a simulation which shows how the platform works would be unavoidable at the beginning of the online session.


3. Some Common Screen Capturing Software

A variety of screen capturing software are available which can be used for the purpose explained above. So as not to take too much of the reader’s time, I will limit myself with brief explanation of some of the screen capture software I am familiar with.

i) Wink

In the face-to-face session of the eLDI_Africa program, we were given a brief introduction to open-source screen capture software called Wink. Wink is a Tutorial and Presentation creation software, primarily aimed at creating tutorials on how to use software. Using Wink it is possible to capture screenshots, add explanation boxes, buttons, titles etc and generate a highly effective tutorial for users. By capturing screenshots, mouse movements and specifying one’s own explanations with them. Using all this in a standard Windows-based User Interface with drag-and-drop editing makes it possible to create high quality tutorials or documentation. These types of tutorials are valuable in making the teaching learning process ever livelier by breaking the monotone of delivering lecture notes in text format only.


ii) Macromedia Captivate

One of the proprietary software known for screen capturing used to be called RoboDemo.
Later the company called Macromedia acquired RoboDemo and reintroduced it as Macromedia Captivate. Captivate has all the capabilities discussed under Wink above. However, products of captivate can also be easily integrated with other Macromedia Software (Macromedia Breeze, Director, Flash, Authorware and so on). It also works fine in standalone form for those wanting to capture screen action and output it in another format. Recently Adobe has acquired Macromedia and come up with a strong web development bundle known as the Adobe Bundle. It is expected that captivate 2.0 may acquire some powerful video editing capabilities from Premiere Pro, Adobe’s video editing software.

iii) Camtasia Studio


Camtasia Studio can help you record and edit videos of screen activity in all multimedia formats and enhance the captured material with special effects, narration and a variety of multimedia features. With Camtasia Studio, you can teach and demonstrate complex ideas and subtle points visually, rather than through words alone with exact video renderings of desktop activity.

4. Training Companies Relying on Screen Capture Tools

As explained above screen capture software are particularly suited for teaching software. When you teach a software application, you essentially demonstrate to the learner how to use the various functionalities of the software based on appropriate examples. Therefore, many companies in the IT business have long started benefiting from the utility of screen capture software as a means of developing their courseware. It is nowadays possible to teach any kind of software. The two most important requirements are:

i) the developer should have an excellent knowledge of how to use the screen capture software
ii) the developer should work with a person with an excellent knowledge of the software to be taught (with subject matter expert)

If the person who is expert in the software to be taught is also capable of manipulating the screen capture software, then that makes life a lot easier. Therefore, it is much logical to teach the use of the screen capture software to the subject matter expert.

Software Tutorials and Training software companies like Total Training, Lynda and VTC are amongst the top companies who use screen capture software to create video tutorials of software educational training. For instance, VTC is a virtual training company which has managed to develop full-fledged tutorials on more than 400 different software types. These companies are naturally commercial and they have monthly or yearly subscription fees on the basis of which they make their online training packages available. They also sell their training packages in the form of CD-ROMs for offline learning.

5. Conclusions and Recommendations

An eLearning course can be developed to various degrees of complexity based on the investigation made during instructional design stage. Depending on the facilities available to the target group, the formats of course delivery will probably vary from one setting to the other. Accordingly, in situations where there are no constraints, it is recommended to raise the quality of educational material by making use of an optimum mix of all types of media formats. It is usually not recommended to reduce the degree of complexity of the eLearning course to a level where it is totally devoid of hypermedia elements. This is specially so for Engineering and Technical Vocational Education programs which require the visualization capacity of the learners.

Therefore, it is essential whenever necessary to include appropriate multimedia elements by way of adding value to the eLearning process. And one of the most common ways of doing so is by using screencasting techniques. This article has discussed briefly the different tools used in screencasting and how they are used to improve quick and efficient exchange of knowledge or information. Therefore, it is recommended for people who are engaged in developing eLearning courses to get to know the screencasting techniques and to apply them for improving the quality of the courses they are engaged in developing.

Blended Learning: Why Our Choice?

(By Alemu Abebe Woldie)

Introduction

The term “blended learning” is being used with increased frequency in the academic world. As cited by Rooney, the American Society for Training and Development identified blended learning as one of the top ten trends to emerge in the knowledge delivery industry.

These days, a dramatic increase in the number of hybrid (i.e., blended) courses in higher education possibly includes as many as 80-90% of all courses (Young, 2002).
Even though blended learning has become Some what of a buzzword in higher education settings, there is still quite a bit of ambiguity about what is meant when the term is used.
How is blended learning different from other terms such as distributed learning, e-learning, open and flexible learning? Some define the term so broadly arguing that there is no any learning system that is not “blended”. Others challenge the very assumptions behind blending as holding onto relics of an old paradigm of learning (Graham, 2002).

In this article a trial will be made to highlight some points on blended learning and to briefly answer the question why we choose blended learning as method of content delivery.

What Is Being Blended?

One frequent question asked when one hears about blended learning (BL) is “What is being blended?” While there are a wide variety of responses to this question, most of the definitions are just variations of a few common themes. The three most commonly mentioned definitions documented by Graham, Allen, and Ure (2003) are:
1) BL = combining instructional modalities (or delivery media)
2) BL = combining instructional methods
3) BL = combining online and face-to-face instruction

The first two positions above reflect the debate on the influences of media versus method on learning. According to Clark and Kozma, both of these positions suffer from the problem that they define BL so broadly that there encompass virtually all learning systems. One would be hard pressed to find any learning system that did not involve multiple instructional methods and multiple delivery media. So defining BL in either of these two ways does not get at the essence of what blended learning is and why the concept of blended learning is exciting to so many people. As to Charles R. Graham the third position more accurately reflects the historical emergence of blended learning systems and is the foundation of the working definition This working definition reflects the idea that BL is the combination of instruction from two historically separate models of teaching and learning: traditional F2F learning systems and distributed learning systems. It also emphasizes the central role of computer-based technologies in blended learning.

Therefore, BL is part of the ongoing convergence of two learning environments. On the one hand, we have the traditional F2F learning environment that has been around for centuries. On the other hand, we have distributed learning environments that have begun to grow and expand in exponential ways as new technologies have expanded the possibilities for distributed communication and interaction.

Graham argue, that in the past, these two learning environments have remained largely separate because they have used different media/method combinations and have addressed the needs of different audiences. For example, traditional F2F learning typically occurred in a teacher-directed environment with person-to-person interaction in a live synchronous. On the other hand, distance learning systems emphasized self-paced learning and learning-materials interactions that typically occurred in an asynchronous environment. The widespread adoption and availability of digital learning technologies has led to increased levels of integration of computer-mediated instructional elements into the traditional F2F learning experience.

Why Our Choice?

There are many reasons why an instructor, trainer, or learner might pick blended learning over other learning options. Osguthorpe and Graham (2003) identified six reasons why one might chose to design or use a blended learning system:
(1) pedagogical richness,
(2) access to knowledge,
(3) social interaction,
(4) personal agency,
(5) cost effectiveness, and
(6) ease of revision.

In the BL literature, the most common reason provided is that BL combines “the best of both worlds”. While there is some truth to this, it is rarely acknowledged that a blended learning environment can also mix the least effective elements of both worlds if it is not designed well. Beyond this general argument (Graham et al. 2003) found that overwhelmingly people chose BL for three reasons:
(1) improved pedagogy,
(2) increased access/flexibility, and
(3) increased cost effectiveness.

Improved Pedagogy. As indicated above, one of the most commonly cited reasons for blending is more effective pedagogical practices. It is no secret that most current teaching and learning practice in higher education training setting is still focused on transmissive rather than interactive strategies. In higher education, 83% of instructors use the lecture as the predominant teaching strategy (U.S. Department of Education, 2001). Some have seen blended learning approaches increase the level of active learning strategies, peer-to-peer learning strategies, and learner centered strategies.

Increased Access/Flexibility. Access to learning is one of the key factors influencing the growth of distributed learning environments. Many emphasize that programs would not be possible if students are not able to have a majority of their learning experiences at a distance from instructors and/or other students. Learner flexibility and convenience is also of growing importance as more mature learners with outside commitments (such as work and family) seek additional education. Many learners want the convenience offered by a distributed environment, and, at the same time, do not want to sacrifice the social interaction and human touch they are used to in a F2F classroom. It is possible to cite numerous examples of how blending is used to provide a balance between flexible learning options and the high touch human interactive experience.

Increased Cost Effectiveness. Cost effectiveness is a third major goal for BL systems in higher education institutions. Blended learning systems provide an opportunity for reaching a large, globally dispersed audience in a short period of time with consistent content delivery.

Wrap Up
Even though we choose BL as an appropriate mode of content delivery, it does not mean that it is 100% perfect. There are issues or challenges that we face when blending. We need to consider six issues when designing BL systems. These include:
(1) the role of live interaction(f2f),
(2) the role of learner choice and self-regulation,
(3) approaches for support, training and tutoring,
(4) finding balance between technological innovation and production of contents,
(5) cultural adaptation, and
(6) dealing with the digital divide

What do we mean by these Challenges (Core Issues)?
The Role Of Live Interaction (F2f)
We need to get answers for these questions: Under what conditions is human interaction important to the learning process and to learner satisfaction with the process? When and why should we be considering human interaction such as collaboration and learning communities?

Role of Learner Choice/Self Regulation. How are learners making choices about the kinds of blends that they participate in? How can blended learning environments be designed to support increasing learner knowledge and skills and capabilities for self-regulation?

Approaches For Support And Tutoring. There are many issues related to support and tutoring in blended environments including:
(1) providing learners with technological skills to succeed in both F2F and online environments,
(2) changing organizational culture to accept blended approaches ,
(3) the need to provide professional development for instructors that will be teaching online and F2F
(5) the need to see more successful models of how to support a blended approach to learning from both the technological infrastructure and organizational (human) perspectives.

Finding Balance Between Technological Innovation And Production Of Contents. In designing BL content, there is a constant tension between innovation and production. Hence, there is a need to look forward to the possibilities that new technological innovations provide and, there is a need to be able to produce cost effective solutions. However, due to the constantly changing nature of technology, finding an appropriate balance between innovation and production will be a constant challenge for those designing blended learning systems.

Cultural Adaptation. This is a check what blended approaches play in adapting materials to local learners. This indicates the need for customizing the materials to the local learners to make them culturally relevant.

Dealing with the Digital Divide. This refers to the divide between the information and communication technologies available to individuals and societies at different ends of the socio-economic spectrum (to address the issue of information poor vs information rich).
By giving due attention to the above shortly described issues, it is possible to transform the conventional pedagogy radically. This, we can call, is a change from a model where learners are just receivers of information to a model where learners actively construct knowledge and skills through dynamic interactions.

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