INTERACTIVE COURSEWARE FOR DISCRETE MATHEMATICS:
UNITAR CASE STUDY
Iznora Aini bt Zolkifly
Faculty of Information Technology
Universiti Tun Abdul Razak
16-5, Plaza CCL, Jalan Perbandaran SS6/12,
Kelana Jaya Urban Centre, 47301 Petaling Jaya,
Selangor Darul Ehsan.
Tel : 03-78092063, Fax: 03-78802404
iznora@unitar.edu.my
Abstract
Internet and web technologies usage as educational tools help to bring knowledge accessible at anytime and anywhere.
This paper will discuss the use of various web technologies and tools in developing an interactive courseware for
Discrete Mathematics course at Universiti Tun Abdul Razak. The interactive courseware is developed to fulfill the needs
for personalized and effective tutoring system that will help meet the growing demand for highly qualified learners. It
provides a tutoring system for UNITAR’s undergraduate students in learning at their own pace according to their
capability and enables them to do their revision at any time. The system will offer individual guidance for students to do
their exercises and trace the mistakes at each stage of solving the particular problem. It will give immediate response,
featuring a two-way communication between the tutorial and the student in a one to one tutoring manner. An
autonomous intelligent agent, the animated pedagogical agent will act as the interactive assistant for students. The
integration of client-side, server side scripting languages, web databases and web technologies such as ASP and XML
helps to create dynamic web pages. World Wide Web engage students in the learning process through an interactive,
dynamic environment involving the student, online materials and an instructor.
1.0 Introduction
Internet and web technologies application as educational tools help to bring knowledge accessible
anytime and anywhere. Much research has been carried out actively in education regarding
knowledge delivery. From face-to-face to virtual learning, different technologies have played great
roles at different times. Amongst the major problem of current online tutorials is that static
materials and minimal interactivity makes learning less interesting. Learners do not always have
independent learning skills and get the individual help they require. They also do not possess all
the information they need and get sufficient feedback. It is hard to assess whether students have
understood the material presented. As one of learning delivery method, interactivity is importance
to sustain learner interest. The word “Interactive” relates to a program that responds to user
activity [1]. Interactivity is a process-related, variable characteristic of communication settings.
Courseware is a term that combines the words course with software, is educational material
intended as kits for teachers or trainers or as tutorials for students, usually packaged for use with a
computer [2].
Interactive Courseware (ICW) or Interactive Multimedia Instruction (IMI) is computer-controlled
training program that relies on student input to determine the pace, sequence, and content of
training delivery. It is also referred to as Computer-Based Instruction (CBI) and Computer-Based
Training (CBT).[3] Computer-based, multimedia educational material providing interactive
training sessions that may contains text, computer graphics, photographic stills, animation, sound
and motion video. Interactive learning with video, audio, graphics, feedback, expert advice, and
questions and answers keep learners interested and reinforce skills. [4]. It can improve learning,
flexible, modular, practical, consistent, engaging, cost-effective and time consuming.
This paper will discuss the use of various web technologies and tools in developing an interactive
courseware for Discrete Mathematics course at Universiti Tun Abdul Razak (UNITAR).
2.0
Materials and methods
The courseware development in UNITAR adopted the Gagne model [5] as the instructional design
model. There are nine events in the model (as shown in Figure 1) which are gain attention, inform
learner of objective, stimulate recall of prior information, present information, provide guidance,
elicit performance, provide feedback, assess performance, and enhance retention and transfer.
Figure 1: Gagne model
2.1
Web technologies
Various technologies and tools such as web technologies, interactive agent, and collaboration tool
are used in this courseware to make learning more effective.
The integration of client-side, server side scripting languages, web databases and web technologies
such as ASP and XML helps to create dynamic web pages. The courseware uses JavaScript to
create agent’s animations. Cascading style sheets is used to set the colors, text decoration and the
position element to be absolute. Figure 2 and 3 below shows the example of JavaScript and CSS
code.
<script type = "text/javascript" for = "agent"
event = "Click">
<!-actor.Play( "GetAttention" );
actor.Speak( "Ops..Sorry!" );
actor.Play( "GetAttentionReturn" );
// -->
</script>
Figure 2: Creating agent’s animation using JavaScript
<style type="text/css">
<!-.menuItem {position:absolute; left:0px; visibility:hidden;}
.node { color: black }
.node A:active { color: red }
.node A:link { color: blue }
.leaf { color: black }
.leaf A:active { color: red }
.leaf A:link { color: blue }
A:link {text-decoration: none color: blue}
A:visited {text-decoration: none}
A:active {text-decoration: none}
-->
A:hover {color:red;}
Figure 3.5
</style>
</head>
Figure 3: Cascading Style Sheets
2.2
Interactive agent
A software agent such as pedagogical agent is a program that performs tasks for its user.
Pedagogical agents have been incorporated in a wide range of educational systems from intelligent
tutoring systems (ITS) to computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) environments.[6 ]
Animated Pedagogical Agent (APA) is used in the courseware as the interactive assistant for
students, help them negotiate and mediate e-learning programs. APA can evaluate the learner’s
understanding through the interaction, can prompt students to interact by asking questions, give
guidance, provide feedback, and engage the students towards the courseware. Microsoft agent’s set
of software services allows developers easily enhance the user interface of their applications and
web pages with interactive personalities in the form of animated characters. Microsoft agent [7]
characters such as Peedy the Parrot is chose to be the assistant with AI agent application [8] as the
knowledge bases (Brains). The databases in the “Brains” are presented in a variety of new and
unique ways. Students can ask questions and based on the knowledge based, the AI agent will try
to give the answers.
2.3
Collaboration tool
The Centra symposium [9] is one of the collaboration tools which interface collaborate voice,
video, data and graphics in a structured group-learning environment. The real-time interactivity
features in Centra can import content directly to the agenda and rich multimedia content. Centra
also provide collaborative hands-on training using real-time application sharing with mark-up tool,
white board and text chat tool. These features can be reviewed after the teaching and learning
session ends. Figure 4 shows the example of Centra symposium environment.
Figure 4: Centra Symposium
2.4
Content presentation
Accurate, sufficient and appropriate content with clear, easy and understandable language engages
students with the interactive courseware. There are many levels of interactions used in this
courseware such as object, linear, construct, support, update and hyperlinked interactivity. The
attractive content is presented in such a way to sustain learner attention. Basically, it is learner
centered and resource based.
3.0
Results and discussions
Interactive courseware for Discrete Mathematic has been developed to fulfill the needs for
personalized and effective tutoring system that will help meet the growing demand for highly
qualified learners. It provides a tutoring system for UNITAR’s [10] undergraduate students in
learning at their own pace according to their capability and enable them to do their revision at any
time. The system will offer individual guidance for students to do their exercises and trace the
mistakes at each stage of solving the particular problem. It will give immediate response, featuring
a two-way communication between the tutorial and the student in a one to one tutoring manner.
Each module of this ICW explains about the objective and present information (Figure 5). The
modular course menu helps learners to choose which title they want to learn. The implementation
of web usability such as easy navigation creates flexibility of browsing the content. Multimedia
elements such as audio and animated graphics help to gain the learners interest.
Modular
Present information
Inform learner or objective
Navigation
Interactive
multimedia elements
Figure 5
3.1
Elicit performance, provide feedback and provide guidance
Figure 6 shows the notes to convert between binary numbers to decimal number. Here,
frames are used to separate the course menu and the notes. Users can always go to other
topic by clicking the course menu. Interactive notes allow users to click the Practice button
to do the exercises regarding the conversion of binary number to decimal number. This
practice or exercise can elicit the student’s performance. An agent assistant provides a
feedback whenever the answer is wrong. JavaScript language is used to retrieve the agent
function and create an interactive quiz module. Learners can ask question to the AI agent
(Figure 6) which then give guidance to them depends on the knowledge based it has.
Elicit performance
Providing feedback
Providing guidance
Figure 6
3.2
Reusability
Reuse is the use of previously written software resources in new applications.[11] The
concept of reusability covers most of the scope in this courseware. Interactive agents can
be revised and updated frequently. Pictures, components, interfaces, scripting and
programming languages are designed and developed based on the reusability concept as
the priority.
3.3
Student’s courseware evaluation
Courseware evaluation [12] has been done every semester by the students. Quality
measures for web based courseware are the content, interactivity and evaluation,
presentation, navigation and technical issues. Overall quality measure mean for the
interactivity and evaluation is 4 out of 5. This shows that students agree that the
courseware engages them through novelty, humor, adventure, unique content, gaming,
surprise elements and etc. The assessments such as quizzes, exercises and practices are
useful in preparing them to take the exam. The feedback is used appropriately and the
courseware is interactive and engaging. The implementation of web usability in terms of
presentation and navigation also helps them to understand the content clearly and meet the
objectives. Figure 7 below shows the percentage respondents’ distribution of courseware
usage duration for every faculty. In this particular semester, at any one time majority of
student spend 30-60 minutes on a particular courseware.
70
60
50
40
30
Faculty
20
Percent
FIT
10
FBA
FHSS
0
Less than 15 minutes
Betw een 30-60 minute
Less than 30 minutes
More than 60 minutes
Figure 7
4.0
Conclusion
World Wide Web engage students in the learning process through an interactive, dynamic
environment involving the student, online materials and agents that act as an instructor. Interactive
learning and performance support is an emerging technology. However further research is required
to determine what technology does best and how it can be manipulated to provide effective
interactive learning environments.
References
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