- Email: [email protected]
university co-operation
267
Teachers as educational software designers: industry/university co-operation Sandra Wills
1. Background
University of Melbourne, Parkoille, Victoria 3052, Australia
1.1 Victorian Education Foundation
Abstract. Funding was obtained in 1989 to develop a pilot elective in 1990 within the Graduate Diploma of Computer Education at The University of Melbourne. Entitled "Designing Educational Software", the elective takes advantage of new authoring tools and multimedia facilities to introduce teachers to the philosophies and practicalities of developing software for the classroom. This in itself is not innovative. However, the elective will be not only offered to teachers enrolled in the Graduate Diploma but to trainers from industry as well, particularly those involved in Computer Based Training. CST is a career path for teachers that has not yet been exploited and at the same time, the CST industry reports skills shortages. The elective has been designed in co-operation with the CET industry. A second aim of the course is to expose industry trainers to the educational philosophies behind school level software. From the interaction of schoolteachers and industry trainers, we shall attempt to develop broader models of CST than the ones currently embraced by the training industry. Likewise, the development of school software should benefit from exposure to the more sophisticated facilities available in industry. The pilot is continuing in 1991 and the teachers will be joined by a smaller number of enrolments from the training industry. By 1992, the percentage of teachers to industry trainers will be 50/50.
The Victorian Education Foundation (VEF) was established by the Victorian state government and is funded by industry from 0.1% of their pay roll tax. The scheme is voluntary and is designed to enable industry to create training and education solutions more in line with their needs. YEP funding enables innovative training to get off the ground quickly and fills a gap until the training is integrated into the normal offerings of colleges and universities. The Institute of Education at the University of Melbourne submitted a proposal in conjunction with the CST industry to the YEP. We were granted an Education Innovation Award, Applied Research Program: Information Technology. The proposal was for the development, within the Institute's Graduate Diploma of Computer Education, of a pilot course on Designing Educational Software which would attract both teachers and industry trainers,
Keywords: teacher training, computer based training, educational software
1.2 The Institute of Education
Sandra Wills, currently a lecturer in the Institute of Education at The University of Melbourne, has been working with computers, students, and teachers for almost twenty years, at primary, secondary, and university level. She was one of Australia's earliest educational software developers and has also worked at times in the computer industry in various jobs, including marketing manager, software consultant, and CBT author. The philosophy presented in this paper of breaking down barriers between schools and industry, is one reflected in Sandra's career. Sandra has been Australia's representative on TC3 since 1985. She is National Education Chairman for the Australian Computer Society and a founding member of the Australian Council for Computers in Education. She was International Programme Chairman of WCCE/90, IFIP TC3's fifth World Conference on Computers in Education, held in Sydney in 1990. Education & Computing 7 (199[) 267-272 Elsevier
The Institute of Education is one of Australia's largest teacher training institutions. It offers a Graduate Diploma in Computer Education, a two year part-time diploma for experienced teachers which can qualify them for Ministry of Education registration as Computer Science teachers. However the diploma also attracts teachers from all subject disciplines, primary and secondary, interested in applying computing across the curriculum. On average the new intake is 60-75 teachers per year. With such a large intake, the diploma is able to offer a number of electives in addition to its core units. The Graduate Diploma of Computer Education (oocs) does not currently include an elective on Designing Educational Software. The last time the diploma was re-designed it was common be-
0167-9287/91/$03.50 © 1991 - Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. All rights reserved
268
S. Wills
I
Teachers as educational software designers
lief that teachers should not be developing software. In earlier years of the diploma some teachers chose to develop educational software as their major project using tools such as PILOT or programming in BASIC. However the GDCE project supervisors generally discouraged most teachers from software development as it was found that the time and effort required to develop the software far exceeded the time available in the year. Recently tools have become available that make this activity more accessible to teachers. The Macintosh is used widely throughout the university and GDCE students are being introduced to Hypercard as a core component of the diploma, along with Logowriter, a successor to Logo. The teachers' first projects with Logowriter and Hypercard automatically veer towards "software that teaches". It is the knowledge domain they know best. In addition to new tools making it easier to develop educational software, there have been rapid developments in the area of multimedia. The new tools automatically encompass multimedia. Part of the resurgence of interest in educational software can be attributed to the excitement caused by the demonstrated potential of multimedia software. In 1990, The University of Melbourne established an Interactive Multimedia Laboratory. Its main function is to professionally develop academic staff of the university in creating multimedia presentations and courseware. Originally it was envisaged that the 1990 pilot elective for teachers would focus on developing multimedia software, however the facilities were not available in time for the start of the elective.
1.3 The Computer Based Training industry
Computer Based Training is a rapidly growing sector of the training industry. Many major companies have now passed the exploratory stages typical of early pilot CET projects and have integrated CBT into their training departments. In addition to people employed within company training departments, a number of CBT companies have been spawned, specialising in the development of CBT under contract. Several CBT authoring tools have been developed in Australia and are widely used in addition to the well-known
imported authoring packages. Victoria has an active CBT association: the Computer Based Training Association of Victoria (CBTAV) which meets regularly and publishes a newsletter. There are a number of barriers to the acceptance of CBT including cost of implementation and development, cost of computer equipment, opposition to change, and lack of experienced, innovative CBT developers. All CBT companies and organisations using CBT acknowledge a skills shortage in the area of CBT authors. CBT authoring requires an interesting and rare mix of skills: a knowledge of instructional design, ability to program, understanding of educational theory, an eye for screen design or user interface, and familiarity with new hardware and software advances that impact on learning. Generally, people employed as CBT authors have to be trained/retrained by their employer. Authors are sourced from three areas: CD the schools or training area, with little or no experience of computing, or vice versa, from (ii) the computing area, with little practical understanding of education and training concerns, or from (iii) The knowledge domain of the CBT to be developed, for example, bank teller, again with little understanding of computing applied to education. There are no courses at Australian universities for training CBT authors. They are usually trained in-house. Each year one or two ODCE graduates leave teaching for the Computer Based Training industry even though the diploma has not formally trained them for this. CBT is a career path for teachers that has not yet been exploited and at the same time, the CBT industry reports skills shortages. Therefore the aim of the proposal to the VEF was to develop a course which would cater for the needs of both teachers and the CBT industry. The elective has been designed in co-operation with the CST industry. A second aim of the course was to expose industry trainers to the educational philosophies behind school level software. From the interaction of school teachers and industry trainers, we are attempting to develop broader models of csr than the ones currently embraced by the training industry. Likewise the development of school
S. Wills
I Teachers as educational software designers
software should benefit from exposure to the more sophisticated facilities available in industry.
2. Description of 1990 pilot elective In 1990, the pilot elective was available only for current students of the GDeE. No CBT authors from industry were to be enrolled until the course had been developed and trialled. The 1990 GDCE students were used as "guinea pigs". It was run as part of an existing elective called "General Purpose Software Tools". The rationale was that authoring languages can be described as general purpose software tools. Instead of the 20 students normally enrolled for an elective, we allowed 40 to enrol and ran two streams of the elective, Stream 2 being" Designing Educational Software". In 1990 15 enrolled in Stream 2. To satisfy the accreditation requirements of General Purpose Software Tools, there were some lectures common to both streams and one common assignment. The assessment consisted of three minor assignments and one major assignment. The elective ran over sixteen weeks-one and a half hours per night, one night per week, for one semester. In addition there were in total five weeks holiday during the course which enabled teachers to spend time on developing their major project. The course included two guest lectures from the CBT industry and a visit to a major bank's training centre was scheduled. The visit was unfortunately cancelled at the last moment, We used "meta-car" as a teaching strategy in the course: CBT to learn about CBT. We used Micro-Energy's Creating CST: a Developer's Guide. Micro-Energy was one of the other four winners of a VEF Education Innovation Award in 1989. Their award was for creating a CBT developer's guide. The guide consists of a book and 3 disks. The disks contain examples of CBT illustrative of the points they make in the book. In return for free access to the draft guide, the teachers in the elective evaluated Micro-Energy's package. Three weeks were allocated to this activity. The last half of the course was spent working on the major project. The major assignment was a team project to design and develop a CBT unit using the authoring tool, Author. Author is a
269
Victorian product by Microcraft. It is well-known in the Victorian CBT industry and has many users elsewhere in Australia and overseas. Author was provided at reduced cost to the pilot course as a contribution from industry. The assignment was a team project, not only due to the constraints of time but, because most software development in the "real world" is a team development and teachers, used to the autonomy of their own classrooms, in general are unused to working in teams. Class contact time was given over to the team projects instead of lectures. This was for a number of reasons. We were using IBM PS /2 machines with VGA colour to give the teachers access to effects they may not have seen on school-level machines. Normally teachers in the oocs spend many hours in their own time on GOCE projects, however they did not have access to these machines outside the university. In addition our site licence for the authoring language did not extend to a home licence and authoring languages are not found in schools. Hence their only access to the machines, and to the other teachers in their teams, was confined to class time. Although we were giving teachers experience of things not normally encountered in schools, the decisions we made restricted their progress with their projects. On the last night of the course, members of the CBT industry were invited to attend to see the teachers' presentations of their team projects. Each project was evaluated by all in attendance using a proforma and copies of all the completed evaluations were posted to the teachers afterwards. The minor assignments included a written evaluation of Micro-Energy's Creating CST and a literature review. The bibliography is attached. Some of the students in this elective attended CBT 90, a mini-conference run in conjunction with WCCE 90, the Fifth World Conference on Computers in Education held in Sydney in July 1990. They commented on the technical sophistication of the applications demonstrated but felt that many lacked a sound underlying educational philosophy, or at least the philosophy was not in keeping with the ones held by teachers. This is a theme that we intend to address in more depth as the elective increases its enrolments of industry authors in 1991 and 1992.
270
S. Wills / Teachers as educational software designers
sing out on the industry visit"; "problems with the network"
3. Evaluation of 1990 pilot elective
An evaluation form was distributed and returned by 12 ofthe 15 students. The following are excerpts from the evaluation.
Would you be interested in working in the industry-full or part-time?
CBT
Full-time 3; Part-time 3; Either 3; Maybe 2; No O.
Why did you enrol in the elective?
"actually learning about something which is used in industry interested me"; "to ascertain use
of CBT languages in schools"; "had to do something and this topic seemed to have some purpose to it"; "I thought it would be useful if I needed a job in industry and because I thought it would be interesting" On a scale of 1 to 5 please rate you feelings: 1 strongly negative 2 negative 3 no comment 4 positive 5 strongly positive
The elective as a whole
-
Average rating your enjoyment of the elective as a whole 4.3 the usefulness of the elective to you 4.0 the assessment as a whole 3.5 content of the elective 4.1 structure of the elective 3.5 the lecturer 4.2 your desire to continue work in this area 4.4
The components of the elective - Micro-Energy's Creating CBT-the book - Micro-Energy's Creating CBT-the disks - evaluating Micro-Energy's Creating CBT - learning "Author" - the literature review - guest speaker l-(CBT Design) - guest speaker 2-(Author)
3.6 3.3 3.3 4.6 2.9 4.4 4.3
What did you like best about the elective?
"working with Author"; "working in teams"; "seeing other teams' presentations"; "finishing the CBT project and seeing it work" What did you not like about the elective?
"amount of work involved"; "literature review"; "not enough time/support when writting our CBT"; "IBM'S weren't available all the time"; "software not lent out-big minus"; "mis-
4. Future developments
The Graduate Diploma of Computer Education has been re-designed for 1992 and contains an elective titled "Designing Educational Software". The pilot course funded by the VEF helped to ensure that this aspect of educational computing was addressed in the new Graduate Diploma. It raised awareness of the previous gap. The pilot is continuing in 1991 and the teachers will be joined by a small number of enrolments from the training industry. We will allow enrolments of 5 fee-paying students from industry. By 1992 the percentage of teachers to industry trainers will be 50/50. The elective will run in its own right without VEF funding in 1992 as it will be fully integrated into the ODCE. It may be possible to run it twice per year in 1992 as it would be self-funding due to the fees paid by industry trainers. In 1991 we are ironing out the problems encountered in the 1990 elective such as providing a home licence for the authoring language. The elective will include much more emphasis on interactive multimedia. We will provide the students with a choice of authoring systems. Each team will be using a different combination of machines, peripherals and authoring languages, for example Macintosh with Authorware Professional, Hypercard for re-purposing an existing videodisc, Amiga with Amigavision etc. An important aspect of the elective for the teachers could then be a comparative evaluation of the different systems. This, however, requires the lecturer to maintain a high level of skills across a range of rapidly changing machines and tools. We may therefore occasionally have to utilise the resources of a number of specialist consultants to cover each area. We are seeking the co-operation of industry to provide the consulting free of charge.
S. Wills / Teachers as educational softwaredesigners
Whatever authoring language is chosen, it is important that it is easy and quick to learn otherwise too large a proportion of the short semester-length elective is spent on learning the language rather than on applying it and on discussing the educational basis of the students' designs. The feedback proformas indicated that too many of the designs in the first pilot were of the traditional tutorial mode. In 1991 we are organising the team project in two stages. The first stage would allow the teams to design and author traditional CBT, recognising that this is probably all that is possible when so much of their energy is focussed on learning a new language. After feedback from peers and from industry, the second stage would encourage them to return to their design to develop a proposal for tackling the knowledge domain from a different angle using an alternative learning strategy and alternative user interface.
5. Conclusion
Teachers do not need to design educational software in order to be able to use computers effectively in their classrooms. However they should be provided with the opportunity to learn the skills if they desire. Some may develop for their own classrooms. Some may go further to develop on behalf of their Ministry of Education for other teachers' classrooms. Some may even go on to develop educational software as a business or migrate to the CST industry. The tools to enable teachers to design software without being expert programmers are becoming more accessible. The paper has described a different approach to the problem of training teachers about designing educational software. The approach attempts to address the needs of the CBT industry as well as the needs of teachers. In doing so, a number of benefits accrue to the teachers. It raises teachers' awareness of alternative career paths. It exposes them to models of adult learning, to alternate models of software design, to the project management concerns of large scale CBT development, and to sophisticated technologies not readily available in schools. The interaction with industry trainers, highlights issues of instructional design
271
and user interface. It enables them to compare the politics of innovation in schools with those of the workplace. In providing a "real-world" perspective on the use of computers for training, hopefully teachers begin to place computers for learning in a broader context than their own classrooms.
References [1] S. Ambron and K. Hooper, eds., Interactive Multimedia:
Visions of Multimedia for Developers, Educators and Information Providers (Redmond, Microsoft Press & Apple Compuler, 1988). [2) S. Lumb, H. Vorrath and P. Juliff, Creating CBT: a Developer's Guide (Micro-Energy Ltd, Melbourne, 1989). [3] D. Tinsley and T. van Weert, eds., EducationalSoftware at lite Secondary Leoel (North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1989). [4] A. Mc Dougall and C. Dowling, eds., Computers in Education (North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1990). [5] 1. Moonen and T. Plornp, eds., Eurit '86: Developments in Educational Software and Courseware (Pergamon, Oxford, 1987). [6] T. Plomp, K. van Deursen and 1. Moonen, eds., CAL for Europe (Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1987). [7] C. Rivlin, R. Lewis and R. Davies Cooper, eds., Guidelines for Screen Design (Blackwell, London, 1990). [8] R. Sims, ed., CBT Issues (Australian Society for Computers in Learning In Tertiary Education, Sydney, 1990).
[9] A Guide to the Design and Deuelopment of Educational Software (Commonwealth Schools Commission, Canberra, 1985).
Discussion
Marilyn Dickson: How did teachers decide the content of the team project (to develop software using an authoring program)? Sandra Wills: They chose to create software for the curriculum area in which they worked. The software was not always created to fil! an educational need - sample titles of the projects include "The Solar System" and "Desktop Publishing". Yaacou Katz: What is the philosophy regarding the connection between Business and Education? Sandra Wills: There should be more interaction between the two in this field, and we hope that there will be, with a higher ratio of business/industry students in this course. I don't think that software created for business and industry training will always be helpful to educators, but the
272
S. Wills ! Teachers as educational software designers
design ideas used for the creating the software are certainly helpful. Joan Haner: Did any of your first students in this course develop projects other than tutorial software? Was the software structured in design? Sandra Wills: Most of the first projects were close to electronic page turning, and we found that the students needed more background in art and graphics to design good software. The creation of graphics took a great deal of time.
David Benzie: I've found similar problems with
authoring tools in general. It takes more time than most teachers realize, and their efforts are regressive at first. It takes lots of time to create software with authoring tools. Sandra Wills: Better authoring tools may make the difference. Although what our students produced wasn't professional-looking, they learned a lot. Their next efforts would probably be better.
Teachers as educational software designers: industry/university co-operation Sandra Wills
1. Background
University of Melbourne, Parkoille, Victoria 3052, Australia
1.1 Victorian Education Foundation
Abstract. Funding was obtained in 1989 to develop a pilot elective in 1990 within the Graduate Diploma of Computer Education at The University of Melbourne. Entitled "Designing Educational Software", the elective takes advantage of new authoring tools and multimedia facilities to introduce teachers to the philosophies and practicalities of developing software for the classroom. This in itself is not innovative. However, the elective will be not only offered to teachers enrolled in the Graduate Diploma but to trainers from industry as well, particularly those involved in Computer Based Training. CST is a career path for teachers that has not yet been exploited and at the same time, the CST industry reports skills shortages. The elective has been designed in co-operation with the CET industry. A second aim of the course is to expose industry trainers to the educational philosophies behind school level software. From the interaction of schoolteachers and industry trainers, we shall attempt to develop broader models of CST than the ones currently embraced by the training industry. Likewise, the development of school software should benefit from exposure to the more sophisticated facilities available in industry. The pilot is continuing in 1991 and the teachers will be joined by a smaller number of enrolments from the training industry. By 1992, the percentage of teachers to industry trainers will be 50/50.
The Victorian Education Foundation (VEF) was established by the Victorian state government and is funded by industry from 0.1% of their pay roll tax. The scheme is voluntary and is designed to enable industry to create training and education solutions more in line with their needs. YEP funding enables innovative training to get off the ground quickly and fills a gap until the training is integrated into the normal offerings of colleges and universities. The Institute of Education at the University of Melbourne submitted a proposal in conjunction with the CST industry to the YEP. We were granted an Education Innovation Award, Applied Research Program: Information Technology. The proposal was for the development, within the Institute's Graduate Diploma of Computer Education, of a pilot course on Designing Educational Software which would attract both teachers and industry trainers,
Keywords: teacher training, computer based training, educational software
1.2 The Institute of Education
Sandra Wills, currently a lecturer in the Institute of Education at The University of Melbourne, has been working with computers, students, and teachers for almost twenty years, at primary, secondary, and university level. She was one of Australia's earliest educational software developers and has also worked at times in the computer industry in various jobs, including marketing manager, software consultant, and CBT author. The philosophy presented in this paper of breaking down barriers between schools and industry, is one reflected in Sandra's career. Sandra has been Australia's representative on TC3 since 1985. She is National Education Chairman for the Australian Computer Society and a founding member of the Australian Council for Computers in Education. She was International Programme Chairman of WCCE/90, IFIP TC3's fifth World Conference on Computers in Education, held in Sydney in 1990. Education & Computing 7 (199[) 267-272 Elsevier
The Institute of Education is one of Australia's largest teacher training institutions. It offers a Graduate Diploma in Computer Education, a two year part-time diploma for experienced teachers which can qualify them for Ministry of Education registration as Computer Science teachers. However the diploma also attracts teachers from all subject disciplines, primary and secondary, interested in applying computing across the curriculum. On average the new intake is 60-75 teachers per year. With such a large intake, the diploma is able to offer a number of electives in addition to its core units. The Graduate Diploma of Computer Education (oocs) does not currently include an elective on Designing Educational Software. The last time the diploma was re-designed it was common be-
0167-9287/91/$03.50 © 1991 - Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. All rights reserved
268
S. Wills
I
Teachers as educational software designers
lief that teachers should not be developing software. In earlier years of the diploma some teachers chose to develop educational software as their major project using tools such as PILOT or programming in BASIC. However the GDCE project supervisors generally discouraged most teachers from software development as it was found that the time and effort required to develop the software far exceeded the time available in the year. Recently tools have become available that make this activity more accessible to teachers. The Macintosh is used widely throughout the university and GDCE students are being introduced to Hypercard as a core component of the diploma, along with Logowriter, a successor to Logo. The teachers' first projects with Logowriter and Hypercard automatically veer towards "software that teaches". It is the knowledge domain they know best. In addition to new tools making it easier to develop educational software, there have been rapid developments in the area of multimedia. The new tools automatically encompass multimedia. Part of the resurgence of interest in educational software can be attributed to the excitement caused by the demonstrated potential of multimedia software. In 1990, The University of Melbourne established an Interactive Multimedia Laboratory. Its main function is to professionally develop academic staff of the university in creating multimedia presentations and courseware. Originally it was envisaged that the 1990 pilot elective for teachers would focus on developing multimedia software, however the facilities were not available in time for the start of the elective.
1.3 The Computer Based Training industry
Computer Based Training is a rapidly growing sector of the training industry. Many major companies have now passed the exploratory stages typical of early pilot CET projects and have integrated CBT into their training departments. In addition to people employed within company training departments, a number of CBT companies have been spawned, specialising in the development of CBT under contract. Several CBT authoring tools have been developed in Australia and are widely used in addition to the well-known
imported authoring packages. Victoria has an active CBT association: the Computer Based Training Association of Victoria (CBTAV) which meets regularly and publishes a newsletter. There are a number of barriers to the acceptance of CBT including cost of implementation and development, cost of computer equipment, opposition to change, and lack of experienced, innovative CBT developers. All CBT companies and organisations using CBT acknowledge a skills shortage in the area of CBT authors. CBT authoring requires an interesting and rare mix of skills: a knowledge of instructional design, ability to program, understanding of educational theory, an eye for screen design or user interface, and familiarity with new hardware and software advances that impact on learning. Generally, people employed as CBT authors have to be trained/retrained by their employer. Authors are sourced from three areas: CD the schools or training area, with little or no experience of computing, or vice versa, from (ii) the computing area, with little practical understanding of education and training concerns, or from (iii) The knowledge domain of the CBT to be developed, for example, bank teller, again with little understanding of computing applied to education. There are no courses at Australian universities for training CBT authors. They are usually trained in-house. Each year one or two ODCE graduates leave teaching for the Computer Based Training industry even though the diploma has not formally trained them for this. CBT is a career path for teachers that has not yet been exploited and at the same time, the CBT industry reports skills shortages. Therefore the aim of the proposal to the VEF was to develop a course which would cater for the needs of both teachers and the CBT industry. The elective has been designed in co-operation with the CST industry. A second aim of the course was to expose industry trainers to the educational philosophies behind school level software. From the interaction of school teachers and industry trainers, we are attempting to develop broader models of csr than the ones currently embraced by the training industry. Likewise the development of school
S. Wills
I Teachers as educational software designers
software should benefit from exposure to the more sophisticated facilities available in industry.
2. Description of 1990 pilot elective In 1990, the pilot elective was available only for current students of the GDeE. No CBT authors from industry were to be enrolled until the course had been developed and trialled. The 1990 GDCE students were used as "guinea pigs". It was run as part of an existing elective called "General Purpose Software Tools". The rationale was that authoring languages can be described as general purpose software tools. Instead of the 20 students normally enrolled for an elective, we allowed 40 to enrol and ran two streams of the elective, Stream 2 being" Designing Educational Software". In 1990 15 enrolled in Stream 2. To satisfy the accreditation requirements of General Purpose Software Tools, there were some lectures common to both streams and one common assignment. The assessment consisted of three minor assignments and one major assignment. The elective ran over sixteen weeks-one and a half hours per night, one night per week, for one semester. In addition there were in total five weeks holiday during the course which enabled teachers to spend time on developing their major project. The course included two guest lectures from the CBT industry and a visit to a major bank's training centre was scheduled. The visit was unfortunately cancelled at the last moment, We used "meta-car" as a teaching strategy in the course: CBT to learn about CBT. We used Micro-Energy's Creating CST: a Developer's Guide. Micro-Energy was one of the other four winners of a VEF Education Innovation Award in 1989. Their award was for creating a CBT developer's guide. The guide consists of a book and 3 disks. The disks contain examples of CBT illustrative of the points they make in the book. In return for free access to the draft guide, the teachers in the elective evaluated Micro-Energy's package. Three weeks were allocated to this activity. The last half of the course was spent working on the major project. The major assignment was a team project to design and develop a CBT unit using the authoring tool, Author. Author is a
269
Victorian product by Microcraft. It is well-known in the Victorian CBT industry and has many users elsewhere in Australia and overseas. Author was provided at reduced cost to the pilot course as a contribution from industry. The assignment was a team project, not only due to the constraints of time but, because most software development in the "real world" is a team development and teachers, used to the autonomy of their own classrooms, in general are unused to working in teams. Class contact time was given over to the team projects instead of lectures. This was for a number of reasons. We were using IBM PS /2 machines with VGA colour to give the teachers access to effects they may not have seen on school-level machines. Normally teachers in the oocs spend many hours in their own time on GOCE projects, however they did not have access to these machines outside the university. In addition our site licence for the authoring language did not extend to a home licence and authoring languages are not found in schools. Hence their only access to the machines, and to the other teachers in their teams, was confined to class time. Although we were giving teachers experience of things not normally encountered in schools, the decisions we made restricted their progress with their projects. On the last night of the course, members of the CBT industry were invited to attend to see the teachers' presentations of their team projects. Each project was evaluated by all in attendance using a proforma and copies of all the completed evaluations were posted to the teachers afterwards. The minor assignments included a written evaluation of Micro-Energy's Creating CST and a literature review. The bibliography is attached. Some of the students in this elective attended CBT 90, a mini-conference run in conjunction with WCCE 90, the Fifth World Conference on Computers in Education held in Sydney in July 1990. They commented on the technical sophistication of the applications demonstrated but felt that many lacked a sound underlying educational philosophy, or at least the philosophy was not in keeping with the ones held by teachers. This is a theme that we intend to address in more depth as the elective increases its enrolments of industry authors in 1991 and 1992.
270
S. Wills / Teachers as educational software designers
sing out on the industry visit"; "problems with the network"
3. Evaluation of 1990 pilot elective
An evaluation form was distributed and returned by 12 ofthe 15 students. The following are excerpts from the evaluation.
Would you be interested in working in the industry-full or part-time?
CBT
Full-time 3; Part-time 3; Either 3; Maybe 2; No O.
Why did you enrol in the elective?
"actually learning about something which is used in industry interested me"; "to ascertain use
of CBT languages in schools"; "had to do something and this topic seemed to have some purpose to it"; "I thought it would be useful if I needed a job in industry and because I thought it would be interesting" On a scale of 1 to 5 please rate you feelings: 1 strongly negative 2 negative 3 no comment 4 positive 5 strongly positive
The elective as a whole
-
Average rating your enjoyment of the elective as a whole 4.3 the usefulness of the elective to you 4.0 the assessment as a whole 3.5 content of the elective 4.1 structure of the elective 3.5 the lecturer 4.2 your desire to continue work in this area 4.4
The components of the elective - Micro-Energy's Creating CBT-the book - Micro-Energy's Creating CBT-the disks - evaluating Micro-Energy's Creating CBT - learning "Author" - the literature review - guest speaker l-(CBT Design) - guest speaker 2-(Author)
3.6 3.3 3.3 4.6 2.9 4.4 4.3
What did you like best about the elective?
"working with Author"; "working in teams"; "seeing other teams' presentations"; "finishing the CBT project and seeing it work" What did you not like about the elective?
"amount of work involved"; "literature review"; "not enough time/support when writting our CBT"; "IBM'S weren't available all the time"; "software not lent out-big minus"; "mis-
4. Future developments
The Graduate Diploma of Computer Education has been re-designed for 1992 and contains an elective titled "Designing Educational Software". The pilot course funded by the VEF helped to ensure that this aspect of educational computing was addressed in the new Graduate Diploma. It raised awareness of the previous gap. The pilot is continuing in 1991 and the teachers will be joined by a small number of enrolments from the training industry. We will allow enrolments of 5 fee-paying students from industry. By 1992 the percentage of teachers to industry trainers will be 50/50. The elective will run in its own right without VEF funding in 1992 as it will be fully integrated into the ODCE. It may be possible to run it twice per year in 1992 as it would be self-funding due to the fees paid by industry trainers. In 1991 we are ironing out the problems encountered in the 1990 elective such as providing a home licence for the authoring language. The elective will include much more emphasis on interactive multimedia. We will provide the students with a choice of authoring systems. Each team will be using a different combination of machines, peripherals and authoring languages, for example Macintosh with Authorware Professional, Hypercard for re-purposing an existing videodisc, Amiga with Amigavision etc. An important aspect of the elective for the teachers could then be a comparative evaluation of the different systems. This, however, requires the lecturer to maintain a high level of skills across a range of rapidly changing machines and tools. We may therefore occasionally have to utilise the resources of a number of specialist consultants to cover each area. We are seeking the co-operation of industry to provide the consulting free of charge.
S. Wills / Teachers as educational softwaredesigners
Whatever authoring language is chosen, it is important that it is easy and quick to learn otherwise too large a proportion of the short semester-length elective is spent on learning the language rather than on applying it and on discussing the educational basis of the students' designs. The feedback proformas indicated that too many of the designs in the first pilot were of the traditional tutorial mode. In 1991 we are organising the team project in two stages. The first stage would allow the teams to design and author traditional CBT, recognising that this is probably all that is possible when so much of their energy is focussed on learning a new language. After feedback from peers and from industry, the second stage would encourage them to return to their design to develop a proposal for tackling the knowledge domain from a different angle using an alternative learning strategy and alternative user interface.
5. Conclusion
Teachers do not need to design educational software in order to be able to use computers effectively in their classrooms. However they should be provided with the opportunity to learn the skills if they desire. Some may develop for their own classrooms. Some may go further to develop on behalf of their Ministry of Education for other teachers' classrooms. Some may even go on to develop educational software as a business or migrate to the CST industry. The tools to enable teachers to design software without being expert programmers are becoming more accessible. The paper has described a different approach to the problem of training teachers about designing educational software. The approach attempts to address the needs of the CBT industry as well as the needs of teachers. In doing so, a number of benefits accrue to the teachers. It raises teachers' awareness of alternative career paths. It exposes them to models of adult learning, to alternate models of software design, to the project management concerns of large scale CBT development, and to sophisticated technologies not readily available in schools. The interaction with industry trainers, highlights issues of instructional design
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and user interface. It enables them to compare the politics of innovation in schools with those of the workplace. In providing a "real-world" perspective on the use of computers for training, hopefully teachers begin to place computers for learning in a broader context than their own classrooms.
References [1] S. Ambron and K. Hooper, eds., Interactive Multimedia:
Visions of Multimedia for Developers, Educators and Information Providers (Redmond, Microsoft Press & Apple Compuler, 1988). [2) S. Lumb, H. Vorrath and P. Juliff, Creating CBT: a Developer's Guide (Micro-Energy Ltd, Melbourne, 1989). [3] D. Tinsley and T. van Weert, eds., EducationalSoftware at lite Secondary Leoel (North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1989). [4] A. Mc Dougall and C. Dowling, eds., Computers in Education (North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1990). [5] 1. Moonen and T. Plornp, eds., Eurit '86: Developments in Educational Software and Courseware (Pergamon, Oxford, 1987). [6] T. Plomp, K. van Deursen and 1. Moonen, eds., CAL for Europe (Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1987). [7] C. Rivlin, R. Lewis and R. Davies Cooper, eds., Guidelines for Screen Design (Blackwell, London, 1990). [8] R. Sims, ed., CBT Issues (Australian Society for Computers in Learning In Tertiary Education, Sydney, 1990).
[9] A Guide to the Design and Deuelopment of Educational Software (Commonwealth Schools Commission, Canberra, 1985).
Discussion
Marilyn Dickson: How did teachers decide the content of the team project (to develop software using an authoring program)? Sandra Wills: They chose to create software for the curriculum area in which they worked. The software was not always created to fil! an educational need - sample titles of the projects include "The Solar System" and "Desktop Publishing". Yaacou Katz: What is the philosophy regarding the connection between Business and Education? Sandra Wills: There should be more interaction between the two in this field, and we hope that there will be, with a higher ratio of business/industry students in this course. I don't think that software created for business and industry training will always be helpful to educators, but the
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S. Wills ! Teachers as educational software designers
design ideas used for the creating the software are certainly helpful. Joan Haner: Did any of your first students in this course develop projects other than tutorial software? Was the software structured in design? Sandra Wills: Most of the first projects were close to electronic page turning, and we found that the students needed more background in art and graphics to design good software. The creation of graphics took a great deal of time.
David Benzie: I've found similar problems with
authoring tools in general. It takes more time than most teachers realize, and their efforts are regressive at first. It takes lots of time to create software with authoring tools. Sandra Wills: Better authoring tools may make the difference. Although what our students produced wasn't professional-looking, they learned a lot. Their next efforts would probably be better.