1. Choose a learning theory and an instructional topic, and describe how the design of a CBI product on your chosen topic would be influenced by your chosen learning theory. (300 to 400 words) 20 points.

Answer: The instructional topic I chose is Evaluating Educational Websites. The target audiences are both pre-service and in-service teachers. The learning theories I chose are Reigeluth’s category of information , Jonassen’s learning strategy and Gagne’s Nine Events of Instruction.

Here are the objectives of the CBI product.

Objective1: Given a URL, learner can tell the category of its domain.

Learning Strategy: Learners need to know what is URL, remember the categories of URL’s domain, and the way to tell them apart.

Objective 2: Given a URL, learner can find the background of the author.

Learning Strategies: Learners will do the practice of finding out the author’s background.

Objective 3: Learner can use five standards to review educational website.

Learning Strategy: Learner understands the five standards and can use them to evaluate educational website.

Objective 4: Given an educational website, learner can use the above strategies to evaluate it.

Learning strategy:  Learner uses the above information to create a checklist and use the checklist to quickly evaluate the given educational website.

Reigeluth’s classifications are used to identify the appropriate teaching strategy. The following six categories are listed below:

Jonassen’s learning strategy:

Objective 1 is teaching concepts and the learning strategy is to ask the learner to recall the concept name, definition, and example. Object 2 is teaching procedures and the learning strategy is to demonstrate the procedure. Objective 3 is teaching principles and rules. The strategy is to explain the rule and then give examples. Objective 4 is teaching procedures. The strategy is to give demonstration.

In Gagne’s Nine Events of Instruction, No. 6 Elicit performance (practice) and No. 7 Provide feedback are used to help designing this CBI product. The learner is required to practice the new skill. Eliciting performance provides an opportunity for learners to confirm their correct understanding, and the repetition further increases the likelihood of retention. As learners practice new behavior it is important to provide specific and immediate feedback of their performance. Unlike questions in a post-test, exercises within tutorials should be used for comprehension and encoding purposes, not for formal scoring.

Therefore in the CBI product, after each objective is presented, there is a shot practice to help learner encoding. Suggested answers are provided in the end to give feedback to learners.

2. When creating a computer-based instructional product, why is it important and valuable to create a flowchart and storyboards? (300 to 400 words) 15 points.

Answer: Flowchart is a diagram that shows how a user will navigate through the CBI product. A flowchart can be compared as an outline when one is going to write an article. In flowchart, both users and designers can see all the main parts and the relationship between them. Creating a flowchart before working on the CBI product can save the designers lots of time, especially when there are big changes on the product. Once the final version of flowchart is settled, designer knows where to start, where to go, and where to in the CBI product.

Storyboards are the sketches of each screenshot of the CBI product. It contains as many details as possible, like shape, colour, size, location and layout. Functions can be described in words beside each storyboard. Like a demo, storyboards tell both users and designers how the CBI product looks like in the workflow. Since storyboards are drafts, they are very easy to be edited and changed. Storyboards are crated after flowchart. They are designed according to the arrangement of each section.

Both flowchart and storyboard are very good tools for team work. As guidelines, they make sure all the team members are thinking and working in the same direction. As communication platform, they let team members communicate clearly and effectively, preventing undermining errors.

3. In this course we used PowerPoint as a tool for creating an instructional product. PowerPoint is a limited authoring tool at best. Why do I say this? What does it lack? Conversely, what are the good reasons to use PowerPoint to create an instructional product? Include in your answer a brief definition and description of the class of software known as “authoring tools” and why they exist. (300 to 400 words) 15 points.
   
   

Answer: PowerPoint is well known as a tool for presentation. Used as a tool for creating an instructional product, it has many limitations. For example, each screen has a default format, which has a title frame, a context frame or picture frame. These frames have default large font and size, usually bold and centered.  Sometimes the format can be altered from on operation system to the other, causing a slightly different look from one computer to the other. Another defect is that PowerPoint cannot store the information input by users. This prevents the interactivity between designer and user during the instructional activity. Also, the animation of PowerPoint is limited. A letter cannot be changed into a number.

Conversely, the good reason to use PowerPoint to create an instructional product is that PowerPoint is easy to use. There is no need for designers to receive a formal training to use PowerPoint.  The slides can be used as the screen to delivery instructional message. A master format can be set as the main display of the scene. Moreover, PowerPoint has text editing tool, drawing tool, some simple animation, and simple sound. It also has some simple navigation buttons, hyperlinks to connect the whole project together. To some extend, PowerPoint is a good tool to create the storyboards, which can be created fancy and easy to correct.

An "authoring tool" is any software that is used to produce content for publishing on the Web. Authoring tools include:

–         Editing tools specifically designed to produce Web content (e.g., WYSIWYG HTML and XML editors);

–         Tools that offer the option of saving material in a Web format (e.g., word processors or desktop publishing packages);

–         Tools that transform documents into Web formats (e.g., filters to transform desktop publishing formats to HTML);

–         Tools that produce multimedia, especially where it is intended for use on the Web (e.g., video production and editing suites, SMIL authoring packages);

–         Tools for site management or site publication, including tools that automatically generate Web sites dynamically from a database, on-the-fly conversion and Web site publishing tools;

–         Tools for management of layout (e.g., CSS formatting tools).

The existence of authoring tools make designer’s job more easier and help them to design a lot of good projects.

4. Macromedia Flash is a drawing/animation/website creation tool, which we have used as an authoring tool. Briefly explain the pros and cons of using Flash specifically for designing and delivering an instructional product. (300 to 400 words) 15 points.

Answer: Macromedia Flash is a very useful authoring tool for designing instructional project. There are several features that have been used widely: animation, stream video, control buttons, dynamic text and website publishing. The animation is a great feature of flash, in other words, flash may be well known for its animation function. This can help instructor to design some procedure instructions, like how to operate a washing machine. Instructors can also design some animated text, which assist learner to learn more efficiently. Stream video is very helpful when designers are incorporated lots of films into flash. For instance, shooting a film of how ice cream is made can give audience or learners a better idea than simply narration. Control buttons give learner a lot some control about the flash product. They can stop, play, pause, go forward, go backward and even move the film on the screen. Dynamic text is another feature that has been used most by instructor. The system can remember the input text from users, which create a chance for interactive learning and testing. Because of “stream” feature, Flash is a good website publishing tool. It can play the downloaded project on the front stage while downloading the rest of the project in the backstage, as long as the downloading is faster than playing. This feature can save a lot of time for learners.

One of the shortcomings of flash is that the designing process is kind of complicated, requiring a lot time to edit and test. In a project, there are so many things to create, like buttons, movie clip and so on. A designer needs a long time to learn flash well. For new designers, some of the action scripts and behaviors are difficult to understand, to apply, and to test.

5. Explain the commonalities and differences between content management systems and course management systems. (250 to 300 words) 15 points.

Answer: A content management system is a piece of computer software system, either online or installed on computer for a group of people organizing and facilitating creation of documents and other content. For example, a content management system can be a web application used for managing contents on the web, like PostNuke content management system.

A course management system is a set of software tools to help an instructor to organize the typical activities, documents, courseware and interactions related to teaching an online course. For example, WebCT, Blackboard and Moodle are three course management systems.

The commonalities are that the two systems are usually web-based, used by a group of people and used as a tool to manage documents. The differences are course management systems are especially used by teachers and instructors to manage courses. Content management systems can be used in education as well as other situations. Usually, a content management system is more complex than a course management system. Here is a table to compare WebCT and PostNuke.

6. RSS is a specification for syndicating (distributing) web content. Why is RSS important from an instructional viewpoint? How can it be used instructionally? (200 to 250 words) 10 points.

Answers: With an aggregator and RSS feeds, one can read the most updated news or articles without going to the many specific websites to search information. Every time when the website you subscribed posts new information, you can receive that through your RSS and read the information with the aggregator. In this way, both instructors and students can subscribe to many instructional and educational websites by adding the website RSS feeds to their aggregator.

RSS and aggregator can save busy working instructors a lot of time on searching the information they want, to sort out, and to select useful information. With the useful information, they can prepare course efficiently.  Moreover, RSS can help students to manage their study work. For example, I have a blogline aggregator, and I add the RSS feeds of my teacher’s blog, WebCT (if they have one), BBC learning English and a job-hunting website. Everyday, I log in my blogline and I find my teacher’s updated article, new assignment and new course ware from WebCT, updated English learning materials and a new list of jobs. How convenient and easy for a student like me to get new information. Life is wonderful.

7. A wiki is a website that makes it very simple for users to add pages, modify content collaboratively, and track changes. How can a wiki be used to potentially support learning? In your answer, go beyond what we have done in this course. What are the instructional limitations of a wiki? (200 to 250 words) 10 points.
   
   

Answer:

From Evaluation tools: Wiki worth (http://www.profetic.org:16080/dossiers/article.php3?id_article=973 )

Wikis may work best for knowledge building over time; progressive problem-solving and problem redefinition; explaining increasingly diverse and contrary ideas, as well as examining the relatedness of ideas from diverse contexts; combing, synthesizing and evaluating definitions and terminology across disciplines; questioning underlying causes and principles; critically reading, and responding in a constructive and public way, to other’s work.

From the above activities, knowledge building, explaining increasing diverse and contrary ideas, combing, synthesizing and evaluating definitions and terminology across disciplines, questioning underlying causes and principles are learning activities. From study’s group work to experts’ research, wiki can be a very handy tool to help people learning much easier.

One instructional limitations of wiki is the management of wiki.  Especially in schools, teachers and administrators hope they have more power to manage the wiki. What contents can be kept and what contents need to be reorganized in wiki need more time to sort out.