Educational Multimedia Software: Maths

notes from a demo of education multimedia software from Melissa Gold on 21 August, 2003

Alternative Learning Styles

The software is mapped to give students different methods for approaching the same material

• Overview - a summary of the lesson
• Explain - traditional, step by step approach to the lesson
• Apply - allows the student to try out the concepts in exercises
• Explore - a more interactive, loosely focused space to play with the concepts
• Evaluate - like a pretest
• HW - based on what the student is getting right and wrong in their evaluations

Alternative Explanations

Within the explain section, students are given several different levels of content

• Instructor Voice - the main core of explain
• Helpline - allows the student to get explanations from virtual peers, each with different approaches.
  • Show How
  • Why?
  • Another Way
  • Picture it
• Closer Look: an opportunity for more in depth analysis for those who wish
• Glossary: inline
• Study tips

Keeping it active

• every few screens, students are given the opportunity to stop and try out what they are learning
• at every inline test, students are given a Helpline
• if they get the test wrong, they are given a hint and asked to try again
• if they get it wrong after the second try, they are shown exactly how to complete the problem and move on

Educational Multimedia Software: English

Alternative Explanations

This software also gives alternative explanations through a set of virtual peers and a voirtual instructor. The characters are introduced as real people with jobs, lives and situatiosn of their own to match different sorts of students. Different photos of each character are shown to make them look more alive.

• examples: student can view the progress of different students on the same assignments the student is completing
• prompts: meant to help the students think more deeply about a topic, or get unstuck
• problem-solving: virtual peers are shown working through the sorts of problems the students may encounter

Steps

instead of breaking navigation up by approach to learning (as in the math), the english CD breaks it into the consecutive steps of writing

• Explore
  • Questions
  • Stories
  • Resources
• Focus
• Draft
• Revise
• Edit
• Conclude

Implications for NmInTheSouthPacific

The Alternative Explanations enabled by the virtual peers fits nicely with the idea of Layers of Simplicity. NmLandbeck shows much of the same divisions of learning approaches in the pacific, and peers could be further tailored to different countries and cultures in the Pacific.

Shared Approaches:

• Try it: give frequent opportunities to jump to the gun
• The Real-world: contextualise concepts to local cultures, perhaps in local languages
• Overview: outline, designed for both cramming students and to give a picture of big in small
• Picture it: use of flow-charts and images
• What does it mean: casual english explanations
• Inline glossary

It might be interesting to experiment between page-reading habits in the region, to see if people focus on Navigation or Content, as perhaps inlining the alternate explanations could make the interface appear easier.