Form and Content

Learning Materials

Hugh Davis, Gerard Hutchings and Wendy Hall

CSTR 93-10

© University of Southampton

Department of Electronics and Computer Science

University of SouthamptonSouthampton SO9 5NH

Abstract

This report describes the Microcosm model and philosophy, and explains theadvantages of taking an open, resource-based approach to the developmentand delivery of learning materials over traditional Computer AssistedLearning (CAL) practices. We describe early experiences in creatingmaterials for the Microcosm environment, paying special attention to thefeatures of the system which make authoring in this way different fromtraditional practices. Finally, we look at the initial use of Microcosm bystudents of History and Biology at the University of Southampton.

CONTENTS

Contents

CSTR 93-101.Introduction..................................................................................22.The Microcosm Model and Philosophy.....................................33.The requirements of the various TLTP projects........................54.Experiences of Authoring............................................................75.

First Experiences of Using Microcosm in a Learning

Environment...........................................................................8

6.Conclusions...................................................................................9References..........................................................................................10

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MICROCOSM: A HYPERMEDIA PLATFORM FOR THE DELIVERY OF LEARNING MATERIAL

1.Introduction

In the past, the time required to create computer assisted learning (CAL)material has limited its introduction into mainstream education. Typically100-150 hours has been cited as the time required to produce one hour ofinstruction (Christie, 1990). Also, material produced in this way is difficult toupdate and becomes redundant as knowledge changes. Furthermore, no twoteachers have exactly the same views on how a subject should be taught,which means that CAL material is not often used outside of the institution inwhich it was developed. A resource-based approach integrating currenthypermedia practices can address all of these problems by permitting thecreation and integration of new material and the customisation and easyupdating of existing material. In this way it is possible to overcome thelimitations of traditional CAL which have prevented the widespread use ofcomputer-based materials in education.

In 1992 the U.K. Universities Funding Council (UFC), announced that it wasmaking provisions for the development and delivery of computer basedlearning materials for higher education under the Teaching and LearningTechnology Programme (TLTP). The aim of the programme was “to maketeaching and learning more productive and efficient by harnessing moderntechnology” (UFC, 1992) and builds on previous U.K. funding initiativessuch as the Computers in Teaching Initiative (CTI) and the InformationTechnology Training Initiative (ITTI). Funding was provided for subjectbased consortia, which consist of departments from several institutionsworking together to create courseware for a particular subject, andinstitutional bids, which involve the creation and delivery of courseware aspart of an institutional infrastructure with backing from senior management.A number of the successful bids involved the use of Microcosm (Davis, Hall,Heath, Hill & Wilkins, 1992; Fountain, Hall, Heath & Davis, 1990), an openhypermedia system, as the delivery platform: in particular the University ofSouthampton was awarded a sizeable grant to integrate the use oftechnology into the teaching on a number of high profile undergraduatecourses, using Microcosm as the central platform.

This report describes the Microcosm model and philosophy, and explains theadvantages of taking an open, resource-based approach to the developmentand delivery of learning materials over traditional CAL practices. Wedescribe early experiences in creating materials for the Microcosmenvironment, paying special attention to the features of the system whichmake authoring in this way different from traditional practices. Finally, welook at the initial use of Microcosm by students of History and Biology at theUniversity of Southampton.

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2.The Microcosm Model and Philosophy

CSTR 93-10Microcosm consists of an open message passing system combined with anumber of viewers and filters. Viewers are programs that can display thevarious formats of text documents, pictures, sound and video. They cancommunicate with the filters to establish what active areas exist in aparticular document, and allow users to make selections within thedocument, then choose actions such as following a hypertext link. Theinformation concerning the selection and action are then bundled into amessage which is sent through a chain of filters, each of which has theopportunity to respond to the message by taking some action. Particularlyimportant filters are the linkbases which contain all the information aboutlinks and which can respond by offering the user the opportunity to displaythe document which is the destination of the link. Other filters provide aidsto navigation, dynamic link services and link creation facilities.

In brief the advantages that such a system offers when producing learningmaterials are as follows:a.

No Mark-up in Documents

All the information concerning links is held in link databases or linkbases.This means that by installing different linkbases, as appropriate, it is possibleto provide different views on the same set of documents. It also means that itis possible to continue to view the document using the application thatcreated it, which is necessary to keep the system open and to allow inter-application hypermedia functionality.b.

Open Architecture and Connectivity to Other Applications

It is possible to make links that dispatch another program with a givendataset as a Microcosm viewer. More importantly it is possible to followlinks from third party applications. In the Microsoft Windows version ofMicrocosm this may be achieved via the DDE where the third partyapplication supports such communications, or else via the clipboard. Theprocess of adapting an application to talk to the Microcosm message systemtypically involves writing a few lines of code in the application's macrolanguage: currently we have added such functionality to Word for Windows,Toolbook, the SPANS Geodata system, Superbase, MS-Access and Autocad,as well as producing our own specialist viewers for around ten othercommon formats such as text, bitmaps and Windows Meta-files.

If learning at a computer is to be about more than simply absorbinginformation and responding to set questions, then the system must offerboth the author and user a seamless interface to the normal applications andtools that make up the entire system; for example a mathematician may wellwish to use a package to investigate the shape and behaviour of a function.In such cases it should be possible to link into and out of the requiredpackage.

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4Since the architecture and message system of Microcosm are open it is veryeasy to extend the functionality of the system to suit the needs of a particularapplication area: furthermore it is possible to distribute Microcosmfunctionality across different machines on a network, even where themachines themselves have differing architectures. Unix and Macintoshversions of Microcosm are currently under development and should beavailable in 1994.c.

Reduced Authoring Effort.

In most hypermedia systems links have specific source and destinationanchors. Microcosm supports such \"specific\" links, but also supports moregeneral links. \"Generic\" links have a fixed end point, but may be followedfrom any point where a given selection occurs within a document orspecified set of documents. This means that it is possible to create a singlelink to a piece of reference material, which may then be followed whereverthe specified source selection occurs without having to re-make the link atevery possible source point. This facility makes it possible to put togethersets of reference material on a particular subject domain, and allow usersaccess to this material from whatever point in whatever document they arecurrently examining. For example, we have made good use of a Dictionaryof Biology, by automatically generating a set of generic links to each term inthe dictionary. Now, by installing this linkbase along with the others in anyapplication in the biology domain, the user has immediate access to all thisinformation from any document.

There are a number of other ways of following links in Microcosm.Documents may have associated keywords which may then be used for linkfollowing. Also text documents may be pre-indexed to allow a built-ininformation retrieval system to attempt to match suitable documents orsections of a document from a query made from a text selection (Li, Davis &Hall, 1992). Authors find this facility particularly useful when attempting toproduce links in very large bodies of material, and this feature is afundamental tool for deducing relationships between various documentswhere no appropriate links have been previously manually authored.d.

Selective Browsing.

Both links and documents in Microcosm may have user defined attributes.These attributes enable us to attach keywords and descriptions to thedocuments and links. These attributes allow users to make queries of thesystem. It is possible to navigate the document collection entirely bydocument attributes.

The resulting Hypermedia system has an intrinsically different feel frommost other Hypermedia systems. In effect Microcosm provides a link servicewhich supplements the normal navigational facilities provided by theoperating system, resulting in an environment in which the onus is on thestudents to interrogate the system in order to find answers to questionswhich are formulated either by themselves or by a tutor - i.e. the student

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must ask the system \"what other information do you have about subject X ?\";most other systems take the opposite approach - i.e. they announce to thestudent \"I have information on subject Xhereby reducing the degree towhich the student dictates the course of the interaction, and reducing therequirement for the student to formulate and ask questions. This free-ranging environment is ideal for providing fast access to large volumes ofmultimedia material, as is often required in conducting research, but mayhowever be either intimidating for naive users, or inappropriate for someteaching needs. In these cases, more formally defined routes through a bodyof information are required, which are provided in the form of Mimics.These are tours through a particular set of multimedia documents whichmay be defined by an author, and which may be followed by the reader, butwithout sacrificing the facility of being able to follow other hypertext links asand when required.

3.The requirements of the various TLTP projects

Microcosm is quite unlike packages such as Toolbook and Authorware.These packages concentrate on providing very smart delivery of carefullyprepared material: Microcosm concentrates on allowing users to browsethrough large bodies of material in a seamless manner. At the same timeMicrocosm differs from other so called hypertext systems that arecommercially available, such as Hypercard and Guide due to the fact that itis an open system. Because of these fundamental differences we have only alittle experience of the sort of techniques that authors will use in deliveringteaching materials using the system. As the TLTP programme is gettingunder way and a number of lecturers in a number of subject areas arestarting to produce delivery materials using Microcosm, we are beginning toget feedback on the sort of special facilities that authors require.

Principally we have found that our user community has broken down intotwo distinct groups. The first group wishes to use Microcosm as the entiredelivery mechanism. The second group wishes to use some other package(Toolbook, Authorware and Guide are notable examples) for the front enddelivery of the teaching materials, but wishes to use Microcosm for linkingtogether the materials. The advantages of this latter approach are:

a. Microcosm may be used to launch any application. A commonrequirement is to launch one application to simulate an experiment, whilesimultaneously launching a hypertext with explanatory notes.

b. Once Microcosm is running it can provide a link service over andabove that provided by closed hypermedia systems. It is possible to followlinks from one package through to another package. A common example ofthis is to have a set of reference material defining terms that will be usedthroughout a body of teaching material. Using Microcosm's generic links it ispossible to follow links to the reference material from whichever package thestudent is currently working.

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c.Microcosm allows separate logins for each user. (Windows and DOSdo not have any concept of different users.) This means that Microcosm cankeep track of who is using the system, and allow staff to configure thesystem in different ways for different users.

d.All Microcosm messages may be monitored. It is therefore possible toproduce statistics of what information is viewed, and how that informationis accessed.

In section 2 it was pointed out that the open architecture makes it easy toadd new functionality. There have been three notable requests forenhancement of the basic model as described in the previous section.a.

A student progress logging system

Much importance has understandably been attached to measuring studentprogress through a body of materials. Microcosm has a logging filter, whichsaves a copy of every message that is sent through the filter chain. Thisallows open ended analysis of user interactions with the system. Teachershave asked us to provide specific tools to analyse these log files.b.

An event monitoring system with active buttons.

Currently Microcosm actions and buttons are actuated explicitly by the user.However, authors have identified occasions when they wish to makeMicrocosm take some action when a specific event occurs. An example ofthis is the request to load a text file to the screen at some specific pointduring the play of some piece of music or some video. These examples arebeing dealt with by introducing the idea of automatic links, similar to thosedescribed in Palaniappan, Yankelovich & Sawtelle (1990), into theappropriate viewers. More problematic have been some requests to monitorevents in applications which are not Microcosm aware and cannot beprogrammed to send messages when the required event occurs.c.

Extended Mimics.

The current Mimic system allows an author to define a linear route througha set of documents. The author has limited control over the appearance ofthe document. There is a demand for greater control of the desktop from theMimics, so that the author can control exactly what appears in front of theuser. This is particularly important when a student is being introduced to thesystem, and we are attempting to provide such control initially by a simplescripting language. Later we will provide a graphical interface for the authorto produce such scripts. A further enhancement we hope to introduce to theMimic system involves allowing various branching and looping structures.

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4.Experiences of Authoring

CSTR 93-10Many of the problems which are experienced when using hypermedia are inpart due to the fact that not much serious authoring has been done onmaterial which is intended for users rather than on material which isintended for research purposes (Hutchings, Hall, Briggs, Hammond, Kibby,McKnight & Riley, 1992). However, some work has been done on hypertextauthoring and patterns are beginning to emerge about how authors go aboutcreating hypermedia learning materials (Kidd, Hutchings, Hall & Cesnik,1992). Previous experience indicates that the authoring process is as follows:

a. define the content in general terms

b. create a pictorial overview of the main topicsc. begin to create materiald. level of detail increases

e. new links and content are incorporated into structuref. refine and update as you go

It is important to note here that whereas in the past content has been definedcompletely before any programming or work on the computer began, withthe highly interconnected information environment that is possible withhypermedia systems, the design process is an ongoing one, with the need fornew links and content areas only becoming apparent during the process ofauthoring.

Establishing a resource-based approach to the creation of learning materialsis different again from the task of authoring closed hypermedia applications.It comprises two parallel and continuous processes. First, the resourcematerial must be collected together and made available in a suitable format.Links are created between individual pieces of information to create whatmight be referred to as 'raw hypermedia'. However, as has been pointed outbefore, this is not a suitable environment for learning to occur (Hutchings,Hall, Briggs, Hammond, Kibby, McKnight & Riley, 1992) . Educationalhypermedia must support a variety of purposes, from providingintroductory material for naive learners, through to a general informationresource for experienced learners or even those who are experts in theirparticular field.

The second stage is therefore one of refining or tailoring the resource-base tomeet specific needs, for example by providing guided tours, or creatingalternative link sets for different groups of users - one set for introductorylearning, another more extensive set for experienced learners. Thus the samebasic material is available to both groups, and inexperienced learners haveaccess to the same information as experienced learners, but the richness ofthe overall resource-base is hidden from them until they can 'find their feet'in the system.

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5.First Experiences of Using Microcosm in a Learning Environment

8At the time of writing this paper we have completed three surveys withstudents, the first of which involved using Microcosm to store and delivernotes for a course introducing computer programming (Davis, Hall,Hutchings, Rush & Wilkins, 1992). There were about 50 students on thecourse and they were required to use the system for at least one session inorder to complete some coursework: many used the system more than this.From this exercise we learned important lessons about how to present thefeatures of Microcosm to the user, and also about how to log the system useso that a complete reconstruction of a session would be possible. Theselessons have been fed back into the system, and we are now piloting workfor the TLTP project. Currently the system is subject to much more extensiveuse by both students and courseware developers.

Another group of users of the system have been History students (Colson &Hall, 1991), and this year they have produced dissertations in Microcosm.Cell Motility, an application for undergraduate Biology students developedusing StackMaker (Hutchings, Carr & Hall, 1992) a Macintosh based toolkit,has been extensively tested (Hall, Thorogood, Hutchings, & Carr, 1989; Hall,Thorogood, Sprunt, Carr & Hutchings, 1990; Hall, Hutchings, Carr,Thorogood & Sprunt 1993; Hutchings, Hall, Colbourn, 1993). The contentand structure of this application has been ported to Microcosm, and thissystem is being used with undergraduate biology students for first time thisyear, and students' reactions to the system have been interesting (Hutchings,Wilkins, Weal & Hall, 1993). Responses regarding the effectiveness of thesystem were encouraging: 80% of users enjoyed using Microcosm, 88% feltthat Microcosm was an effective learning resource, and 85% said they woulduse it again as a general source of reference. However, only 65% disagreedwith the statement \"This 'high-tech' route to information is intimidating\suggesting some unease with the Microcosm environment. 82% foundmanipulating windows easy, so the intimidation must have been due tofactors other than the multiple windowing environment. Only 9% ofstudents using the original StackMaker version of Cell Motility said they feltintimidated by the technology, and since the two systems offer essentiallyequivalent functionality, the cause of this problem is not immediatelyapparent. One possible explanation could be that students generally foundthe Macintosh interface easier than the Windows interface: we will have towait for the Macintosh version of Microcosm to test this hypothesis.However, the overall reaction to Microcosm was extremely positive.

As the TLTP projects continue to prepare courseware we will gain furtherexperiences of how authors wish to use Microcosm, and how we can helpthem to make best use of the system. A large part of the problem that weface in introducing such a system into the university is in overcomingentrenched attitudes. Many believe that prior failures using traditional CALdemonstrate that technology offers no added value in teaching, at least at

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university level, and others have fixed ideas about the sort of deliverysystem they wish to use and are unwilling to explore other routes.

6.Conclusions

CSTR 93-10In the future there is a good chance that a large proportion of learning inhigher education will be via technology based systems: the fact that the UFChas initiated the TLTP in the U.K. is evidence of this. If this endeavour is tosucceed, the obstacles encountered with traditional CAL - large authoringtimes, difficulties with updating and personalising material, the prescriptivenature of the delivery medium, etc. - must be overcome. We believe that aresource based approach such as that encouraged by Microcosm will providea basis from which many of these problems will be solved.

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References

Christie, A. (1990). The use of Interactive Videodisc in the Teaching ofOrthopaedics in Physiotherapy, Medical teacher 12(2), 175-179.

Colson, F. & Hall,W. (1991). Multimedia Teaching with Microcosm-HiDES:Viceroy Mountbatten and the Partition of India, History and Computing 3(2),89-98.

Davis, H.C., Hall, W., Heath, I., Hill, G. & Wilkins, R. (1992). Towards anIntegrated Information Environment with Open Hypermedia Systems. In: D.Lucarella, J. Nanard, M. Nanard, P. Paolini. eds. The Proceedings of the ACMConference on Hypertext, ECHT '92 Milano, ACM. 181-190.

Davis, H.C., Hall, W., Hutchings, G., Rush, D. & Wilkins R. (1992).Hypermedia and the Teaching of Computer Science: Evaluating an OpenSystem. In: David Bateman and Tim Hopkins. eds. Developments in theTeaching of Computer Science, The University of Kent.

Fountain, A.M., Hall, W., Heath, I. & Davis, H.C. (1990). MICROCOSM: AnOpen Model for Hypermedia With Dynamic Linking, in A. Rizk, N. Streitzand J. Andre eds. Hypertext: Concepts, Systems and Applications. The Proceedingsof The European Conference on Hypertext, INRIA, France. Cambridge UniversityPress.

Hall, W., Thorogood, P., Hutchings, G. & Carr, L. (1989). Using Hypercardand Interactive Video in Education: An Application in Cell Biology.Educational and Training Technology International 26(3), 207-214.

Hall, W., Thorogood, P., Sprunt, B., Carr, L. & Hutchings, G. (1990). IsHypermedia an Effective Tool for Education? In McDougall, A. & Dowling,A. eds. Computers in Education, Elsevier Science Publishers B.V.: North-Holland pp. 1067-1074.

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CSTR 93-10Hall, W., Hutchings, G., Carr, L., Thorogood, P. & Sprunt, B. (1993).Interactive Learning and Biology: A Hypermedia Approach In Ferguson,D.L. ed. Advanced Technologies in the Teaching of Mathematics and Science,Springer-Verlag: Heidleberg. (In Press)

Hutchings, G., Hall, W., Briggs, J., Hammond, N.V., Kibby, M.R, McKnight,C. & Riley, D. (1992) Authoring and Evaluation of Hypermedia forEducation, Computers in Education 18,171-177.

Hutchings, G., Carr, L. & Hall, W. (1992) StackMaker: An Environment forCreating Hypermedia Learning Material. Hypermedia 4(3), 197-211

Hutchings, G., Hall, W & Colbourn, C.J. (1993). Patterns of Students'Interactions with a Hypermedia System. Interacting With Computers. (inpress)

Hutchings, G.A., Wilkins, R.J., Weal, M. & Hall, W. (1993) Microcosm: RealWorld Use. Department of Electronics & Computer Science, University ofSouthampton, U.K., CSTR 93.

Kidd, M.R., Hutchings, G., Hall, W & Cesnik, B. (1992). ApplyingHypermedia to Medical Education: an Author's Perspective. Educational andTraining Technology International 29(2),143-151.

Li, Z., Davis, H.C. & Hall, W. (1992). Hypermedia Links and InformationRetrieval. The Proceedings of the 14th British Computer Society ResearchColloquium on Information Retrieval, Lancaster University.

Palaniappan, M., Yankelovich, N. & Sawtelle, M. (1990). Linking ActiveAnchors: A stage in the Evolution of Hypermedia. Hypermedia 2(1).

UFC (1992) Universities Funding Council, Teaching and Learning TechnologyProgramme Universities Funding Council Circular Letter 8/92, available fromUniversities Funding Council, Northavon House, Coldharbour Lane, Bristol,BS16 1QD, 1992

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