Late: A Unified Concept for a Learning And Teaching
Environment
Hermann Maurer
(Graz University of Technology, Austria
hmaurer@iicm.tu-graz.ac.at)
Abstract: LATE is the acronym for Learning And Teaching
Environment, a concept that pulls together a number of developments in
a uniquely integrated way to provide - for the first time in the
history of computing - an approach to computer assisted learning and
teaching that offers a realistic alternative to more traditional
methods. Above claim may sound exaggerated. However, the reader is
asked to reserve judgement until having looked at the details of this
paper. LATE is not just one other concept in the area of computer
assisted instructional technologies - an area rich in projects with
high-expectations but few real success stories. LATE is more: it is
based on much experience with earlier undertakings, both negative and
positive, and is positioned to be a definitive answer to educational
needs as they can be provided by networked multimedia systems now
and in the forseeable future. LATE is positioned as concept that can
be turned into a fully functional and applicable system, open-ended to
incorporate further modules, improvements and future computer and
network technology. In this sense LATE can be aptly described by the
longer acronym: IS THE LATEST, standing for Integrating Systematically
Technologies Helping to Establish Learning And Teaching Environment
Strategies. It has been over 30 years that computer-based solutions for
educational purposes have been investigated and experimented
with. Results have been consistently exasperating modest. Indeed some
frustrated researchers and developers have started to seriously
consider the possibility that the educational process - being highly
oriented towards individual needs - may not be computerizeable at all
to a large extent. The LATE concept as put forward in this paper - will show that above
mentioned pessimism is - fortunately - not justified. Rather: it has
taken a long time to effectively introduce computers into the
educational process, but the LATE concept, once implemented,
provides the ultimate answer. Hence our pun: LATE is better than
never! And hence our request to all European funding agencies, and the
European Commission in particular, to provide the financial assistance
to turn LATE from a concept into a reality. LATE is not a new attempt at developing a computer assisted
instruction (CAI) or computer based learning (CBL) system; it is not a
system providing modern lecturing techniques; it is not another
attempt to implement digital libraries; it should not be seen as a
novel authoring environment, a distance teaching system, a networked
help system, discussion forum, computer supported collaborative
environment or a networked model of modern computer based decision
rooms. LATE must not be understood as any of the above: LATE is the
rich symbiosis of all of the above resulting in an environment of
breadth and dimensions sofar unheard of. If this sounds too good to be true: do continue reading; above is not
intended to give a project description, but to "whet the appetite"
for reading what follows. There we will show that and how the
symbiosis of the diversity of areas is indeed feasable when a modern
WWW system with much extended functionality is used as a basis. Key Words: WWW, Web, distance teaching, authoring, CAI,
CBT, CSCW, educational software, HyperWave, Hyper-G, HM-Card Category: C.2.4, H.2.8, K.3 Page 580
1 The LATE Concept - General Outline
LATE (= Learning And Teaching Environment) is a concept that combines
all important aspects of the use of computers in educational settings
into a single powerful system that (a) provides a new and effective
Learning And Teaching Environment based on current technologies and is
(b) open towards new computer and network developments. It suggest
to integrate existing modules in a flexible way as will be outlined
establishing full bridging where appropriate. LATE is based on years of experience with the use of computers in
educational settings, on one of the most advanced "authoring and CAI"
systems available called HM-Card [Maurer and Scherbakov 1996] and the
first second generation WWW system Hyper-G/HyperWave [Maurer 1996]. Since LATE draws on a number of disciplines it can be understood as a
powerful extension of diverse areas such as e.g. CAI (Computer
Assisted Instruction), Authoring Systems, Hypermedia or WWW Systems,
and Communicational and Cooperational tools within them, CSCW
(Computer Supported Collaborative Work) and Digital Libraries
[Marchionini and Maurer 1995], or [Maurer 1995b], to mention just a
few of the more important components. For the purpose of this exposition we explain LATE from the CAI point
of view but have to and wish to stress that alternative views would be
equally justified and illuminating. In the remainder of this Section 1 we present a first rough idea of
what the concept is all about based on a CAI perspective. In the
following Section 2 we analyze earlier CAI efforts and their
shortcomings; we explain in Section 3 how those shortcomings may be
rectified by integrating a variety of ideas and techniques and explain
how they could be combined in Section 4. Section 5 is a short summary
and Section 6 includes some references. As mentioned in the paragraph above we now proceed to explain the
basic idea of LATE by starting with the CAI nucleus of LATE. We want
to caution once more that CAI is not seen as more central to LATE than
other areas; our choice of starting with CAI aspects is arbitrary but
eases the description of the concept. LATE contains a CAI (Computer Assisted Instruction) nucleus. This
nucleus is basically WWW enriched by the features of HM-Card [Maurer
and Scherbakov 1996] and other data-types embedded in WWW that require
helper applications for viewing, such as e.g. PDF [Adobe 1993]. Thus, LATE allows the creation of "courseware", i.e. multimedia
material with educational contents involving text, graphics,
animation, pictures, audio- and videoclips, 3D images and scenes,
etc. interspersed with "question/answer" diaglogues. For more details
concerning above points see Section 2. Note that courseware is usually educational material that is used in
"double isolation" in the following sense: learners are isolated from
other learners, tutors or teachers, and the material presented is a
"closed universe" supposedly selfcontained, i.e. isolated from the
universe of other material. In LATE, both barriers are completely
removed: the first by embedding the courseware in a network that
allows asynchronous and synchronous interaction, between learners, and
between learners and teachers; the second by understanding courseware
modules not as isolated islands but as parts of a large electronic
repository of such modules, of executable software (e.g. "simulation"
and "experimentation" components), Page 581
electronic books, journals and a variety of other electronic material
combined in a "Digital Library". The removal of the barriers mentioned has many other synergetic side
effects: "authoring" a course - an up to now tedious and time
consuming effort - can often be reduced by fitting together existing
modules of the electronic library by merely "customizing" them. This
and the fact that such material can also be used in computer supported
lecture rooms not only leads to modern lecturing techniques [Lennon and Maurer 1994],
replacing traditional overhead transparencies but also leads to the
concept of "authoring on the fly" [Maurer
1994], [Ottmann and
Bacher 1995]. The "usual" authoring-of-courseware
bottle-neck is virtually eliminated in LATE because of the new
methodology mentioned above and the crucial fact that (!) potential
question/answer dialogues do not have to be "guessed" by authors any
longer. Rather, if questions arise that have not been dealt with
before, LATE allows the automatic inclusion of the resulting
question/answer dialogue that thus becomes part of the courseware for
future use. As WWW based system LATE also is a natural candidate for
use in distance teaching with desirable functions such as "on-line
help" or "discussion groups" thrown in "free" due to the
communcational and cooperational features inherent in its basis
Hyper-G/HyperWave. We have now provided a first glance at LATE. By analyzing weaknesses
of traditional CAI approaches and showing how they can be overcome by
adding new functionality (Section 2 and 3) we present two further
layers of details of LATE before turning to the more technical
Sections 4 and 5.
2 Analysis of Past CAI Developments
The first serious attempts to use computers for educational purposes
date back to the early sixties. Despite expensive and unsophisticated
hardware (text-only terminals with keyboard input only) some packages
like PLATO although not successful on a grand scale continued to be
used by some institutions for more than 20 years. The main reason for
the comparative success of PLATO is due to its sophisticated record
keeping system (useful for both student guidance and quality control),
supported by the then popular arrangement of simple-minded terminals
attached to a central computer system. There are three main aspects
why PLATO (and similar systems) did not do better than they did that
are usually quoted: (1) bad price/performance ratio on the equipment side; (2) lack of (colour) graphics and animation to better visualise
processes; (3) high effort to produce good quality courseware.
With the advent of personal computers points (1) and (2) changed
dramatically and (3) improved due to so-called What You See Is What
You Get (WYSI-WYG) editors. This resulted in a new wave of enthusiasm
culminating in efforts such as COSTOC and the first versions of
Authorware. To the surprise of many specialists, the new systems did not achieve
the breakthrough expected, either. Careful analysis yielded the
following reasons, this time: Page 582
(4) the decentralisation due to personal computers and stand-alone
configurations annihilated one of the crucial successes factors of
earlier systems, the careful record keeping of how students used what
material; (5) the cost of authoring systems (compared to, say, graphics editors)
was unjustifiably high; (6) production costs for good quality material remained high
(typically 100 hours effort for one hour of instructional material); (7) lack of sophisticated interactivity and insensitivity towards
individual student needs: most courseware was still of the "page
turning variety", students working in a "tunnel" from which they could
not escape. From 1985 onward, much effort was invested into point (7) by
investigating, for example, "intelligent tutoring systems", "student
modelling", extensive use of "simulations", etc. Success was limited
due to the very high costs involved in creating good courseware this
way; attempts to reduce the "tunnel" syndrome by introducing new
navigational paradigms were partially successful, yet points (5) -
(7), as a whole, remained sufficiently unresolved to prevent much
success. The most crucial change occurred in the late eighties with the
emergence of true multimedia and the notion of "hyperlinks", allowing
users to navigate fairly freely within a certain instructional
domain. Tribute has to be paid to HyperCard (and its
clones). Suddenly, inexpensive or even free authoring packages became
available. Difficult to prepare vector graphics could be replaced by
easily scanned images. Also, the "hyperlink" paradigm seemed to
eliminate the feared "tunnel" syndrome. As a consequence, tens of
thousands of educational modules using HyperCard and similar tools, or
more recently Web tools, have been created. It is instructive to realise why this new approach stimulated
computer-based education but did not create the final breakthrough,
either. Recent studies list the following reasons: (8) since scanned images are so much easier to use than carefully
prepared vector graphics (diagrams) they are often used even if vector
graphics would be more appropriate for the instructional aim at issue; (9) replacing the "tunnel effect" and "page turning" by arbitrarily
free navigation leads to "getting lost in hyperspace" and
disorientation; (10) the use of images, video and audio clips increases data volume to
an extent that network-based or floppy-based distribution becomes
infeasible; (11) preparation of small packages is easy: indeed easy to the extent
that even those never having considered pedagogical or design issues
suddenly believe to be expert courseware designers; (12) it is not enough to prepare small courseware packages; large
databases of modules, and re-usable, easily maintainable and
customisable modules are necessary; (13) courseware should be available both in stand-alone and networked mode.
LATE is the first coherent proposal solving all issues discussed in
(1) - (13), hence packs into it much of experience of past 30 years of
computers as educational tools. In conjunction with emerging large
"digital libaries" and sophisticated communicational features we
have reached a decisive point, the point where using computers to
support teaching and learning becomes truly feasible. To conclude this Section we analyse how progress in computers and
features of LATE are assuring that the "13 obstacles" of (1) - (13)
are no longer valid: Page 583
- price/performance ratio of equipment is no longer a problem;
- techniques for high quality visualisation are now available;
- the effort to produce good quality courseware has been reduced
due to better editors and the use of media from various sources;
- decentralisation yet keeping detailed records of use is becoming
possible by putting courses on the Web (WWW); this aspect is very
important and explicitly addressed in LATE;
- authoring tools are either free (like some HTML editors) or
inexpensive (like HM-Card);
- the concept of modularity, maintainabiblity, reusability and
customisability as e.g. available in HM-Card assure that LATE allows
more efficient authoring by orders of magnitude; also, "authoring on
the fly" (see Section 4.5) may soon be a reality;
- LATE suggests to have as much navigational freedom and
cross-references to other material as is desirable for the subject at
issue;
- LATE recommends to use scanned images but to also provide
built-in editors for vector graphics and animation, like e.g. in
HM-Card;
- LATE claims and assures that both guidance and freedom are available;
- LATE allows all media but also enables the creation of very
compact course-ware modules suitable for the Web;
- LATE allows to emphasise pedagogical issues and standard formats;
- LATE is the first system supporting the four important
properties: modularity, reusability, customisability,
maintainability based on HM-Card;
- LATE supports stand-alone and networked (WWW) mode.
Since the possibilities of HTML 3.0 and PDF (PostScript) (see [Adobe
1993
]) are well-known we do not discuss them here further, but HM-Card
as novel system [Maurer and Scherbakov 1996] deserves some
explanations: HM-Card is a set of tools that enables authors to build powerful
interactive multimedia presentations and courseware. "Interactive"
means that the system does not just allow the users to choose
different paths from time to time, but that fairly complex system-user
dialogues can be incorporated, e.g. for checking the level of
understanding as required for training applications, hence the term
"courseware". "Multimedia" means that HM-Card allows to combine text,
graphics, animation, raster images, audio and video clips: HM-Card has
a built-in editor for text, graphics and animation and allows to
import and integrate other media types (e.g. images and video clips)
readily. Above all, HM-Card provides a new paradigm for "navigating"
from one multimedia document to another, both with and without the use
of so-called "hyperlinks". HM-Card includes powerful features to help ensure "link consistency"
and to allow a modular approach to the design of presentational
packages and course-ware that assures unprecedented ease in reusing
and modifying existing modules. HM-Card is thus a set of tools designed to create and peruse:
- Personal multimedia information systems;
- Computer supported educational packages ("Courseware", i.e. CAI
packages)
- Shells combining other applications into an integrated system
with a flexible multimedia user interface;
- Multimedia presentations and demonstrations without or in
combination with other WWW material.
Page 584
All tools necessary to create such applications are included in
HM-Card. The preparation of material is done without having to
program. Rather, authors simply select suitable media objects, define
necessary parameters and place them on the screen - even computer
animation and question-answer dialogues can be built this way. Material created can be structured so that it is easy to maintain,
reuse and peruse modules. HM-Card is thus suitable for both personal
hypermedia authoring as well as professional multimedia
publishing. HM-Card Material can be used "stand-alone" via WWW, and
can be fully integrated with other WWW material. For examples of courseware consult http://www.iicm.edu/hmcard on the
Web. Summarising, HM-Card is the only authoring system for presentation and
courseware material that does all of the following:
- includes an editor for vector graphics and animation producing
very compact resultant files (a big plus if courseware or
presentations are offered via WWW);
- provides the facility to author complex question-answer dialogues
without resorting to programming or scripting;
- allows the step-wise and modular production of courseware units;
- supports reuse, maintenancee, customisation and the
administration of large databases of courseware fragments;
- provides new navigational techniques that help the user, and
provide facilities for automatic link maintenance not found in any
other major system except Hyper-G/HyperWave;
- can be used stand-alone or in connection with WWW, i.e. Hyper-G/
Hyper-Wave;
- allows cross-references to other material, creating an
arbitrarily large "digital library".
3 Overcoming CAI weaknesses and adding functionality
We have looked at the development of CAI in Section 2 and have
diagnosed a number of crucial weaknesses that have not been fully
addressed in existing CAI systems. We have indicated that LATE does
indeed provide solutions for all aspects mentioned. Before we discuss how LATE manages to overcome those weaknesses we
want to remind the reader that LATE is based on Hyper-G/HyperWave, the
first second generation WWW system, see [Maurer 1996]. It should be
noted that Hyper-G/HyperWave as WWW system with non-embedded,
bidirectional typed links, a global annotation concept and powerful
data structuring allows easy customisation of presentation material
including such material for educational purposes; and the
communicational features of Hyper-G/HyperWave provide the basis for
networked cooperation of all players involved in LATE. Thus, some of
the weaknesses of traditional CAI systems are immediately removed or
at least mitigated by using Hyper-G/HyperWave as basis of LATE. Other
important features (like the programming free authoring of
"semi-intelligent" question/answer dialogues) are partially taken care
of by using concepts of HM Card. Page 585
Let us now look at the various issues one by one in some more detail,
returning to them in more concrete terms in Section 4. LATE can be seen as a set of traditional multimedia CAI modules
enriched by additional functionality and material. LATE modules can be
used for self-study purposes, or by instructors as replacement of
traditional lecturing techniques involving e.g. overhead
transparencies. Multimedia components include of course animation and
audio- and videoclips. This not only assures that explanations can be
given in an optimal fashion but that the teacher can be heard and seen
from time to time reducing the "impersonality problem" of traditional
CAI. Whenever material is used both for self-study and as basis of orally
delivered lectures the amount of (textual) explanation becomes an
issue: overhead transparencies - or with LATE their electronic
counterpart - should only contain key phrases, the complete
explanation given by the lecturer. Contrariwise, self-study material
has to be - if the student wishes - complete and selfcontained. For
this reason traditional CAI modules are either good for self-study but
not for the delivery of lectures (since "frames" are overloaded with
details) or are good for the delivery of lectures but not really
suited for self-study (since detailed full-sentence explanations are
missing). In LATE "frames" are implemented using the cluster concept
of Hyper-G/ HyperWave: explanatory graphics and animation come in a
cluster together with "full text", "sparse text" and "audio", and
depending on user preferences a combination of those will be
delivered. Typically, self-study will use "full text" with audio
available on request (by activating an icon), while the same material
would be used with "sparse text" when used in a lecture room
setting. Observe that already here it becomes apparent how the
material can be used for multiple purposes: a student may listen to a
lecturer who presents the material with "sparse text", but may later
review it with "full text" and "audio" preferences. Another problem with traditional CAI is the amount of guidance offered
to students. Strict guidance leads to the "tunnel syndrome" (i.e. the
situation that when working thorugh material there is little choice
except for following "one linear path"); the ample use of hyperlinks
that does provide much "navigational" freedom but is no solution
either, since it leads to the "lost in hyperspace syndrome". In LATE, modules typically allow for a good amount of navigational
freedom, each frame e.g. having options to go back to the table of
contents (of the whole module or a well-defined part of it), options
for "fast forward" and "fast backward" (akin to leafing through the
pages of a book) and occasional links for shortcuts, further
explanations, etc. However, LATE usually will not provide a plethora
of hyperlinks (although such decisions are all up to the authors of
the courseware material): rather, LATE allows at any time the use of
(and search in) a "background library" whose composition has been set
beforehand by defining a certain "scope" within the database. This is where LATE combines CAI with digital libraries and the unique
scoped search facilities available in Hyper-G/HyperWave. Basically,
each module is part of the Digital Library available in LATE. This
digital library contains CAI modules, other WWW multimedia material,
the electronic versions of books and journals, see e.g. [Maurer and
Schmaranz 1995], executable programs, etc. Using features of
Hyper-G/HyperWave LATE allows to associate with each CAI module a
subset of the library that is called "active". Any search initiated by
a user will always involve all and only the documents of the active
part of the Page 586
library. To be specific, suppose a CAI module deals with a computer
science subject and the user is German but has a working knowledge of
English. The "active" part of the library could then be all computer
science literature and material available in either English or
German, with a dictionary English-German in case some English terms
not known to the user will occur. It must be carefully understood that the student can use the library
whenever needed before continuing with the CAI modules at issue, but
that this is only one of the ways for students to obtain additional
information: communicational tools like bulletin-boards, chatting to
other students currently on-line, etc. are also available. We will
return to this in Section 4.7 - 4.10. One of the main points of criticism of traditional CAI is the often
limited amount of "interaction" available to students: too often CAI
modules degenerate to "page turning in a beautiful multi-media
enriched book". LATE, however, provides features for much
interactivity: - students can use the electronic library to "browse and explore"
at their leisure;
- they can interact with other students and teachers through
electronic means to be explained in detail in Section 4;
- they can activate "simulation modules" where available;
- they can test their knowledge in question/answer dialogues either
provided a priori through facilities in HM-Card or available due to
questions resolved electronically earlier on; as will be explained in
Section 4 students
can ask questions that are answered by teachers or tutors immediately
("synchronously") or at some later stage ("asynchronously"): such
question/answer dialogues are added by LATE to the underlying CAI
module. Thus, CAI modules get "enriched" by additional material over
time;
- the fact that LATE is based on the connection oriented protocols
of Hyper-G/ HyperWave also opens the possibility for user-tracking
and even student modelling, if desired. Note that this feature - one
of the strong points of PLATO - is thus resurfacing after years of
neglect!
One other main obstacle to the use of CAI in the past has been the
effort required to prepare high quality CAI material. This effort is
much reduced in LATE for two entirely different reasons: - the authoring of question/answer dialogues requires that authors
"guess" what questions will be asked, a tedious if not futile
undertaking. Since questions and their answers can be incorporated
using LATE at the time the questions are asked this problem all but
disappears;
- authoring a high-quality CAI module will always be very time
consuming if done from scratch. However, LATE supports the re-use and
customization of material existing in the Digital Library to an
unprecedented level hence easing the authoring process
dramatically. Indeed even "authoring on the fly" (see Section 4.5)
becomes a distinct reality.
In addition to above, the communicational features of LATE, and its
network environment, make the perusal of CAI modules a process that is
very different from the traditional one-person self-study paradigm
found in classical CAI. This will be much clearer after Section 4,
hence a more detailed discussion is postponed. Page 587
Summarizing, LATE provides an open multi-user teaching and learning
environment whose flexibility opens new vistas for the whole
educational process: from university instruction to distance teaching,
from training on demand and training on the job to life-long learning.
5 Summary
The combination of modules described above in one system LATE would
provide the most comprehensive systems for using computers for
learning and teaching ever designed. The implementation of LATE based on the advanced WWW system Hyper-G/
HyperWave and the multimedia system HM-Card, both developed in Europe,
is possible today. Indeed, many parts have been implemented in
experimental fashion by various research groups. However, the coherent
integration and development of missing "bridges" and subcomponents is
still a major task and will only be possible under the stewartship of
one strong group that coordinates and integrates efforts, and if a
substantial amount of funding is provided.
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