Authoring Lessons for the Internet: Factors in Design

Prepared for Society for Information Technology in Education, 1997.

Terence C. Ahern, Texas Tech University

Kathy Burleson, Texas Tech University

Trey Martindale, Texas Tech University

The World Wide Web's (WWW) ability to deliver entertainment, provide information, and conduct commerce holds a particular fascination for the public. Everyone from individuals to corporations and major newspapers to universities have a homepage that provides information, entertainment or a product for sale to anyone who is "surfing" the Internet.

The World Wide Web is more than a simple curiosity but represents a fundamental shift in the way the world interacts. Historically separate industries of television, cable, telephone and computers are merging rapidly into single web industries.

Education is not immune from this rapid technological shift. The Internet represents a tremendous opportunity to redefine our notions of computer-based instruction, distance education and even teaching itself. The established fields of courseware and multimedia design are time consuming, mechanistic processes. The Web, however, has the promise of providing highly targeted individualized instruction for all students with a fraction of the development time and cost. The possibilities are endless but the transformation of the Internet into a truly capable delivery vehicle for education is not without problems.

The Problem

A major problem is that traffic on the Internet represents more consumers than producers of information. Teachers using the Internet for instruction must use whatever is currently available from a myriad of information providers. This can be frustrating because there appears to be little awareness of good instructional design or methodology displayed on the World Wide Web. The active design of home pages is more for information and not for educational or instructional purposes.

Consequently, for this study we assumed that good instructional software could be developed for the Internet by incorporating useful instructional design practices in conjunction with typical courseware authoring development techniques using readily available tools (Grabowski & Droms, 1994). Because Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the current Lingua Franca of the Internet we were also interested in how well HTML would behave as an authoring language and whether it could be used to deliver instructionally sound Internet applications. The results of this investigation indicate three major design factors that designers and teachers should consider when using HTML and the Internet as an instructional design and delivery vehicle: connectivity, architecture, management.

Authoring

Given the complexity of programming a computer, authoring programs are designed to allow non-programmers such as teachers the opportunity to create instructional software using a simple palette of instructions and commands. In the late seventies to early eighties, developers could choose from either an authoring language or an authoring system. Later, as operating systems became more graphic, scripting environments were invented to deal with the advanced complexity.

Authoring Languages and Systems

Authoring languages are based entirely on a formal programming languages such as Pascal or C. By reducing the number of available instructions and restricting the development of code to accepted instructional patterns simplified the language and the development of courseware. For example, PILOT (Programmed Inquiry, Learning or Teaching) was designed to create computer-based tutorials based on the concept of the frame (Conlon, 1984). Using a simple set of commands, an author could easily build a sequence of content screens while managing how the user would interact with the lesson. Authoring languages, although designed for a narrow application, were still enough of a programming language to allow the developer a great deal of freedom in the actual implementation of the courseware.

In contrast, authoring systems relied on highly structured instructional strategies. A content expert using an authoring system would simply answer a series of questions presented on the screen in order to build an instructional application (Miheim, 1994, p. v). The reduced time to build an application at times outweighed the restrictions in design.

Scripting Environments

In the late 1980's microcomputers such as the Apple Macintosh developed the graphic user interface (GUI) which allowed for non-linear, event driven software. Developers had to create applications in an environment that made it very difficult to program. Consequently scripting environments were developed that bridged the gap between higher level and authoring languages. Further these environments allowed the developer the opportunity to choose the level of complexity. Scripting environments fit nicely between an authoring language and a formal high-level programming language.

HyperCard was the first attempt to allow non-programmers to develop Macintosh-like applications that would conform to the GUI interface. HyperCard allowed the developer to choose between 5 levels of complexity ranging from simple browsing to full scripting capabilities. For example a developer using HyperCard could create a card reminiscent of PILOT to construct content frames. At the other extreme, HyperCard also provides the developer with a complete scripting language called HyperTalk.

HyperText Markup Language

Hypertext Markup language is not an authoring language nor is it a scripting environment, instead it is simply tokenized text. HTML provides a standardized way of transmitting information over the Internet by incorporating embedded commands or tokens in text files that can be recognized by applications called browsers. When a browser such as Netscape or Mosaic logs on to the Internet it downloads a simple text file. If the text file is encrypted with tokens that the browser recognizes, then the file will be displayed on the screen according to the design of the developer. Even though it resembles an authoring language using the frame concept, there is no underlying programming language controlling the interaction. Instead the developer must rely on the inherent capabilities of the user's browser. Nonetheless, HTML allows for the easy development of cross-platform applications currently not possible with traditional authoring applications.

Instructional Design

The goal of any instruction is to overcome a deficiency in skill or knowledge. A careful understanding of the instructional goal provides the designer with clear guidelines in terms of content organization, as well as determining the content sequence and pacing. Without a clear understanding of the goal state, instruction becomes muddled and unproductive. Consequently, we developed our lessons using sound instructional design practices.

The Study

Participants

The participants were fourteen advanced graduate students in a Summer Special Topics course in Instructional Technology. These fourteen students included: nine doctoral and one masters student in Instructional Technology, one masters student in Interdisciplinary Studies and 3 masters' students in Museum Science. In addition, three students who were taking the course over a distance from the primary location

Materials

For each lesson, the audience, task and outcome were identified. Furthermore, the content organization was determined and finally the implementation plan was decided.

Each individual lesson corresponded to traditional instructional design methodology. Issues of scope, sequence, and pacing guided our lesson design. Consequently, it was recommended that each lesson implement the following plan:

Standard HTML was chosen as the authoring environment. Furthermore, we did not use an HTML editor to produce the lessons because there is no industry standard HTML editor available to classroom teachers.

Procedure. The course was delivered using various Internet protocols such as e-mail, ftp, telnet, and http over a period of four weeks. The first two weeks included basic instruction in HTML along with a refresher course in instructional design. Each member of the class had two weeks to develop an individual lesson that corresponded to the delivery plan. The final week was spent in uploading and evaluating each individual lesson.

Results

In general, we found that HTML can be used to quickly create lessons that correspond to simple computer-aided instruction (CAI) (Hannafin & Peck, 1988). Consider Figure 1 in which the author used a mix of graphics and text to both capture the students' attention while also providing an orientation to the content of the lesson. Notice the use of a HTML link to simulate a button that links the next screen in the sequence.

Figure 1. Splash Screen.

We wanted to know if we could develop lessons in appropriate chunks, which would in HyperCard be represented as a single card. The underlying HTML code for Figure 1 was a single text file (see Figure 2) that the Netscape used to display the splash screen information.

The goal was to be able to easily modify the individual screens and provide for a convenient way to reorder the sequence and pace if the instruction warranted it.

Figure 2. HTML source code.

<HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE>Problem Solving in Intermediate Algebra</TITLE> </HEAD> <H1>Problem Solving</H1> <H2>in Intermediate Algebra</H2> <IMG SRC="splash.gif" ALT="Problem Solving logo" HEIGHT=125 WIDTH=200 ALIGN=RIGHT> <P>This lesson is designed to provide you with an exciting, new approach to solving stated problems in Intermediate Algebra. Through the course of this lesson, you will see a structured set of steps that will allow you to solve general stated problems.<BR> The average time spent working through this lesson is 15 minutes.</P> <P><A HREF="main.html">Let's begin...</A> </P> </BODY> </HTML>

Instead of a single application file that includes text and graphics such as in HyperCard, HTML requires separate files for both text and graphics. For this investigation it was decided that, like individual cards in a HyperCard stack, each content screen would be constructed in a series of individual text files that would then be linked together. These links would act as buttons and would be normally indicated both by a different color than the main text as well as underlined (Figure 3). When the user clicked on the link, it would change color to indicated that this link was visited. This displays some of the limitations of HTML as an authoring language because the author must manage each link without the help of the application.

Design Implications

In developing Web-based instruction, we identified three major factors that educators must consider when using for the Internet for instruction: connectivity, architecture, and management.

Connectivity is a major problem for network-based instruction. Traditional authoring was designed for specific delivery platforms. In the Internet, the actual machine that the software will be delivered on is unknown, which can cause different display problems for the instructional designer. One result of this study noted is which platform the HTML is developed on and whether it does make a difference. However, a more pressing problem is the lack of easy and affordable access to the Internet. Slow connect times, incompatible browsers, or a lack of suitable hardware can cause problems for students and reduce the impact of the network-based courseware.

Network architecture is also a problem. Authoring systems typically developed and delivered the instruction using the same platform. Networks change this development cycle into a client/server relationship. This essentially removes one of the core features of authoring which permitted a content expert to control how a lesson would be delivered as well as how individual users interact with the software.

The Internet is a server-based system, which means that the content of a lesson resides on a remote computer from the one that is actually delivering the lesson. Due to the variety of different platforms and browsers it is difficult to provide true student interaction. One way to overcome this limitation is to provide a server-based solution through a language called Common Gateway Interface (CGI). In the future, this may be resolved with applications that support Java; however, simple but effective interaction can be built into the design as this study has demonstrated.

Management issues are also a very important consideration. Issues such as what type of server (Macintosh, Unix, PC) are crucial for longterm development and management. The type of server can make trivial issues such as file names a huge problem and require a large time commitment.

Other issues such as who provides the Domain Name Service will require teachers and educators to come to grips with the nature of other issues such as firewalls, file names, etc.

The managing of specific development issues can also be very time consuming. Even though HTML and the Internet work well in cross platform situations, questions such as which version of HTML to use, which graphic format or the conversion of files from one format to another requires careful attention.

Conclusion

The Internet has a lot of potential to deliver quality, effective instruction but in reality is in its infancy. Over the next few years many of these issues will become moot with the development of new tools and technology. Currently, there is a tremendous interest in Java a programming language developed by Sun Microsystems to create applications for delivery over the Internet. Other technologies and even authoring environments will surely follow. Nonetheless, the results of this study simply underscore the fact that sound instructional design will always mean better instructional applications regardless of the tools used to produce instruction or the medium used to deliver instruction.

References

Conlon, T. (1984). PILOT: The language and how to use it. Englewood Cliffs: New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

Grabowski, B., & Droms, K. (1994). The instructional design process and the use of authoring systems for computer-based training. In W. D. Milheim (Eds.), Authoring systems software for computer-based training . (pp. 3-22). Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Educational Technology.

Hannafin, M. J., & Peck, K. L. (1989). The design, development, and evaluation of instructional software. New York: Macmillan.

Milheim, W. (Ed.). (1994). Authoring-Systems software for computer-based training. Engelwood Cliffs, New Jersey: Educational Technology.