On Thursday 5th September 1996, Dr. Brian Chapman delivered his presentation at Clayton Campus. Introduced by Dr Chris Browne, he has been involved with multimedia and training in multimedia for many years, pioneering the use of mechanistic computer simulation as a tool for research in theoretical physiology. He majored in muscle physiology with particular interests in energy metabolism, thermodynamics and membrane transport.

To begin, Brian gave a brief history of how the interactive economics study guide project came about. He recalled that it was on the initiative of Dr Stephen Matchett, (Director of University Development), who became aware in the second half of last year of what QED was developing. Dr. Matchett brought this to the attention of Harper Collins Publishers, who have since been sold to Addison Wesley Longman. Demonstrations of some of the software was arranged for Harper Collins and it was those demonstrations that led to the contract. Brian proceeded to show his audience what was shown in demonstration to Harper Collins.

One of the products shown to Harper Collins was created for the Physiology Department, a couple of years ago. This was in the form of electronic practical notes giving dissection instructions and interactive simulations. The style was to use static text, non scrolling fields, and large serif font, so that there was not too much text to look at, at any one time. The text was illustrated with pop up resources linked to hotwords. Dissection instructions, particularly all the places where the students are likely to ask for help, were illustrated with a pop up video frame-grab. Harper Collins was also shown an interactive animation. The potential of making animated textbooks was quickly realised and they were also impressed with the graphics contributed by John Swales and more recently Beata Vitas.

In a pharmacological example, it was noted how information was brought up with complimentary graphics so that when text came up, graphics changed as well. Again it was the same idea of having all the information under a general heading, a static non-scrolling field, with extra material being brought in as pop up text and graphics from hotwords.

Brian digressed shortly at this point to show a product that had just been produced for Electrical Engineering. The economics electronic text book is really a mega project; a several hundred page text book being turned into electronic form is not, Brian explained, the way to begin in multimedia. He then displayed the product for Electrical Engineering, Caulfield Campus which is being prepared in consultation with Ian Kominsky of Monash University’s Dept of Electrical Engineering. This was an experiment for the 3 hour practical class, a simulated experiment on the properties of a transistor amplifier. There was only the single page. No other pages to navigate to. Information was displayed on the derivation of the formulae in the form of a pop-up. The interactive experiment involved varying resistors and getting an opportunity to store the outcome of any change that was made. (Altering the resistance value of a resistor changed the signals at the input and ouput ends of the amplifier). He showed this as an example primarily because it took only a couple days to put up the first working model to view. When there was feedback and some particular changes, it was ready to use in a couple of days time. The total manhours being only 20 hours to support a three hour practical class. Brian also explained that a version of this application has been put on the world wide web and can be looked at interactively by accessing the QED web site. To do this “Neuron” is needed—a new plug in developed by Asymetrix for ToolBook II. This allows ToolBook II applications to be run remotely, even if you don’t have ToolBook II. Netscape Navigator 2 is needed however and either Windows ‘95 or Windows NT.

The Economics contract was to create an electronic version of the first-year text Economics: 3rd Australian edition (1064 pages), written by an American, Waud and four Australian authors, (Maxwell, Hocking, Bonnici and Ward) one of whom is Ian Ward of Monash Dept of Economics.

The interactive study guide is being developed using Multimedia ToolBook, with a grand total of 461 tutorial ‘pages’ displaying static text containing over 2,000 hotwords linked to pop-up resources (text, graphics, interactive tasks). Most pages are linked to a bank of 300 multiple choice questions, and each page is linked to a free-form notepad created for each user. The software also tracks the user’s MCQ scores, times spent on each ‘page’ and an indication of the user’s self-assessment for each ‘page’. Navigation is via consistently placed buttons and 3 different layouts are used to provide an instant visual cue of which kind of environment the user is in at any given moment. An ‘I’ for interactive, indicates those chapters where there is something that a book cannot do. Perhaps an opportunity to draw graphs, simulate changes in demand and supply, or animation of the demand for labour when there are movements in the average wage rate.

Brian acknowledged the direct electronic authoring help he received from Michael Hayles and Riduwan, the indirect know-how contributed to QED Reasearch Unit by Hugh Kelly and Chailerd Pichitpornchai, and then went on to describe the package structure. One system book, high up in the ToolBook heirarchy holds the handlers to form the generic functionality of all the different books. There’s a master contents book which contains the chapter outlines. The master notebook allows the students to make their own notes and there are 33 tutorial books, one for each chapter. These come down to the 461 ToolBook pages for the tutorial content and 300 ToolBook pages for the multiple-choice questions and feedback.

After several practical demonstrations of the various pages, Brian proceeded to explain in response to questions from the floor, that Monash has just entered into a licensing agreement with Asymetrix. ToolBook II Instructor licences are available for $250, being 12.5% of the educational retail price ($2,000). The Economics package is being distributed separately from the text book.

The project is scheduled for completion within 1 person-year at a cost not exceeding $100,000 excluding the time involved in the new printed edition of the textbook (the printed text is effectively the ‘story board’ for the electronic version). This was contrasted with the estimated 40 person-years and 1 million pounds sterling invested in a similar project using Multimedia ToolBook CBT Edition undertaken by a group of eight economics departments in the UK recently announced on the Internet. Samples from these two different essays can be downloaded from http://edx1 educ.monash.edu.au/~qed/ and http://sosig.ac.uk/winecon/support/download.htm, respectively.

The HEPCIT Committee thanks Dr Chapman for his fine presentation. If you would like further information please contact Brian directly.

Dr Brian Chapman Director, Quality Education at a Distance-Research Unit