From common interests in Opera and music and things computing, a collaboration has flourished between Ainslie Ellis and Chris Browne. They have been developing multimedia applications, supervising students in the development of multimedia applications and on Thursday, October 17th they talked about their work with students in developing computer based teaching.

Ainslie Ellis is a lecturer in the Peninsula School of Computing and Information Technology at Monash University. She graduated from Caulfield Institute of Technology with a B App Sc (EDP). After working as an analyst programmer in industry for some five years, she went back to Caulfield (by then Chisholm Institute) to lecture in Computing. She currently teaches programming subjects in C and Unix in the B Computing (Applications and Development). She has completed a Masters in Education at Monash and following a desire to improve teaching and learning at tertiary level, she has been actively involved in the development of Computer Based Teaching (CBT) applications as well as supervision of students doing development work in this area.

Chris Browne graduated from the University of York with a B.A. in Chemistry (which shows you how perverse the British academic system can be) and from the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology at Oxford with a D. Phil in Chemical Pathology. He was initially seduced out to Monash in 1974 to join the Dept of Biochemistry, and following five years in the Dept of Medicine at McGill University in Montreal, he eventually returned to Monash in 1982 to join the Dept of Physiology, where he is currently a Senior Lecturer. He has been actively interested in the production of CBT materials for several years and is very pleased to have been the inaugural HEPCIT presenter in early 1994.

Chris began their presentation by explaining how they wanted to show that it is indeed possible for two people to collaborate successfully at a distance and over a long period of time. The project came initially from a requirement he identified in the 2nd year physiology class, the biggest single 2nd year science class with 360 students. A complicated series of practical classes rotate the students, each practical having to be put on 12 times. In looking at ways to break the nexus of this management problem, of labs being tied up for long periods of time and static pracs having to be there and run repetitively, a paper based exercise on Morphometry was seen as easily convertible to a computer based exercise. This could then be run in a computer lab freeing prac lab space.

The Morphometry class was originally run on a series of seven charts. Each had text and electromicrographs, which Chris assured us had information within them which students could learn to interpret. The other type of resource was the explanatory line diagram. So with these 3 types of elements, it seemed possible that they could be easily embedded into an electronic package. In this class students have to read the text, examine the images and try to count or measure quantitative data. The educational flow of information was lost in the swapping of charts within the classroom and also the simple mechanics of measurement on the chart were a bit difficult. Students would also skip the text reading in order to get the practical sections done and sign off to get out of the class as quickly as possible. With a computer based exercise, this problem could be more easily addressed.

At this point Ainslie described how final year students became involved in the project development. Students who do this project are enrolled in a straight bachelor of computing degree with a commercial data processing orientation. They are not computer science students. They are doing degrees in application development and so are looking at all of the processes, concepts and information involved in actually developing commercial data processing applications. This is a final year project subject for them and the detail that they are given is background in the system development lifecycle area, but they may not have specific information on multimedia. It’s a fairly substantial project. The students work in teams of 3-5 students and their aim is to develop a small computer application for a client in industry or an external client, in this case Chris. They are not given case studies and Ainslie stressed that the students are working for real clients with all the vagaries and issues that are associated with working with a real client.

In order to get this project off the ground, there were 3 different sets of people involved. The computing students, the supervisor (Ainslie), and the client (Chris). Ainslie discussed the issues involved in relating within these particular groups of people. The breakdown of the lifecycle was outlined with a feasibility study firstly determining whether the project is proceeded with or not. This was seen as crucial in coming up with the scope of the work also. The analysis phase, design and development and testing were then looked at, considering the tasks which were clearly interactive and multimedia issues. It meant analysing the system in a different way. It was more task driven, rather than data driven. The issue of design and development was quite different in that they had to consider a different type of design technique, using things like story boards and object hierarchy diagrams and the idea of the incremental nature of the design. Tackling project management was expected. The students have the ultimate responsibility for the project, determining an appropriate allocation of tasks within the group and liaison with the client. Documentation gives the written substantiation of the requirements of the system, actual items being signed off by the client and expectations being recorded. Ainslie displayed examples of the work in the authoring package, Toolbook 3.0 and the testing strategy implemented. Her overview of the responsibilities of the students and supervisor fleshed out the project for us, with Chris returning to complete the presentation.

The nature and the use of the product were then defined from the client’s perspective. Chris explained how he required the students to be inventive and imaginative for the eventual product to be wholly effective. Examples were shown of the tutorials and exercises, the interface not allowing students to jump into the exercises and questions until they’ve read the tutorial. Various animations and a chart map, displaying the pages visited and structure of the lesson were viewed. The audience expressed interest in hearing an evaluation of this student teacher collaboration in the near future, with Chris and Ainslie showing several more examples of the students’ work and answering questions from the audience to finish.

Thank you to Ainslie and Chris for their considerable effort in developing this presentation. The HEPCIT committee acknowledge the care and enthusiasm involved, particularly at a distance.

Ainslie Ellis: Ph (03) 9904 4605, email ainslie.ellis@fcit.monash.edu.au or
Chris Browne: Ph (03) 9905 2508, email chris.browne@med.monash.edu.au

For further information about the presentation, please contact

Catherine Ellis, telephone 9905-3272, or fax 9905-3278