Authoring Environments and Tools 52

The technology barrier can be significantly reduced by removing the need for teachers to use programming skills or to have to work with third party experts to develop interactive worked examples. In other contexts, an authoring

environment can be used to achieve this end. An authoring environment is a toolkit that enables digital artefacts or content to be created without

programming skills. For example, the Microsoft Word Application is a typical authoring environment for producing electronic documents. In considering

authoring environments, two particular aspects are relevant in this context: first the authoring environment should be usable by the intended population of

authors, and second, the artefacts developed using the environment should be appropriate for the intended audience, in terms of usability and functionality.

In the educational context, these two populations are teachers and learners, respectively. The needs of the learners have already been described in detail and summarized in the earlier section 2.5.3, outlining guidance for creating best-practice worked examples. However, these guidelines are independent of context, so that they could refer to spoken, paper-based or computer-based worked examples. The issue involved in the computer-based context are now addressed, for each group in turn.

2.8.1 Empowering the Teacher

An educational authoring environment provides teachers with a visual authoring environment for creating artefacts like web sites, interactive hypermedia, microworlds, or simulations. Locatis and Al-Nuaim [65] gave a useful definition of an authoring system: “the term authoring tool refers to a range of software products having utilities for composing, editing, assembling, and managing multimedia objects, while the term authoring system refers to a subset of these products allowing multimedia development without programming.”

Locatis and Al-Nuaim [65], Bodendorf et al. [66], Recker et al. [67] and Hsiao et al. [68] argued for the need to provide authoring tools for teachers to create rudimentary worked examples without special training. Authoring tools provide a non-programming environment where authors are prompted at every step as

they enter lesson content and specify instructional strategy. Once entered, the system automatically produces the corresponding error-free code, which

controls the lesson’s presentation. Hence, authoring tools can reduce the technological knowledge effects in the TPACK framework. Using authoring tools eases development and can help teachers to bring control of the authoring process back to the content expert. Tools having authoring utilities specifically for instruction can guide users in developing more effective products. However, Avner et al. [69] stated that the authoring system can improve quality, but not guarantee it. They may make it easier to author poor instruction as well as good, because anyone can be an author. Hence, the author should at least have good content and pedagogy knowledge in order to use an authoring environment to produce good worked examples.

Some authoring environments were developed in the past. However, they were designed for different purposes. CTAT[70], REDEEM [71], ASTUS [72] and EON [73] are authoring environments for creating Intelligent Tutoring Systems. By authoring ITSs to engage between the teacher’s schema and the students’ schema, the teacher has to model students’ behaviour through using feedback messages to correct students’ schema or using hints to guide students to apply the right schema to finish the exercises. MatrixPro [74], RIDES [75], SimQuest [76] are authoring environments for creating computer simulations embedded in an instructional environment to support discovery learning and guided practice. QuizJET [68] is an authoring tool for teacher to create on-line quizzes and questions, which are used by students to do self-assessment. Microsoft FrontPage, Adobe Captivate 6 [77], Course Lab[78] and GLO Maker[79] are authoring tools for publishing E-learning contents, which can be used for students learning by themselves as an alternative to attending lectures. Unfortunately, none of these authoring environments focus on creating interactive worked examples, which can transfer an expert’s schema and present solutions in a step-by-step fashion.

Microsoft PowerPoint is an authoring tool designed for creating slideshows to give presentations. As such, it plays a significant role in helping teachers to develop lecture content in the current education environment. The slides are usually linear and may contain hyperlinks for jumping between different sections.

This allows the user to get more detail on a subject of interest. In addition, it allows the user to add audio and video clips in a presentation. In a single slide it allows the user to define a sequence of showing different pieces to form an animation. Basuhail [80] identified one of the reasons for using the Microsoft Office package for designing, implementing, and delivering worked examples was that it is built on the users’ experience of using PC software. Hence,

teachers use it to prepare worked examples, which can be demonstrated inside the lecture with oral explanations in a step-by-step fashion. In the lecture, teachers also can ask questions in order to make students critically think about the worked examples. But after the lecture, when students reviewed these worked examples, as the oral explanations were missing, the teacher’s thinking process for solving problems could not be revealed. Using PowerPoint slides in the lecture, presenting concepts in sequence one after the other, the teacher can manually refer back to previous written content (sometimes to information recently presented, and other times to the content originating much earlier) in order to explain how the concepts are applied when solving problems.

Unfortunately, when students use these slides after the lecture, they do not have the same ability as the teacher had to jump between different slides, so these worked examples become quite similar to the worked examples in a textbook. This is a root problem of using PowerPoint to develop worked examples, as it is designed for giving presentations. Hence, the power of the worked examples developed using PowerPoint is very limited outside the lecture context.

By using authoring tools, teachers who have the pedagogy and content knowledge only can produce interactive worked examples. The area of

technology knowledge in TPACK framework will shrink, so the teacher only needs to pay attention to the trends in learning, not in technology. Technology

knowledge will not be a bottle neck for individual teacher to deliver personalised interactive worked examples.

2.8.2 The Essential Features of the Teacher User Interface

An authoring environment for interactive worked examples will need to allow the teacher to:

 Describe the thinking process of solving problem following the cognitive apprenticeship model;

 Explain the reason for decision-making in a step-by-step fashion while the worked example is demonstrated;

 Embed questions between steps in order to encourage students to critically think about the worked examples;

 Identify the applied concepts in order to reveal the relationship between the problem and the solution.

2.8.3 The Essential Features of the Student User Interface

Freitas and Neumann [81] stated that the user interface is the key point for an effective teaching tool. It should be intuitive and closely follow the

requirements of the individual learners and support personalized learning. So the learners should control their individual learning pace, choosing when and where to use the tool and the pace of learning.

As discussed earlier, self-explanation plays an important role in the worked example assisted learning process. The provided worked examples should be able to encourage students to generate self-explanation while processing problems. Hence, an essential feature of student interface is to allow and encourage students self-explaining. In a computer-based context, this can be achieved through asking students questions, and letting them type in

explanations of what they have done or what they need to do next.

Jeung et al. [82] suggested that highlighting the relevant contents of worked examples, linked to the explanation of this part of the contents, can reduce the cognitive load. This allows students to devote their cognitive resource to

understanding the worked example, which leads to enhanced learning. Hence, allowing students to see the highlighted contents with the explanation together is another essential feature of the student user interface.

To summarize, the essential features for student user interface are allowing students to:

 See the highlighted contents in worked examples together with the linked explanations.

 Answer questions and access model answers.