Design and development process
The process of the design and development of digital learning materials can be viewed as a sequence of the following activities. The designer starts with articulating design requirements. Design requirements represent demands that the final digital learning material should meet. The designer also formulates a list of design guidelines that helps him/her during the design process. Various (instructional) principles are the basis for these requirements and guidelines as will be explained later. During the design process, ideas are formulated and worked out and these ideas are translated into a prototype of the digital learning material. The (formative) evaluation(s) of the prototype aim(s) for verifying whether the design requirements are satisfied and help to come up with adjustments of the prototype. According to the improved prototype, digital learning material can be developed that satisfies the requirements and that can be used on regular educational settings.
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presentation (physical issues). For the design of digital learning materials these authors introduced nine additional considerations: impact on learning, student computer literacy, student computer access, infrastructure, interactivity, navigation, evaluation, content accuracy and recency, and loading speed and bandwidth. Although this model is quite extensive and complete, it is also quite inhomogeneous in its classification; most of the nine additional considerations are related to the four principles.
A different classification, a classification into three fields of principles, is possible: 1) education, 2) subject matter and 3) information and communication technology (ICT). The classes Language and Instructional design fit in the field of education. The nine additional considerations can be divided into technical considerations (the field ICT) and considerations for Instructional design (the field education). The principles within the class Presentation are related to computer technical principles (the field ICT) or to educational principles (the field education).
In this thesis, design guidelines and design requirements for the design of digital learning materials are based on the three just mentioned fields, as represented in Figure 1.5.
Subject matter
The professional field of the subject matter describes the learning goals of the learning materials and also depicts the course content of the learning materials. The subject matter food chemistry as well as the learning goals of the courses Food Chemistry and Advanced Food Chemistry have been described in the first part of this introduction.
subject matter
education information and
communication technology
design of digital learning materials
Figure 1.5: Relation of the fields of education, subject matter and ICT with the design of digital learning materials.
Education
In order to design learning materials successfully, it is necessary to account for factors that facilitate learning. Incorporating these factors into the design of digital learning materials is essential to develop instructionally sound learning materials (Martinez, 2002). The educational principles on motivation, on cognitive load and on support, as described earlier in this introduction, are used as a basis for the design and development of the learning materials. Depending on the learning goals and subject matter of the learning material also other educational principles can be used as a basis for the design of the learning material. For example, the design of learning material with a learning goal related to the skill ‘problem solving’ should be based on educational principles about problem solving.
ICT
For the field of ICT, in relation to the design of learning materials, the restrictions and possibilities of ICT and principles in the field of human computer interaction (HCI) are of importance. In the case of designing digital learning materials one needs to take into account the possibilities of the learning management system used at the educational institute, as well as the possibilities of the computer programs used to develop the learning materials. Also, technical restrictions on the user side such as loading speed, bandwidth, and desktop configurations are of importance for the design of digital learning material. Related to the use of ICT is the field of HCI. The design of the interface of digital learning materials is a critical consideration to gain the maximum benefit for students (Evans et al., 2004). There are several guidelines from HCI that provide a functional user interface design such as structuring the material to more than one level and providing sufficient navigational information and navigational tools.
Evaluation of the digital learning materials
The research described in this thesis is a design oriented research, which means that we are mostly interested in the design and development process of learning materials for food chemistry. Proving the effectiveness of digital learning materials is a time-consuming activity and is not in the scope of our research.
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teachers and with experts from different fields (e.g. education, user interface design, food chemistry).
Table 1.6 gives an overview of the types of evaluations that will be used in this thesis. In this research, most emphasis will be put on the evaluation by case study. The case studies are performed with the final digital learning materials. The main evaluation tool within the case studies is a questionnaire. The questions are (directly) related to the design requirements, so the answers of the students give an indication whether the learning material satisfies the design requirements.
Table 1.6: An overview of the types of evaluation that will be used in this thesis. type of evaluation description / goal
formative evaluation with students
A formative evaluation is an evaluation of the prototype, to verify whether students can work with the learning material efficiently and to detect possible technical or content errors.
The learning material can be tested by one student, a few students, or in the normal
educational setting in the course. Depending on the number of students, this evaluation is one- on-one with the designer or is similar to the case study as described below.
(formative) evaluation with experts
Experts are teachers, educational experts, subject matter experts and experts in user interface design. Most of these expert evaluations should be formative, to check for errors from in content, lay-out or from an educational point of view, before students are going to work with the learning materials. Evaluations (e.g. with
teachers and an educational expert) can be a regular or a one-time event. case study with
students
The learning situation will be described thoroughly. Students work on the learning materials in the normal educational setting (i.e. during the course) and are not aware of being a subject of investigation. If possible, students are observed while working on the learning materials. Students fill in a questionnaire specifically designed to evaluate the learning materials and to test the design requirements related to student use. If applicable, also a standard course evaluation questionnaire is used.
interviews with students
Students are interviewed by asking them to comment on statements, to answer questions, or to give opinions. Interviews need to be planned carefully to make sure that useful results arise from the conversation. The way the interviewer asks the questions can highly determine the answers that are given. Therefore, the results from this evaluation type need careful handling.
examination questions During the examination phase of the course, in which the digital learning material is
used, students have to answer questions that are related to the knowledge and skills that they could have acquired by working on the digital learning material.
When evaluating learning materials it is important to consider the context in which the learning material is applied (Laurillard, 1994; Pawson and Tilley, 1997; Scanlon et al., 1998; Yildiz and Atkins, 1993). The reason for this is that it is known that the outcome of an evaluation is influenced by the context in which the learning material is applied (Pawson and Tilley, 1997). The context depends on, for example, the student’s prior knowledge, the computer room arrangements, sufficient time, number of persons in the group, and the assessment of the task (will students be graded, is use compulsory) (Laurillard, 1994). Because of the influence of the
context, the case studies will take place in the normal educational setting. When evaluating in the normal educational setting, most students will not be aware on forehand that they are subject to investigation and will behave as normal as possible. Moreover, the context should be described to be able to explain the results of the evaluation within this context.
Formative evaluations (with students and experts) are performed with the prototype learning materials to detect errors and to find out whether students are able to work with the learning materials.
An interview with students can be performed when more information is necessary than could be collected with questionnaires.
When possible, the results of examination questions are used to give an indication of the effectiveness of the learning material. These results are only an indication. Since students also follow lectures, have laboratory classes, read and study their textbooks and readers, it is impossible attribute the results of the examination completely to the use of the digital learning materials.