Producing Web Course Material with IBM Knowledge Factory Team

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Producing Web Course Material with IBM Knowledge
Factory Team

• Harri Laine, Teemu Kerola
• Department of
• Computer Science
• University of Helsinki

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Big Picture
Course Material Production (IBM Knowl. Fact.
Process, )
email, chat, discussion groups
hyper-media self-study material
web teaching (lectures, etc)
Learning Platform (WebCT, LLS,)
web collaboration tools
web (self)evaluation tools
f2f collaborative work
f2f teaching (lectures, etc)
books, etc
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Self-Study Material

• Interactive book
• must be better than conventional book
• Animations, movies, sound ,
• Links to references other topics
• prerequisite material, on-demand courses?
• Navigation, tracking
• what have I done already? what next?
• for student? for teacher?
• Self-evaluation questions
• On-line exams

multimedia
hypertext
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Media requirements

• For example
• Multi-media PC
• 56KB Internet connection
• Data accessed with browser from learning platform
  (e.g., WebCT, Lotus LS)
• Need to match
• produced material
• learning platform
• end-user media

IBM Knowledge Producer
Lotus Learning Space
Student desktop at home
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Knowledge Factory Concept

• Knowledge Factory (KF) Team
• 14 roles 14 types of people doing the job
• some roles may be taken by client
• E.g., Subject Matter Expert
• most roles taken by KF Team
• many roles combined to one person
• some roles need more than one person
• E.g., Content Developer
• External Team special expertise areas
• Core Team actual product development

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Knowledge Factory Team

• External Team 8 roles
• Subject Matter Expert
• Production Manager, Media Architect
• Technical Specialist, A/V Specialist
• Production Artist, Photographer
• Quality Tester
• Core Team 6 roles
• Instructional Designer
• Courseware Engineer, Content Analyst
• Content Developer (plus Voice?)
• Media Coordinator, Quality Coordinator

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Knowledge Factory Process

• Analyze current and existing material
• select new material type, instructional method
• High Level Design Document (HLDD)
• goal, expectations, target audience
• navigation, look and feel
• instructional theme, instructional strategy
  methods
• course outline, modules, module dependencies
• For each module, Detailed Design Doc (DDD)
• draft (E.g., with PowerPoint) on each view for
  student
• navigation, text, voice, hotspots, animations,
• used by Content Developers to produce final
  material
• Knowledge Producer (KP) tool
• Quality control by Quality Tester and client

agreement, contract
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Experiences

• Course Introduction to Databases (18 modules)
• divided among 4 universities
• our first 2 modules
• Relational Algebra (about 2 lecture hours 6
  working hours)
• SQL DDL (about 1 lecture hour 3 working hours)
• Our starting point
• Existing material in Finnish simple HTML,
  simple style, no sound, any browser, printable
• We did not know the process
• Preparations
• Translation in English

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Experiences

• HDDL of 24 pages

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Experiences
Look feel no scrolling, fixed size
window audio in each page
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Experiences

• DDL 2 tries initial version with PowerPoint

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Experiences
final version off DDD used templates (MSWord) 159
pages about 40 tasks/questions about 25 pages
reachable only by incorrect answers about 30
pages cartoon like sequences
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Experiences

• First version
• straightforward splitting of the manuscript into
  small pages - reflection questions added
• instructional designer changed during development
• errors in formulas, errors in graphics
• Second try
• inductive learning
• database expert included in the team
• new layout, less errors
• only one browser, server dependence ?

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Experiences

• well defined but laborious process
• closer co-operation with implementors needed
• hard to fit university teacher schedules with
  implementation team schedules (part time full
  time)
• hard to catch the functionality of the material
  from the DDD too early decisions about control
• overall responsibility of the course was missing
• how to maintain the course is a problem ?

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Example screen
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Example screen
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Example screen
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Example screen
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Example screen