It/cs workshop: multimodal, multimedia courseware for teaching technical concepts in humanistic context

ABSTRACT

As global competition in IT increases, IT/CS students must learn concepts, theory, and implementation more efficiently, more broadly (e.g., technical and humanistic context) and in greater technical depth. IT (esp. CS and mathematics) is data-intensive - teaching can suffer from information overload, particularly in Web-based courseware. Efforts to simplify IT/CS teaching sometimes result in technology overload, where students encounter technical detail without humanistic context (e.g., history, ethics, business aspects). Overload usually correlates with decreased comprehension, increased boredom, decreased learning, and potentially lower performance in applicative tasks.

In response to this problem, our paper describes IT/CS Workshop (ICW), an innovative, interactive Web-based paradigm for teaching and learning of technical concepts in a multi-level, multi-media humanistic context. ICW, under development at University of Florida, complements established undergraduate and graduate coursework and texts, by interactively presenting concepts at three modes or levels of abstraction:

(1) WorkShop - Students are assigned tasks similar to jobs in an industrial workshop, with interactive suggestions and helps;

(2) WorkBench - Technical views of Tools (e.g., concept, theory, example) and Techniques (implementation and analysis) are integrated with humanistic views of Environment (history and recycling of previous technology) and Society (ethics, interactive collaboration with experts and friends); and

(3) TestBench - Interactive analysis of results, quizzes, practice exams, and progress tracking help students evaluate their work, with pointers to remedial web pages.

For example, ICW's multi-media (audio-video lectures, animated examples, and sophisticated interactive analysis programs) support teaching of computer systems performance analysis (IT), algorithm complexity analysis (CS), and error propagation theory (Mathematics). Links to related Internet groups, websites, and scholarly articles support in-depth learning. ICW's multi-level, multi-media approach enriches teaching and learning, while reinforcing different learning styles and cultural views.

Additional features of ICW include creative exploration, whereby students can collaborate competitively, within loose constraints. This opens many new applications and approaches, and provides multiple data sources to support the semi-automatic or (eventually) automatic monitoring and modification of student learning behavior. Thus, instructors could extract metaphors for exploration, then apply these to the process of evaluating student progress. This paper describes ICW's software architecture, interfaces, and courseware generation techniques, with examples from IT (hardware performance) and CS (complexity analysis).

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  K. Computing Milieux
  K.3 COMPUTERS AND EDUCATION
      K.3.2 Computer and Information Science Education
          Subjects: Information systems education

Additional Classification:
  K. Computing Milieux
  K.3 COMPUTERS AND EDUCATION
      K.3.2 Computer and Information Science Education
          Subjects: Computer science education

General Terms:
Experimentation, Human Factors, Measurement

Keywords:
courseware, distributed learning, performance measurement