A Constructivist
Learning
Environment Java
Implemented
John Gray
Tom Boyle
Department of Computing and Maths Faculty of Science and Engineering Manchester Metropolitan University +44(0)16-i 2471545
Department of Computing and Maths Faculty of Science and Engineering Manchester Metropolitan University +44(0)161 2471545
[email protected]
[email protected]
Colin Smith Blackrod Bolton Lancashire +44(0)1942833986
colin.smithl
[email protected]
require something more akin to a reference text. Intermediate levels of experiences and skill places a heavy burden on the design of learning environments. Offering support for these two extremes together with various intermediate levels of experiencesand skill places a heavy burden on the design of learning environments. Traditional approaches to teaching programming involving a blend of lectures, reading and practical sessionstypically lead to a number of problems: . passivelearning styles . over emphasis on language form as opposed to function . prematurecomplexity
1. ABSTRACT In this paper we describe the development of a flexible and interactive learning environment for studying the Java programming language. The system has been written using Java and has been designed around an extended version of the CORE [l] design methodology. Earlier work using CORE resulted in hypertext based learning environments such as CLEM (CORE Learning Environment for Modula-2) [2]. The current work seeks to enhance and augment the features provided in the early work by offering additional representations of the topics under study, incorporating audio and video resources, and improving the flexibility of the possible learning paths through the learning materials. 2. PROBLEMS AND ISSUES IN LEARNING TO PROGRAM
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prematureabstraction Traditional teaching approaches impose a rule-based approachon the learner and restrict their natural problem solving skills. Constructivist learning theory [6] indicates that people are active and constructive in making senseof their environment. Offering people the opportunity to be active in the learning process through structuring the context in which problems are presented encourages a more natural style of learning. Adopting this approach in the design of learning environments can result in a fine-tuned well-balanced learning experience for people. For example the CLEM system provides a complete course for studying the Modula-2 language and has been used as the major vehicle for teaching first year programming at several British universities since 1991. This systemis in essence a networked hypertext system that offers people flexible routes through an interactive learning environment combining the presentation of information, executable examplesand exerciseswith an online notepad, compiler environment and performance monitoring. Evaluations of this systemhave emphasisedits successand raised issues related to improving accessto the possible routes through me learning materials.
Learning to program is a difficult activity requiring a combination of theory, practice and problem solving skills. People wishing to learn a programming language typically have a wide range of experiential backgrounds ranging from the complete novice to programmers experienced in other languages. Their individual needs for learning programming vary significantly with novices wishing to navigate through the learning material in a sequential manner while experiencedprogrammersmay Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. ITiCSE ‘98 Dublin, Ireland 0 1998 ACM l-58113-000-7/98/0008...
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3. OPPORTUNITIES OFFERED RECENT WEB DEVELOPMENTS
When applied in learning environments CORE results in successful, interactive and flexible systems that help people with a variety of levels of previous domain experience to study and acquire knowledge and skills requiring significant human effort.
BY
The rapid expansion of the Internet during the 1990shas lead to many new opportunities for creating learning environments. The demand for web based applications has generatednumerousnew tools and techniquesranging from pure HTML hypertext document linkage systemsto rich, interactive platform independent languagessuch as Java. As the tools and techniques for building web based applications improve, the possibility of building environments incorporating distributed learning multimedia, and high levels of interactivity.
5. EXTENDING AND APPLYING CORE FOR THE DESIGN OF A WEB BASED LEARNING ENVIRONMENT The facilities offered by the Java programming language supported an extension of CORE to provide an enriched pedagogical environment. This in turn allowed the application of the extended version of CORE to create a Web based system. This system is implemented using Java and its aim is to teach people how to program in Java. One issue central to extended CORE was to breakawayfrom the typical book metaphorto an interface that offered a closer representation of the structure imposed on the material presented. A book suggests a series of pages containing information to be learned together with an overall structure whereas our aim is to offer people a variety of ways of accessingthe material. People should be able to interact with the material sequentially, or randomly, or to cover just sufficient of the information in order to ensure that they can attain the expected learning objective. Providing such flexible access through a web based learning environment increasesthe perceptual distance between a book and the computer as the vehicle for learning and as such requires an alternative metaphor. One result of changing the metaphor underlying CORE was an increasedflexibility in navigating through learning material. This was implemented through the inclusion of vertical tabs to facilitate movement between sections of related material, horizontal page tabs offering movement between pages within a section, multimedia controllers offering audio and video material, and, hot ‘links’ to other topics. One aspectof the refinement section is the use of questions to extend and enhance students’ understanding of a topic. These questions are presented as a series of vertical tabs. To help students check their progress towards the learning aims for a topic special ‘marker’ questionshave been added. If a student can answer these correctly then they have achieved the learning aims and may proceed to further topics. Offering the questions and marker questions as tabs allows students to choose the order in which the pursue the refinement section. The process of reviewing the CORE approach lead to a simplification of the concept whereby the four tenets, originally represented as four separate and distinct components within learning environments, are naturally represented as three components in the Java learning environment. Here the Context component offers information explaining the purpose of a language construct, offers reasonsas to why the construct is useful
Improving the tools and techniques assiststhe processof building web based applications however it does not obviate the need for sound pedagogic design approaches to the process of creating and structuring the content of such applications. Good design does not emerge opportunistically from using new technology; it requires creative insights and principled approachesto ensure that evolving web opportunities are optimised.
4. THE DESIGN OF THE SYSTEM The constructivist approach as exemplified in the CORE (Context, Objects, Refinement, Expression) methodology is used as the basis for the Java learning environment. This has been used previously to build learning environments such as CLEM, DOVE [3] (Dynamic Observation in Virtual Environment) and VirCom [4] (the Virtual Computer). The components of the CORE approachare outlined below.
4.1 Context This introduces the purpose of the learning material and provides a background against which people can relate the new knowledge without overloading them with too much detail.
4.2 Objects Objects offer the student exemplars of the topic and demonstrate what they should have acquired on completion of the learning activity. People are able to interact with such objects and the process of understandingthe material begins here.
4.3 Refinement During this aspectpeople are offered further examplesof the topic and through a combination of direct interaction, questions and feedback the student extends and refines their understanding of the topic.
4.4 Expression At this point the student should be able to express their understanding of the topic and this is reinforced through explicitly stating what has been learned and also through practice of the fundamental skills. 95
and also provides an example of the new construct embeddedwithin a working program. One key issue here is that these facilities are offered but the user decides which if any of them they access. Information made available through the Context component comprises a mixture of text, video and audio sources; again the user has control over the form they interact with. The Object and Refinement elementsare combined into a single component within the learning environment. This extends the user’scontrol over how they navigate through the material. In particular it facilitates learning by allowing a user to choose whether they need to perusethe Object component (further examples of the language construct) or whether they have sufficient knowledge to attempt lhe Refinement component (the questions and feedback). Here there is a distinct improvement in the flexibility of the learning paths providing the facility to adopt a linear approach by accessing every component and also supporting routes in which users can elect to accessthose pages which test a full understanding of the material. Video clips have been integrated within this componentand they extend earlier works. Their inclusion offers a naturally occurring instructional model. The video shows a familiar local expert providing guidance for the users by explaining the operation of the examples. Users have the opportunity to see an animated step through of example programs where video together with program output are used to illustrate the effect of individual statementswith those programs. The Expression component remains relatively unchanged though its implementation within the learning environment has resulted in improvementsto the look and feel of the interface. One specific aim in the design of the Java learning has been the needto facilitate future expansion of the system. Past experience has shown that through continued use of such learning environments further functionality and improvements become evident. Early work which was strongly basedaround commercial hypertext development systemshasproved difficult to extend and modify easily.
6. THE EVALUATION
6.1 Summative Evaluation The systemwas evaluated with regard to its acceptability to its potential users and also its effectiveness as a learning environment. To test the effectiveness of the prototype as a learning tool two chapters of the CLEM system were incorporated. The content, concerning selection and simple iteration, of the two systems was identical, although re-organisedwithin the prototype, was identical. Students were then invited to compare and contrast the two systemsrunning side by side on separate computers. Student feedback was gained through observation of their interaction with the systems, the completion of a questionnaire, and debriefing of students after their sessions with the systems. The students involved in this evaluation were a mixture of undergraduate and postgraduate students. Most of them had previously usedCLEM in their early studies. The outcomes of this evaluation were extremely encouraging and supportive of the prototype. With respect to the original aims of the project students questionnaire responses and also the verbal feedback rated the enhanced navigation in the prototype very highly. The inclusion of vertical tabs to facilitate movement between sections of related material, and horizontal page tabs offering movement between information within a section, scored very highly in the questionnaire results. Students appreciated the greater level of control over the order in which learning material was covered. The addition of ‘marker’ questionswas seen as extremely helpful. Together with ability to attempt such questions at any time they were seen as offering students a way of checking to see how far they had progressedwith the learning aims for a section. On the less positive side the feedback showed that students were less happy with the video information presentedwithin me prototype. In particular they felt that such material should offer somethingmore than present in the text and graphics already in the system. Another aspectof the systemthat the studentsresponsescriticised was the level of feedback available within the prototype. Here the suggestionsfor improvement included details of why an ‘answer’ was incorrect, and the inclusion of links back to relevant learning material so that students could check their understanding.
FRAMEWORK
There has been a mix of both formative and summative evaluation applied during the course of the development of this system. Adopting an iterative prototyping developmenl approach to building the system involved repeated evaluations of the evolving system. The prototype itself became an object of communication among the development team and servedboth as a mirror for the project aims and also as a vehicle for identifying misconceptions and misunderstandingsarising during the development phase. An example of the latter was the recognition that early versions of video clips were too didactic and laced with jargon.
6.2 Summary and Future Developments The application of CORE to the building of a Java learning environment has resulted in a number of innovations. The prototype offers very flexible access paths to its subject matter, supporting user with a wide range of previous programming experience. The environment integrates a wide set of resourcesthat users can select to support their learning needs. In developing this environment a balancebetween the need to provide a coherent, structured learning environment and the 96
provision of an ‘open’ systemthat can easily be adaptedto future changehas beenmaintained. As Java develops further the possibility of incorporating acceptable real-time video conferencing increases. ‘I’hiS would support video and/or audio links for collaborative peer group learning together with online tutoring. The addition of these facilities would offer a learning style involving layers of learning i.e. users could work on their own, with colleagues or with a tutor. Such an approach could be used as a filter to weed out premature requests for tutor help, in itself a potential major saving in tutor time.
[2] Boyle T., Gray J., Wend1 B. and Davies M. (1994) Taking the plunge with CLEM: the design and evaluation of a large scale CAL system, Computers and Education ,22, 19 - 26 [3] Boyle T., Stevens-Wood B., Zhu F. and Tikka A. (1996) Structured learning in virtual environments, Computersand Education, 26, l/3,41 - 49. [4] Boyle T. and Thomas G. (1994) Build your own virtual computer: a computer simulation using an active learning approach. In Brusilovsky P. (ed) Proceedings of the East-West Conference on Multimedia, Hypermedia and Virtual Reality, MHVR ‘94, Moscow, Sep 1994. [S] Duffy J., Lowyck D., JonassenH. and Welsh T. M. (eds) Designing Environments for Constructivist Learning. Springer-Verlag [6] Piaget J, The Child’s Conception of the World, Rowman and Allenheld, 1960
7. REFERENCES [1] Boyle T. and Margetts S. (1992) The CORE guided discovery approach to acquiring programming skills, Computersand Education, 18, 127 -133.
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