Ecodesign: Development and Testing of an E-learning System Margit Pohl1, Markus Rester2 Design and Assessment of Technology Institute, HCI Group, Vienna University of Technology
Keywords: e-learning, hypertext navigation, environmental education, ecological product design Abstract: Knowledge about ecological product design is becoming more important for employees of manufacturing companies. Because of organizational reasons these employees often are prevented from attending courses of this topic. E-learning can be a solution for this problem. The following paper describes the design process for an elearning system about ecological product design. Our experience indicates that constant testing can help to make the design of an e-learning system clearer and easier to understand. This is especially important for e-learning systems because there is no continuous support by teachers or trainers.
1 Introduction Because of the importance of sustainability for modern society, environmental education plays an increasing role in many areas of society (see e.g. [1]). International standards (ISO 14000) and competitive advantages through ecological production induce companies to invest in environmental education of their employees. There is, for example, an increasing demand for courses in ecological product design from manufacturing companies. At the Vienna University of Technology, such courses are offered to all kinds of students. Especially employees of manufacturing companies sometimes have difficulties to attend. Small and medium enterprises often find it troublesome to send employees who fill in vital positions to longer courses. This is all the more relevant for companies located in remote geographical areas. Therefore, it seems to be a sensible solution to offer training in ecological product design as an e-learning course. In a project which started in September 2003 such a system is being developed. This course is based on the experience of face-to-face classes. The instructional material so far being used was a book with a CD-ROM [8]. During the first stage of the project, an initial prototype has been has been implemented from scratch using the open source platform Zope and Python and is being used in a course. The elearning system can be accessed with any conventional WWW browser. The following paper will describe the Ecodesign e-learning system, its aims, its pedagogical foundation and the design process. During the design process, first tests were being conducted. These tests will be described and the results of the design process will be discussed.
2 Description of the Ecodesign Course The aim of the Ecodesign e-learning system is to convey knowledge about ecological product design to adult learners. There is an increasing demand for learning systems for adult learners, 1
especially for professionals looking for additional training. These learners have specific requirements for e-learning systems [6]. Such e-learning systems have to incorporate problem-centered learning and address the experiences of the learners. Flexibility of time, place and pacing is very important to enable adult learners to arrange work and learning conveniently. The Ecodesign e-learning system tries to fulfill these requirements. The basic functionalities it offers are access to various kinds of material, access to examples, and communication with other members of the group or teaching staff. Consequently, it consists of three sections: materials, examples/tasks and communication. Its main part is a collection of seven concrete examples. The trainees, for example, have to improve the design of an electrical water kettle according to ecological standards. They get an extensive description of the problem, some hints how to solve the problem and many links to additional material (tables, texts about standards, other solutions, ...) which is necessary to complete this task. The learners are supposed to use these materials in order to compute the optimal solution for an "ecological" water kettle. The seventh example is carried out as teamwork of 3-4 trainees. The examples are presented in a hypertext format. We also developed detailed guidelines for the content providers how to structure the material. One of the guidelines, for example, says that scroll fields are prohibited to avoid overwhelming the learners with too much material. Adult learners are usually able to decide for themselves which documents are important for their work. Links to other relevant material (e.g. in the materials section), therefore, are a better solution for adult learners than large amounts of text on the screen. Apart from that, it has been argued by many researchers that the WWW is not a medium for the delivery of large amounts of text for learners of any age group (see e.g. [3], [9]). The Ecodesign book [8] is a textbook and provides ample information about the topic and should be used by learners together with the online system. It must be mentioned, however, that some of the content providers are not comfortable with this approach because they are sceptical about the merits of highly distributed learning material. Compromises have to be found to accommodate both content providers and educational experts. The communications section provides possibilities for synchronous and asynchronous communication (see table 1). Three different technologies will be utilized to ensure versatile forms of communication: email, discussion forums (similar to weblogs) and IRC (internet relay chat). While we decided to let participants use their own email-client, which they are familiar with, we incorporated a Java-based IRC-client into the e-learning system. Thus amongst other advantages we are able to control various parameters beneficial to structured conversation (e.g. fixed colors for trainers and tutors). Table 1: Communication areas with corresponding metaphors and used technologies Area Announcements
Metaphor Display Cabinet
Technology Forum/Weblog
Discussions
Bulletin Board
Forum/Weblog
Conferences
IRC-client (Java)
Work Group
Consultation-hour (scheduled) and Informal Meetings Meeting Rooms
Participants/People
Directory
IRC-client (Java) Email (mailto:)
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Remarks Only trainers and tutors are allowed to post major entries. Trainees may write follow-ups. Free Speech (should be task-relevant, of course) Trainers will be present at fixed dates (about twice a month). Tutors will be encountered regularly and by short-time appointments. Once the teams have grouped, each and every team will have their own IRC-channel. For active tutoring primarily.
It is well-known that motivation is an important variable in online learning [7]. Without accompanying measurements drop-out rates in online learning tend to be very high. To avoid these high drop-out rates we adopt two strategies. We use blended learning. The duration of a course is one semester. During this semester there are three face-to-face meetings (one at the beginning, one in the middle, and one in the end), so that trainers, tutors, and trainees can get acquainted and can solve problems which cannot be solved online. Between these face-to-face meetings are online learning phases. Apart from that we use an approach which can be called active tutoring. In addition to the trainers who deliver the lectures in the face-to-face meetings and who provide the content material there are tutors who support the learners online. They organize electronic meetings and answer all the questions the trainees have when they are not in the face-to-face meetings. In previous projects very positive experiences were made with active learner support [5].
3 Design The design of the Ecodesign e-learning system is based on an office metaphor. The three sections of the system (materials, examples/tasks, communication) can be accessed by doors. All three sections can be imagined as rooms (the materials section as a storage room, the tasks section as a single office and the communications section as a canteen). The examples are represented as physical folders. The aim of such metaphors is to make it easier for users to develop a consistent mental model of the system and to make the usage of a system more intuitive. It must be mentioned, however, that not all user interface design experts support this view (for a discussion of this issue see [4]). Some researchers argue that at times metaphors can be rather confusing because no metaphor is perfect and necessarily contains contradictions. The canteen metaphor, for example, implies that communication in this room is not job or task oriented but private in nature. In the context of the Ecodesign system this is misleading. We conducted a first quick and dirty evaluation to find out whether our overall design approach was viable. We made fairly systematic tests with two people (between one and two hours) and less systematic interviews with three more people. We prepared three design solutions on paper and showed them to the subjects. All design solutions used the office metaphor. The differences referred to the navigation. One solution used menus, one used a rather minimalist tree-navigation similar to the Windows Explorer and the last used icons intensely and graphical maps similar to sitemaps on the WWW (see figure 1). Figure 1: Three different navigational approaches tested in the first evaluation: menus, tree and icons plus sitemap
We were a little bit sceptical about using the office metaphor but the subjects seemed to like it and urged us to keep it. The solution with the menus was too complex and rather confusing. The subjects also found that menus should rather be used for functions, not for accessing locations in cyberspace. Most of them found the solutions with the icons rather attractive but thought that a navigation similar to the Explorer was the most efficient. Especially the two 3
subjects in the extended condition were not only asked their subjective opinion but were asked to "use" the system. We asked users what they thought what would happen when they pressed a button or how they would go about to accomplish a task. We then assessed which solution was easiest to understand. One user, for example, had difficulties with the graphical maps (or "sitemap") because she did not know what their function was. Figure 2: Final outline incorporating room metaphor, tree navigation, breadcrumbs and graphical maps
The final solution uses a navigation similar to the Windows Explorer but has some icons of folders added (see figure 2). Despite the fact, that some users still do not understand the function of a graphical overview map we decided to offer them in the system because they are not the primary method of navigation. On the other hand, there are several reasons to include such maps. There is ample empirical research which indicates that graphical maps are advantageous for the learning process [2]. Needless to say, mapping a graph into a tree is a lossy transformation in terms of representing the link structure (“non-hierarchical” links are lost). In addition to these two navigational concepts we also provided a quick navigation bar known as breadcrumbs because its benefits of both quick access to superior nodes and display of contextual hierarchical relations.
4 Conclusion The Ecodesign e-learning system is supposed to fulfill the needs of professionals in manufacturing companies, especially those who work in remote areas. The basic idea of the Ecodesign e-learning system is to present the learning material in an interactive manner which emphasizes concrete examples. During the project it turned out that content providers are not always willing to deliver material conforming to this approach. The Ecodesign e-learning program uses an office metaphor to make it easier for learners to understand the system. In the first rather informal test, the subjects found this metaphor quite attractive. Contradictions in the metaphor, which were confusing for the users, had to be omitted. The users chose a navigation system which resembles the Windows Explorer, probably because they are familiar with this method. A first tentative conclusion from the design process might be that the ideas of content providers, potential users, and e-learning experts often diverge quite considerably. Extensive testing can render these different views transparent and form a basis for discussions.
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Acknowledgement Thanks to Peter Judmaier and Philipp Schlörb who cooperated with us in the design of the system. The project “eLearning Kurs zu umweltgerechter Produktgestaltung / ECODESIGN” is financed by the European Social Fund (esf) and the Austrian Ministry for Education, Science and Culture.
References: [1] Azeiteiro, U. et al (eds.), 2004: World Trends in Environmental Education. Peter Lang, Frankfurt/Main, Germany. [2] Jonassen, D.H., Reeves, T.C., 1996: Learning with Technology: Using Computers as Cognitive Tools. In: D.H. Jonassen (ed.): Handbook of Research for Educational Communication and Technology. Simon and Schuster – Macmillan, New York, USA, pp. 693-719 [3] Petre, M. et al, 2000: Innovations in large-scale supported distance teaching: transformation for the Internet, not just translations. In: M. Eisenstadt, T. Vincent: The Knowledge Web. Kogan Page, London, UK, pp. 97-116 [4] Preece, J. et al, 2002: Interaction Design. Wiley, New York, USA. [5] Reichl, F., Vierlinger, U., 2003: Tutor-enhanced eLearning for University Based Continuing Education. In: Proceedings of the ED-MEDIA 2003. Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, pp.1633-1640 [6] Rudestam, K.E., Schoenholtz-Read, J., 2002: Overview – The Coming of Age of Adult Online Education. In: K.E. Rudestam, J. Schoenholtz-Read (eds.): Handbook of Online Learning. Sage, Thousand Oaks, California, USA, pp. 3-28 [7] Simonson, M. et al, 2000: Teaching and Learning at a Distance. Merrill, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, Columbus, Ohio, USA. [8] Wimmer, W., Züst, R., 2001: ECODESIGN PILOT: Produkt-Innovations-, Lern- und Optimierungstool für umweltgerechte Produktgestaltung mit deutsch/englischer CD-ROM. Verlag Industrielle Organisation, Zürich, CH. [9] Wolfe, C.R., 2000: Creating informal learning environments on the World Wide Web. In: C.R. Wolfe (ed.): Learning and Teaching on the World Wide Web. Academic Press, San Diego, San Francisco, New York, USA, pp. 92-112
Authors: Margit Pohl, Ao.Univ.Prof. Mag.rer.soc.oec. Dr.phil.
[email protected] Markus Rester, Dipl.-Ing.
[email protected] Design and Assessment of Technology Institute, HCI Group Vienna University of Technology Favoritenstr. 9-11 A-1040 Vienna, Austria
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