Instructional Design: Its Relevance for CALL

Transcription

1 Instructional Design: Its Relevance for CALL Elaine England City Polytechnic of Hong Kong ABSTRACT: By drawing on insights from other disciplines, CALL can be improved. This paper examines the ways in which Instructional Design has aided a CALL project from the overall conception to each screen. Factors which are considered include: training programs, the psychology of screen reading, task analysis and color cueing. KEYWORDS: Instructional Design, Task Analysis, Screen Design, Effective Color Cueing, Courseware Design The quality of software is often criticized, but the factors which constitute quality are difficult to define because a rounded piece of software needs to meet criteria across a range of disciplines. Unless CAI meets the criteria for educationally valuable software there is a danger, as described by Phillips (1986), that computers will cause the same disillusionment as language laboratories. Interdisciplinary contributions from computer science, instructional design, ergonomics and cognitive science should be encouraged. This paper will describe an interdisciplinary project in the City Polytechnic, Hong Kong, where the Language and Educational Technology departments are working together with the aim of providing back-up computer programs for the supplementary English courses for their tertiary second language students. The emphasis for the project is writing proficiency because all examinations are conducted in English. Overview of the Project The original idea for a suite of self -access programs included a diagnostic language test and three different types of exercises on language topics. The test would assess the students' weak areas and the exercises could be selected according to the diagnosed weaknesses. The programs were to be constructed with authoring facilities to allow a team of language lecturers to input data, edit and revise materials as necessary. The data was to be based on student errors from their written work. Software designers have recognized that some large programs are not being used to their potential. The designers blame the apathy of the users, the users blame the difficulty of understanding the program structure. The reasons CALICO Journal, Volume 6 Number 3 35

2 for non-use of software are more complex than this and include the psychology of screen reading, problems with operating the hardware, and the difficulty of concentrating on content and operating procedures. Nickerson (1981) cites poor documentation, poor user aids, and lack of a simple command language as some of the many factors which cause frustration in users. With these in mind, the overall structure of the City Polytechnic CALL project was upgraded to include computerized training programs for lecturer and students use, and printed documentation for back-up during use. The training programs orient the users to the computer procedures, the screen layouts and the concepts embodied in the materials. They also allow the user to focus on the operating procedures for the program and the content separately. It takes time and thought to understand how programs operate. To ask the user to concentrate on both content and hardware operation demands more than a classroom situation. In the classroom students are used to different kinds of learning formats. Although the development time for the suite of programs is increased significantly, the training programs are seen as one of the ways to solve the problem of "why such (computer) systems and especially those that appear to have considerable potential for their intended users are not used, or are not used as effectively as they might be." Nickerson (op cit). At the beginning of the project the content specialist determined that there should be three levels of exercises multiple choice, gap-fill and edit. The first two are traditional whereas the third lends itself to the power of a computer more naturally. Briefly, Edit allows a student to highlight mistakes in a passage, attempt to correct them and receive explanations about the mistakes. The concept behind the three-tiered exercises was to provide a range of cognitively easy to difficult exercises, thus allowing the student controlled exposure from limited to more natural, contextualized language. One of the reasons for the Edit style program was the students' apparent dislike of proofreading their own work. Because of the lack of proofreading, their work contained careless errors as well as errors of knowledge, and the careless errors could be avoided if the students developed an editing habit. During the development the content specialist was concerned about the amount of context to be displayed, length of explanation allowed, and the maintenance of a link between question and explanation. The developers were constrained by screen size, difficulty with color, flicker when scrolling text within a window on screen, and the pervading difficulty of reconciling the expectations of the content specialist with computer procedures. An instructional design emphasis was placed on legibility of the screens, and color-cueing was used to draw attention to the right piece of information at the right time. CALICO Journal, Volume 6 Number 3 36

3 The cognitive progression of the three exercises was originally based on the following assumptions: 1. Multiple Choice demands cognition of an answer from given choices where the location of the word is indicated by a dash. 2. Gap-fill demands self generation of an answer using predictive abilities triggered by a context where the location for the word is indicated for the student. 3. Edit demands cognition of error where no indication is provided, then selfgeneration of alternatives to rectify the mistake. Task Analysis for Effective Computer Use The largest cognitive gap between the exercises may appear to be between 2 and 3. In fact, from an instructional design point of view, the transition from answer provided to self-generation of an answer, 1 and 2, involves the transfer of responsibility from the teacher to learner and is consequently more difficult. This means that there is a need for the learner to have a lot more internalized language ability and knowledge available to draw upon to suggest an answer. With this in mind, during the development stage of the gap-fill exercise and at the suggestion of the instructional designer, the exercise was altered to a) aid the cognitive leap, and b) to make true use of the computer potential for controlled exposure to language. In effect, the exercise took on a new dimension which moved it away from the static, traditional gap-fill exercise to a new style of exercise only possible on a computer. The exercise consisted of two parts. The student could try the usual gapfill format but if they could not suggest answers then they could access the second phase of the exercise where there are suggested alternatives. The alternatives are not displayed all at once, as with Multiple Choice, rather, they are given one at a time. The student is asked to make a decision whether the alternative is acceptable or unacceptable for the context. In this way students who have the capacity to produce alternatives for the gap are allowed to demonstrate the ability; but if they cannot, they can decide to activate the alternatives which can help trigger associative connections or build-up the connections for future reference. The students may also try to fill the gap and succeed but then also opt to see the alternatives as an extension of knowledge about the context. The advantage of the following Switch exercise is that it allows the pace and type of cognitive exposure to be under the control of the learner. It provides a flexible, adaptive and supportive learning environment and an effective bridging tool between the low level and high level exercises. The scoring system for the Multiple Choice exercise is two points for a right answer at first attempt and one point at the second attempt. The Switch exercise gives two points if the student generates answers unaided, and one point each if the student selects the acceptable alternatives. The Edit exercise gives one point for each mistake the student spots and one more point each for CALICO Journal, Volume 6 Number 3 37

4 correcting them. Psychology of Screen Reading Screen reading control poses one of the most difficult tasks for the developer. In language programs where there is a lot of text to display, highlight and change, the complexity increases. The instructions need to be displayed clearly but not detract from the content. Program design usually demands that instructions are consistently displayed in one area of the screen so that the user knows where to look when in doubt. However, it was necessary to violate this principle in the Switch exercise because too much was happening on the screen. When the students decide to ask for the alternatives because they cannot suggest an answer or they want extra stimuli, the colored phrase or word moves into the gap and the students' eyes are drawn to the top of the screen by the movement and color. Simultaneously the new instruction line is displayed. Until this point, all instructions had been placed at the bottom of the screen. However, because the eye is drawn to the top of the screen, the instruction at the bottom might be ignored. By creating a line in the middle of the screen between question and answers, and by placing the new instruction on that line, the eye is drawn to the top half of the screen and notices that two changes have taken place. In this way, the content and the instruction meet the need of the student. The content dominates because of color and movement; the instruction is apparent but does not over-ride the content. (See Figure 1) It is this type of balance that is important to make the programs user friendly. Easterby (1984) describes such attention to development detail as necessary to make the processing sequence clear in Sample Screen from the Switch Exercise (Figure 1) CALICO Journal, Volume 6 Number 3 38

5 message design. The left hand side represents answers by students. The right hand side represents computer-generated alternatives. Effective Color Cueing The use of color can be valuable in signaling the function of different pieces of information. The Switch exercise used the screen in a complex way and the type of interaction changed. A link between the two types of interaction was necessary and this was achieved through color. For example, if the student attempted to fill the gap and was correct, the background color behind the answer would change to background red while a message indicating the student was correct was also displayed. If the answer was wrong, the background would become magenta and a negative message would appear. In the second stage of the exercise in which alternatives were displayed and the students had to decide if the alternatives were acceptable or not, there were a number of possible responses. Alternative displayed is acceptable Student agrees it is acceptable. Correct response message displayed. Alternative displayed is acceptable. Student finds it unacceptable. Wrong response message displayed. Alternative displayed is unacceptable. Student agrees it is unacceptable. Correct response message displayed. Alternative displayed is unacceptable. Student finds it acceptable. Incorrect response message is displayed. The difficulty occurs when effectively two wrongs make a right the answer is unacceptable or wrong and the student is right to know this. The illogicality of expressing this is resolved by the message used to reinforce the student's opinion and by the use of color which shows the status of the answer. Essentially, at the end of the question the student is left with a screen where both the acceptable and unacceptable answers are clear through color. (See Figure 1) The student moves on to receive explanations of all the answers. The complexity of the Switch program should indicate the necessity of the training program. Apart from learning the options that are available, the student is made aware of the significance of the color coding before having to concentrate on the content. Color choice on a computer for cueing or aesthetic use needs care since the legibility of text can be affected. Color, like movement, can distract as well as attract. (England 1984) Screen Size Screen restrictions are demonstrated well by the Switch exercise. If used fully, each side of the screen has a function and there may be a maximum of five CALICO Journal, Volume 6 Number 3 39

6 answers displayed which need explanation. The explanations would probably take more than one screen. The input of a large amount of text meant that Scrolling of the explanation screen was necessary. A simple but non-restrictive word processing program was also developed for ease of text manipulation. The program needed its own word processing program because any public domain word processors would have disrupted the aesthetic balance of the screens. Also, the use of a different system of symbolic coding would have disrupted the programs' continuity. The scrolling and word processor were pedagogically necessary, as the content specialist indicated, but the development time for the suite of programs was increased dramatically. The restriction of screen size can cause an unnatural break between pieces of information which should logically be in close context with each other; the answers and the explanations are an example of this. To overcome this problem in the programs, the students can flip backwards and forwards between the answer and explanation screens thereby maintaining the explanation and context to allow easy assimilation of the information. Conclusion The effective use of Computer Assisted Learning (CAL) involves interplay between the content specialist and instructional designers from the overall conception of the project through to the design of pieces of each screen. Compromises do have to be made and there is a danger that pedagogical considerations fall foul of programming limitations. The potential of CAL can equally fall short of itself because of the content specialists' resistance to innovative teaching techniques. This project demonstrates that interdisciplinary collaboration can be fruitful. The areas of change from initial conception to the final design and the attention to detail throughout each section's development have provided quality tools for the second stage of the project where a team of content specialists will decide on the body of content to use in the program shells. Notes 1 This article is an expanded version of a paper given at the 16 FIPLV World Congress on Language Learning. January 1988, Canberra, Australia. 2 I would like to acknowledge my project team members: The Initiator, Mike Milanovic, Language Department; The Pogrammer, Stephen Au, Educational Technology Center. References Easterby, R. (1984) Tasks, Processes, and Display Design in Information Design ed. Easterly R. and Zwaga H., Wiley and Sons Ltd. England, E. (1984) Color and Layout Considerations in CAL Materials. Computers and Education Vol. 8 No. 3 pp CALICO Journal, Volume 6 Number 3 40

7 Nickerson, R. S. (1981) Why Interactive Computer Systems are Sometimes Not Used by People Who Might Benefit from Them. Int. J. Man-Machine Studies Vol. 15 pp Phillips, M. (1986) CALL in its Educational Context in Computers in English Language Teaching and Research ed. G. Leech and C. N. Candlin. Longman. Author's Biodata Elaine England is a Senior Educational Technologist at the City Polytechnic, Hong Kong. After several years experience of ESP course design for pre-sessional courses, she did a joint Masters in Educational Technology and TEFL (1981) and received her Ph.D. on CALL in Since then she has worked as an Educational Technologist on developing distance learning texts and CAL programs for different disciplines. She's now coordinating CAL and videodisc projects. Author's Address Dr. Elaine England Educational Technologist Center City Polytechnic of Hong Kong 700 Nathan Road Mongkok, Kowloon Hong Kong CALICO Journal, Volume 6 Number 3 41