Introduction

For a practitioner to evaluate an individual’s competence in a particular area or field, learning outcomes need to be assessed. In a traditional classroom setting there are a number of methods available to assess an individual’s competence; in an elearning environment these methods may not be suitable or the creation of suitable assessment tools (or what is termed learning interactions) may be beyond the current skills of most practitioners. Prior to tools such as CourseBuilder a practitioner had to be well versed in the use of complex web development software or in an Internet programming language such as JavaScript to create a learning interaction.

Currently there are a large number of tools available that are able to create learning interactions and require little knowledge regarding the use of both web development software and programming languages. Most of these tools have the capacity to empower practitioners with the ability to easily create a variety of learning interactions.

The majority of these tools are stand alone, so if a practitioner wanted to create an elearning application using these tools they would need two kinds of software, one to create the interaction and the other to create the elearning application. Using this approach may create a variety of problems, so the challenge is to find a tool that:

1. can be integrated into an existing web development tool;
   
2. is easy to use;
   
3. is cost effective; and
   
4. doesn’t require a player or plug-in to work.

After examining a number of methods and tools, CourseBuilder stood out for two main reasons, it fulfilled the pre-mentioned criteria and importantly it was available as an extension for Dreamweaver. By installing the CourseBuilder extension it became a seamless and very easy undertaking to access the tools needed to create a variety of learning interactions.

What is CourseBuilder?

CourseBuilder commenced life as a software package titled Attain Objects for Dreamweaver; a cost was also associated with this software. CourseBuilder is now offered free for Dreamweaver version 3 and upwards (see resource section for download details). It is noted that there is an initial cost with purchasing the Dreamweaver software, however if a practitioner is to create elearning applications, this type of software is essential if the development process is to be both efficient and cost effective.

CourseBuilder may be used to design web based courses and web based assessment tests and uses current HTML, JavaScript, & XML technologies. Using this tool practitioners are easily able to create a variety of multiple choice, text entry, drag and drop, and other types of assessment interactions by using an extremely simple wizard interface. The real power of this extension is that it enables practitioners to create interactions that would normally take hours or days to do by hand.

Using CourseBuilder

There are a large variety of excellent tutorials available for CourseBuilder (please refer to the resource section for details); the intention if this section is not to emulate these tutorials but to indicate how simple it is to create two types of learning interactions.

The following examples include a true/false and text entry interaction. For these examples there is no need to store or track the user’s interactions, instead the aim is to provide the user with immediate feedback when they interact with a CourseBuilder object. However, the option does exist within CourseBuilder to save the user’s interactions to a database such as Microsoft Access, SQL Server, or Oracle. CourseBuilder also has a feature called Knowledge Track which allows for the exchange of user interaction with Learning Management Systems. Some of the tracking options available through Knowledge Track are the user’s score, number of right/wrong answers, response time, and time spent on an interaction (for example). Further information regarding this option may be accessed via the Help option found within Dreamweaver.

Once the CourseBuilder extension has been successfully installed a ‘Learning’ tab option is placed into the Insert window. To access CourseBuilder, simply click on the Learning tab, the CourseBuilder object is then displayed as shown in the image below. The CourseBuilder object may also be accessed via the Insert option within the Dreamweaver main menu.

Adding a True/False interaction

Step 1 – Inserting the CourseBuilder object:
To insert a CourseBuilder object into the target page simply click on the icon shown in the image above. Please note that when creating a learning interaction, CourseBuilder inserts (by default) the support file directories (images and scripts) into the same directory where the current Web page is saved (as shown in the image below). If the directory already has an image directory then it will save the support files into this directory and will not overwrite the original.

After the default file directories have been installed, a wizard interface will appear with a variety of options (shown below). The first interaction explored here is a true/false response. Note that there are a number of categories available (the following exercise will explore the ‘Text Entry’ option).

Step 2 – The Wizard options:
After clicking on the true/false option three extra tabs will appear at the bottom of the wizard interface (shown below).

Step 3 – The General tab:
By clicking on the General tab the wizard will change to allow you to enter a question and edit its settings.

Interaction Name:
Leave this as shown in the image above.

Question Text:
To enter your question, simply delete the default text in the ‘Question Text’ box and type in your question.

Judge Interaction:
This has three options, for this exercise use the middle option as shown in the image above.

Correct When:
This exercise is designed to only provide feedback to the user so ensure that the ‘Correct When’ option is selected as shown above

Knowledge Track:
The option to send the results to a management system isn’t required for this exercise; ensure that this box is not checked. If this response was to be part of an assessment and a compatible system was present, this box may be checked.

Tries Are and Time Is:
Again this exercise is designed to provide feedback so ensure that both the ‘Tries Are’ and ‘Time Is’ options are unlimited. If the response was to be part of an assessment regime, both of these options may be employed.

Reset and Layer option:
If required a reset button may be added and the interaction can be inserted into a layer. These options aren’t required for this exercise.

Step 4 – The Choices tab:
After entering information into the required fields simply click on the Choices tab to open up another section of the wizard. This part of the wizard offers a number of options that focus on which is correct and incorrect, and a score can be put against the correct response. In this case the correct choice here is true and there is no score due to the requirement to provide feedback only.

Step 5 – The Action Manager tab:
By clicking on the Action Manager tab the wizard will present a variety of user information that is already preset, but can be edited to suit the results of the interaction. Please note that unless you are well versed in JavaScript try not to change any of the default settings.

To edit a popup message simply click once on the ‘Popup Message’ statement under the ‘if Correct’ statement (refer above image) to highlight it then click on the edit option to the left, a window will open with a preset message as (shown below).

To change the popup message simply delete it then type in the feedback you wish to provide to the user then click OK. To change the message for an incorrect response simply click on ‘Popup Message’ statement under the ‘else if Incorrect’ statement, a similar window will open. When you have finished editing the responses simply click on the OK option within the wizard.

Step 6 – The finished True/False interaction:

The CourseBuilder icon will now appear in two locations, the insert menu bar and the Dreamweaver document. As each interaction is created CourseBuilder will place an object at the end of the interaction.

To edit the interaction simply click on its object once, the properties bar will change as shown in the image below. Simply click on the edit button and the CourseBuilder wizard will open containing all of the information for that interaction. Simply follow the above steps to access the option to be edited.

Adding a Text Entry option

Step 1 – Inserting the CourseBuilder object:
To ensure that this exercise follows on from the previous one please make sure that the blinking cursor is located to the right of the CourseBuilder object inserted into the Dreamweaver page. To add a text entry option simply click on the CourseBuilder icon located in the insert menu bar, the wizard will open. For this exercise click on the Text Entry option, the wizard will present two text box options as shown below.

For this example click on the small text box option, once the selection has been made three tabs will appear at the bottom of the wizard as shown in step two of the previous exercise.

Step 2 – The General tab:
As shown in the image below there are a number of options, this exercise will not use the ‘Initial Text’ option. This option may be used if the interaction is to fill in a missing piece of a statement. For this interaction the user will be given a question, the user will then need to type in their response and click the submit button. For this exercise set all of the options as shown in the image below.

Step 3 – The Choices tab:
Similar to the previous exercise the Choices tab offers a number of options that focus on which is correct and incorrect, and a score can be put against the correct response. In this case the response is not judged and there is no score due to the requirement to provide feedback only. To have the responses not judged simply click once on the Response1 option to highlight it, then click on the ‘Match Is’ option, scroll down and select the ‘Not Judged’ option. Repeat this for the other options.

To make it simpler you may delete responses 2&3 and leave Response 1.

Step 4 – The Action Manager tab:
Even though this is a different learning interaction than the previous exercise the Action Mgr tab is treated exactly the same as shown in the previous exercise. However the responses are replaced with the question’s answer. To edit the user feedback refer to Step 5 – The Action Manager tab in the previous exercise. However there is one more response that needs to be set.

Under the ‘else if Unknown Response’ statement click once on the ‘Popup Message’ statement, click edit and then replace the response with the question’s answer. If this is not done a ‘Response Not Known’ message will appear when the user clicks on the submit button.

Step 5 – The finished text entry interaction:

As mentioned in step 6 of the previous exercise, after clicking OK on the wizard, CourseBuilder places an object at the end of the interaction. To edit this interaction simply follow the steps outlined in step 6 of the previous exercise.

The two exercises presented here are a very basic example of how CourseBuilder may be used to create a learning interaction. The exercises were designed to ‘wet the appetite’ of a practitioner who might want to investigate the issues of using a tool such as CourseBuilder in creating learning interactions for their elearning application.

The resources below contain a variety of tutorials and methods indicating how CourseBuilder may be used in a variety of ways.

Resources:

To download the CourseBuilder extension:
www.macromedia.com/support/coursebuilder/downloads.html

Take a featured Tour of CourseBuilder
www.macromedia.com/software/coursebuilder/productinfo/features/

CourseBuilder Templates:
www.discoverysystems.com/Pages/CB-Templates.htm

Online CourseBuilder Tutorials
www.macromedia.com/support/coursebuilder/scoring/multi_page_track/

www.macromedia.com/support/coursebuilder/interactions/demo_procedure/

www.macromedia.com/support/coursebuilder/basics.html

www.informit.com/isapi/product_id~%7BA7CB8B7F-77F2-432B-9AFC-99BC6C6C2C69%7D/content/index.asp

CourseBuilder tips:
www.rapidintake.com/ri_press_cb_tips.htm#multipleCorrect