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ALANI, Morteza1 & BARNES, Robert2
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2 Open University, Milton Keynes, UK, r.c.barnes@open.ac.uk
Abstract: Science and Engineering disciplines historically use laboratory experiments to reinforce and underpin the teaching and learning strategy. However, in this process to achieve a positive outcome, certain criteria should be met in terms of practical, technical and organisational aspects of the whole operation. The procedure adopted for students to undertake laboratory experiments also has remained virtually unchanged for many years.
This paper addresses the above problem by providing students of Civil Engineering, Engineering Geology, Earth Sciences, and so on. with computer aided academic and technical Soil Mechanics Laboratory facilities that they can remotely access and navigate at their own leisure or be used as a complementary material to support lecture programmes. A video/photographic (panoramic) guided tour of the laboratory provides students with real life facilities and equipment. Incorporated help files and digitised images provides apparatus details, sample preparation and measuring devices together with details of British Standard procedures to standard Soil Mechanics tests.
Finally, analysis of the results of a learning outcome and quality control questionnaire incorporated within the software (completed by students/end users) is reported.
Keywords: Multimedia, Soil Mechanics, Laboratory, Software, Toolbook
Students often experience difficulty relating laboratory experiments to theory, caused principally by scheduling difficulties which dictates that experiments are not easily synchronised with the taught theory. Students therefore have difficulty appreciating the inter-relationship between conceptual ideas and their verification by a practical demonstration in the laboratory. Unfortunately, many laboratory experiments lose their impact if students are not fully prepared, or appreciate the value of experimentation as an essential component in the learning process.
Although the symbiotic relationship of educational theory underpinning laboratory exercises is explored in lectures, seminars and tutorials, it does not however impart competence, nor prepare the student for undertaking various types of experiments. Students first encounter with a laboratory and its surroundings can be quite daunting, particularly when the types of equipment vary enormously. In addition, the functionality of the apparatus and the method of use for particular experiments has its own learning curve that is rarely acknowledged in the learning experience. Very often students struggle through experiments with very little insight and procedural guidance – a direct consequence of not having essential prior knowledge of the laboratory, its equipment, and function. This often exacerbated by access restrictions placed on laboratories, which enforce security and safety through the Health and Safety Regulations. As a direct consequence, students have many difficulties writing up experiments, trying to visualise and describe accurately the processes and procedures that were undertaken. The description of equipment and mode of operation often requires recourse to memory and educated guesswork, hence students are prone to inaccuracies in both description and methodology – a direct result of their unfamiliarity with both the laboratory and its equipment.
The procedures adopted for students to undertake laboratory experiments have remained virtually unchanged for many years. Students are expected to undertake experiments using a ‘recipe’ sheet, which provides them with a step-by-step procedure. This work sheet is often only provided on the day that the experiment is to be carried out, and consequently student’s procedural progress is severely hampered by a general lack of confidence. Even when students are provided with the information prior to the laboratory exercise, the difficulties still arise, being the by-product of not being able to relate the written procedures with the visual awareness of the instrumentation.
If experiments are to be valid and worthwhile, students must be provided with a sense of ownership, both before and after experiments have been conducted. In the process of undertaking an experiment, and in the subsequent writing up, students need to be able to revisit the laboratory and refresh their memory so that they are more capable of relating their results to expected outcomes. Too often students carry out experiments mechanically, being more concerned with completing the exercise than appreciating the demonstration of theory with practice.
The main objective of this ongoing investigation is to address the above problems by providing students (civil engineering, engineering science, earth sciences, and so on) with a computer aided virtual reality (real-time) Soil Mechanics Laboratory which enables them to view the laboratory facilities at their own leisure. Of course it should be emphasised that this experience can be applied easily to other engineering and science disciplines.
The resulting software, which is in the form of a CD-ROM at present, consists of three distinct key elements.
The first element includes a photo-panoramic guided tour of the laboratory (navigable movie), providing students with navigational access to the laboratory facilities in the Department of Civil Engineering, University of Portsmouth. This incorporated a high degree of interactivity, allowing students to explore and discover at their own direction, level and pace.
The second element provides technical information, which includes a procedural statement for each experiment, a description of the equipment and apparatus, an example, typical results, references to other literature and additional information to underpin lecture notes. The second element also includes a video clip of each individual experiment demonstrating preparation of the sample/s, standard procedure, equipment details and good practice.
The third element includes an incorporated Course Management System (CMS) which operates as a utility to administer students, score question results and provides a log file This is very versatile providing a password log-in utility, questioning methods, score results encryption (tamper proof scoring) and feedback to the tutor (email facility).
This software provides students with unrestricted access to the facilities, the principal advantage of which is that they may ‘visit’ the laboratory electronically in a highly interactive and information-rich environment – before, during and after the experimentation period.
In an attempt to tackle the previously discussed problems, it was essential to identify and establish alternative sources of information and efficient modes of student learning. In this respect, after preliminary investigation, multimedia and navigable imaging techniques were found appropriate. Multimedia has long been recognised as a viable development environment in learning and teaching, and individuals and teaching institutions have made excellent progress in this field in recent years. However, this progress has not been achieved easily, as potential technical difficulties as well as logistic ones do exist, when trying to integrate an idea into an effective product in the field of learning and teaching.
Innovation in approach, quality of content and form and a high degree of interactivity as well as compatibility between the multimedia development tool and the objectives of the programme are the essential components for an efficient and successful product.
When developing a graphically rich application such as the Multimedia Soil Laboratory (MSL) it is useful and convenient to have a higher specification computer. The computer used in this project has the following specification:
A CD Read/Writer (CDRW) is installed within the tower. Connected to the computer is a zip drive, scanner and printer. The CDRW is an essential component used to back up the large media files and produce the published CD. Other items of equipment used to produce the pilot application are a digital video camera and video capture/editing equipment (based in the Portsmouth University Media Centre).
Authoring, graphical and video editing software are used to create the media content and application.
The authoring package used to build MSL is Toolbook II instructor Version 6.1a (by Asymetrix). This application is specifically developed to produce Computer Based Training solutions. This application provides all the necessary utilities to produce visually pleasing multimedia applications for distribution on CD-ROM or over the Internet. It is extremely versatile, catering for high end users that wish to develop quick multimedia solutions using Toolbook templates and ‘widgets’. However, Toolbook has a command based scripting language called OpenScript. This enables lower-level development to produce more specialised and sophisticated applications. For a more in depth discussion of Toolbook features used in MSL see Application Design and Toolbook Command Based Language (OpenScript) below.
Web 3D by Asymetrix and Draw 7 are two main graphics programs. The backgrounds, button and title images are all created using two software packages.
The video editing software is Digital Video Producer (DVP V4) by Asymetrix. This program is used to edit the final video clips and add in the narration.
Design of the application has been kept simple. Navigation is kept very open utilising traditional forward/back buttons and via the two panoramic views of the soil laboratory. An open navigation allows full access to all parts of the application. This will allow past and future topics to be explored, see Figure 1.
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Figure 1: Panoramic view of the Soil Laboratory and full applications
A simple visually pleasing background image and layout provides initial visual impact but does not dominate the overall look and feel. Each page has an identical look and feel, keeping topic lists and button groups in identical locations. This is important to achieve user familiarity. Initially, a complete example page (Atterberg test) with all viewers and information was developed, see Figure 2. Once tested and approved this page became a template on which to base all further pages (with minor modification).
Figure 2: Atterberg test content
This method allows for rapid application development but requires quality control and early application design and approval. However, any major alternatives to the application once established will require substantial time and effort to amend.
The page in this case refers to a Toolbook page that contains the background image, a topic list with buttons, all other navigation buttons and buttons to open the laboratory viewers (see Figure 1). A single page is used for each test. All information, equipment, video clips, references and questions are available by selecting items from the topic list. Navigation by the back/forward buttons scroll through each test page.
The opening title image is produced using a Web 3D package and is inserted as a graphic (Toolbook paintObject).
The laboratory image (panoramic view) is composed of a seamless collage of still images taken from a video clip and is displayed in a scrollable window (viewer). The image has been modified to fit on the maximum page width available. Hot regions on the image describe the item of equipment and/or navigation to the page describing that particular test (see Figure 3).
This is controlled using OpenScript events such as ‘mouseEnter’ and ‘buttonClick’.
The properties of the laboratory viewers have been set to allow scrolling and to open the viewer in a set position within the screen.
Figure 3: Description of the Cone Penetrometer test equipment
A viewer is a window through which graphics or information on a page can be viewed without navigating to the page. They also have the added functions of close/minimise/maximise and window dragging. The advantage of this is that the user is able to open many windows at once and manage these on the desktop. Viewers are opened from a topic list contained on a main description page. Viewers display scrollable text, graphics to display items/parts of equipment and a selection of questions. A more complex viewer is used to display the scrollable laboratory view, which allows topic selection and navigation links. Properties are set to allow scrolling and to position the viewer.
Toolbook has a command based scripting language called OpenScript. This enables lower-end development to produce more specialised and sophisticated applications. Scripts can be written to control events or actions of objects or control the application. Most events in MSL are controlled from a script at the page level. The script is essentially the same for all further pages. Modification of the script is simple providing a naming convention is established and adhered to.
Several difficulties have been overcome in developing video clips for the Soil Laboratory. The production problems have largely been solved by good video production/editing techniques and current compression software (codecs). Soil testing may be a long process involving detailed and complicated applications of equipment. Up to 30 minutes of video footage is taken per test. This footage is then edited to reduce it to clip of around 2 to 5 minutes. A method to achieve this is to film the whole test performed precisely and very quickly (main shot). Important parts of the test are then filmed again in close-up. The close-up portions are inserted at the appropriate places within the main shot. Another technique is to use transition effects such as fades or swipes to change between scenes, which are very different or to break a lengthy part of repetitive content. The first edit is performed with uncompressed video. The second edit (final approved edit) is compressed using Cinepak (Audio Visual format (.avi) ). Cinepak is a useful codec which is installed as part of the multimedia components within Windows 95, 98 and NT. This allows clips to be played using the players installed on these operating systems. The clip specification is 320(w) x 240(h) in 24 bit colour and at 15 frames per second (see Figure 4). A script for the narrated portion of the clip is produced. The sound is recorded using Microsoft Sound Recorder through an ”off the shelf” microphone and head set. For reasonable sound quality and file size the sound is recorded at 8 bit, 22kHz and mono. The University of Portsmouth Media Centre undertook the filming, directing, video capture and performed the fist edit using professional equipment. The second edit and video compression were performed in Digital Video Producer.
Figure 4: Extract from the video clip performing Liquid Limit test
Every test example has a series of questions loosely termed ”see what you can remember”. No score from these questions is generated but answers are logged. To enable a better picture of the student perceptions of the application, a set of optional questions are provided on exit. These are set to provide a rating, based on the answer response and recorded in the log file. The questions are a series of multiple choice, true or false, ”fill in the gap” and ratings. Question widgets (utilities built into Toolbook) are available from a widget catalogue and selected/dragged onto the page. Score and response properties of the question widget can be set. Logging procedures are set within the lesson properties. The log file location is specified when the application is run by the student. The student then provides his/her name, which is recorded in the log. The lesson properties have been set to record the navigation route (provides a page name), the time taken to navigate through the application and records responses to questions. The logs from each student are sent to the specified file location and appended to the log file. The log file record responses in a tab separated text file. Analysis of the log file by the tutor will identify problems with the application, give an indication of a preferred method of navigation, demonstrate a student’s understanding of the topic and show that a student made full access to each topic.
For quality control and student/staff feedback purposes the following modes of assessments were considered:
Analysis of the results demonstrated clearly an overwhelming support for this package amongst students as well as colleagues. The following table (Table 1) depicts the response of students to the questionnaire.
Table 1: Crude results of responses to the questionnaire
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Question |
Answer (%) |
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Quality of information |
Excellent - 100 |
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Quality of images & set up |
Excellent - 80, Good - 20 |
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General Quality & Interactivity |
Excellent - 100 |
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Does this package interest you as a T&L tool? |
Yes - 100 |
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Would you use it if it was made available to you? |
Yes - 100 |
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How practical did you find the package? |
Very - 100 |
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Did you find it user-friendly? |
Very - 100 |
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Will you revisit the package when writing up your report? |
Yes - 100 |
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Importance of the above |
Very - 75, Average - 25 |
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How important is this package to you, if you miss a laboratory session? |
Very - 100 |
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How do you think this package can be improved? |
A number of constructive and complimentary comments were made by the students as well as the staff |
For easy and convenient publication, Toolbook II Instructor V6 is shipped with InstallShield. Installations can be created using the Auto Packaging Wizard (written to publish Toolbook applications using InstallShield) or by the more advanced feature contained within the InstallShield application.
A number of tests using the pilot version of MSL have been conducted on computers running Windows 95 and 98 using 6 and 24 speed CD drives. The tests showed that a Pentium 100 MHz, 16MB of RAM with a 6 speed CD drive efficiently displayed the application. Very little delay was experienced when navigating between pages and very few frames were skipped when playing the video. The audio was of satisfactory quality.
Students/staff responses and comments demonstrated that this project is certainly a step in the right direction by providing complementary material to support and improve students’ learning experience in the field of Soil Mechanics/Geotechnics. It has also been demonstrated that Multimedia is a viable option to be considered for such purposes.
It was noted that wide availability of software of this nature might influence students’ participation in the laboratory sessions with serious consequences. However, it must be stressed that the above situation will depend, to great extent, on how the software is introduced to students and how it is incorporated within the teaching programme.
From the reactions received to this software, we are encouraged to believe that positive steps have been taken towards the enhancement of students’ learning experience in this particular branch of civil engineering.
It was also recognised that this experience could expand easily to other practical and experimental based engineering and science courses.
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