Interactive Educational Model by Manu Kamath

Team Profile

Manan Oza Student MDes (Communication Design) batch of 2011 Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology

Manan holds a Bachelors of Fine Arts from Pune University, Pune, and passed out in the year 2008. He has been working for the past 3 years as a User Interface and User Experience designer. Based in Mumbai he gained experience in the web-development and new media like the touch screen technology and small screen technology. Overall he has worked with Print media, Online media and Branding. His keen interests involve User Experience and User Interaction Design. Role in the Project : UX/UI Design : Look and feel, Graphic design and custom HTML, CSS, jquery, javascript elements, Information Design

Manu Kamath Student MDes (Communication Design) batch of 2011 Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology Manu holds a Bachelors of Computer Applications from the Xavier Institute of Computer Applications(XICA), Ahmedabad, and passed out in the year 2009. He has been a freelanced Graphic Designer and an Art Director after his graduation and has worked with various Event Management firms and Marketing firms. Apart from graphic and art his interests are User Experience and Visual Communication. Role in the Project : Background Research, Content writing, Information Design/Mockups and Documentation

Development and Education Communication Unit (DECU)

Development and Educational Communication Unit working under the umbrella of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), is actively involved in the field of satellite communication for the benefit of the nation. Since its inception, DECU has been engaged in the activity of development and education communication and has undertaken several programmes in the areas of development, training and education, using TV as a medium of communication. The journey started with the famous Satellite Instructional Television Experiment conducted during 1975-76 while Kheda Communication Project started as part of SITE continued till 1989. Dynamic efforts of this organization have led them to successful completion of various projects like Jhabua Development Communication Project, Training and Development Communication Channel on INSAT, GramSat programme and the Science Channel - Jigyasa.

Acknowledgement

To work at the Development and Educational Communication Unit (DECU) of the Indian Space Research Organization(ISRO), Ahmedabad, was a very good opportunity for the team as we were able to learn and gain a lot of knowledge and experience during the summer internship. We express our thanks to the all the people who helped us to make this project possible. Firstly we would like to thank our program co-ordinator Prof. Binita Desai and Mr. Nair and Prof. Gosh (In-charge of the placement cell) at the Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology (DA-IICT), Gandhinagar. Further we thank Mr. Ravishankar , Head HRDD ISRO for accepting our summer internship proposal. Special thanks to Mr. Nitin Bhavsar, Head of the Content Generation Group(CGG) at DECU and our mentor Mr. Kamlesh Udasi. They guided us and gave us insights about the various DECU programmes and it was really generous of them to allow us to explore the medium of web. We also thank Mr. Phani Kumar for giving us his critical reviews which helped us point out the limitations and gave us a scope to improve the project. Lastly we thank all the staff members of the multimedia department for helping us as and when we needed their support in the project.

Interactive Educational Model 1 Table of Contents

Table of content

Introduction

Pg. 2

About EDUSAT Programmes

Pg. 4

E-learning and other teaching tools

Pg. 8

The Interactive Educational Model (IEM)

Pg. 10

Features incorporated

Pg. 13

User Interaction and Information Architecture

Pg. 16

Prototype and the current IEMs limitations

Pg. 31

Conclusion

Pg. 32

Interactive Educational Model 2 Introduction

Introduction

With the advancement in technology and with how more and more gadgets are now easily available to the general population it is now not just a luxury but a necessity to a lot of people. From electronic pocket dairies to the pocket pcs and now to the modern smart phone. From the dial-up connections to the broadband and the wireless. From a desktop to a smart tab. Everywhere technology has gone further and made the old big table top and wardrobe sized devices to handheld and pocket devices today. With this growing technological advancement also comes the growing need to make tools and programmes which can help the modern day person to be able to make the most of his cool gadget. In this particular project we have kept in mind this very need and made an attempt to bring a tool that can assist teachers and parents alike to aide their children with their academic education. At first the idea was to create an application which can be installed across platforms like PC, Mac, Android and the iOS. Later this idea was changed because we figured that installing an application might end up being an unnecessary procedure for someone who just wants to use a tool that will help oneself with academic studies. The idea then went on to using the power of the World Wide Web (WWW). Along with devices even the power of the internet has been upgrading itself ever since. With wider and faster access to the internet and with search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo etc. We see how most people are today hooked on to a device or a gadget not just because of its cool features but a majority of them are hooked up because of the faster access to the internet. Websites like Wikipedia are synonymous with education today specially when it comes to students. If anyone wants to know something more about a certain topic or subject one usually goes to a library. But today the more techno-savvy population, which involves students and professionals, turn to the search engines or websites like Wikipedia. This was again a little difficult for us to finalize because here we are talking about academics and specifically making a tool which is available on the internet. Now the internet

Interactive Educational Model 3 Introduction

today is also a centre for online socializing with websites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Orkut, and many others. We initially found out that a lot of students belonging to the age group which we are planning to focus, mainly students of class 10th, 11th and 12th, are mostly familiar with Emails and the various social networking websites. Now the most important question for us was whether a website/portal was the apt solution here because we don't want to tempt the student to keep socializing while they study using our tool. After weighing all our options we finally decided that the proposed solution can be online because all that a student would need is a Computer and a modern day basic broadband connection. Plus the internet can be accessed from anywhere in the world so wherever the student is he/she can always plug in. Another important factor is the usability. Today all schools have computers and students of class 10th and onwards are definitely friendly with the basic computer interaction and the use of the internet. Taking into consideration all of the above we finally decided to make an internet based website/portal which can be made into an Educational Model for the students. Now why exactly do we choose education is another question. The idea to work with education came into being after carefully going through the activities at DECU (Development and Educational Communication Unit) of the ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization) specifically when it comes to education. DECU has been associated very closely with making programs/ videos pertaining to academic syllabus of various Educational boards in the country. Hence this project basically means to exploit this resource at DECU and make a model that can be used by every student to help him/herself with learning. The idea that we have come up with is not very exclusive. There are already existing E-Learning / Teaching tools available in the market. Some are free, others are chargeable. Some are open to the all and others are others are available only to a limited segment in the society. Our Model aims to target a general population of students i.e. whoever has a basic internet access.

Interactive Educational Model 4 About Edusat Programmes

About EDUSAT Programmes On the 20th of September 2004 India reached a new landmark by launching the EDUSAT. India's first satellite dedicated for Educational Communication. In fact no other country has a dedicated satellite only for education. The launch of this satellite meant setting up of infrastructure on the ground to utilize the benefits of it. The EDUSAT utilizes Multimedia. It has the capabilities transmitting audio visual along with text and graphics and animation. DECU - ISRO has spent a lot of resources by getting together a team of experts in not just education but also video, audio and multimedia. The basic idea of setting up the EDUSAT was and still is to Educate the Nation. Specific channel is dedicated to the EDUSAT for their education related activity of teaching/learning/training. For school students EDUSAT programs are unlike the usual lectures by teachers and professors that include the text book and the black board. DECU changed this routine by including multimedia elements like animation, images, videos etc that would make learning more fun and also would help make abstract concepts more clear to the students. Instead of replacing the classroom with multimedia they worked up a solution to make a tool that would aid the teachers to help students understand some concepts better through multimedia experiences. The EDUSAT network is well spread throughout the country but somehow the EDUSAT is restricted to specific centres where the infrastructure is established. Due to this only a few students are able to avail the benefits of the same and not all students can get access to the EDUSAT programs. But over the time DECU has worked on a lot of programmes relating to school syllabus and has a very rich repository of such multimedia embedded videos which can serve perfectly as a tool for students and it can be used as an added knowledge to the lectures and textbooks. The EDUSAT programmes are sometimes with one Anchor and in some other cases it is like a small classroom setup with a teacher and a couple of students. Text book topics are made simpler in them and the examples are visually shown with the help of either animation or videos. Subtitles are also included in them so that the student can also read as to what is happening. The format is very easy to understand and grasp. Plus the students dont really have to do anything extra. They just have to sit back and watch the show. There are also two way communication possibilities using the

Interactive Educational Model 5 About Edusat Programmes EDUSAT. There is also possibilities to use a computer terminal for training purposes using the EDUSAT. But as written earlier this is possible only with the help of a certain infrastructure which in a way is very expensive for any one particular school to establish. Some of the programmes sometimes are also aired on national tv channels like Doordarshan and its other channels. For the purpose of better understanding and keeping in mind the attention span of students a programme is never made for more than 20 mins. Hence it is very unusual for an entire chapter from a textbook to be covered in one programme. They are always shot in parts where each part would cover certain key topics from a particular chapter. This definitely makes the programme more interesting for the students and makes some room for curiosity amongst them. One good thing about these programmes which we found is the use of language with regional tongue influence making the language sound very familiar instead of making it sound foreign. Even the teachers on the video are in most cases teachers and not actors because of which the content in most cases is never flawed or incorrect. The programmes are shot in a simple but convincing manner and no where does the programme look over stylized or exaggerated. This particular format of the programme makes it more inclined towards the content rather than the style or the animations. This format according to us can work very well with the general population or our current target audience. Further none of these programmes are scrapped and are instead stored in a library at DECU for future reference. Thus all the EDUSAT programmes are available at DECU anytime. Even the various EDUSAT centres across the country have access to these videos and can make them available on request. The only one thing we found out about this is that it is not very popular yet. Students who do not have access to an EDUSAT centre have absolutely no idea that such programmes are available. This is again one reason that made us want to make these programmes more accessible not just by a limited number of students but a lot of them.

Interactive Educational Model 6 About Edusat Programmes

Image 1 : Teacher hosting the video with a student

Image 2 : Subtitles to emphasize key points.

Interactive Educational Model 7 About Edusat Programmes

Image 3 : Experiments are conducted in local school labs giving them a more natural and friendly feel.

Image 4 : Animation and graphics are used to explain abstract concepts.

Interactive Educational Model 8 E-learning and other teaching tools

E-learning and other teaching tools In the early 1960s, Stanford University psychology professors Patrick Suppes and Richard C. Atkinson experimented with using computers to teach math and reading to young children in elementary schools in East Palo Alto, California. Stanford's Education Program for Gifted Youth is descended from those early experiments. In 1963, Bernard Luskin installed the first computer in a community college for instruction, working with Stanford and others, developed computer assisted instruction. Luskin completed his landmark UCLA dissertation working with the Rand Corporation in analyzing obstacles to computer assisted instruction in 1970. Early e-learning systems, based on Computer-Based Learning/Training often attempted to replicate autocratic teaching styles whereby the role of the e-learning system was assumed to be for transferring knowledge, as opposed to systems developed later based on Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL), which encouraged the shared development of knowledge. As early as 1993, William D. Graziadei described an online computer-delivered lecture, tutorial and assessment project using electronic mail. In 1997 Graziadei, W.D., et al. published an article entitled "Building Asynchronous and Synchronous Teaching-Learning Environments: Exploring a Course/Classroom Management System Solution". They described a process at the State University of New York (SUNY) of evaluating products and developing an overall strategy for technology-based course development and management in teaching-learning. The product(s) had to be easy to use and maintain, portable, replicable, scalable, and immediately affordable, and they had to have a high probability of success with long-term cost-effectiveness. Today many technologies can be, and are, used in e-learning, from blogs to collaborative software, ePortfolios, and virtual classrooms. Most eLearning situations use combinations of these techniques.

Interactive Educational Model 9 E-learning and other teaching tools

In India currently there are couple of companies that are bringing the best of technology into classrooms today making them the modern day high-tech learning centres. Today Educomp is one company which provides e-learning in and out of classroom services for schools all across the country. There are drawbacks to the same as well because the infrastructure needed to setup such a classroom is not only expensive but also to an extent unaffordable by normal regular schools in the country. Thus making it very difficult to penetrate to every segment of the student community. There are other e-learning solutions already available on the internet. Some are video libraries, some are document repositories and some are file sharing portals all of them distributing and sharing content related to education and knowledge free on the internet. But here again all of these websites are easily accessible and even if they are there are drawbacks like improper categorization of data. i.e. the data is not categorized according to class. Not to say that it is wrong because some of the websites have categorized their data according to subjects and every subject has data pertaining to all classes. These websites can be good solution to e-learning tools but they have to be used with the guidance of teachers or parents. i.e. The teacher or the parent will have to tell the student to watch a particular video for a particular subject or topic instead of just asking the student to go to the website and start. Another open university was developed by Apple i-tunes. They came up with the concept of the i-tunes U which is a repository or collection of lectures from one of the best universities in the world on various technical and non-technical subject topics. You can make an account on i-tunes and setup your own e-courses using those videos and actually run an entire course on your own with the help of i-tunes U. But the matter at hand is an elearning tool for school children in India, all of whom are not able to comprehend international style of teaching. So a true solution for them would definitely be a solution made especially for them. Here at DECU videos for children have been developed keeping in mind not just the syllabus but also their cultural background. Taking into account the current E-learning trends we think that the Interactive Educational Model will definitely find a good fit on the internet and will give a new direction to academic syllabus based learning for Indian schools and its students.

Interactive Educational Model 10 Interactive Educational Model (IEM)

Interactive Educational Model (IEM) The IEM is a model which can applied to any already existing medium of education. It is not a standalone product or a new method of education but rather a tool which can be used by teachers for their teaching assistance. The model will assist teaching/educating in a 3 step format: 1. Maintain: The model will Maintain its own student database whereby it can mark each student who uses this model individually. This would ultimately make the model more friendly because it would address the user individually instead of a common group. Example : Each student will have to put in his/her name and probably Roll. No. to register with the programme and then all messages or indications by the program will be addressed to the student. "Welcome Riddhi Gupta... please select your subject/topic" 2. Monitor: The model will be time based whereby indicating the student to spend certain number of minutes or hours on a particular chapter or topic. This will encourage the student to spend that time with the particular subject or topic. By this we can definitely monitor the time a student spends on a particular topic. If the student would close the topic sooner than the time advised then there would be a time stamp which would indicate the student or rather encourage the student to spend some more time with it. Example: "You are required to finish the given topic within 35 mins." "You only have 10 more mins to finish the topic. Are you sure you want to end the session here? " 3. Assess: At the end of every topic there will be a test format of a multi choice question and answer which the student will be required to answer. The result of the

Interactive Educational Model 11 Interactive Educational Model (IEM)

subsequent test can be either printed out or stored in a PDF format whereby the teacher teaching this subject can keep an eye on the development of the students. The above given thus would cover a majority of the work of a teaching assistant for any teacher. This model is carefully designed keeping in mind the importance of a teacher physically teaching a student and also a situation where the student is trying to self-learn. In both these cases this tools/model can be very supportive because of the various features that will be embedded in them. Given below are the inclusions which are likely to be present in an IEM: 1. Cross-platform: The program will be platform independent so it will be able to run on PCs, MACs, Android, iOS and other tablet platforms as well. 2. Student database: Multiples student can use this program on a single machine if they do not have individual systems at home. 3. Detailed Navigation: The student will be able to navigate through the program in an easy format by which he/she can select the subject and the topic that he/she wants. Thus the model will be dynamic and not set in a linear format forcing the student to go through subjects and topic one by one. This also comes to advantage because the student will have an option to start another topic by leaving the already running topic. 4. Interactive elements: The user will be in control with the help of elements like 'play', 'pause', 'text scrolls', 'copy', 'screen grab' etc. These Interactive elements will be included so that one can pause the session to take a break and also so that one go back a particular time in the session if one wants to listen to the portion again for better understanding. This will be a feature which will be added to the already existing EduSat programme.

Interactive Educational Model 12 Interactive Educational Model (IEM)

5. Video/Content: There will be simultaneous 'text scrolls' along with video so that if one has any difficulty understanding the audio (if the audio quality is very poor) one can read through the text scroll along with it. Other content will include 3D scrollable images of topic related articles or items which the students can pause and look at. Giving them a feel of actually holding the element in their hand and seeing it from all angles. This feature can even be further elaborated by allowing the students to go through a certain simulation where they can put elements together in 3D like building blocks. 6. Result : The student will have results of the various tests they will go through which can then be a guiding tool for the respective teacher for assessing the development of the student's progress or understanding. Using these results the teacher can then have a better perspective on the standings of the student. Along with the teachers the result can be viewed by the parents as well allowing them to keep an eye on the progress of their child. 7. Discussion : A forum for student to post their doubts, feedback and thoughts to make interaction between other students who are signed in.

Interactive Educational Model 13 Features Incorporated

Features Incorporated The IEM will have a wide variety of features which will be included to make sure that the students are able to familiarize themselves to the usability of the website/portal.

The above image shows the initial idea of the features which we thought we of importance and which should be included in the IEM. 1. Login : The login is to maintain a database of students / users who are using the IEM. This way DECU - ISRO can keep track of the number of students and also the region where IEM is most effectively used. Thus will be very helpful for internal monitoring and also will give quantitative feedback.

Interactive Educational Model 14 Features Incorporated

2. Menu : The website should be easy to navigate and should not have any unfamiliar jargon which might make it more difficult for the student to understand the basic navigation structure. We thought it was appropriate that the Menu should be similar to that of a normal text book. 3. Animation : As discussed earlier Animation is very helpful to explain abstract concepts. 4. Search : Not only should the navigation be systematic but also non-linear in some cases and search does exactly that by enabling the student to search for data on the entire website/portal. Thus the student won't always have to go step by step to search for content relating to his need. 5. Timeline : This was an idea which we later on thought of not including or we thought that it could be included at a later stage. We thought of giving a Chapter wise time line to the students which would show them the progress that they have made through the chapter. Initially we thought it would be a mode of encouragement but then we now think to differ that it might also make some of the boring chapters seem never ending. So for now this feature is on the waiting-list. 6. Voice output : Voice output can definitely add to the interactivity of the website/portal but somehow implementing this at this stage of the beginning did not seem required. According to this feature we thought of introducing a virtual character that would speak to the students while they are navigating and also guide the student to perform tasks like 'play', 'pause' etc. 7. Video/Text Scroll : This is the key feature that we think will be the most helpful. A simultaneous text scroll for the students so that they can actually make notes from the video on the computer itself instead of writing it down on their notebook. If they find an important point in a topic they can pause the video... select the text required about the topic and then copy it onto any other file which they want. This works better than subtitles for us because for those students who do not have a fast enough internet connection to stream the video they can always use the text scroll.

Interactive Educational Model 15 Features Incorporated

These features given above we chosen initially to be included in the IEM. As we moved further some of these features were dropped, modified and changed as we thought seemed more appropriate and doable. This exercise of putting down all the various possible features on one sheet did help us to further build in on the concept and the flow of information.

Interactive Educational Model 16 User Interaction and Information Architecture

User Interaction and Information Architecture After the initial brainstorming of the features we started putting down the design of the layout and how the information should flow through the website. The series of images given below are the basic paper prototype which gives us a better understanding of how the website works and also serves as a blueprint for the final design and output.

The above is the interaction for the Login. This Interaction is pretty basic and for the Login we have included the "Class" and "board" so that the student can change his preference of class and the educational board that he wants when he logs in. Well this is a little irrelevant but we thought it would be better for the student to actually choose his preference at the

Interactive Educational Model 17 User Interaction and Information Architecture

time of Login and not after he/she logs in. The login page will have a 'Doodle' as we call it which can have something like the "thought for the week", Images relating to festivals etc. The next interactions are of the Subject selection and then the index. At login the student will then have to select his/her subject of interest. This is a linear approach and there is no space for confusion here because the student really knows what subject he/she wants to look into. Here we can see how the information will be given to the student step wise and not poured all onto him/her.

Interactive Educational Model 18 User Interaction and Information Architecture

The next is the topic interaction. As the student selects the topic interaction the following screen will pop-up. it is a basic interaction with quick navigation buttons for the student to enable/disable feature, skip, move forward/backward, print and also an option to skip to the test.

Interactive Educational Model 19 User Interaction and Information Architecture

The various features include : •

Enable/disable Text

•

Enable/disable Video

•

Print a PDF

•

Skip to Test

•

Go to previous/next topic

The Next is the test which will be a multiple choice test which is to evaluate the knowledge that the student has gathered after watching the topic. We felt necessary to include this feature because we think it is important for the student to involve in such activities so that he/she can also get a brief idea about the knowledge that he/she is getting.

Interactive Educational Model 20 User Interaction and Information Architecture

The next interaction is of the discussion board. We decided to keep this simple. It's a simple forum where you can see the latest forums, check the various threads, create a new one etc.

Interactive Educational Model 21 User Interaction and Information Architecture

Interactive Educational Model 22 User Interaction and Information Architecture

Interactive Educational Model 23 User Interaction and Information Architecture

The overall flow of information will be as such :

Home

Subjects

Discussions

Navigation / Index

Discussion Index

Change Class/Board

Open Thread

Create New

Select

Topics

Test

Exam

Glossary

After deciding the basic interaction for the website it was very important for us to work on the final layout and look and feel of the website. After much though input we finally decided to give it the chalk board green colour with the usual swipe and scribble effect. The reason for which was the give the students a visual feel of the chalk board on the website itself. Plus the design is also centred around school going children who belong to the age group of and up to 16 to 17 years of age.

Interactive Educational Model 24 User Interaction and Information Architecture

Interactive Educational Model 25 User Interaction and Information Architecture

Interactive Educational Model 26 User Interaction and Information Architecture

Interactive Educational Model 27 User Interaction and Information Architecture

Interactive Educational Model 28 User Interaction and Information Architecture

Interactive Educational Model 29 User Interaction and Information Architecture

Interactive Educational Model 30 User Interaction and Information Architecture

All the text and content in these images are not the actual text. These are only for referencing and prototyping. These images are of the website with its final look and feel.

Interactive Educational Model 31 Prototype and the current IEMs limitations

Prototype and the current IEMs limitations The current prototype of the website simply enables one to see to how the IEM would actually work. The team could was able to code the websites using HTML and CSS along with javascript and jquery for its various features. Right now the prototype is static and not dynamic. Using the prototype one clearly gets the idea of the navigation, video and text and also as to how every feature would look and feel like. The current project was not developed to its Alpha stage. For that further work needs to be done on the back-end of the website. Further coding, database and data binding are still left out as they were not under the domain of the team. Plus with the time constraint with us it was difficult for us to actually learn the coding and finish the project up to its Alpha stage. Every system has its limitations and we do believe that the IEM even though seems like a very good solution to what we are trying to resolve has its limitations. Some features like 'search' within a particular video or a topic is something that can be embedded later on. For now we just have a general search option using which one can search within the website but not within a specific topic or a video. Secondly the design of the website might have to undergo some changes to go along with further coding specially when the website is linked to a database. For this website to function without any issues one has to make sure that one's browsers allow scripts to be run. So users who use Internet Explorer 6.0 might face some difficulties but as Internet Explorer 6.0 is no longer used by most of the users we are expecting that we should not have complaints. The prototype and the Alpha needs to be tested with regular users to get feedback on its overall look and feel and also the functionality. The current design has been worked upon after research and also taking a look at other online available tools but a primary user study is very important before the project goes into its beta release stage.

Interactive Educational Model 32 Conclusion

Conclusion With the resources given to us by DECU and the support of the staff in the Multimedia department the project's prototype was able to be finished within the given time limit. We are hoping that IEM should be a breakthrough not only for being a teaching support tool for teachers and parents but will also be an excellent way to make an online library of all the syllabus based videos produced by DECU. Not only will the IEM give way to e-learning in every home but hopefully it will also encourage a positive use of technology at home especially for the students. With room for including more features in the future this can be a very stable, usable and user-friendly solution for learning. Teaching and learning is something that is never ending. At every point we learn something new and we teach something new to someone. Taking into account this we can never assume that one solution can be a permanent solution to learning. The IEM hence is flexible in that approach as there is still room for adding and removing features to or from it.

Interactive Educational Model

Bibliography: •

http://educomp.com

•

http://www.apple.com/education/itunes-u/

•

William D. Graziadei, Sharon Gallagher, ROnald N. Brown, Josehp Sasiadek: Building Asynchoronus and Synchronus Teaching-Learning Environments: Exploring a Course/Classroom Management System Solution