Group Reflection

​Our group began our journey on early of February, when an email was sent out to everyone to get a feel to what topic we were interested in doing.  From this we narrowed it down to a topic in English Form 2, What People Do. Everyone were agreed to choose this topic because we are interested in this topic and we believe that we can develop the courseware on our decided topic.  After the group decided that this was what we wanted to pursue, we went out on our own to do some general research in this area and to suggest some readings around this.  We meet regularly to discuss our findings.  The majority correspondence took place using Gmail.  The majority of the email on discussion parts of the project was responded to within a turnaround of 24 hours.   ​

The project was planned by analyzing the specification and breaking it down into a list of high-level tasks. These tasks were then included in a Gantt chart, which allowed us to see when exactly particular sections would be finished and how we'd allocated our resources. This Gantt chart was revised slightly at the middle and towards the end of the project, to reflect where our estimations had proved incorrect, or where there'd been delays. The time taken for the design stages of the project were underestimated initially, however, the time taken for integration and testing was also over-estimated, so the project was completed within the allocated time.

 ​Throughout the overall development process of the courseware, there are a lot of things that we can learn. The most important thing is that we can experience ourselves the whole process of multimedia development starting from planning phase until the courseware is finish and ready to use. The process requires commitment and creativity from all group members to get the job done. This is the time where the teamwork and cooperation from all group members is most important. Also, guides from our dedicated lecturer, Dr. Jamal and positive comments from peers keep us improving the courseware until we reach this level. We believe that we need to learn a lot of things in the future to keep improving ourselves. ​

There are several problems faced during the courseware development process, but we manage to sit down and solve the problems together. As for example, we encounter the technical problems usually involve the coding and use of action script. We manage to find the solutions by Google it in the internet and ask for help from the expert friend. Another problem is to create the sense of unity for the whole design of the courseware. Because we separately design our own part, we have to make sure there are guidelines and certain concept to follow in terms of our design. That includes the typography, images and template of the courseware. We try our best to make it suitable and match the theme of the courseware. ​

This group project was probably one of the largest projects we'd undertaken and it taught us a lot about group dynamics and the importance of design. A clear design allowed each member of the group to work relatively detached and meant that there were fewer stopping points along the way. The experience of
this project will influence how we  start projects in the future, in that we plan to invest more time in
creating a design before starting work on implementation.

Final Presentation

Alhamdulillah, finally we manage to finish our full version of the courseware. Today we have presented our courseware to be evaluated by peers and Prof Jamal. we get positive feedback from them, and that's make us quite happy and relieved. We take every comments and suggestion as the point to improve our courseware in the future. Now we have to prepare for the final report. As usual, our group has discussed and divide the task to each group members to be fullfilled on estimated time.

Screenshots of final courseware English Form 2 - What People Do

Montage, Main Menu, Song, Conversation

 

  

Let's Spell

 

 

 

 

 

Let's Do

 

 

Let's WH

 

 

Let's Write

 

Let's Guess

 

Exit

Courseware Evaluation and Improvement: What People Do

From the feedback that we get on previous presentation comments and after the formative evaluation of the courseware, these are some improvements that made by our group before final presentation..

	Weakness found from formative/peer evaluation	Changes have been made
1.	Template is not so standard for every main scenes for activities	Standardize template for every main scenes activities
2.	Inappropriate background colour with text colour.	Made text colour in contrast with background colour.
3.	Sound system is not functioning well.	Fixed the sound system and add a mute button in order for user to control their learning.
4.	Exit the system when exit button is clicked.	Ask conformation to leave the system after the exit button is clicked.
5.	Confusion for user in the 'Let's Write' activity.	A divider for each words are provided to avoid confusion.

Courseware Testing and Evaluation

Testing and Evaluating your own multimedia courseware can help you spot problems and make

appropriate changes.

It helps to have somebody else evaluate and test the courseware for you, but you can probably

gain some benefit even if you go through the procedure yourself.

Courseware Evaluation vs Courseware Testing

Testing implies matching a prescribed set of quantifiable criteria against performance to find

errors. For example, to check :

• if the design ideas which are applied are working;
• if the message is communicated perfectly or not;
• If multimedia and interactive elements work properly.
• everything that is used in the presentation is
• relevant to the intended audience, if not then what part is to be changed;

Evaluation is wider in that it is not looking for specific errors but improvements to the design during development or when the program is finished. The things to notice are :

• what is working well; what are the strengths of the
• project; what are clients saying about it;
• what do they like or dislike; is the objective being accomplished;
• if the entire project is to be done over again, what would be done differently.

11th Week: Visual # Pleasing to the eyes or more?

Before taking this course, my perception towards visual functions are that pleasing to the eyes, have elements such as balance and unity and some some sorts of arts. However, the visual function is more than important in designing the courseware. 

The visual interface gives the impression of the whole courseware and motivates learners to use the courseware. Eventhough  we design the courseware aligned to the learning theories and have good information and interaction design, without good visual design the courseware will not be effective to meet the objectives and specifications.

And I believe that the most important consideration in choosing visual interface / theme of the courseware is the need of audience. The visual must match the criteria of the audience. Example; kids, teen, adults etc.

Critical Task in Visual Design

• Define the visual theme and style
• Design a system of screen layouts
• Create the structural elements of each screen (background, windows, etc)
• Create the control elements
• Integrate the media elements
• Create PROTOTYPE Screens

10th week: 40% Prototype Critique

This week we present our 40% prototype. We get some positive feedbacks from peers and Dr J. We really appreciated that. And we'll try to improve our work.

Some screen shots of our courseware (2nd edition prototype)

Main Menu: Edited by Ashikhin

Set Induction: Edited by Syakira

Let's Spell: Edited by Syakira

Let's Do: Edited by Cik Ku Rohaya / Ashikin

Let's Wh: Edited by Cik Ku Rohaya / Ashikin

Let's Write: Edited by Farhana

Guess Me: Edited by Farhana

9th Week: Working On It!

Again..the class is canceled this week..but no worries..we sit together to work on our courseware project.

We work on our 40% prototype that is scheduled to be presented on the following week.. The atmosphere is quite intense because we just come back from our holidays..however we try our best to produce something..