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..

8th Week: Mid Semester Break

This week we have a week of mid semester break..Hurray!

But, we keep track with the progress of our project..Individually we keep searching for useful resource and information to be gather in our courseware later..

7th Week: Group Discussion

This week, unfortunately the class in canceled...(^_^)

So we do some discussion between our group members to discuss few things regarding the courseware:

• define the concept / theme of our courseware 
• take a look at courseware examples to get some  bright ideas
• brainstorming

6th Week:Information Design & Interaction Design

Information Design

There are five things to think about in the process of Information Design:

• Message : What information do you wish to share?
• Audience: Whom do you wish to share your message with?
• Purpose: How and why do you want to share your message with the audience?
• Background: What does your intended audience already know about the subject you are discussing.
• Structure: How can your message organize effectively?

Interaction Design

"Interaction design is about shaping digital things for people’s"


-Jonas Lowgreen (Interaction-Design.org)

Interaction design aims to define and facilitate interaction between human beings by means of a product or a service. It focuses on the possibilities to create and encourage behavior facilitating an exchange between people. 

During the conceptual phase an interaction designer works with such notions as:

• mental model (a person’s representation of a system or an environment)
• metaphors;
• “mapping” (availability of system control elements and their impact);
• real or perceived affordance of an object(the object’s capacity to suggest its own function);
• senses (sight, touch, sound, smell...);
• user environment (immersion, augmented reality, virtual worlds, tactile interfaces...)

5th Week: Analyze, Design & Critique..

For this week, we are required to present our design document to the classroom. We did what we think we could make, a simple design but we think the strategies of our courseware will meet the constructivisme theory of learning. But, according to Dr Jamal we mismatch the elements with the strategies of implementation. We realize that the elements must be synchronize and parallel with the strategy of implementation.

I am also quite impressed at some of other group that comes out with a very detailed design, which is "can sell" according to Dr Jamal. I do think that our group should review the design document again after get some ideas from the positive comments from Dr. Jamal.

Then, I came out with the conclusion that the design document is not necessary to be very complex and heavy because it may create many technical problem later on. But, it has to be precise with all elements aligned with the concept that desired to be delivered.

TOO MUCH, TOO LITTLE OR TOO LATE TO DECIDE?

4th Week: Design Document

For this week, I was unable to attend the class because I went to my hometown in Terengganu. But I manage to catch up with my group members about the topic that the class discussion this week - Design Document. After all, what is design document is about?

From my search in Wikipedia, design document can be defined as...

• A written description of a software product, that a software designer writes in order to give a software development team an overall guidance of the architecture of the software project.
• usually accompanies an architecture diagram with pointers to detailed feature specifications of smaller pieces of the design.
• required to coordinate a large team under a single vision.
• needs to be a stable reference, outlining all parts of the software and how they will work.
• is commanded to give a fairly complete description, while maintaining a high-level view of the software.

And in my personal point of view, design document provide a platform or guidlines for the courseware developer to implement their project to meet the specific objectives

Regarding our courseware project, we have a discussion to construct our design document for our project. the most important part is to know what theory and strategies to be applied in the coursware to meet to objective and the needs.

The design document format are as below:

3rd Week: Fundamental of Multimedia Courseware Design

For this week, we discussed about the fundamental of Multimedia Courseware Design. The basic idea can be represent in this diagram;

The analogy of pyramid explains the fundamental of design which is consisted of element of Content, Forms (Visuals) , Functions (Technology) and Purpose (Economics). The design should consider the Economics factor as the objective or to determine the purpose of the courseware. The content was displayed as a brick to build the pyramid. The element of Visual and Technology must be balance to create a good courseware.

In this week, we also discussed abot the key factor to consider in planning a courseware. Some of them are;

• Well structured
• Easy navigate
• Quick download
• Simplicity
• Consistency
• Engagement

And also the types of Learning Theory to be consider to adapt to the software such as;

• Constructivisme
• Cognitisme
• Behaviorisme

The multimedia couseware design consisted of three major parts;

• Information Design
• Interaction Design
• Visual Design