JISC

Start date: 1 April 2005

End date: 30 September 2005

Funding programme: e-Learning Frameworks and Tools programme

Project website: http://www.hull.ac.uk/esig/makingtracks.html

JISC theme(s): e-Learning

MakingTracks will integrate the work of the well established and popular online NRICH project at the University of Cambridge with the outcomes of the ELF funded project ISIS. It will produce an institutional demonstrator deploying the ISIS toolkit and be informed by the developments from the completion of the DEL funded ASSIS project.  The pedagogy of the existing Learning Trails will be enabled by the ELF technology and constructed in conformance with appropriate standards. MakingTracks will improve access to both the resources and their deployment ensuring the sustainability of these materials and the availability of them beyond the duration of the project.

Aims and Objectives

MakingTracks aims to make better use of the NRICH archive by designing and packaging Learning Trails which can be explored by learners and parents at home, and which can inform and guide teaching in the classroom. We expect to future-proof these trails and maximise their reusability by adopting IMS specifications.

• It is expected that Simple Sequencing will provide a way to encode navigation that will help guide learners
• Trails will be built around interactive investigative environments constructed in Flash. A learner’s explorations and responses will inform the rules of the sequencing service, and guide progress by suggesting further enrichment material at an appropriate level of difficulty.
• This project aims to construct two such rich trails as demonstrators.
• During this development we will monitor and report on how the educational designers at NRICH start to understand the use of the ELF toolkit and how effectively they are able to relate to and make use of it.

Project Methodology

The work for MakingTracks will be split between the partners using their strengths and ensuring separation of the evaluation by Cambridge from the original software developer, Icodeon. Interoperability will be addressed by generating sequences of content that complies with the SCORM 2004 standard. These interactions can be generated using the Captivate tool from Macromedia, removing some of the significant overhead usually associated with the production of such materials. Project scope will include evaluation of the ISIS toolkit and the creation of a demonstrator using the player from the Assis project. The Assis player provides a means of integrating adaptive sequences with assessment items. This project will not be evaluating the assessment component from Assis, based on APIS toolkit. The critical success factors are: the creation of the demonstrator testbed including the installation and deployment of the toolkit and player; and the generation of suitable sequences by Cambridge with support from the rest of the project team.

Implications/Deliverables/Stakeholders

The project will produce concrete examples that link both the technology and pedagogy strands of current JISC e-Learning developments. This will include templates of suggested ways that learning experiences can be standardised, structured and reused. It is hoped that this effective combination of innovative pedagogy and technology will encourage the future take up of such ELF technologies by other academics in other HE and FE institutions.

Final reports

This project completed in October 2005 and the following reports are available at the bottom of this page

1. MakingTracks final reports
2. ISIS Software Quality evaluation
3. ISIS Toolkit Utility, Usability and User Evaluation report