Adobe Success Story

· Generator automates the production of online course materials.
· Instructors with no programming experience can now develop, deliver, and edit online course material from anywhere at anytime using a browser-based interface.
· Learning system dynamically adapts online courses to the learning levels and styles of a diverse group of students.

Project Details

"Macromedia software products are easy to use, and at the same time, they provide cutting-edge features and make our team more productive." Roger Mundell, Manager of Electronic Distributed Learning Centre for Economic Development & Applied Research

Royal Roads University

Created by the Government of British Columbia in 1995 as a special purpose university, Royal Roads University offers both undergraduate and graduate degree programs, enabling working professionals to attain advanced degrees without leaving their job.

Equipped with Macromedia Dreamweaver, Generator, and Flash, Royal Roads develops personalized, interactive, multimedia courseware for deployment over the Web. Macromedia software products allow instructors with no programming experience to develop, deliver, and edit online course material from anywhere at anytime using a browser-based interface.

Creating a flexible learning environment

As soon as Royal Roads decided to deliver course materials via standard Web browsers (rather than through a proprietary client), scholars began searching for the right software products to develop and implement the online learning curricula. Many Royal Roads students work in offices behind network firewalls or use slow analog modems; so security, bandwidth, and scalability were major issues.

Royal Roads also wanted to address the differences in learning style and prior knowledge among its diverse student body. Roger Mundell, Manager of Electronic Distributed Learning (EDL) at the Centre for Economic Development & Applied Research (CEDAR), explains, "We looked at the success of online vendors like Amazon.com, which use database-driven content to individually tailor each shopper's experience. We wanted to use a similar system to adapt the online courses to the learning levels and styles of a diverse group of students."

Mundell and his team reviewed dozens of computer-based training technologies. Unfortunately, the vast majority of these systems deliver static pages modeled on classroom delivery techniques. Many online learning systems are geared to K-12 or correspondence-style education and attempt to simulate the classroom environment in the online world. Finally, most online learning products evolved before the advent of the Web and are not optimized to deliver dynamic content through Web browsers.

"We found our solution with Macromedia's Web-based authoring and delivery tools. After creating a short course using Dreamweaver, we populated it with content from a Microsoft Access database and delivered it over the Web. This pilot project proved the principle on a small scale. Then we saw a Macromedia presentation about Generator interfacing directly with a third-party database. That demo really convinced us that Macromedia had taken a leadership position in Web-based authoring and delivery technology for online learning."

Using Generator and Dreamweaver to create course templates

Royal Roads quickly setup a highly productive system for developing new online course material. An instructor defines the learning outcomes for a specific course. An instructional designer uses Dreamweaver and Flash (with Generator authoring templates) to author new course templates based on the learning outcomes. These graphic templates establish the overall look-and-feel of each course module.

Macromedia authoring products provide creative design freedom and flexibility, enabling Royal Roads to break away from the traditional design of educational materials, namely, sequential learning. A Learning Style Test lets students determine their preferred method of study. Choices range from traditional methods—where students begin with an abstract overview and then move, sequentially, towards practical applications—to more hands-on methods—where students begin with problem solving and then move backwards into theory. Then each course module is presented dynamically in four different formats, allowing students to choose the learning style that best suits them.

Generator and Oracle 8i™ serve up dynamic content

Royal Roads uses Macromedia Generator to automate the production of online course materials by separating design and content. Generator interfaces with an Oracle 8i relational database and acts as the dynamic graphics server. Using a browser-based interface, instructors populate the course database with multimedia content: text, graphics, video, or virtually anything else. Generator combines the content in the database with the course templates dynamically, and then builds the Web site graphics and interactive applications.

Macromedia Generator offers several key benefits to the online learning program at Royal Roads. To begin with, students benefit immensely from the personalization features. For example, students access the course templates, which are customized to individual navigation choices. Thus, students can utilize whichever of the four available learning styles best suits them.

Instructors also benefit greatly from the Generator model, since it allows them to edit their course content at anytime, from anywhere. Mundell's team set up a simple program that allows instructors to interface with the content database from any Web browser. Generator automatically regenerates every Web page daily, so any changes made to the content database are picked up by the templates and are reflected immediately in the course materials.

Generator also allows instructors to send electronic messages to students quickly and easily. These messages appear on the student's opening page when they log into a course. Royal Roads finds that this messaging system increases one-to-one interaction between students and instructors, and students like the convenience of not having to check message boards.

Unlike the one-to-many learning model, whereby a single instructor lectures a classroom, the Generator approach allows for a many-to-one learning model, whereby one student benefits from the knowledge of the instructor and that of every other student in the class. For example, students can annotate course materials and add recommended readings to a scrolling list that appears on every student's opening page. Generator compiles all of this new information, and Flash delivers it to the students.

Mundell and his team are constantly designing new online course materials that take advantage of the advanced interactivity features in Generator. Data-driven balance sheets, for example, allow students to play with financial variables and then see the effects on the bottom line in real time.

Flash delivers high-impact graphics with fast downloads

Royal Roads uses Macromedia Flash to deliver course materials to students, which solves several key technical issues for the online learning program. Vector-based Flash sites play as they download, or stream, allowing for immediate feedback from students. Streaming enables Royal Roads to deliver highly interactive multimedia course materials—including beautiful graphics, long-form animations, and other dazzling effects—over slow analog modem connections.

For students who can only connect to the Web occasionally, a Flash movie of an online course can be downloaded once, stored in the user's cache, and then played back anytime using the Flash Player.

"One of our students was a Navy Commander who was on a ship during most of his 12-week course," said Mundell. "He was able to get the Internet through a satellite uplink, but only with great difficulty. By downloading the entire Flash movie, he worked his way through the course materials offline. He then went back online, occasionally, to take quizzes, interact with his study groups, or receive instructor feedback."

Automatic resizing of Web site graphics is another important benefit of Flash. The instructors at Royal Roads edit their course materials frequently, making changes that can distort Web page layouts. Flash automatically scales every Web page to fit a user's screen. Hence, students always see a perfect layout, and Mundell's team doesn't have to change course templates whenever an instructor makes a change to content.

Flash also enables Royal Roads to deliver highly interactive navigation interfaces, such as rollovers, drag-and-drops, and a wide variety of other functions, which ensure that students get hands-on practice with course materials.

Conclusion

Web-based authoring and delivery software products from Macromedia have provided Royal Roads an impressive return on its investment. Mundell's development team is relatively small: one person does all of the instructional design and template work, another person codes the database, and a third person manages all data entry. Yet in less than one year, this three-person team has developed five online courses averaging 200 hours per course. Online courses on finance, ecommerce, and environmental business management are being rolled out in the spring semester of 2000.

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