Aspects of courseware authoring

Abstract

In this Special Issue of the Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, attention is given to the new image of 'courseware'. A collection of contributions originating from the University of Twente discusses aspects of this changing image. Now what is changing? From the contributions some strong impressions can be derived. Courseware, the generic term used for educational software and related paper materials, is no longer to be seen as fixed, local, unifunctional and unimedial. The evolution of courseware from being a unimedial product (say of an ASCII-based type) in the direction of becoming a multimedia product has, of course, been going on for some years already. Multimedia products, especially in the sphere of entertainment, combining popular music, video clips, and arcade type games, are fast becoming a large selling products. Boosting a market among young people, one can nevertheless ask if from an educational point of view, such CD-Rom, and CD-I based entertainment products contribute much to educational practice. But, of course, the technology can be used quite well for educational purposes, and there can be no doubt that it will be. The form that multimedia products for education will take is not yet well established. Maybe the dominant metaphor will be 'explorable worlds' perhaps contained in 'virtual reality space', or the dominant metaphor maybe 'electronic books' coming in various forms such as 'moving picture books', 'electronic study books', 'talking books' and so on. A considerable number of publications indicate that the electronic book metaphor will become very powerful in the coming decades. The technical format of such books has not yet been settled; some authors perceive a definite future for hypermedia structures whilst others opt for the database approach and its various lines of successors. The technical format, no doubt again, will be discussed further and may not ever be established in definitive form. This should not bother us too much as long as the 'courseware' products, that will be obtainable and carried by such formats, are of good educational value and thus effective for teaching and learning purposes. At the moment, we are confronted with some other aspects of the 'new image' of courseware. It is no longer to be (only) a 'fixed' product, designed