Courseware System Research Articles

Designing Effective User Interfaces for Web Courseware

Current courseware development has moved to integrate multimedia, the WWW and Internet techniques. We think that the courseware design should not only put teaching materials on the Web and integrate audio/video facilities, but also should focus on other issues, such as user interfaces and software architecture. Our approach is to adapt the general architecture for building a Web site to our courseware development by identifying the roles of system programmers, Web developers, and course designers. The user interfaces is the crucial part for a courseware system. This paper introduces the design for effective user interfaces which can help students' learning.

An Eclectic Model for Evaluating Web Based Continuing Medical Education Courseware Systems

World Wide Web and compact disc-read only memory technologies have introduced new prospects for delivering continuing medical education (CME) to rural and remote physicians. However, evidence concerning the effectiveness of these technologies in providing CME, and approaches to their evaluation, is limited. The rationale for this study was to design a model for evaluating the effectiveness of computer-mediated CME courseware. An eclectic, evaluation-planning matrix was designed by selecting various concepts from the literature and was used in planning and developing the evaluation model. The model was field-tested by evaluating a computer-mediated courseware program on dermatological office procedures, and a meta-evaluation was conducted to assess the effectiveness of the evaluation methods and procedures. The findings suggest that the model was useful in collecting data to inform decision making and to improve the instructional product. The field test results revealed that computer-mediated instruction was effective in delivering CME at a distance.