Performer: an instrument for multidisciplinary courseware teams to share knowledge and experiences
One of the traditional problems in courseware development that is recognized as hard to solve, is the communication and co-operation between various disciplines in project teams that are working on a courseware product [Alber (1996) Multimedia: a management perspective. California: Wadsworth; Boyle (1997) Design for multimedia learning. UK: Prentice-Hall; Chambers & Whiting (1990) Communications of the ACM, 23(6), 332]. It is only recently that research about using computers in education also focuses on the project team operational processes [van Aalst & van der Mast (1998) In A. Sutcliffe, J. Ziegler, & P. Johnson (Eds.), Designing effective and usable multimedia systems. Proceedings of the IFIP Working Group 13.2 Conference. Stuttgart: Kluwer]. Most existing research addresses the added value of the product for the end-user (the learner), or development methods for courseware products. However, in our view both of these (important) aspects partly rely on the way in which the various courseware development disciplines can communicate and co-operate. In other words, facilitating and improving these processes is likely to result in higher quality courseware that is more satisfactory to learners. We present an instrument that facilitates courseware development teams in sharing each other's knowledge and experiences. Statistical measurements have shown significantly more positive experiences within the development teams, on a number of multidisciplinary themes. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
interactive learning environments architectures for educational learning system