Controling a multimedia CAL network in undergraduate pharmacy education using a courseware management system

American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education,  Summer 1999  by Stevens, Robert G,  Lewis, David J A,  Sewell, Robert D

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Managing an ever increasing range of CAL software is a problem for many educators. Our own experience of accessing more than 70 different computer based tutorials under Windows 3.11 led to a confusing display of program groups and icons which undergraduates found difficult to use. To address these problems we installed a prototype courseware management system (Caleidoscope), which prepared structured navigation menus. The manager provided facilities for logging the use of each software package (activity) and for preparing user profiles for each registered user. The system proved successful as a navigation aid and for acquiring performance data. A survey of undergraduate users indicated approval and acceptance of the navigation architecture.

INTRODUCTION

Client/Server Networks

Client/Server networking systems use a series of small, interconnected file server computers to store and distribute applications and data to individual PCs. File servers use extended PC architectures, allowing the use of the popular MSDOS, Windows and Macintosh operating systems(1). Novell Netware is a commonly used networking operating system for Client/Server systems. The courseware management system (CMS), Caleidoscope, described in this paper is mounted on a PC-based, Windows 3.1 (networking), MS-DOS 6, Novell Netware platform.

The Pharmacy CAL Network

The use of computer assisted learning (CAL) in the Welsh School of Pharmacy (WSP) started in 1993 with the replacement of two pharmacology practical classes with Multimedia simulations(2,3). The software was popular with both staff and students and the intervening period has seen a general acceptance that such simulations have a role to play in the teaching of pharmacology to pharmacy students(4). The range of CAL activities in the undergraduate course has been progressively extended to include:

practical simulations;

tutorials which either reinforce lecture material or act as stand-alone student-centered learning courses;

multiple choice tests;

notes, diagrams and animations used in lectures (added after a course to aid revision).

Over 75 computer based activities, with varying degrees of sophistication, and created by a variety of authoring tools, are now available. The majority of teaching materials are derived from two sources, The Pharmacy Consortium for Computer Aided Learning (PCCAL) and the PharmaCALogy consortium. Both consortia are funded by the Teaching and Learning Technology Programme (TLTP) initiative funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England. Our own "in house" developments have resulted in eight multimedia tutorial packages(5) and supplementary notes to lectures contributed by about 45 percent of teaching staff and mainly created in PowerPoint. Figure I shows the increase in computer assisted learning packages (both tutorials and supplementary notes) in the period 1992 to 1997.

Our experience is common to many educational departments(6,7) and university computer services have been faced with the problem of how best to make increasing amounts of multimedia courseware available to students via networks (8,9). An integrated and flexible method of software delivery is needed to present a wide range of packages which each make different run-time demands on the network. This paper describes our experience with a CMS which has been used to control our pharmacy teaching system over a period of approximately three years. The intention is to give a brief introduction to an approach that others may wish to consider in the provision of CAL to pharmacy students.

SOFTWARE MANAGEMENT

Although specific requirements will vary, a CMS needs to include the following:

provision of a front-end or "shell" to existing software that provides students with orientation, searching and navigation facilities;

integration of courseware that has been developed in any authoring or programming environment. (e.g., materials developed in Toolbook (Asymetrix), Authorware and Director (Macromedia), Visual Basic (Microsoft), C );

integration of documents created using standard applications (e.g., lecture notes created in PowerPoint (Microsoft), or a tutorial developed using a macro in Excel (Microsoft) );

integration of commercial applications;

measurement and reporting of student usage of software;

management of student assessment.

Prior to the introduction of a CMS, the delivery of courseware at the WSP was managed by a combination of Windows 3.1 program manager icons and front end menus constructed within each teaching package. Although these methods were acceptable for a small number of courseware applications, there were practical limitations. With a large number of Windows Program Manager icons, many users found it difficult to assimilate the breadth and depth of the available courseware. Students were not always clear of their current location within a system, and got lost easily. Another major drawback was that there was also no easy way to detect when an application had terminated and consequently, it was not possible to provide usage statistics.