DEMONSTRATION
RECAL - Using Standards-Driven Component Technologies to
Save Multimedia CDROM Materials from A Lingering Death
Rachel Ellaway, David Dewhurst, and Stewart Cromar The
University of Edinburgh, Scotland
ABSTRACT:
Over the last decade
there has been significant UK government funding initiatives to develop high
quality, often multimedia CDROM materials in healthcare- related disciplines.
However, because the content and pedagogical design of these materials is
inherently linked to the run-time delivery mechanism, as the program ages, it
is less and less able to be run on modern equipment. Already many otherwise
excellent programs are now unusable for just this reason.
The RECAL Project at
the University of Edinburgh is developing approaches to harvest the often high
quality educational content from these programs. This will be achieved by
disaggregating existing multimedia CD-ROMs into their constituent learning
objects and pedagogical design, and then providing easy-to-use tools for reassembling
and running them using a component-based approach that manages run-time,
content and pedagogy separately from each other. RECAL is using a standards and
specifications based approach for recording the pedagogical design and learning
object metadata, and developing an object repository for the media assets
themselves and a Macromedia Flash run-time engine for delivery.
The key aspect of
this approach is the pedagogical design expressed and held in an external
parameter file to the run-time engine. The parameter file is written in XML and
is read in by the Flash engine at run-time, allowing the new program to
populate itself based on the design and parameters in the XML file. Different
versions of the XML parameter file will cause the program to run in different
configurations.
The project, which is
specifically working in the area of providing e-alternatives to using animals
in experiments, will also be engaging with authors in other countries to
provide different language variations. An author will simply need to translate
the parameter file to create a different language version of the program. This
approach also allows authors to add or remove components; they can add data
from an experiment here, remove a question there and change the look and feel
of the program to meet local requirements.
Because the pedagogy
and content will be stored in a standards and specifications-compliant format,
when the Flash run-time becomes obsolete, the program design and media assets
will still be available and able to be run in subsequent run-time platforms.
This approach is also being used to future-proof the development of new
multimedia programs. This paper will demonstrate this approach and the benefits
for developers, authors and the educational community as a whole.
BENEFIT TO PARTICIPANTS ATTENDING SESSION:
Not supplied
Rachel Ellaway
MVM Learning
Technology Section
The University of
Edinburgh
Hugh Robson Link
Building
George Square
Edinburgh EH8 9XD
Phone: +44 131 651
1749
mailto:rachel.ellaway@ed.ac.uk
CO-AUTHORS:
Dr David Dewhurst
Stewart Cromar
MVM Learning
Technology Section
The University of
Edinburgh
Hugh Robson Link
Building
George Square
Edinburgh EH8 9XD