International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Vol XXXV, Part B6. Istanbul 2004
Name of the course
Contents
of the course
Topic 1
Topic 2
Introduction
into
selected topic
Learning helps
Literature
Self evaluation
Learning program 1
Learning program 2
Contacts
Receive tasks
Send solutions
Final tasks
Instructions
how to proceed
with the learning
Figure 3. User interface of the described e-learning course
4.4 Self-evaluation tests
Multiple-choice quizzes are usable for a self-evaluation whether
the read literature was understood. The presented questions are
answered by marking one of two or three possibilities.
4.5 Assignments
Assignments (tasks) are given to participants after each topic.
These are a couple of questions, which have to be answered by
a short text or some calculations. The participants will receive
from the teacher a standard answer or an individual answer.
After reviewing the comments he or she may wish to read again
some of the literature or use the learning programs before
continuing to the next topic. Figure 4 makes the steps of
learning more clear. Frequently asked questions and the answers
may be placed in a conference so that all of the participants can
take advantage of them.
4.6 Final assignment
After the participants have worked with all of the topics a final
assignment (task) will be given at the end of the course. The
participants have to pass this test in order to receive the diploma
of successful attendance.
5. TOOLS FOR THE PRODUCTION OF COURSEWARE
The tools for the production of courseware are very similar to
the tools for the production of Web pages. In recent years a
rapid development of design tools for Web pages has taken
place and this is still going on. A good performance of Internet-
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based courseware (as regards speed and safe operation) is
achieved if client and server software is developed. In addition,
the development of computers, networks, and programming
languages has contributed very much so that sophisticated
learning programs can run at the Internet.
The tools of the individual elements of the courseware differ.
They are dealt with in the same order as in the previous chapter
and are based on the development of course "B" of the
EuroSDR e-learning.
5.1 User interface
A Web authoring program produces the user interface as
depicted in Figure 3. "FrontPage" of Microsoft (MS) and
"Dreamweaver" of Macromedia are such programs. The
Netscape composer, which is integrated into the Netscape
browser, is also useful, especially if simple changes (updates)
have to be carried out only. The incompatibility between the
mentioned tools may give problems if several of these programs
are used for the same task. Toolboxes for Web graphics designs
exist, which help to create logos, buttons and templates, and
they can be taken directly from there. An example is (Voska, R.,
2001).
5.2 Literature
The literature is created in MS Word or another text-processing
program and then converted into pdf-format by the same
program or by Acrobat Distiller. In this way the literature is
displayed for all of the participants in the same way.
Presentations at the introductory seminars are produced by
means of Netscape composer in HTML (Hyper Text Markup
Language) and can - after uploading onto a server- be displayed
on a client computer.
Learnin
Literature TS
Short Self-evaluation
Introduction
i c
Receive tasks M 9
n
! f
e
Send r
solutions e
( ; Compare n
/ ; ; Standard S
Topic Topic Review 1] answers e
start end S
Figure 4. Steps at an e-learning course
5.3 Learning programs
The used tools for three different learning programs reach from
programming languages like Java to authoring programs like
Flash MX. More information about these tools can be found in
(Flanagan, D., 2002) and (Leete, G. and E. Finkelstein, 2002),
respectively. The production of courseware already starts with
the preparation of the images and numerical examples.
Programming in MathLab as well as image processing by means
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