Design And Implementation Of A Platform For Courseware Designing Based On Knowledge Nodes

With the popularization of Internet, e-learning becomes more important in present information society. Most educational experts concern about the quality of courseware which represents the learning contents and teaching strategies. In order to create high quality courseware, teachers meet a lot of challenges such as the complex composing process, high hurdle for beginners, no standards, no guidance and no formal methods. Though many multimedia courseware designing systems are developed, most of them can not share the network of knowledge nodes. Teachers are still difficult to organize their teaching contents in lectures and classes.The paper presents a three-layer model for making courseware. The basic layer of the model is knowledge nodes. Above, the second layer is teaching strategy, and the third is the representation of knowledge nodes. And based on the model a new courseware designing platform is developed and evaluated. On knowledge nodes layer, the nodes and their relationship are expressed using graph theory, so that they can be processed automatically. On the teaching strategy layer, knowledge nodes are reorganized to design a new teaching process and teaching method. On the third layer, the system produces courseware pages according to a HCI template in which screen layout and color use is defined. With the platform, teachers need not to fiddle with the concrete scripts. After a short time study, they are able to design high quality courseware. Moreover the Share of knowledge node network reduces the burden of recollecting teaching material and raises the efficiency of courseware construction.The paper discusses the technical part of the platform such as system modules, query algorithm and data models. The evaluation of usability of a courseware designed by the system is also concluded.