Effective courseware development

The use of hypermedia and multimedia technology is perceived as one of the most efficient ways to enhance student access to information and improve learning interaction in the undergraduate computer science course. Such an approach will guarantee high level quality teaching whilst permitting significant reduction in lecturer-student contact hours. In this paper we investigate how some special properties of multimedia data can be handled by conceptual modelling techniques. We propose a simplified conceptual framework for the development of interactive courseware. In our proposal, we examine firstly the static structure of the system focusing on the structure of objects and their relationship to each other while temporarily disregarding the dynamic nature of the system. To simplify the conceptual model construction we use predefined constructs and topic descriptors. In a later stage the conceptual model is used to generate the functional prototype. The dynamic behaviour of the system-flow of control, interactions, sequencing of operations on active objects-is examined in real time using the functional prototype, corrective member, and the feedback loop.<>