Loughborough University,
Civil and Building Engineering Department,
Ashby Road,
Loughborough,
Leicestershire,
LE11 3TU

Contact: Julian Mackenzie
Tel: 01509 228794
Email: j.mackenzie@lboro.ac.uk

Aims:
The aim of the exercise was to :

• provide a new delivery technique to increase student attention and interest;
  
• increase flexibility;
  
• develop innovative teaching and learning techniques;
  
• facilitate student centred learning both on and off the campus;
  
• introduce IT into the module/unit.

Resources:
It was felt that the resource had to be flexible and have a variety of formats in order to maintain student interest. Computers were chosen as the delivery means as it enables students to gain access to a large database of graphical and pictorial images. The computer application Question Mark was chosen because it was the only package available at the time to manipulate textural and graphical formats. Delivery at the front end is respectable - albeit not as polished as some newer packages, it is secure when networked and has good technical support. The site licence was £900, which by current standards is reasonable and although there is now a web-based version the current specification will satisfy requirements.

Details:
Construction technology is predominately a practical subject that involves a large variety of architectural & structural details, plant & equipment and methods & techniques to construct and maintain the built environment. In order to adequately address these learning issues, graphical and pictorial mediums are used during lectures and tutorials. Traditionally slides have been utilised to show real life operations. However, due to the volume of material, speed of delivery, and lack of discourse this resource is time consuming, inflexible and non-interactive. Therefore, the learning objective was to allow students to access large volumes of annotated drawings, pictures and details, both during formal lectures/tutorials and at their own convenience elsewhere.

Operating Procedures

Illustrative examples of CAL pages

As part of the department's approach to flexible learning initiative, slides and photographs of common building technology operations have been digitised to form a database of interactive images. The database of 140 photos is divided into sections, Site Investigation, Foundations, Temporary Works etc.

Responses to Correct and Incorrect answers

On entering a section students are shown a picture with a corresponding question. A correct answer is acknowledged, whilst a dialogue box that contains the correct answer and a brief explanation follows incorrect responses. The question responses are varied and can be 'fill in the missing word', 'move cursor to identify' to straightforward textural and numerical answers.

Examples of question choice

Once a student has worked through a section their score is shown and they can continue on to another set of questions. The students are shown how to gain access to the database during a tutorial. Students are then encouraged to practice on all of the sections within the database in their own time. The students can access the database from most computer facilities on the campus and even from their own rooms in halls of residence. Access is gained by logging on with their normal password. A fortnight later the students are tested on 40 randomly generated questions from the database. This assessment represents 15% of the Construction Technology Management module.

Evaluation:

The results from the assessment are automatically logged and a programme analyses the results to provide a breakdown of the answers. From the analysis the lecturer can determine: which question were answered correctly and incorrectly, a list of the actual responses and who made them, time spent in answering the question etc.

This breakdown of the results allows the lecturer to determine which questions the students struggle with and hence which areas need to have more time spent on explanation. As a result of the monitoring ability of the program, the assessment can be remotely set. Thus allowing the students to sit the test in their own time and place.

Benefits:

A frame of reference by which to judge the overall success of this CAL package is difficult to construct. However, several pointers have emerged which indicate that it is achieving its objectives.

• students are accessing the database in their own time, which suggests that the exercise is stimulating their interests;
  
• feedback from the students is very positive and many departments have adopted this system across the campus as a means of administering basic assessments;
  
• results of the assessments return high marks and a high average mark.

Issues and Lessons to be Learnt:
The initial Building Technology version suffered as a result of poor grammar, question structure, inconsistent formatting and photo quality. As the concept was relatively new the visual quality issues were not a problem that the students identified. However, the spelling and sentence construction reduced credibility. These issues were addressed when the first major revamp was carried out.

With any question and answer scenario there is always the potential problem with student perception and interpretation of what is required. This was demonstrated when the Software Experience survey exposed a number of potential misrepresentations. The QA feedback loop (student questionnaire) hopefully addresses these issues and is constantly implemented.

When the package was last implemented a problem occurred with one question, which had the affect of stopping the accumulated score at the time at which the question arose within the random test, regardless of how many questions the respondent correctly answered. Although the culprit question was found, the reason why it reset the accumulated score to zero was not determined. So at the time we took the question 'out of the loop' and subsequently rewrote the question utilising a different format.

Another problem experienced was overloading the server, this phenomena is not unusual when not enough back-up protection is included. In the short term we overcame this by embedding links to the test in a web page and gaining access through a different server.

After the assessments were carried out the CAA server was 'taken apart and rebuilt'. As a result no further problems arose.

Ongoing Developments:
The BTEC CAL programme started as a funded project into the development of a computer database of images, predominately to be used for teaching and learning support. Over a period of three years it has developed into a stand-alone application, which can be used for teaching and assessment. Being 'home grown it lacks the presentational style of commercial packages. However, it satisfies the specific criteria for which it was designed, and fits neatly into a teaching and assessment scheme.

The tactical plan is to increase the number of images within the database to cover differing aspects of construction technology including, mechanical and electrical installations, drainage etc.

Strategically the programme will look to develop the tool to incorporate more subjective reasoning within the questions, utilising quantitative software and content analysis.

References, Further Reading and Sources of Further Related Information:

1. Barker, P. & Yeates, H. (1985), Introducing Computer Assisted Learning. Prentice Hall International. England
2. Smith, P.R. ed (1986), Advances in Computer Assisted Learning Selected Proceedings from the CAL 85 Symposium. Pergamon Press. London