CIMEL: Constructive, collaborative Inquiry-based
Multimedia E-Learning*
William M Pottenger, Assistant Professor,
610-758-3454, pottenger@eecs.lehigh.edu
G. Drew Kessler, Assistant Professor, 610-758-4818, kessler@eecs.lehigh.edu
Martin Herr, Undergraduate Developer, 610-758-6305, mah2@lehigh.edu
Harriet Jaffe, Research Assistant, 610-758-6305, haj4@lehigh.edu
Soma Roy, Research Assistant, 610-758-3737, sor4@lehigh.edu
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer
Science
Lehigh University
19 Memorial Drive West
Bethlehem PA 18015
We are developing
a multimedia framework for constructive and collaborative, inquiry-based
learning for introductory, upper-level and graduate computer science courses. Constructive
learning goes beyond learning by receiving knowledge, to learning by
building systems, with immediate, visual feedback. Collaborative
learning encourages students to interact with instructors and librarians, via both
live links and remote-controlled “show me” sessions or by reviewing a
multimedia FAQ of recorded “show me” sessions. Inquiry-based learning
guides the student into pursuing exploratory research in a community of
students and scholars. A reference librarian persona will suggest research
topics, then help extract content from both traditional library resources as
well as dynamically mined material, answer typical questions and help construct
annotated bibliographies, reviews and research proposals. The framework will be an integrated,
multi-track model, allowing students to select content according to their
background, interests and course requirements. Within this general framework,
we plan to develop content for three courses in the Computer Science curriculum,
ranging from Introduction to Computing (CS1) at the freshman level to
Object-Oriented Software Engineering (OOSE) at the graduate level. We have gathered baseline evaluation data
for the CS1 and OOSE courses that is currently under analysis.
Since the project
began in October 2000, we have developed a prototype for OOSE with Abstract
Data Types as our sample content. The prototype includes an exercise to
find emerging trends in topics related to students’ research interests by
mining relevant textual databases. The reference
librarian persona guides the user through the process of detecting such trends
in a “show me” session. A network interface specification outlines how CIMEL
will facilitate collaborative sessions between students, instructors and
librarians. A review panel,
consisting of the project team and external experts, will assess the prototype, analysis and design
documents, programming guidelines, and evaluation plan. We will then design and implement an alpha
version of the multimedia, collaborative interface and hot topics engine by the
end of the summer, and evaluate it in classes next fall. The
prototype, documents, and evaluation materials can be seen at http://www.eecs.lehigh.edu/~cimel.
*
This project is funded by National Science Foundation (Grant No : EIA-0087977)