[ajrobson]

I am going to make an interactive java tutor in director, the key word being interactive , can anybody suggest what they would like to see in such a product? Any help will be fantastic!!

[wookie2u]

I'd like to see an interactive Swing tutorial... I believe it'd be a really good way to learn the Swing API, which drove me absolutely nuts for a week or so... it's just so big and cumbersome, and the tutorials are all so idiomatic.

[ajrobson]

Thanks for the reply, in what way would you like it to be interactive? I have had a few ideas like putting quiz questions at the end of lessons etc put I would like people's views on how to set out the lessons.

I want the user to pick a lesson but not to simply sit there and read for x minutes then do a quiz at the end, as anybody got any suggetions how to make the learning part more interactve? audio or video for example

[nick43137]

Hey, you could have like two seperate boxes one the text and when they click like 'Make this Interactive' or something the second box opens and they can do whatever there...like this.




So when they click 'Make me interactive' whatever part their on the second box kicks in and the lesson continues but interactive!

Hope this helps at all....


EDIT: Well, the box wont show up right....but I hope you got the idea!

[wookie2u]

Have a look at the "try it now" approach at w3schools. For example http://www.w3schools.com/html/tryit....ml_form_submit. I think a similar setup for a tutorial on the various Swing controls and layouts would be effective... allowing the student to get "immediate feedback" on SMALL changes to a working example.

IMHO, Quizs are ineffective outside the classroom simply because most people don't do them. I've done quit a few CBT courses in my time, and the poorest ones mixed the "quiz questions" in with the instruction. I found the mix rather confusing, as has to think about "how to navigate the course" as apposed to thinking about the course material.

I think the best ever learning aid is a "solved problem", especially for computer programming. In this mode you present a problem, then present one (or more) solutions to that problem, and then discusses that (those) solution(s), pointing out the new an interesting concepts which have been introduced. If your presenting several possible solutions you typically do the "stepwise" refinement.. explaining why one solution is better than the others. This works especially well for fundamental programming constructs like selection and iteration.

I personally prefer exercises and challenges over quiz's. For example :
In chapter 2 we covered selection with the "if" statement and iteration with the "do while" and the "for" loop. Here's the completed code from the last example which prints "Hello World" five times, Yeah, pretty boring wasn't it... well, can you figure out how to make it print:
Hello World
Goodbye World
Hello World
Goodbye World
Hello World
by putting an if statement in the for loop? (Hint: if (i%2==0) then "i" is an even number)
If you get stuck hit the "Hint" button to see the solution to a similar problem. If you get completely lost hit the "I Whimp Out!" button to see the completed code.

I'd present all this on a form with a "Try It" button which compiles and runs the code. Eliminating compiler errors could be a problem. I've been thinking about the Visual Programming approach for a while. I stumbled over Alice (http://www.alice.org/) last week, and I think it's a really excellent idea.

This is all just my opinion. I'm not a teacher, nor do I have any training in teaching. But I'm not a bad programmer, and I still remember my "formative years" in the trade... I think I would have enjoyed learning in such an environment.

Good luck with it.

[ajrobson]

Thank you you gave me some really good ideas there, I like the idea of a try it now window but i am not sure how I would make a java compiler in director, i know javascript can be written with director so maybe its not as hard as i am thinking. Anybody got any more suggestions or can help me with the compiler issue please let me hear your thoughts.

[wookie2u]

robbo,

Director is a flash creator isn't it, so I expect that executing anything from it on the client would be disallowed by design, because of the inherent security issues.

I'm a javascript novice, and I really don't what is possible with it, but I imagine that executing external programmes on the client is a no-no, for the same security concerns as flash/director.

I suggest that you could embed your flash presentation in a HTML page, and use a signed applet to allow the user to edit the source code, execute the compiler (on the client) and read it's output back into the applet... and I suspect that you could embed the users applet (thus produced) back into "the page" by using javascript to construct another applet/object tag in the DOM on the fly. Interesting...

I wish you the best of luck with it, and I'll be interested to see whatever you come up with.

Cheers. Keith.

[ajrobson]

Thank you I have been told about a director xtra that might do the job, I will have a look into it. Does anybody know of any CBL for teaching any programming language? that way i can get some ideas as to the layout etc as all i have been able to find is history ones which are aimed at young children so have cartoon like interfaces.

[wookie2u]

What's CBL?

[ajrobson]

computer based learning

[wookie2u]

Dude,

I suggest that you should do a few CBT courses to get a feel for what works and doesn't work.

I've used Books24x7.com before. They've got a large collection of CBT's (Computer Based Training courses) on just about every conceivable computing topic. I'm not spruking Books24x7.com over any other vendor. They are IMHO ridiculously expensive for individuals, at $495/annum, even if you only want to do 1 course, which IMHO should cost about $25.

What I would do in your place is search the edu domain for "Free programming CBT course".

Cheers. Keith.