Theoretical Discussion About Group ProjectIntroduction
Alan and I are the secondary school teachers in Hong Kong. Alan teaches Design & Technology while I teach Mathematics and Computer. Angle of Elevation and Depression are the topics in Form 3 Mathematics syllabus. According to our experience, students can learn above concepts easily if teacher can use more visual representations instead of words alone. In our group project, we will design an interactive visual representation using ‘Flash’ to explain the concepts of Angle of Elevation and Depression. We hope that the product will help students to understand concepts easily and attract their learning interest.
Process of Group ProjectFirst Step When we posted our proposed storyboard of group project in the Blog, we got some useful feedbacks from classmates. They suggest us to use photos to describe each page of our storyboard instead of words alone. It is believed that people can learn more deeply from words and pictures than from words alone (Mayer, 2005). Visuals can communicate complex ideas with clarity, precision, efficiency and convey the most knowledge in the shortest time in small space.( Tufte ,1983).
Second Step Afterwards, we start to construct a web page for learners to study the concepts of Angle of Elevation and Depression. The contents of web page will consist of explanations, games and quiz. We will design more pictures less words in our group project because we believe that well designed graphics are far more effective than words. Other research throughout the 1990s has also demonstrated that visual displays have supportive effects on communication of information, thinking, and learning (Mayer, 2005). Interactivity can enhance information communication capability of visual display and allow for more information to be meaningfully structured. This can further engage a student to interact with the display and become more active that just passively view the display (Daniel, 2007). Furthermore, carefully constructed pictures as visual text adjuncts can not only have a decorative function, but also have functions of representation, organization, interpretation, and mnemonic encoding (Levin, Anglin & Carney, 1987).
Final Step At the end of April 2007, When we posted our near-completed representation of group project into the Blog, we got a lot of useful feedbacks from Daniel, Ryan and classmates. Firstly, as Daniel stated that visual and interactive representations are not drill and practice, quiz questions, tests or games, they allow a user to explore its content freely and this exploration is often externally directed. So our project should be kept to a single representation displayed on the screen. Since we had created several screens in our project, we should merge the contents and represent the information in a single screen. Secondly, in our visual representation some classmates wonder that is it possible that the angle of elevation is an obtuse angle? In the local textbooks, the angles of elevation and depression are smaller than 90 degrees. After discussed with Daniel and other classmates during the lesson, we change the angle of elevation and depression between 0 to 90 degrees. Thirdly, in our project we found that the skill of placing a mouse cursor over a hotspot area is very useful. The information will appear when necessary and this helps save a lot of space in a visual representation with only one single display. But some classmates mentioned that it was quite difficult to discover the hotspot. As a result, we created some hints inside the visual representation in order to let user know about the hotspot. Fourthly, designing slider is another important feature to know for effective creating of interactive visual representations in Flash. In our group project we designed two sliders in order to allow user to observe the change of Angle of Elevation and Depression. User dragging the slider can change not only numerical values on the screen but also display the movement of the object. The changes in visuals tell the user if a variable represented by the slider increase, it also change the related graphic representation. Some classmates found that the sliders were started at "end". So we will correct it in our final version. Finally, some classmates pointed out that the plane and the ship will not move like this, they should move at a horizontal line. We will amend it in our final product.
Conclusion
After the project we were more clearly about the concept of visual representation. It is not like PowerPoint presentations or web page. It is always a single slide and all information is prepared for the user who can then interrogate it and interact with it. By the way, Thank you very much to Dr. Daniel and other classmates, they gave us some useful suggestions, as a result, we can make our project more reasonable and interactive.
Reference:
1. Mayer, R. E. (2005). The Cambridge handbook of multimedia learning. New York: Cambridge University Press.
2. Tufte, E. R. (1983). The visual display of quantitative information. Cheshire, Connecticut: Graphics Press.
3. Levin, Anglin & Carney, (1987). The psychology of illustration, vol 1 basic research: Springer, New York
4. Daniel Churchill (2007). Interactive representations of information and knowledge. http://wp.cite.hku.hk/
