February 1997 — Features

Print this article | Email this article

Click here to receive your FREE subscription to T.H.E. Journal

Design Standards for Visual Elements and Interactivity for Courseware

The interactive courseware developer should focus on the individual learner, build in active participation, and provide both positive and negative feedback. In closing, the bottom line is "simplicity."

A large number of organizations have invested a great deal of time and money in the technology that will provide training opportunities to individual learners and the organization. An interactive courseware developer owes it to the learner and the organization to provide only the most relevant and intuitive courseware possible.

ICW development requires developers who are not only educationally and technologically attuned to emerging and migrating technologies, but also demonstrate an innate ability to develop educational programs that contain a seamless and intuitive graphical user interface.

Present your message, and only your message. Don't confound it with superfluous graphics, animations, sounds, colors or activities. Be a minimalist in your approach. Think lean.

Make it a challenge to present your message with as few textual and audiovisual stimuli as possible. If you make it too lean and learners have trouble understanding it, you will find that out during formative evaluation.[2] If, however, you put too many "bells & whistles" in your lesson, you will probably never find out about the troubles. All you'll end up doing is using up time unnecessarily -- yours and the learners' -- as well as disk space.

Pete Thibodeau is an Instructional Systems and Interactive Courseware Development Specialist for the U.S. Army. E-mail: thibodep@lee-dns1.army.mil

References:

  1. Forester, Tom (1991), Computers in the Human Context: Information Technology, Productivity and People, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
  2. Misanchuk, Earl. R. & Schweir, Richard A. (1994), Interactive Multimedia Instruction, Elizabeth City, NJ: Educational Technology Publications.

Other resources:

  • Gery, Gloria (1992). Making CBT Happen, Boston, MA: Weingarten Publications, Inc.

Golas, Katherine C., Orr, Kay L, & Yao, Katy (1994), "Storyboard Development for Interactive Multimedia Training," Journal of Interactive Instruction Development, pp.18-31.