Antoine Feghali, Assistant Professor; Martine F. Abi-Aad, B.E.;
Maroun E. Abou Jaoudeh, B.E.; Nathalie A. Aouad, B.E.; Elie N. Hobeika, B.E.
American University of Beirut
850 Third Avenue, 18 Floor, New York, NY 10022
We conducted a needs analysis using questionnaires on a stratified random sample of high school and freshman university students. The results were used to tailor the content and design of the program to student needs and their computer literacy level.
The student orientation program (SOP) is a trilingual-English, French and Arabic-package developed using Asymetrix Multimedia Toolbook to be shipped on a CD-ROM. Users will find information about all universities in Lebanon and the respective majors offered as well as brief descriptions of professional fields of study, and scholarships available in Lebanon. Moreover, potential university students have the choice to solve typical real life problems related to the field of study under investigation. Among other options, they can view video clip interviews with professionals and academicians that could answer typical questions. Finally, SOP provides self-assessment to help students identify potential career paths and domains of study to make a better choice for their future.
We intend to distribute this CD-ROM to high schools in Lebanon and the Middle East in an attempt to improve career guidance in the region.
The complexity of life and the unstability of the working environment in Lebanon highly affect the Lebanese youth when choosing a field of study. Due to the lack of guidance sessions in the majority of high schools and colleges, students experience an information deficit regarding the fields of study offered by local universities and the work opportunities in the country. In a needs analysis we conducted in five schools representing a stratified random sample of high schools in Lebanon, 91%of the graduating students had not yet decided on their future field of study and/or university.
Moreover, students had little help in discovering their skills, abilities, interests, and other personal characteristics. Consequently, student choices are being based on the commonly known fields of study as well as the ``prestige'' of the intended degree and the economic status of their parents. It was therefore a necessity to introduce an extensive program that reduces these limiting factors by helping students perform a proper matching between their personality, the different educational systems and universities, and the world of opportunities around them.
Based on similar studies done at Purdue University in the early nineties [1], we see that the Student Orientation Program (SOP) being developed will have an important impact especially that many high schools are being equipped with personal computer systems, thus opening the way to using the new emerging technologies.
SOP is a trilingual multimedia package being developed at the Multimedia Center of the Faculty of Engineering and Architecture at the American University of Beirut (AUB) using Asymetrix Multimedia Toolbook 3.0 under the Windows environment.
In an attempt to fill the gap in student orientation, SOP emphasizes two of the three steps related to any vocational guidance process: career-awareness and self-assessment, whereas decision-making is left for the student. Given that vocational guidance is the process of assisting the individual to choose a university major and career path, prepare for it and progress in it[2], SOP primarily helps students make their own choices.
SOP contains four basic complementary elements: universities, specializations, scholarships and a self-assessment unit.
Two animated characters, ``curious'' and ``book'' accompany students in all SOP exercises: ``curious'' finds himself facing intriguing situations and seeking student assistance, while ``book'', a wealth of information, supplies them with explanations and hints.
SOP exercises have four main parts: introduction, problem statement, feedback, and theory. In the introduction, narration prevails as a mode of presentation, to enhance student motivation. A summary of the key ideas is displayed on screen to refresh student memory, while all technical terms are explained to match his or her readability level. The problem statement uses narration to explain to the student the procedure he or she should follow to reply to the question prompt. The procedure could be any of drag-and-drop, single or multiple item selection, or matching. A combination of animation and narration provides feedback to student response. Finally, textual information takes the student one level deeper, by further expanding the underlying theory related to the initial situation.
The content of the software dictates the use of a certain hierarchical division to structure the information in a modular way. Figure 1 shows the different stages in the information structure and the logical links among them.
The path University-Faculty-Major is a direct mapping of any university organization. The Major-Specialization link is less obvious: a specialization maps to different majors in different universities due to the existence of several educational systems. Moreover, a university major may map into more than one specialization. For instance, the major ``Computer and Communication Engineering'' at AUB fits in ``Computer Engineering'' and ``Communication Engineering.'' The Scholarship-University connection is bi-directional.
The self-assessment instrument is considered as an independent entity connecting to the structure through its output. A matching between the test output categories and the specialization list establishes the link which is unidirectional, going from the test to the list.
The Graphical User Interface (GUI) is a main issue in designing SOP since 46%of our audience are computer illiterate and 74%are unfamiliar with the Windows environment. Our major concern is therefore to make the computer-human interaction as close as possible to human-human interaction. The SOP application occupies a full screen and cannot be customized. A minimization option is however available. This allows the use of all the screen space and limits interaction with any other software.
The main screen elements are shown in figure 2 and can be divided as follows:
Every stage has a screen template containing all the elements stated above, where the nodes are represented by the information buttons. Clustering of the different buttons into information and control bars reflects the navigation freedom. Different degrees of freedom allow users to choose the level of navigation control. SOP takes advantage of the multimedia technology by displaying information in the optimal medium that conveys it: text, pictures sound and video are used to complement each other in a non-repetitive manner. Every medium introduces new information.
Graphical icons are used for all buttons. Due to the multiplicity of the functions and the length of some captions, graphical icons are needed to reduce item search. Icons are customized to provide a better differentiation of the functions. Icons are supported with yellow labels and status bar descriptions appearing on mouse entry. Finally, the cursor shape gives users immediate feedback and informs them of the actions they can perform.
The underlying design of the software is a direct mapping of the information structure. It uses a similar hierarchical organization referred to as the design hierarchy. Figure 3 shows the different levels of the hierarchy.
Indexing and coding techniques are used to search and uniquely code an item at any level of the hierarchy. At level 0, the item is used to determine the information category such as university, specialization or scholarship. In subsequent levels, each item is defined by three fields (Figure 4(a)): an index number selected sequentially, a description text corresponding to the item name and a code which is either an abbreviation or the initials of the description text. Figure 4(b) shows two sample items.
The index number is used to access an item in an order other than the hierarchy order. It is also used, together with the MSP, SPM and SCU properties to map a major into a specialization and vice-versa, and a scholarship into a university. The code is used to access an item in hierarchical order by specifying a code at each level down to the requested level. It is unique only for items at the same level. A full constructed codeword would have the following form: AUB-FEA-CCE-L corresponding to American University of Beirut, Faculty of Engineering and Architecture, Computer and Communication Engineering, Laboratories.
When an item is specified in the hierarchy, an information field (figure 5), common to all items at the same level, is selected. This field refers to the specific information to be displayed.
Finally, a pointer is used to indicate the active item corresponding to the information currently being accessed thus facilitating structured navigation.
Toolbook authoring system is designed around the metaphor of a ``book'' using object hierarchy (figure 6) and event-driven messages. Objects are entities with properties defining their characteristics and behavior when an event occurs. Actions in Toolbook are defined by events. Every event triggers a message which travels up the hierarchy in search of the handler to be executed.
The design of SOP is based on a functional approach. It consists of the information module containing both the information and the functions displaying it. Furthermore, SOP contains a control module allowing manipulation of the hierarchical structures, navigation through chunks of information as well as print and on-line help utilities.
The partitioning of books is shown in the figure 7.
The control book remains resident in memory and controls the overall application. It uses viewers that display navigation elements and pages from other books. The information books are designed with one common background. This enhances navigation speed, provides a consistent way of referencing pages and allows automatic information update. Every information page is referenced either using the unique name property assigned by Toolbook or using the name property.
Design of the different navigation functions is optimized using index searching, code searching or simple stacks depending on the available information and the output required. Navigation functions include backing to a previous location, jumping to a location included in a history field, searching, level switching and the use of a graphical map.
Our work in the Multimedia Center has completed the design and implementation of both the university and specialization blocks, and supplied information on AUB and the engineering field. We presented a demo version in a regional multimedia exhibition, where we received feedback from both professionals and potential users.
Future plans include the design and implementation of the self-assessment instrument and scholarship blocks, the integration of the remaining universities and specializations, and addition of exercises as well as video interviews. The information is currently available in English; however, we intend to add both French and Arabic, allowing users to select the language they prefer. As another step, we will solicit feedback from our intended audience before printing SOP on a CD-ROM where we will distribute the package to high school and freshmen students in Lebanon and the Middle East.
