ISSUES INVOLVED WITH IMPLEMENTING A

STUDENT-CENTRED TECHNOLOGY-BASED TOOL

The Case of a Multimedia Glossary

David M. Kennedy

Hong Kong Institute of Education, Tai Po, Hong Kong

Keywords: Learning tool, Glossary, Adoption.

Abstract: There is evidence that glossaries are perceived by students as highly desirable assets to improve learning.

This paper describes the development of a glossary tool, the Multimedia Enhanced Glossary to Assist

Understanding (MEGA-U), which can leverage the resources available on the internet, support communities

of practice and support student-annotation of glossary terms. Customized glossaries should enhance student-

centred online learning environments. However, there are significant barriers to successful deployment of

the glossary system in pre-service teacher education Hong Kong. The paper describes the tool, and then

examines the reasons why the tool is not being used as expected, highlighting some of the pedagogical,

logistical and cultural factors that inhibit the use of the software.

1 INTRODUCTION

There is strong evidence that online glossaries are

perceived by Hong Kong students as highly

desirable assets to improve learning. McNaught and

Lam (2005) conducted a meta-analysis of evaluation

findings for 58 courses in Hong Kong. The highest

ranked function was the provision of learning tools

such as glossaries. One explanation for this is that, in

Hong Kong, English is classified as a foreign

language, and the standard of English is a matter of

concern. It is not surprising that online dictionaries

(Chinese and English); and glossaries of technical

terms, especially with audio pronunciations or visual

material, are highly valued.

Hong Kong students’ desire to have access to

good glossaries was a key feature in the decision to

develop the glossary tool that will be described in

this paper. The first section of the paper describes

the development and functionality of the glossary

tool. The second section reflects on the, as yet,

unsuccessful attempts to have colleagues use this

tool in their own courses.

2 DEVELOPMENT AND

FUNCTIONALITY OF MEGA-U

The Multimedia Enhanced Glossary to Assist

Understanding (MEGA-U) is a computer-based

courseware tool designed to support the

development of an online glossary for teachers/

lecturers and students engaged in developing courses

with a web component. MEGA-U is designed to be

more than a text-based glossary, as in a traditional

book-based version and, indeed, in what is generally

found on the internet. The functional aspects of

MEGA-U include:

• a search engine capable of partial matching of

words;

• display of a wide range of media resources;

• an easy to use authoring environment requiring

no knowledge of html;

• the ability to create customized glossaries for a

range of courses;

• the ability to involve students in the development

of the glossary;

• facility for double byte character sets

(multilingual support); and

• security protection for editing and usage of the

glossary (or glossaries) by multiple users.

255

M. Kennedy D. (2006).

ISSUES INVOLVED WITH IMPLEMENTING A STUDENT-CENTRED TECHNOLOGY-BASED TOOL - The Case of a Multimedia Glossary.

In Proceedings of WEBIST 2006 - Second International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies - Society, e-Business and

e-Government / e-Learning, pages 255-260

DOI: 10.5220/0001242602550260

 SciTePress

The MEGA-U has been developed using the

standards for reusable content articulated in the

Sharable Content Object Reference Model

(SCORM) of the Advanced Distributed Learning

Network (Brown, 2002). The database has been

developed using open-source software, MySQL and

an Apache webserver.

Figure 1 provides a map of the workflow

involved in developing a glossary. The hierarchy is:

• The Administrator creates a new named glossary

entity into which content can be placed for the

Glossary Owner, who may be the course

coordinator.

• The Glossary Owner creates accounts for other

teachers.

• Teachers create accounts for students.

• All members of the glossary team can annotate/

add links and resources to the glossary.

The glossary can be searched without a need for

a password and/or username. In this way, students

may be provided with access to a multimedia

glossary without a need to add usernames or

passwords in the first instance. The facility to

annotate and add additional resources to a glossary

term is considered a key component/ functionality of

the MEGA-U. Therefore, a simple procedure has

been incorporated in order to facilitate the uploading

of student names, passwords and numbers via a

comma-delimited file, should a teacher wish to

provide all students with the facility to add to

glossary terms. The MEGA-U is intended to

improve the information literacy of students, by

providing opportunity for students to annotate the

definitions, add custom resources or links to suitable

multimedia content thereby providing a student-eye

view of the concept or term in the glossary. The

glossary is also designed to support the development

of communities of practice (C of P).

The design of the MEGA-U enables groups of

teachers to work together to develop more complete,

more media-rich sets of glossary terms. Moreover,

the MEGA-U software enables resources to be

linked across multiple servers anywhere in the world

by the use of a Uniform Resource Locator (URL)

and simple-to-use templates to map the size of

multimedia resources for inclusion into the glossary.

The MEGA-U has been successfully developed and

tested. It is deployed in a number of pre-service

teacher education modules taught by the author.

Figure 1: Workflow in the MEGA-U.

successful

term

exists

students

can

student

wants to

manage

must

checks

enrollment

modification sent

for approval

changes

approved

reject

unsuccessful

Start

Mus t

logon

gloss ary

term s

Users can update

profiles

Batch creation of

student accounts

Account ma nagement

View, delete,

reset password for

student accounts

Glossary management

Ba tch crea ti on

of glossary

Add, list, update,

delete term

Glos sary

Owner

Ad d n ote o r UR L

Ad d re s o ur c e

Add link to resource

Logon

View term in detail

with m ultim edia,

multilingual entries

Create new

gloss ary

Account ma nagement

Download glossary

Modify

gloss ary

Cha ng es

rejected

New glossaries

need the

Ad m in i s tra to r

Ad min is tr a tor

approval

WEBIST 2006 - E-LEARNING

256

Table 1: Main features and examples of the MEGA-U in use.

Partial word matches in

searching.

It is possible to enter one letter or a partial spelling and have the glossary engine return a list

of possible term (Figure 2). This has advantages for many students who may not know the

exact spelling of the word. The search engine is only in English. This is not perceived as a

problem in Hong Kong since all students in schools study English from an early age.

Display of a wide range

of media resources

Video, animation, graphics and/or sound can provide multiple perspectives of the definition

or description of a term. In Figure 3, the term shown is ‘photosynthesis’ and it includes a

graphic that is accessed from a remote server.

A single glossary entry, composed of multiple media resources from a variety of sources

(URLs), can be assembled into a single coherent form for display (and interaction) to a

student when required.

Simple to deploy

The clickable MEGA-U icon can be placed in any webpage or as a replacement for a glossary

in a learning management system, and is therefore available to students at any time.

Display information

about any number of

content domains

The database behind the MEGA-U is intended to simply store content or URL links and

collate each of the elements of a glossary term on demand. In this way, the content can be

updated easily.

Multilingual The database supports double-byte characters.

Simple glossary

creation

A basic glossary can be uploaded via a comma-delimited Excel file which includes the

glossary term, definition, links to resources and related terms.

Web-based

management

Glossaries can be managed from a standard web browser. The software engine has been

tested with Internet Explorer (6.xx) and Firefox (1.0x).

Multiple levels of

security

The levels are: administrator (creates glossaries), Glossary Owner and associates (editing,

uploading terms, student accounts, adding resources, quality control), and student rights to

annotate or add resources (URLs, multimedia).

Once a student annotates an existing entry, the

Glossary Owner (key teacher) receives an email that

links the teacher (via a web browser) to the changed

term which now has ‘Accept’ or ‘Reject’ on screen

in order for permission to be given for changes to

the database. This is a key design feature of the

MEGA-U, which is intended to maintain the

accuracy and appropriateness of the content of any

glossary, and protect against malicious or

inappropriate annotations or links.

In Table 1, the main features of the MEGA-U

software are summarized. Key aspects include the

ease of authoring (students and teachers), partial

word searches in English (very important in a

multilingual environment such as Hong Kong), and

managing access to the authoring components of the

MEGA-U for students and teachers.

3 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

FOR THE DESIGN OF THE

MEGA-U

The theoretical framework of the project is based

upon the work of Kennedy & McNaught (1997)

which described the manner in which computer-

facilitated learning (now more commonly called

eLearning) may be considered from the perspective

of either didactic, pre-emptive or transformative

approaches to teaching (Bain & McNaught, 2006;

Laurillard, 2002). These three conceptions of

teaching can be briefly described as follows.

The didactic teacher believes in a transmissive

view of learning in that knowledge can be directly

transferred from teacher to student. This viewpoint

tends to encourage surface or reproductive learning

in students.

A pre-emptive orientation to student learning

which, while sensitive to past students’ prior

learning and misconceptions, is teacher-centred and

focuses on the teacher’s explanations, rather than

student activity.

A conversational or transformative conception is

based on viewing learning as a process in which

understanding is constructed by the student with the

assistance of the teacher.

In Table 2, the three views of a glossary viewed

from the perspectives above are shown.

The design of the MEGA-U extends the

traditional text-based glossary to one that

encompasses the affordances offered by the internet,

with the additional potential to incorporate a more

transformative approach to the material incorporated

in the glossary. Including student-derived definitions

and links has the potential to develop a multi-modal

glossary better suited to the specific needs of

students.

ISSUES INVOLVED WITH IMPLEMENTING A STUDENT-CENTRED TECHNOLOGY-BASED TOOL - The Case of

a Multimedia Glossary

257

Table 2: Design elements of a glossary from a didactic, pre-emptive, or transformative perspective.

Didactic Pre-emptive Transformative

A list of text-

based definitions

and formulae.

The terms may be represented as text,

graphics, video, sound, or simulations

(multiple representations of concepts).

As for pre-emptive, with the additional facility

for students to contribute multiple definitions to the

glossary, and/or construct their own glossary.

Figure 2: Graphics in a glossary entry.

When a student searches for a term, partial

matches are shown (e.g., ph would produce pH and

photosynthesis). When a student rolls their mouse

over the row automatically expands to show all of

the text (bilingual) for that term. In Figure 2, the

student has clicked on the term ‘photosynthesis’ to

show embedded multimedia resources.

The MEGA-U can either upload or link to any

internet resource with a URL. A transformative

approach to learning is supported by the ability of

students to add to existing glossary terms.

Additional text, links, descriptions and resources

may be added to the glossary as required via a

forms-based editing environment. In an existing

term, the glossary term, definition and initial links,

and resources remain unchangeable by the student.

The student can add a resource description and link,

a description, multimedia or a link to multimedia

(the size of the object must be stated in pixels in

order to provide the size of area for the object to

display correctly).

4 EVALUATION

Initial evaluations have been undertaken with a

small focus group (four students) from a multimedia

class. The students had a link to the MEGA-U

available as part of the online module resources. The

comments by the students are summarised into the

paragraphs below (this is a summary developed by

one student for the group). More complete

evaluations are ongoing, as the MEGA-U becomes a

part of the teaching and learning environment of

more modules.

The system is quite user friendly. Once you’ve input

the keywords, for example, you input a word ‘cancer’,

then the cancer’s glossary will appear and then you can

see the definition of cancer. Then you can click on the

word cancer and you go to another page. After opening

the webpage, you can see more details about this glossary

item. You can see the pictures and also some URL links

which provide more information to the item. The user can

certainly click the URL links and find more useful

information on the webpage created by the other people

all over the world.

Moreover, you need not input the whole word and then

you can start your search. For example, you need to find

what photosynthesis is, but you forget the spelling of the

part ‘synthesis’ or maybe you’ve already mixed up with

other words, you can simply type the word ‘photo’, and it

will start the smart search, giving you all the words with

the spelling started by ‘photo’. Thus, if you only type a

letter ‘a’ and start the search, the system will give you all

the words started with ‘a’ in the glossary. Additionally, no

matter you input a capital letter ‘a’ or not, it will display

both the capital ones and the non-capital ones. If you do

not input anything and press the search button then all the

items in the glossary will be displayed.

WEBIST 2006 - E-LEARNING

258

Responses from experienced educational

designers in Hong Kong, Australia and the UK have

also been positive. However, in order to be more

fully evaluated, the MEGA-U needs to be used in a

number of normal classes with a range of students

and teachers. Therein lies the problem. A number of

colleagues in a number of discipline areas at the

Hong Kong Institute of Education have looked at

MEGA-U and stated that it would be of real value in

their classes. However, all have deferred actual

implementation plans, claiming that students (who

are pre-service teachers) would find this way of

working too challenging, and that students would

not ‘trust’ entries from other students. In the second

section of the paper I will look at reasons for this

viewpoint.

5 IMPLEMENTATION IN THE

HONG KONG CONTEXT: THE

KEY PROBLEM

In 1998 the Hong Kong Special Administrative

Region government began a program of

modernization as part of a five-year strategy to

provide hardware and software, connect schools to

the internet, begin professional development of

existing teachers, and require teacher education

institutions to mandate a level of information

technology competency in education (ITCE) targets

amongst new graduates. The original five-year plan

achieved a number of milestones, primarily in

technical, training and infrastructure developments

(Kennedy, Fitzgerald & Lee, 2004). However, the

hoped-for change in pedagogy did not occur in

conjunction with the hardware and software roll-out.

In 2004 progress was reviewed and the focus was

shifted from equipment and infrastructure to

pedagogical change, which articulated a more

constructivist view of using ICTs to enhance and

support teaching and learning in Hong Kong

(Education and Manpower Bureau, 2004), arguing

for a move from a teacher-centred to a more student-

centred approach. This is a challenging shift as, in

Hong Kong, a student-centred, collaborative

approach to teaching and learning is not the norm in

the classroom (Pearson, 2001).

It is claimed by the University Grants Committee

that Hong Kong has enthusiastically adopted web-

based technologies for teaching and learning in

universities (Leung et al., 2005). One reason is that

the web is viewed as offering significant cost

savings. However, the situation in schools is seem to

be different with tightly prescribed curricula and

more traditional approaches to teaching and learning

still being the major form of student experience

(Kennedy, Fitzgerald & Lee, 2004). In such

environments changes in teaching practice are

incremental and slow. There are some good

exemplars of effective use of ICTs in Hong Kong,

but these isolated examples have required

substantive changes in the manner in which students

are taught, a clearly articulated collective vision and

strong school leadership over a number of years

(Harrington, 2005).

6 CHANGING THE

EDUCATIONAL LANDSCAPE

Ten years ago Hooper and Rieber espoused a belief

that embedding technology in teaching and learning

in schools would reinvigorate the role of the

classroom teacher: “We envision technology as a

teacher’s liberator to help reestablish the role and

value of the individual classroom teacher.” (Hooper

& Rieber, 1995, p. 154). They identified two things

that were required in order to realize this belief. The

first was a move to more student-centred teaching

and learning. The second was the need to develop a

community of teachers, students and parents that

nurtured and supported the learning process

(Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt,

1992). Rogers (2003) went further and identified

five key stages: knowledge, persuasion, decision,

implementation and confirmation that are required

before actual practices are likely to change.

Sherry, Billig, Tavalin & Gibson (2000)

proposed a five-stage model congruent with Rogers’

key stages that has been validated (in a three-year

research project) for technology adoption and

diffusion in US schools. The five stages are

characterised by: teacher as: learner, adopter, co-

learner, reaffirmer or rejecter, and leader. Each stage

in turn is characterized by a series of strategies. For

example in Stage 1, teachers are learning about the

technology while in stage two they are beginning to

adopt the technology. It would be fair to say that the

majority of teachers in Hong Kong are currently

between ‘persuasion’ and ‘implementation’ stages in

the Rogers’ (2003) model, but it is less clear with

regard to the Sherry et al. (2000) model since there

is evidence to suggest that the availability and access

to computers in Hong Kong schools outside formal

IT/ computer literacy classes is limited. While

teachers are often interested in engaging with ICTs

ISSUES INVOLVED WITH IMPLEMENTING A STUDENT-CENTRED TECHNOLOGY-BASED TOOL - The Case of

a Multimedia Glossary

259

to improve student learning, they are constrained by

circumstances out of their direct control. Over 77%

of teachers have achieved Intermediate ITCE

competencies, but the implications of a survey of

teachers in 684 primary and secondary Hong Kong

schools were that only 6% of teachers show any

evidence of innovative pedagogies and practice

(Kennedy, Fitzgerald & Lee, 2004).

The design of the MEGA-U has been undertaken

with constructivist principles in mind and a teaching

and learning framework that is based upon a

conversational framework in which students

communicate with each other (Laurillard, 2002).

However, not withstanding the design, the positive

responses from the student focus group and

experienced educational designers, there remain

significant barriers to more widespread use.

Establishing Communities of Practice (C of P) using

ICTs in Hong Kong schools can be achieved but it is

often limited to direct intervention (Yuen, 2003).

The MEGA-U is being trialled in a number of

courses involving pre-service teachers but only those

taught by the author. Its use is still limited by current

policies and practice.

REFERENCES

Bain, J., & McNaught, C. (2006). How academics use

technology in teaching and learning: Understanding

the relationship between beliefs and practice. Journal

of Computer Assisted Learning, 22, 99–113.

Brown, J. (2002). Making a Macromedia Flash MX

learning object SCORM-conformant (White paper).

Alexandria, Virginia, USA: Advanced Distributed

Learning Co-Laboratory. Retrieved November 28,

2005, from

http://www.macromedia.com/resources/elearning/obje

cts/

Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt. (1992).

The Jasper Experiment: An exploration of issues in

learning and instructional design. Educational

Technology Research and Development, 40(1), 65-80.

Education and Manpower Bureau. (2004). Empowering

learning and teaching with information technology.

Hong Kong: Education and Manpower Bureau.

Retrieved November 28, 2005, from

http://www.emb.gov.hk/index.aspx?langno=1&nodeI

D=2497.

Harrington, S. (2005, Aug. 27). Big class struggle to get

IT just right. South China Morning Post, pp. E1–E2.

Hooper, S., & Rieber, L. P. (1995). Teaching with

technology. In A. C. Ornstein (Ed.), Teaching: Theory

into practice (pp. 154–170). Needham Heights, MA:

Allyn and Bacon.

Jonassen, D. H., Peck, K. L., & Wilson, B. G. (1999).

Learning with technology: A constructivist

perspective. New Jersey: Merrill.

Kennedy, D. M., Fitzgerald, R., & Lee, K. T. (2004).

Enacting government IT in education policy:

Designing modules for teacher education in Hong

Kong. Journal of APEC Studies, 6(1), 17–38.

Kennedy, D. M., & McNaught, C. (1997). Design

elements for interactive multimedia. Australian

Journal of Educational Technology, 13(1), 1–22.

Kozma, R. B. (2003). Technology and classroom

practices: An international study. Journal of Research

on Technology in Education, 36(1), 1–14.

Laurillard, D. (2002). Rethinking university teaching: A

conversational framework for the effective use of

learning technologies (2nd ed.). London: Routledge

Falmer.

Leung, T. P., et al. (2005). Education quality work: The

Hong Kong experience. Hong Kong: Editorial

Committee on behalf of the eight University Grants

Committee (UGC)-funded higher education

institutions.

McNaught, C., & Lam, P. (2005). Building an evaluation

culture and evidence base for e-learning in three Hong

Kong universities. British Journal of Educational

Technology, 36(4), 599–614.

Pearson, J. (2001). Information technology in education:

policy and provision in Hong Kong schools.

Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 10(3), 279–

292.

Rogers, E. M. (2003), Diffusion of innovations (5th ed.),

New York: Free Press.

Sherry, L., Billig, S., Tavalin, F., & Gibson, D. (2000).

New Insights on Technology Adoption in Schools.

Retrieved November 28, 2005, from

http://www.thejournal.com/magazine/vault/articleprint

version.cfm?aid=2640.

Yuen, A. H. K. (2003). Fostering learning communities in

classrooms: A case study of Hong Kong schools.

Educational Media International, 40(1-2), 153–162.

WEBIST 2006 - E-LEARNING

260