ENHANCED TEACHING STRATEGIES

The Design Process of a Support System for Teachers

Narin Akrawi

Department of Informatics and Media, Uppsala University, Kyrkogårdsgatan 10 B, Uppsala, Sweden

Keywords: Computer-based Teacher Support, Teacher Education, Teaching Strategy, Bloom’s Taxonomy.

Abstract: In this paper we present the design process of a knowledge-based system, called Mentor. When designing

Mentor, our aim is to give the teachers opportunity to reflect upon their current teaching strategies and

provide guidance on how to improve their teaching. The purpose of emphasizing the design process for

Mentor is to identify, capture and validate, at an early stage, important pedagogical aspects. A thorough

design process will help us to implement a system according to the users’ requirements regarding

functionality and the users’ interaction with the system. In Mentor Bloom’s revised taxonomy is used as a

basis for classification of different objectives and skills that educators need to reflect upon in facilitating a

student-centred learning environment (SCL). Moreover, the revised taxonomy is used to relate the teachers’

teaching strategies to the taxonomy and as a basis for generating feedback to the teacher. This feedback is

individualized since it is related to the information the teacher has provided the system concerning his/her

teaching. The result of tests showed that Mentor could be used as a tool for provoking teachers’ reflections

at all level of the educational system.

1 INTRODUCTION

Growing and working in the information age has

promoted learning and problem-solving for various

learning communities (Spector, 2008). One of the

communities is the educational organization, which

has endeavoured to put students at the centre of the

learning. Despite this demand on schools many

teachers continue to use a teacher-centred approach

when educating students (Lea et al., 2003; O’Neill &

McMahon, 2005). Student’s active learning is

supported in a SCL environment. In this type of

learning environment, the main task is to promote

students’ learning by giving them more control over

their own learning and disseminating new

knowledge and skills (Alagic, 2004).

In a traditional class environment, the interaction

between teacher and students is restricted and “the

teacher is holding the power to knowledge, the

power to deliver the knowledge, and the power to

control the learning and teaching environment”

(Kasim & Ali, 2007). On the contrary, in a SCL,

teachers become facilitators, and encourage students

to interact and help other and learn from each other.

This form of teaching creates healthy

communications between teacher and students.

Some authors argue that such communication

becomes more effective when integrated with

Information and Communication Technologies

(ICT). The educational improvement demands

educators to rethink and re-evaluate their perception

about their knowledge and expertise in the field of

teaching (Kraus et al., 2001; Sweder, 2002).

However, rethinking and revaluating one’s own

expertise critically, is a difficult task (Kjellin &

Stenfors, 2002). Unfortunately, teachers, who are

trying to integrate and use new teaching methods

differing from traditional ones, are often met by

resistance by their colleagues as well as by students

(Hedin, 2006). Utilizing information and

communication technology in form of, e.g., a

knowledge-based system, the teacher could explore

new teaching strategies before implementing these

strategies in the classroom. In this paper we present

the design process of a knowledge-based system,

called Mentor. The aim is to give the teachers

opportunity to reflect upon their current teaching

strategies and provide guidance on how to improve

their teaching. . In turn, this can influence their

classroom leadership style. The design proposal

focuses on the requirements regarding the

functionality of the system.

Akrawi N. (2010).

ENHANCED TEACHING STRATEGIES - The Design Process of a Support System for Teachers.

In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Computer Supported Education, pages 72-81

DOI: 10.5220/0002781200720081

 SciTePress

Figure 1: The process of capturing requirements (Pfleeger & Atlee, 2006).

Our purpose of emphasizing the design process for

Mentor is to identify, capture and validate, at an

early stage, important pedagogical aspects. As it is

vital to involve domain experts and end-users when

designing and implementing systems supporting

learning, we have collaborated with teachers and

pedagogues with expertise within information

technology. A thorough design process will help us

to implement a system according to the users’

requirements regarding functionality and the users’

interaction with the system.

Thus, to support teachers to improve the quality

of their teaching and to move toward a more student-

centred learning environment we designed Mentor.

By offering such a system we believe that teachers

will get new insights into new teaching strategies

and will hopefully adapt their teaching strategies in

accordance to the new approaches.

This paper is organized as follows. In section 2 a

brief introduction to design process is given.

Sections 2.1 to 2.3 describe the process of capturing

and validating the requirements in the system

design. In sections 3 the design of Mentor has been

presented. Finally, the results of the validation, as

well as, the concluding discussions are summarized

in section 4.

2 THE DESIGN PROCESS

According to some researchers, among them Gero

and Sudweeks (1997), a design process is a

knowledge intensive activity. These authors argue

that studying a design problem requires knowledge

across different disciplines and sources, for instance

knowledge spread between many experts,

publications and databases (ibid.). However,

transforming this knowledge into a working system

requires that the designers find the relevant

knowledge, as well as, assure customers’ need and,

at the same time, make it possible for the system

developer to understand how the system should

work (Pfleeger and Atlee, 2006). The design process

is an iterative process, in which the designer moves

back and forth between different activities to

understand the requirements (Gero & Sudweeks,

1997).

The first step in the development of a system

design is the process of capturing requirements.

Requirement engineering is considered by many

authors as one of the most significant parts of any

software project (cf. e.g., Lehner & Hofmann, 2001;

Sommerville, 2004; Pfleeger & Atlee, 2006). If the

users’ requirements are not clearly understood the

errors can result in an extensive rework when

discovered at later phases (Pfleeger & Atlee, 2006).

For this reason we have emphasized this part when

designing the system proposals. In this regard, a

prototype of the system can be useful to understand

the requirements and see what requirements are

missing or to evaluate design alternatives. There are

two kinds of requirements: functional and non-

functional. Functional requirements define the

interaction between the system and its environment

and emphasize the functionality of the system. Non-

functional requirements describe a restriction on the

system that limits our choices on the product to be

developed (ibid.). In our system design proposals we

have focused on the functional requirement.

In order to design Mentor, as for all new

systems, we started the requirement process for

Mentor with a feasibility study. According to

Sommerville (2004) a feasibility study is a short and

focused study aimed at answering questions e.g.,

“Does the system contribute to the overall objectives

of the organization?” This question is critical since

if the system does not contribute to the overall

objectives then it has no value (ibid.). The result of

the feasibility analysis showed that there is a need

for this kind of system. For capturing requirements

For the design of Mentor we utilized the

approach seen in Figure 1. The first step in the

capturing requirements is the process of elicitation.

In this process the user’s requirements are collected

and then analyzed.

Elicitation

Analysis  Specification Validation

Software

Requirement

Specification



ENHANCED TEACHING STRATEGIES - The Design Process of a Support System for Teachers

2.1 Elicitation and Analysis

During the requirement elicitation activity, a system

or knowledge engineer uses different techniques

such as literature review, observations, interviews,

questionnaires, focus groups, use cases, and

prototypes to discover requirements and gather

necessary information about the application domain,

what services the system should provide, the

requirement performance of the system etc (Pfleeger

and Atlee, 2006.). The elicitation and analysis can be

seen as an iterative process, where the collected user

requirements are analyzed and the result from the

analysis is input in a new elicitation activity. During

these activities the system engineer tries to get a

clear picture of the collected user requirements,

which will later be specified in a requirement

specification. Through the requirement specification

the communication with customers, as well as, the

maintenance of the requirements and the system gets

easier.

The methods chosen for the elicitation in the

project are literature review, observations,

interviews, and focus groups. The work with Mentor

started by conducting a literature review to study

relevant literature about the central topics in our

research such as learning, teaching, learning styles,

Bloom’s revised taxonomy (Anderson & Krathwohl,

2001) and knowledge-based systems. This literature

review was conducted to enhance our knowledge

about these subjects, to frame our work and to be

able to compare our work with those of others.

Moreover, through this literature review we tried to

give the readers the core idea of our research.

To collect data about the opinions, the needs and

the requirements for Mentor we used observations,

interviews and focus groups. Observation is

considered as one of the common methods for

qualitative data collection and can be conducted

either by direct observation or participant

observation (Trochim, 2006). To assure that the

observations are of the natural phenomenon, the

researchers should be involved as “involved

researcher”(Walsham, 2006) in the daily activities of

the observed situation. As involved researcher, we

got a close involvement, which helped us to gain an

in-depth understanding of the situation. We found

that the educational system in Kurdistan is basically

based on the teacher-centered approach where the

teacher has the total control in the classroom.

Kurdistan, as many other countries, has realized the

need for a school reform, which should be toward a

more SCL environment (Mayiwar et al., 2005). To

start the reform, educational experts were invited to

Kurdistan including professors from Department of

Educational Administration and Leadership, College

of Education at Tennessee State University, USA.

The most important elements in the reform

considered to be teachers’ leadership style and their

ways of teaching. These facts, gave us the idea of

designing Mentor. As I live in northern Iraq and

teach at the College of Engineering at Salahaddin

University I observed the situation very carefully

and became a part of the daily activities in the

observed situation. As a part of the teaching staff I

was allowed to attend my colleagues’ lectures and

labs. We also cooperated in and between our

courses, e.g., in my course the students will learn the

process of software engineering from requirement

gathering phase to the design phase and learn to

implement the requirements at another course.

Through this cooperation it was easier for me to

notice the other teachers’ teaching strategy, as well

as, their leadership style in the classroom. The result

of my observations showed that the most of the

teachers were accustomed to one leadership style,

the autocratic one and the teaching strategies are

based on this autocratic view of teaching. The

reason for this might be that they, themselves, have

been taught by autocratic leaders and therefore are

not trained as democratic leaders. Therefore it is

vital to provide these leaders with effective models

of alternative leadership styles and teaching

strategies.

Moreover, we interviewed the president of the

University, the dean of the Department of

Engineering and the dean of Department of

education. The result of our interviews showed the

same result as our observations. They addressed an

enormous need for a change in the educational

settings. The president of Salahaddin University

stressed “we seek the thinking, approaches, tools,

and skills that will equip an increasing portion of our

student body with leadership and management

capabilities that will effectively address the needs of

all segments of our society in every corner of our

region. It is this focus on, and commitment to, the

public interest that has yet to become the

professional interest of our students and graduates.”

He also added “achieving this objective requires

teachers to rethink critically regarding their current

leadership and teaching styles”.

To get help with pedagogical issues for

designing Mentor we contacted the experts at the

institute, VLM (Virtual Learning Environment) at

Uppsala, Sweden. After discussing our idea with

people at VLM we were directed to the Regional

Centre for the Coordination of Pedagogical

CSEDU 2010 - 2nd International Conference on Computer Supported Education

Development (RCCPD). The main objective of this

organization is to assemble people with pedagogical

knowledge to help each other to change and improve

the educational system regarding the needs and

requirements. At the first interview with the project

leader at RCCPD we introduced the purpose of the

thesis in general and the purpose of designing

Mentor in particular. We also asked about existing

systems and whether they saw a need for the system

that we aimed at designing. The result of this

interview showed that despite the great emphasis on

education in Sweden, schools have not yet succeed

in creating suitable student-centred classrooms.

To get further and more accurate information and

to gather requirements, the project leader at RCCPD

set up a focus group interview with other experts

who shared common experiences and expertise

about teaching. At the first focus group we presented

the research topics and introduced our main idea for

the group. Topics such as knowledge-based systems,

Bloom’s revised taxonomy, which we planned as a

method in our system, were discussed. Bloom’s

revised taxonomy is applied in Mentor to classify

different objectives and skills that educators need to

reflect upon to support students’ deep learning. We

have chosen the revised Bloom’s taxonomy in

Mentor of two main reasons: the first is to be able to

map teachers’ answers to the taxonomy and the

second is to give the teachers different kind of

feedback based on the educational objectives in the

taxonomy.

Additionally, I shared my experiences of

teaching at Salahaddin University in northern Iraq.

These topics and ideas put the foundation for the

questions that were asked. To facilitate the

respondents’ answers and their point of view we

prepared open-ended questions in advance.

At the second focus group interview, we

presented a set of questions related to teaching

strategies that we had found on UCIrvine

Instructional Resources Centre’s website. A set of

eighteen questions, regarding design of courses has

been set up on this site. The set is adapted from an

article by K.T. Brinko, published in “The Teaching

Professor” (Brinko, 1991).

The gathered requirements often results in a large

set of raw requirements that due to cost and time

limitations cannot completely be implemented in the

system (Parvianien et al., 2003). Therefore, after

discussions and analysis of these questions at two

additional focus groups, we decided to utilize

questions 1-9 in our support system. The first five

questions were further studied and analyzed in detail

by one of the experts. We also further developed

these questions and divided them in different levels

to be able to implement them properly in form of

rules in a coming system.

2.2 Specification

One convenient technique to determine the

functional requirements for a system is to identify

use cases (Pfleeger, 2001). A use case “describes

particular functionality that a system is supposed to

perform or exhibit by modelling the dialog that the

user, external system, or other entity will have with

the system to be developed” (ibid.). By using a use

case the communication between customer, system

developer, and tester becomes much easier.

Therefore, we have utilized this technique when

designing Mentor. One example of a use case used

in the design of the system prototype can be seen in

Appendix 1. Through this use case, the main

interaction with the system has been specified.

2.3 Validation

To show that the requirements do define the system

that the customer wants we validated the gathered

requirements. This phase is very important since

errors in requirements can result in extensive rework

costs when discovered at later phases (Pfleenger and

Atlee, 2006). There are different techniques for

validation of requirement such as requirements

reviews, inspection, reading techniques, model-

based requirements validation, and testing-based

requirements validation, and prototyping (Ahmad &

Saqi, 2008).

Prototyping is a technique, which makes

requirements more tangible. Through a prototype

requirements can be demonstrated which makes it

easier to find problems and give suggestions for how

the requirements can be improved. The prototype

can be in different forms e.g., static, paper-based

prototype or interactive software-based prototype

(Dumas & Redish, 1999). Paper-based prototyping

is considered to be effective to involve users in the

design process early by showing users screen images

on paper and visualize how the product will look

like and let them to try the prototype (ibid.). One

drawback with these kinds of prototyping is that

they are slow. In an interactive software-based

prototype the designer can simulate the look and feel

of a software user interface quickly. This technique

makes it easier for the designers to discover

problems and make changes before it is too late

(ibid.).

ENHANCED TEACHING STRATEGIES - The Design Process of a Support System for Teachers

Figure 2: Question 5 in relation to taxonomy.

We chose an interactive software-based prototyping

to visualize requirements and also to identify

problems at an early stage. A researcher who has

been involved in the project and a teacher, at the

Department of Informatics and Media, at Uppsala

University, organized the tests. Tests can be

considered to be more reliable when carried out by

other than the researcher because then he/she will

not have any influence at the test. In the first test

two IT-pedagogues employed at the municipality of

Uppsala and active at VLM were participating. In

the second group the project leader, as well as, the

project assistant at the RCCPD contributed. It is

worth to note that the testers have been involved in

the project previously and helped us with the

pedagogical knowledge. It has been proved that tests

performed by a group of two persons are more

fruitful since they can have a discussion. Through

discussions more information can be obtained

((Durkin, 1994; Awad & Ghaziri, 2004).

The tests were performed in a usability test lab

where the entire sessions have been recorded. The

test persons’ activities e.g., what they saw at the

interface, the way they worked with the system, as

well as their comments and reactions were recorded.

After finishing the session the tests were finalized

by asking follow-up questions to get additional

important information. Moreover, after each test the

prototype was further developed in accordance to

the testers’ comments and suggestions. The result of

the tests is presented in section 4.

3 THE DESIGN OF MENTOR

In this section we present the design of the

knowledge-based system Mentor. We have utilized 9

of the 18 questions At UCIrvine Instructional

Resources Centres’ website regarding design of

courses (Mayiwar & Edman, 2007):

1. What are my course goals? What do I want my

students to learn primarily?

2. At what level (s) do I want my students to

perform?

3. What class activities will help my students to meet

these goals and levels?

4. How will I support my students in their efforts to

meet these goals and levels?

5. What assignments will I use to evaluate my

students’ success with these goals?

6. How much uniformity of assignments will best

serve my students’ need?

7. What evaluation approach will best help my

students to meet these goals and needs?

8. What evaluation unit for each assignment is

consonant with these and levels?

9. What type of class atmosphere will foster

students’ success?

In Figure 2 one of the questions is given with

different alternatives and the chosen alternatives are

marked. In order to motivate the teacher, the system

starts with a brief presentation of the main ideas with

using the system. Then the user will be given a set of

multiple choice questions related to teaching

methods (See Figure 2).

CSEDU 2010 - 2nd International Conference on Computer Supported Education

Figure 3: Different kinds of feedback in relation to Meta-cognitive /Evaluate.

Every answer will be interpreted and mapped to the

revised Bloom’s taxonomy. When the user has

finished a session the system will present an

overview of how the answers have been evaluated

according to the taxonomy, giving the number of

matches in each square. Through this presentation

the user can get an insight into their teaching

method, which hopefully will lead to personal

reflections. Additionally, feedback will be generated

upon user’s request (See figure 3). Two kinds of

feedback can be presented. The first one is

dynamically generated in relation to the user’s result

and the other one is general and explains different

objectives in the taxonomy and also gives

suggestions about teaching.

As mentioned earlier the main goal for designing

Mentor is that it should support the teacher’s

reflection over their current teaching strategies and

to give new insight into other strategies. We believe

that teacher could be supported by different kinds of

feedback and explanations.

4 RESULT AND DISCUSSIONS

The collected and validated requirements were, as

described above, documented in a requirement

specification in form of use case. This uses case

were utilized for designing prototypes of Mentor.

Furthermore, the prototypes were tested on two

groups. The aim was to check the following aspects

presented in Sommerville (2004):

1. Validity Checks: checks were conducted to

confirm whether the system provides the functions,

which best support customers need. In this regard,

the mixed-initiative dialogues, feedback given by the

system, the set of the questions, the way of working

with the system, and the presented result in

accordance to Bloom’s revised taxonomy were

evaluated. Moreover, the systems’ suitability as a

tool to support teachers’ reflections about their

teaching strategies was studied.

2. Consistency Checks: the requirements

described in the document should not be conflicting,

which means that it should not be any contradictory

or constraints or descriptions of the same function.

The testers checked if the test persons found any

contradictions between questions, multiple choices,

tips and the feedback presented in the system.

3. Completeness Checks: the requirements

document should be completed by all functions and

constraints set by the user. For this reason, the test

persons were asked if there is some additional

ENHANCED TEACHING STRATEGIES - The Design Process of a Support System for Teachers

Figure 4: Questions 2 & 7 in Mentor.

functionality, explanations, or questions to be added

to the system.

4. Realism Checks: the requirements should be

checked whether they could be implemented after

studying existing technology. In this regard, time,

cost, possible financiers were considered.

5. Verifiability Checks: the system requirements

must be written in a verifiable way. This means that

a set of tests through which we show that the system

meets each specified requirements must be written.

The aim of this documentation is to decrease the

potential disagreement between customer and

contractor. The use cases were further studied to

make them as easy as possible to facilitate the

communication between the users and the developer.

Two groups of test persons have evaluated the

design of Mentor as described in chapter 4. The

result of the evaluation showed that this system

could be used as a tool for school leaders at all levels

in the educational system. Some comments from the

tests are:

“The system is a tool that provokes reflections”.

“This system can be used as a tool to make the way

we run our schools visible and help us to reflect

upon it.”

The test persons believe that teachers play the

central role in any educational system. They state

that even if we change the educational system at

national level e.g., the curriculum yet the goals will

CSEDU 2010 - 2nd International Conference on Computer Supported Education

not be achieved until teachers’ teaching strategies

are adapted to the new approach.

“When we try to make changes at a national

level, teachers are still living in the autocratic

system. Then we have a commission that is changed.

So now the individual must change themselves.”

Furthermore, the feedback given by the system in

form of explanations and tips was very useful and

essential for teachers’ reflection, according to the

test persons.

“I found the feedback given by the system very

useful since I don’t need to remember all of it.”

“I am impressed of the presented feedback. It is

really appreciated.”

“In the traditional teaching environment often

teachers are alone. When they need feedback on a

particular issue they can use the system and through

the feedback and presented tips find out how to move

on.”

“Internal discussions performed by oneself can

be poor therefore the system will work better if we

work as a group when using it.”

By analyzing the result of the evaluation we found

some problems and suggestions for the

improvement. The first problem is that the definition

of the knowledge dimension and cognitive process

dimension in the Bloom’s revised taxonomy must be

further developed to be better understood. One

suggestion is to have three to four different

definitions for each concept and one additional free

definition so that the user can be able to define the

concept in his/her way. The second problem was the

given feedback in form of numbers in the taxonomy.

The numbers are difficult to interpret and

understand. Moreover, it is not necessary to evaluate

what is stored in the system. Suggestion was to use

other signs to give the feedback. The third problem

is the contradictions in question 2 & 7 (See Figure

4). For the question 2 is given that if you e.g., mark

“Create” according to the note then it means that all

the previous options are also marked.

Having follow-up questions would reduce this

problem. Question 7 was also difficult to answer

since it is not clear what summative and formative

evaluation is. One reflection is that every teacher

must choose both of the options to fulfil the course

goal.

The forth problem is that there are no questions on

how to motivate students. One suggestion is to

motivate students to take examples from their daily

life to learn from. This is considered to be in

accordance to the student-centred approach.

The following suggestions have been given to

improve the design:

1. Add more questions and follow-up questions

to the system and use different colours for

follow-up questions.

2. Add questions that help teachers to motivate

students.

3. Add information about learner’s strategies in

the follow-up questions.

4. Add information about how questions are

related to each other.

5. Remove the numbers in the taxonomy and

use other types of graphical feedback.

6. Define the concepts in the taxonomy more

thoroughly and give different options of

one definition. Moreover, give the users the

opportunity to add their own definition.

7. Provide users with two different views of the

system. One for planning the teaching and

one for reviewing.

8. Give the user opportunity to watch a video

about another teacher’s teaching situation.

9. Translate the system to Swedish.

As mentioned earlier the aim for this paper was to

put a solid foundation for the design of Mentor, a

knowledge-based system for teachers’ learning. In

the past decades there have been new demands on

teachers. One of the biggest challenges has been to

reflect upon their current teaching strategies and try

to move toward more student-centred teaching

strategies. Studies show that despite great emphasis

on student-centred teaching, there are still many

teachers who continue to teach in the traditional

teacher-centred way. Moreover, teachers, who are

trying to integrate and use new teaching methods

differing from traditional ones, are often met by

resistance by their colleagues as well as by students

(Hedin, 2006). Utilizing information and

communication technology in form of, e.g., a

knowledge-based system, the teacher could explore

new teaching strategies before implementing these

strategies in the classroom. In order to provide a

knowledge-based system that meet teachers’ need

we have focused on the process of capturing

requirements in this paper. This process is

considered to be the most important part when

designing a system. Since, the success of an

implemented system is depended on clear and well-

defined requirements. Through the presented design

ENHANCED TEACHING STRATEGIES - The Design Process of a Support System for Teachers

process we have got good support for the

implementation of the design in a working system.

REFERENCES

Alagic, M., Gibson, K. & Doyle, C. (2004). The Potential

for Autonomous Learning through ICT. Society for

Information Technology and Teacher Education

International Conference. 2004(1), 1679-1684.

(available online) http://dl.aace.org/14560 [June,

2008]

Anderson, L.W., & Krathwohl D.R., (2001). A Taxonomy

for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing: A Revision of

Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. New

York: Longman.

Awad, E. & Ghaziri, H. (2003). Knowledge management.

Pearson & Prentice Hall.

Brinko, K.T. (1991). The interactions of teaching

improvement. In teaching. New Directions in

Teaching and Learning, No. 48. San Francisco, CA:

Jossey-Bass.

Dumas, J. S., Redish, J. C. (1999) A practical guide to

usibility testing. Revised Edition. Intellect books.

Durkin, J. (1994): Expert systems, design and

development. Prentice Hall.

Edman, A., Mayiwar, N.(2003) A Knowledge-Based

Hypermedia Architecture Supporting Different

Intelligences and Learning Styles. Proceedings of the

eleventh PEG2003 Conference. Powerful ICT for

Teaching and Learning, St. Petersburg, Russia.

Gero J., Sudweeks, F., (1994) Book review Artificial

intelligence in design '94 by (Eds.), Kluwer Academic

Publishers, Dordrecht, 1994. pp 768, ISBN 0-7923-

2994-5. http://journals.cambridge.org/ Retrieved

August 2008.

Gobet, F. & Wood, D. (1999) Expertise, models of

learning and computer-based tutoring. Computers &

Education 33.

Hedin, A., (2006) Lärande på hög nivå – idéer från

studenter, lärare och pedagogisk forskning som stöd

för utveckling av universitetsundervisning (Learning

on a high level – ideas from students, teachers and

pedagogical reserach as support for university

teaching). Uppsala University.

Hofmann H. F., , Lehner, F., (2001), Requirements

Engineering as a Success Factor in Software Projects,

IEEE Software, vol. 18(4) pp. 58-66, July/Aug.

Kassim H., Ali Z. (2007) The Use of ICT in the

Implementation of Student-Centered Learning (SCL).

Internet Journal of e-Language Learning & Teaching,

4(1), January 2007, pp. 15-31.

Kjellin, H., Stenfors, T.( 2002) Harald Kjellin, Terese

Stenfors, A Process for Acquiring Knowledge While

Sharing Knowledge, Proceedings of Fourth

International Conference on Practical Aspects of

Knowledge Management, 2-3 December, Vienna,

Austria.

Kraus, L.A., Reed, W.M. & Fitzgerald, G.E. (2001) The

effects of learning styles and hypermedia prior

experience on behavioral disorders knowledge and

time on task: A case-based hypermedia environment.

Computers in Human Behavior 17, 125-140.

Lea, S. J., D. Stephenson, and J. Troy (2003). Higher

Education Students’ Attitudes to Student Centred

Learning: Beyond ‘educational bulimia’. Studies in

Higher Education 28(3), 321–334.

Mccombs, B. L. and Vakili, D. (2005) A Learner-Centred

Framework for E-Learning. The Teachers College

Record, Volume 107 (8), August 2005, pp. 1582-

1600(19) Blackwell Publishing.

Marton, F., Hounsell, D. & Entwistle, N. (1996) Hur vi lär

(The Experience of Learning), Stockholm: Rabén

Prisma.

Mayiwar, N., Edman, A. (2007) Mentor- knowledge

Management System Supporting Teachers in Their

Leadership. Proceedings of NBE conference.

Roveniami Finland

Mayiwar, N., Pritchett, W. P, Edman, A. Wiemers, R.

(2005) Improving Leadership Styles Using

Technology. The Journal of Interdisciplinary

Education (JIE) a peer-reviewed journal associated

with the North American Chapter of the World

Council for Curriculum and Instruction.Vol. 7, No. 1.

Morphew, V.N. (2002) Web-Based Instructional

Learning/[Edited by] Mehdi Khosrow-Pour. USA:

IRM Press

MacNeill, N., Cavanagh, R., Silcox, S. (2003) Beyond

Instructional Leadership: Towards Pedagogic

Leadership. Proceedings of annual conference for the

Australian Association for Research in Education,

School renewal: recurrent themes about educative

mission, pedagogy and leadership. Auckland.

O’Neill, G. and McMahon T. (2005) Student–centered

Learning: What Does It Mean for Students and

Lecturers? Publisher: All Ireland Society for Higher

Education (AISHE), Dublin.

Pfleeger , S. L. and Atlee, J. (2006). Software

Engineering. Theory and Practice. Third Edition.

Pearson International Edition.

Parviainen, P., Hulkko, H., Kääriäinen, J., Takalo, J. &

Tihinen, M. (2003). Requirements Engineering.

Inventory of Technologies. VTT Publications. Espoo.

Saqi, S. B., Ahmad, S., (2008) Requirements Validation

Techniques Practiced in Industry: Studies of Six

Companies. Master Thesis in Software Engineering.

School of Engineering. Blekinge Institute of

Technology, Sweden. Thesis no: MSE-2008-23.

Available online:

http://www.bth.se/fou/cuppsats.nsf/bbb56322b274389

dc1256608004f052b/03a48c3772d5b49ac12574ff002e

6fd4!OpenDocument

Spectro, J.M., (2008) Cognition and learning in the digital

age: Promising research and practice. Computers in

Human Behavior 24. 249–262.

Sommerville, I. (2004) Software engineering. Addison-

Wesley, Fifth Edition.

CSEDU 2010 - 2nd International Conference on Computer Supported Education

Sweder, Lucianne. (Website, 2002). Teachers That Impart

Technology Make a Difference for Student Part 1 of 2.

FET Connection. Gorge Ortega. Managing Editor.

Florida Educational Technology Corporation.

Available on http://www.fetc.org/fetcon/2002-

FallSweder.cfm. Retrieved on October 18, 2005.

Trochim, MK., W. (2006) Qualitative approaches.

Available at: http://www.socialresearchmethods.net.

Walsham, G. (2006) Doing interpretive research.

European Journal of Information Systems, 15 (3), 320-

330.

APPENDIX

Use case: Reflect upon ones teaching strategies

Scope: Mentor Level: User goal

Primary Actor: - Teacher, school and university

Stakeholders and interests: Principals, University teachers

training teachers, Students and Parents of students

Preconditions: The user has an account in Mentor.

Success Guarantee (Post conditions:

The user should have answered all questions and gotten

feedback. Answers and results should have been saved in the

system. The user should have logged out.

Main Success Scenario (Basic Flow):

1. User logs in to Mentor, providing identification

information.

2. System returns the start page, presenting the purpose of

Mentor.

3. User confirms that he/she has read the information by

proceeding to the next page.

4. System presents Blooms revised taxonomy, showing

the cognitive dimension and the knowledge dimension, with

links to definitions.

5. User explores the definitions in Blooms revised taxonomy.

6. System presents definitions.

User repeats step 3-4 until he/she is satisfied.

7. User confirms that he/she has understood the definitions

by proceeding to the next page.

8. System presents the connection between the questions and

the taxonomy.

9. User confirms understanding by proceeding to the next

page.

10. System presents a multiple choice question with different

answers.

11. User answers the question and proceeds to the next page.

System and user repeat step 10-11 for all nine questions.

12. System presents the result, where the answers are mapped

to Blooms revised taxonomy through numbers for each

combination of dimension items.

13. User explores a combination number.

14. System presents individual feedback depending on the

user's answers as well as general information about

definitions and tips for improving the current combination of

dimension items.

User repeats step 13-14 until he/she is satisfied.

15. User chooses to save his/her answers and result.

16. System saves the answers and the result.

17. User chooses to log out of the system.

18. System logs out the user automatically.

Extensions (Alternative Flows):

*a. At any time, the user can choose to return to a previous page.

1. System presents the previous page.

11a User chooses to return to a previous answer to change his/her

answers.

1. System presents the previous question and shows the previous

answers.

2. User changes answers to the question.

15a. User chooses to not save his/her answers and result.

1. System asks the user for confirmation.

2a. User confirms that no answers or result should be saved this

time.

2b. User regrets the decision and chooses to save the answers and

result anyway.

1. System saves the answers.

17a. User forgets to log out.

1. System saves the answers and result and logs out the user

automatically after a certain period of inactivity.

17b. User wants to do the questions all over again and chooses to

restart the questions.

1. System shows the first question together with the user's

previous answers to that question.

Special Requirements:

- New users to Mentor should be able to create an account.

- System should have a function to provide new passwords in

case of forgotten passwords.

- System should be self-instructing and so intuitive to use, so

that no manual is needed.

- System terminology should be adequate for the teaching

domain.

- System must be easy to use even for users without much

experience of computers.

- It should be possible to choose several answers at the same

time.

- There should be an inactivity timer preventing that the user

leaves in the middle of running the application, possibly

exposing the answers to others passing by the computer.

Technology and Data Variations List:

- Mentor should use hypermedia techniques, possibly web

based.

- Result should be generated through knowledge-based

techniques

Open Issues:

- Is an English version enough, or should Mentor support

several languages?

ENHANCED TEACHING STRATEGIES - The Design Process of a Support System for Teachers