智慧型遠距合作學習環境中超媒體數位系統教材的設計與評估

Abstract

This thesis presents a novel and efficient digital system courseware design and its evaluation. Designing this courseware is intended to bridge the software/hardware comprehension gap between computer science and electrical engineering students.We integrate the ideas of $computer$-$assisted$ $learning$ $(CAL)$, $computer$-$aided$ $design$ $(CAD)$, and $hypermedia$ to develop the courseware. The learning materials are built in an intelligent distant cooperative learning environment. Students can learn the courseware through the network without limitation of time and place, which usually encounters in the traditional learning environment. To avoid students of getting lost in the hypermedia courseware, we provide some useful facilities of user interface, such as hot keys, a suggestive path, logic diagrams, and an overview map etc., to guide them to learn the courseware in an effective and friendly manner. The learning path can be bottom-up for sequential learning or top-down for courseware overview. With the help of high level hardware modeling and simulation tools, such as VHDL (VHSIC Hardware Description Language) tools, all basic components of digital systems have been described with high level constructs. Thus, students can understand the high level hardware constructs easily based on their knowledge of software design, especially for students with good logic concept and coding skill. The VHDL tools can also help to check the student's hardware design on-line and can provide more interaction between the student and the environment. We also assess the effectiveness of our courseware via $expert$ $evaluation$ and $user$ $evaluation$. The results of expert evaluation provide feedback for improving the courseware. The results of user evaluation are intended for two indications. One indication is the attitude of the users toward the courseware. The evaluation results show that the students like to learn using our courseware. The other indication is student achievements using the courseware. The evaluation resultsalso demonstrate that the students could make progress after learning using our courseware.