Below will consist of the 'Introduction' extract from my Honours Project that I completed in my final year of University.

1. Introduction

The presence of online learning has seen considerable growth over the last three decades and has been a continual focal point for many long-term strategies in all educational institutions (Van Nuland, et al., 2020). Students of all walks of life have many competing responsibilities that would make otherwise traditional methods difficult to facilitate in their daily lives. However, the development of flexible learning opportunities afforded by online systems enables learners to learn at their convenience – either synchronously or asynchronously. This integrated online environment is designed to work in parallel with the practical learning students would experience face- to-face, such as Demonstrations and Laboratories (Rennie, et al., 2020). Totlis, et al. (2021) emphasizes this point – stating that although any theoretical lecture can be effectively delivered through an online medium, content requiring three-dimensional representation and perception, such as human anatomy, is not as easily possible to replicate in an online environment. The COVID-19 pandemic changed all of this.

With educational institutions not allowed to permit teacher or student presence on campus, the traditional and complex pedagogical forms of demonstrations and laboratories had to adapt to the more complex e-learning format. This additional distance over the internet introduces the concept of ‘transactional distance’ – whereby communication between the instructor and students increases the potential for misunderstanding (Naddeo, et al., 2021). This transactional distance affects demonstrations and laboratory activities the most – making any replication or representation of these in an online environment difficult. Learning materials such as video, simulations, or detailed guides are an inefficient substitute for the real face-to- face experience and as a result is not a credible replacement, a phenomenon impacting the Science, Technology, Engineering, Medical (STEM1), and similar domains the most (Inda & Kumar, 2020). Rennie et al. (2020) supports this notion, explaining that students in these fields would normally be exposed to a variety of expensive, complicated, physical machines and instruments in equally as complex facilities. Denying this invaluable hands-on exposure and immersion robs learners from technical subtleties required in their future working lives.

However, the reality is that online learning going forward is now a heavy consideration for many educational institutions and compromises must be made. Prior to the onset of COVID-19, Lo et al. (2021) conducted a case study to analyse the effectiveness of a blended learning environment, incorporating elements of high quality pre recorded demonstrations and experimental laboratory techniques for undergraduate science courses. These videos consisted of step-by-step explanations highlighting & showing common mistakes that can occur. Lo et al. (2021) found that their students were highly engaged in this new learning environment when supported with unique multimedia. When COVID-19 inevitably forced Lo et al. (2021) and their cohorts into lockdown, course content was already produced and tested. The 2020 and 2021 cohorts were well resourced and minimised the sudden change in learning habits. The authors found that this learning model promoted student self-motivation, engagement, and learning outcomes with students improving in both formative and summative assessments. However, the authors recognise that this was at a high faculty cost, with no low-tech solutions generally available. This thesis will present a prototype system which aims to provide a new form of multimedia content to the online classroom environment: a Choose-Your-Own- Adventure video exploration system. This prototype will target user interactivity and engagement at its core, while at the same time, being an easy-to-use low-tech tool in the arsenal of educators. With the resultant prototype system, this thesis will utilise a user study to explore the factors that influence user acceptance of the presented prototype and make design recommendations for future development.

1.1. Example Scenario

Suppose you are a chemistry teacher wanting to demonstrate why students should always follow instructions. To show this, you can record a short video explaining an experiment where students spray an alcoholic mist into a large plastic bottle, then afterwards throw a match inside. The provided instructions say to only sprays three times into the bottle. The teacher, in a controlled and professional environment, can record what happens if the student were to spray one, three, and ten times. This is to a) cure the student's curiosity of what happens if they put too much b) engages the student because they can now satisfy that curiosity, and c) by being engaged, students will more effectively learn the principal concepts being demonstrated.

1.2. Thesis Goal & Objectives

The goal of this thesis project is to develop a ‘hybrid’ online laboratory that will be able to leverage the benefits of both the hands-on laboratories students used to perform in and the live demonstrations students used to observe. The resultant product will allow for active observation in an adaptive personalised laboratory demonstration – where students will have the ability to control the laboratory and demonstration methods comparable to a ‘Choose-Your-Own-Adventure’ book. However, this broader goal does not provide depth to start the project. Without a clear direction, intent is not immediately clear to researchers. To break this down further, objectives will be constructed to create quantifiable and measurable targets. With this in mind, the following objectives are presented. The first objective is to develop a novel gamified CYOA platform. The creation of this system will explore methods that will enable educators to easily construct these CYOA paths for students to explore. Exceptional care will be applied to make it an easy-to-use system – paying close attention to user feedback. Being such a novel idea, usability of the final presented prototype system will be evaluated, which leads to the second objective. The second objective will be to evaluate the usability of the prototype system. This will be completed via a user study through a Think-Aloud. In doing so, it is hoped that it can be proved that the system as a whole is effective. Results from this will enable recommendations of future work to be done on a similar prototype system. The third and final objective is to evaluate the factors that influence the acceptance of this new technology. This will be carried out using user questionnaire data and a uniquely crafted research model. In doing so, empirical results can suggest recommendations on future work.

1.3. Contributions

This thesis project is expected to contribute several ways to the relevant bodies of knowledge in varying domains. These include:

1. A novel system designed to implement a CYOA multimedia system for educators
2. An evaluation methodology and usability results for this novel system
3. A novel theoretical research model regarding constructs affecting user acceptance of the prototype system
4. An analysis of demonstrations versus hands-on laboratories was completed, and an associated identification of the functionality that can be included to make online demonstrations more interactive for students was proposed

The first contribution is relating primarily to the feasibility of the system design, largely from a technical and general usability perspective. The primary delivery of this contribution is a base for future work regarding implementing more refined versions in the future. The second contribution is regarding the usability of the prototype. The use of a think-aloud to thoroughly examine the usability of the current prototype opens the door for future iterative design work. Overall, it provides a clear foundation for future work. The third contribution relates to the research model generated for the thesis. A system can be very usable, but it does not necessarily mean it will be accepted by the user population abroad. The fourth and final contribution of this research is the thorough analysis of the current state of demonstration & laboratories, and the potential gamification has on making these traditional teaching methodologies into interactive videos. The contribution of this research model will allow future work to target areas that heavily influence user acceptance of the prototype system and create a more representative research model in the future.

Bibliography

Van Nuland, S. E., Hall, E. & Langley, N. R., 2020. STEM crisis teaching: Curriculum design with e-learning tools. The Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, Volume 2, pp. 631-637.

Rennie, A., Gamage, K. & Lambert, C., 2020. University Programmes during COVID- 19 Pandemic, s.l.: Scholarly Community Encyclopedia.

Totlis, T. et al., 2021. Online educational methods vs. traditional teaching of anatomy during the COVID-19 pandemic. Anatomy & Cell Biology, Volume 54, pp. 332- 339.

Naddeo, A., Califano, R. & Fiorillo, I., 2021. Identifying factors that influenced wellbeing and learning effectiveness during the sudden transition into eLearning due to the COVID-19 lockdown. Work, 68(1), pp. 45-67.

Inda, S. S. & Kumar, R. K., 2020. Role of E-learning in Quality Assurance during COVID 19 Pandemic: Challenges and the Road Ahead. Purushartha, 13(2), pp. 97- 105.