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Other Interactive Elements

The number and scope of other types of interactive activities in a course are limited by the creativity of the team members, and by limits on time, expense, and file size. Certain areas of content were allowed more flexibility in resources due to the fact that learning required a greater amount of interactivity. For example, literature and social science courses, which contain large amounts of reading material, can be successful with less interactive practice than math, science, or language courses, which require frequent interactions to enhance explanations of difficult concepts. However, interactivity in all courses helps keep students involved with the material and keeps them interested.

Some of the types of interactivity in English and social science courses include pop-up windows that add additional interesting information, or that ask questions to help students relate to the material they are reading.

Here is an example of a pop-up window from Health Science 2. Rolling over the terms on the left bring up descriptions on the right that students need to know.

Language courses, such as Spanish or ESL, require lots of interactive pieces to explain concepts, help teach vocabulary, and practice grammar and vocabulary skills. The CLASS™ ESL 1 course includes an interactive activity to help teach how to count change in U.S. currency. A voice gives the “problem”, including the price of the meal and the amount given as payment.

The student is then asked to count back change. As the student drags the change (in any combinations of denominations), the computer responds with feedback letting the student know if the change was correct or not. If not, the student can try again. Each successive “problem” is more difficult than the one before.

The microscope is an interactive piece from the Biology 1 course, which allows students to simulate using a real classroom microscope. This is a highly manipulative microscope, in which students can drag the appropriate slide to the microscope stage, turn the light on, and move the slide around until they see an image.They can perform a rough focus and then a fine focus. Students are able to change the degree of magnification too; first they focus using the lowest power and then increase magnification. This is done by offering a fully rotating nosepiece that holds three different objective lens magnifications at 4x, 20x, and 100x. Each increase in magnification allows the students to see finer detail of the specimen being observed. (All images on the slides are actual microscopic pictures that were taken using material in a real lab.)

Other courses require many self-check types of activities. Many of the Social Science courses rely heavily on maps such as the interactive maps found in World Civilizations I and American History II.

There is sometimes a tendency to get carried away with the creative development and use of interactive elements just because they are available and can be done. Remember to ask if the interaction or animation was necessary to enhance education.

Research and testing shows that overuse of “flashy” components, which don’t explain the content, are irritating to students and can actually detract from the material. Creation of these elements is also time consuming and expensive and can slow the loading time of the course pages dramatically.

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