CTAD invited us to work with them to rebrand and develop a suite of learning CDROMS: English in Action is a set of learning resources for adult literacy. Workshoping with their writers, educationalists and systems specialists we began to re-build the brand. The set of CDROMS focus on documentary style video and we set upon developing interfaces and learning exercises that facilitated the footage in an innovative and accessible way. Level 1 was showcased at BETT 2006.

Background

CTAD was looking to bring their existing set of English language courses, EIA, ‘…into the 21st Century’. Rather than just giving the existing product a facelift, we worked together with writers and systems developers to redesign the whole structure of the product and revitalise the learning experience.

Research

We first focused on the learners who would use the product. We then broadened our scope to understand what kind of the situations or circumstances they might find themselves ine and what might be the likely triggers for engagement. This helped us to envisage how users might experience the product and how to make it easier for them to use.

From this research, we decided to follow a documentary narrative approach, as this was the most interesting and relevant way to engage a very broad audience. We then looked at the best way to structure and design the product. It made sense to focus then on a product that revolved around video. This meant thinking carefully about how users could use, access, and work along side the video easily and effectively. We knew we had to focus on making the video player a very flexible and extendable tool.

Concept

We began thinking of the video player as a virtual version of an ipod or mobile phone - something you could always carry around with you, that could always be accessible, small, portable and with well thought out useful features.

We developed a thumbnail video holder which would always be present in the corner on the screen, wherever you were in the CD. To launch it you needed to click it and it would pop up to full size. Once launched you could drag the video player around your screen, enlarge or minimise the player. This enabled students to work along side the video easily and switch between video and exercise without having to navigate away from what they were doing.

We included a subtitle function which was available on both full and mid size versions of the player. The mini player’s functions were reduced for ease of use. The subtitles were an effective solution for comprehension and reading exercises and had obvious accessibility benefits.
Subsequently many of the exercises we developed involved interacting with the video. The most successful of these being an exercise where the learner is able to direct which way the narrative unfolds depending on the answers they supply at certain points of the video.

Interface and Navigation

Our research revealed that there was going to be a wide variety of uses for the cd. Some teachers would use the cds in class and go through a whole half hour session, however there would also be users who would want to just brush up on a certain aspect of their English language, such as grammar, or listening comprehension.

The navigational structure was pushed to make it as easy for learners to hop around the CD picking out specific exercises as it would be for a learner to have an engaging and satisfying half hour session with the cd. We focused on developing a particular narrative curve for the cd. This approach ensures that that their learning journey was varied and that there were few chances that learner has a repitious half hour.

Therefore we developed two navigation structures, one was an A to B structure where the learner was guided throught the CD beginning to end through a series of scenarios and prompts and choices. The other structure was supported by a drop down navigation that enabled the learner to have a good overview of what was on offer on the CD and pick out the relevant points and hop back and forth from the CD.

Accessibility

The CDROM had to adhere to common accessibility standards. The whole CD was tab enabled, and all animation was dynamically coded which made the excerises themselves very light weight XML fed applications. We designed the CDROM and accesses so that it would be easy to update the design and content - making it a very sustainable, durable and robust product for our partners, CTAD.

Feedback

The feedback from the tutor and the learners has been overwhelmingly positive. With the overall verdict was articulate by one tutor as being “… very absorbing. …it catered to precicely to the learners needs …and that the product had been put together with the students very much in mind. “