Problems with using components in educational software

Autor: Andries van Dam, Anne Morgan Spalter
Rok vydání: 2003
Předmět:
Zdroj: Computers & Graphics. 27:329-337
ISSN: 0097-8493
DOI: 10.1016/s0097-8493(03)00027-x
Popis: Reuse is vital in the education world because the time and money necessary to create high-quality educational software is a significant problem. Estimates for the cost of creating a single well-designed, highly graphical and interactive online course in the commercial domain range from several hundred thousand dollars to a million or more. Thus, the idea of reusable software components that can be shared easily is tremendously appealing. In fact, “component” has become a buzzword in the educational software community, with millions of dollars from the National Science Foundation and other sponsors funding a wide variety of “component-based” projects. But few, if any, of these projects have approached the grand vision of creating repositories of easy-to-reuse components for developers and educators. This paper investigates some of the factors that stand in the way of achieving this goal. It also looks forward to a new genre of educational software that we hope will emerge when the basic components problems have been addressed. We begin by defining the word “component” and looking at several projects using components, with a focus on our Exploratories project at Brown University. We then discuss challenges in: critical mass, intellectual property issues, platform and system specificity, programming in the university environment, quality assurance, searching and metadata, and social issues. We look at relevant software engineering issues and describe why we believe educational applications have unique factors that should be considered when using components.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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