Design and implementation of a videoconferencing tutorial

Abstract

The tutorial described in this paper takes the user through the installation of the CU-SeeMe videoconferencing package, used at several universities and elementary schools, developed at Cornell University, USA. The tutorial can be used for networking classes or by anyone wanting to install and use CU-SeeMe. Since the tutorial was designed and implemented by one of the authors, a graduate student who had not built a tutorial before, it became important to introduce him to the topics of instructional principles, interface design and hypertext characteristics. If he had to find and learn about these topics in isolation, it would have taken him as long or longer to do that as to construct the tutorial. Instead he was able to utilize a hypertext instructional design methodology which took him through those topics in enough detail to enable him to construct a tutorial that is instructional, maintainable, consistent of interface and extensible. Another important time saver for the author was the opportunity to use SIMPLE developed by William M. Marcy and Marion O. Hagler at Texas Tech University. SIMPLE is designed to be easy to learn and use and facilitates the integration of course material into a multimedia package that has the capability to keep track of student movement through a tutorial and student responses to exercises.