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This brief will examine and explore some tools and techniques that can be used to develop interfaces for learning environments. Interface design has been a topic in software engineering for many years. The advent of graphical user interfaces has created many remedies and challenges for the software engineer. In recent years with an increased emphasis in educational technology, instructional designers are also included in this arena. The interface can be a driver in terms of a learning environment´s ability to engage a student. It can also provide a point of information exchange and therefore learning between the student and the environment´s software. Thus, the issue of an interface is vital to the success of a learning environment. This brief will produce a variety of interfaces for various environments to allow the designer to contrast and compare them based upon the required purpose. The designer will have a toolkit filled with tools and techniques which will allow for interfaces that will engage the student and facilitate their learning. The primary audiences are K-12 and post-secondary educators who desire to create digital media based educational materials.

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Background and Significance

User Interface Design

Hypertext

Animation

Assessment

Understand the Audience

Define the Inputs

Define what processing occurs

Define the outputs

Cognitive Underpinnings

Chunking Implications for User Interface Design

Dual Coding

Dissonance Theory

Learning Taxonomies

Cognitive learning taxonomy

Affective learning taxonomy

Psychomotor learning taxonomy

Combining taxonomies

Presentation Sequencing

Elaboration Theory

Learning Hierarchies

Prototyping

Storyboarding

Navigation Patterns

Random Design

Structured Designs

Selecting an Appropriate Design

Multimedia: It´s Implementation and Usage

Images

Image file compression

Lossless Compression

Lossy Compression

Raster formats

Interlacing

GIF

Design issues with GIFs

JPEG

Design Issues with JPEGs

TIFF

RAW

PNG

BMP

PPM, PGM, PBM, PNM

Vector formats

CGM

SVG

Motion Pictures / Animation

Sound Files

Uncompressed Format

Compressed Formats

Lossy Compression

Lossless Compression

Text and Message Design

Their Combination

Modality Principle

Redundancy principle

Implications for Multimedia Design Limits

The Case for Adding On-Screen Text to Narrated Animations - The learning preference principle

The Case Against Adding On-Screen Text to Narrated Animations

Other Principles

Navigation Patterns

Random Design

Structured Designs

Summary / Conclusion

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Joseph J. Frantiska Jr. is a contributing faculty member at Walden University. He has undergraduate degrees in mathematics, business, software engineering and artificial intelligence along with graduate degrees in computer science and business administration. He possesses a doctorate in education from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Prior to entering the field of instructional technology, he spent over 25 years in industry as a systems and software engineer with experience in all aspects of the software and system development lifecycles generating more than 20 technical publications. He has taught at the college level for over twenty five years in both educational technology and computer science in both online and face-to-face environments.

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