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1. distributed through the Web Most students have an individual access to it 7 DISCUSSION The paper presents a hypertext exercise collection used in a first university course of measurement technology The structures used for interactive use the exercise types used and experience given by students are presented The author has an opinion that this sort of interactive study material could be used together with distributed textbooks as study material If the professors of co operating universities organise their work in a suitable way this could result in a joint international education activity REFERENCES 1 Numminen M Aumala O Virtual Instrument as AC Measurement Training Tool To be presented at IMEKO XVI in Vienna 2000 2 T amp M Educators Corner Interactive Fundamentals Experiments http www tmo hp com tmo iia edcorner English Director html 3 September 1999 3 Aumala O Fundamentals in Measurement Technology Mittaustekniikan perusteet 8 edition Otatieto Helsinki 1999 223 p in Finnish 4 Toolbook User Manual Asymetrix Corporation Bellevue Washington 1994 5 Aumala O Interactive Exercises in Measurement Technology Version 1 2b Tampere University of Technology course 75116 Measurement Technology ISBN 952 15 0291 6 http mit tut fi books perusteet 11 October 1999 AUTHOR Prof Olli Aumala Tampere University of Technology Laboratory of Measurement and Information Technology P O Box 692 33
2. 101 Tampere Finland Phone 358 3 365 2483 Fax 358 3 365 2171 E mail olli aumala mit tut fi
3. HYPERTEXT TRAINING AID INMEASUREMENT TECHNOLOGY O Aumala Laboratory of Measurement and Information Technology Tampere University of Technology Tampere Finland Abstract Software can be used to help students to learn concepts structures calculations and use of measuring instruments Such tools are useful particularly in situations where there is very limited time for contact teaching A careful design according to research on the studying process is essential Experience shows that self study repetition by using software training aid is fruitful for learning theoretical issues Keywords Training aid Multimedia Self study 1 INTRODUCTION There are situations where contact teaching is not sufficient to learn properly concepts structures theories or practical applications This problem is very important for distance education e g through the Web But even in more traditional cases similar difficulties can exist The number of students attending a course may be so big that no classroom for the whole group is available Or the difficulty is an overlapping of lectures of other courses and the student can choose only some of them to listen to the teaching Foreign students have the problem of following teaching given ina strange language The Web is used increasingly for teaching theoretical issues The most common method is to present texts problems and their solutions in the Web in the form of Adobe Acrobat files Modern HTML code can
4. acteristic values of a distribution _ Table of Contents gt lt gt This problem concerns calculation of the values nature dimensions of the characteristics handling of crude errors graphical presentation of the cumulative distribution function Check first the units After that give the calculated values from top to bottom Note Hide hint fields after reading them by clicking You can also use a calculating software eg a spreadsheet program Find out how the used functions of this software work Pure number m oN Ove Pure number Pure number EET Ove After everything is done go to the next page Figure 3 Typical mathematical task In this example the main point is to make sure that the dimensions of the statistical parameters are understood It is a clear benefit that one cannot pass this aspect because the examples worked in courses of statistics often deal with plain numbers only Another subtopic of this exercise is the indication and removing of those results which possibly have crude errors and this is presented on another page that is coupled with this one by a hyperlink the hotword go An example of comments shown after an erroneous input is shown in Fig 4 In this case there was a wrong value and dimension of the variance After clicking the comment field an additional comment appears giving knowledge for determ
5. also present mathematical equations This method is not very fruitful because the solutions are given directly without any guidance that could help the student to correct his her mistakes Measurement technology differs from many other subjects in a very fundamental way a measurement means always something experimental A period of laboratory work is very essential even for basic skills in measurement technology But actual laboratory work may be preceded by some theoretical introduction and this can be learnt remotely Paper 1 presents how software means can help students in the use of virtual instruments and how this software can be used as a preparative study material for practical laboratory work These tools can be used also in the Web 2 is an example and they may be very useful particularly before the first laboratory courses 2 BASIC THEORETICAL TOPICS Some common topics are present practically in all measurement tasks They can be presented and studied theoretically The contents of a basic textbook 3 indicates following topics e types of scales of measurement e loading effect of the measuring instrument e problems caused by the waveform of the measurand some cases of systematic error of AC measurement measurement chain balance methods quantisation sampling dynamic measurement problem of response time and frequency signal processing calibration and evaluation of measurement uncertainty All topics cannot be dealt with
6. be used to guide students in a meaningful way Students are asked to calculate a value or they are asked to choose among given alternatives According to the response of the student the program can show new fields on the hypertext page giving hints or advice or it can reward a good performance A simple HTML page does not contain a possibility to use IF structure in its operation but there are other environments where this can be done The studied case was programmed with Multimedia ToolBook 4 which can be distributed freely as runtime version to the students 6 EXERCISE COLLECTION The exercise collection 5 is intended to be used as study material for the first university course in measurement technology This course includes 28 lecture hours 14 hours mathematical exercises and 3 laboratory exercises 3 hours each The course is a mass course the number of students is about 400 at a time and even lectures have to be given in two parallel classes There is a sort of contact teaching but the classes are too big for any individual tutoring The interactive exercise collection intends to complement the mathematical exercises The exercise set includes problems of most important chapters of the textbook 3 of the course It is recommended that the exercise set should be taken as a part of the repetition work before the final test of the course The feedback from the students indicates that this form of education can complement the contact teac
7. correct or not If it was correct a corresponding hint should follow otherwise the next guess should be proposed What has been said above makes clear that the formulation of the exercise problem is very important The checks for a correct solution should be done often enough to be able to identify every possible type of mistake without ambiguities If a mistake is found an individual comment for this mistake should be given An exercise can be designed as a flowchart see the principle in Fig 1 All relevant steps are presented first then checks for intermediate results and finally hints and confirmations of success Applause Hints 1 Figure 1 The structure of an exercise with automatic commenting The design of interactive automatic exercises is a field for pedagogic research Often this research cannot be made due to lack of resources or time In this case the design should be done by an experienced teacher who is able to evaluate various possibilities and risks 5 PROGRAMMING TOOLS From Fig 1 it can be seen that the structure is quite simple The programming of an interactive exercise can be done using many alternative programming tools It is advisable to include text figures equations etc in the material presented to the user Sound and videoclipses would also be helpful in some cases These are however more tedious to prepare and they also demand a more complicated software and equipment of the student Hypertext can
8. hing in a meaningful way It is quite generally evaluated as a good tool for final training One student stated that the exercises had developed an understanding why it is necessary to evaluate the measurement uncertainty 6 1 Covered topics The collection includes a page for choosing a problem It is arranged as a hierarchical menu according to Fig 2 i amp Exercises in Measurement Technology ioj x File Edit Text Page Help Bxercises in Measurement __ Contents mm Types of Scales Welcome to work exercises in this hypertext collection This is the Table of Contents for the collection You can choose a problem using a hierarchical menu You can always come back to this table of contents with the pushbutton at the right upper corner Next to that button there are also buttons for browsing pages On each problem page there is a description of the problem in the left hand frame On the right you can find fields buttons etc for your output There is a particular page for training the basic operations of this collection Click the button beneath Sensors Noise and resolution Balance methods Signal processing Figure 2 Hierarchical menu of the exercise collection Only the first submenu is shown here 6 2 Types of exercises Most problems are formulated as mathematical tasks An example is presented in Fig 3 amp Exercises in Measurement Technology OF Xx File Edit Text Page Help Char
9. ining the correct number of degrees of freedom If the student meets difficulties that go beyond his her skills the solution may be called with a particular pushbutton The solution becomes visible only after typing a confirmation this hopefully prevents students from going too easily to the solution Another type of exercises is a selection task This has been used in the handling of the types of measurement scales see Fig 5 The experience tells that a calculation task may be safer than a selection task from the point of view of learning It seems to be too easy to try to guess a selection Calculauion oT Ine values nature dimensions of the characteristics handling of crude errors graphical presentation of the cumulative distribution function Check first the units After that give the calculated values from top to bottom Note Hide hint fields after reading them by clicking You can also use a calculating software eg a spreadsheet program Find out how the used functions of this software wa Mesulls 253 pay Pure number vaine 02 J ev Ove Pure number Esumi Ov Ove Pure number The variance is defined as the power of the deflection After everything is done go te L a next page 4 2 i l 2 Sy here is the number of results 1 is the number of Figure 4 An example of a comment field Exercises in Measurement Technolog
10. thoroughly within a single course but an understanding of their presence is essential for any engineer working in the field of measurement 3 ROLE OF EXERCISE There is a long tradition to include guided exercises into theoretical courses The learning properties of students vary and particularly adult students often learn best by first reading a text and then working with exercises If the number of students is big individual guidance cannot be given The exercises are done merely by asking students to solve a set of exercise problems and then by giving and explaining a case solution This is efficient from the point of the teacher but it is not so efficient from the point of the student An ideal education method would be to follow the working of the student to give rewarding feedback on correct steps taken and to identify mistakes at once giving a hint how to find the correct way 4 AUTOMATIC GUIDANCE A teacher or a tutor follows the working of the student If an error happens an experienced tutor can often guess what sort of mistake was done The student may then confirm or deny the guess and a way can be found how to proceed If the guidance happens automatically it would be better not to guess but to be sure about the mistake and to present an unconditional hint or advice If this is not possible the most probable mistakes should be presented in order of probability one at a time The student has then to decide whether the guess was
11. y File Edit Text Page Help degrees of freedom Yrhat is it Note the unit Types of Measurement Scales This exercise analyses basic characteristics of various types of scales of measurement and allowed applications of some characteristic quantities Problem Which types of scales are represented by following scales a Fahrenheit temperature scale b size of a paper sheet classification A4 etc c days of week Specify first the levels of each type of scales Check all relevant properties of each scale type properties first then the type proceed from top to bottom Note Make HOTWORDSs visible Alt T S Note also that comment fields should be hidden after reading by clicking the field with the mouse Identification equality Order relation gt Difference not dependent of the zero Natural zero point Natural unit of measurement me eee ney omina see OOOO ramsa Ei peris EE Pase oooi Psae oE Figure 5 A selection task This is the first task of a multitask exercise 6 3 Distribution of the collection The first version of the collection was distributed on floppy disks The installation package was prepared for installing the exercise collection and the runtime version of the application programme It also added a programme group and a starting icon into the start menu program manager After the testing period the software was modified The latest version 5 is a shareware software and is

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