abstract

a critical factor for the success of various teaching methodologies depends substantially on students’ motivation as well as their logical thinking. yet students may find these methodologies not that effective if they do not possess the necessary qualities. to overcome these shortcomings, we propose a web-based learning model, vl, which may be considered as an active learning tool incorporating the vital elements of self-motivation, simple to use and information filtering. vl is an acronym that stands for visual learning. it consists of three major components, namely the code book component, the dictionary component and the play component. in addition, a number of optional modules may also be included in order to provide better support to the vl model. example of optional modules may be the concept module and the problem case module. all these components and supporting modules are posted to a web site for student access. a project, funded by the university grants committee, has been launched in order to study the feasibility and operations of the vl model. this paper will present an overall view of the proposed web-based learning model and discuss its role as a learning tool in the context of problem-base teaching.

keywords: web-based learning model, code book, dictionary, play.

1. introduction

motivating students to learn is a difficult task. it is even more difficult when the classroom lecture involves a programming environment and a design methodology [borne 1993]. however, with the aid of the modern computing technologies, the difficulties can be substantially reduced if a good design of visual programming environment [zhang and zhang 1998] has been implemented. before we present how such computing technologies are incorporated into our web-based learning model, perhaps it is worthwhile to investigate how motivation can be invoked from students’ point of view. first of all, students are keen in

· what knowledge they will acquire?
· how to apply the knowledge in solving problem?
· how to apply the knowledge to an application?
· is the knowledge easy to learn?

in the context of our web-based model for learning the java language, the first three issues can be explained with no difficulty. the first concern is easy to clarify. most of the computing students know that the java language is one of the state-of-the-arts of computing languages. for the second concern, we use the problem-base learning [savery and duffy 1995] as our teaching methodology in our visual learning model. hence, students are able to apply the knowledge in solving problems. the third is quite critical. we intend to build the vl model by using an application that most students are familiar with, for example, a cinema ticket booking system. after the students have attended all the lessons, they should be able to build systems of similar application. the final concern is perhaps the most difficult for the students. for this purpose, we have to rely on modern computing technologies together with some design constraints. these design constraints are:

· each lesson consists of a number of sessions.
· each session is a stand-alone java application.
· each session is used as a building block for the next session.
· information loading in each session must be minimal.
· explanation facility for each session must be adequate and user-friendly.

this paper intends to present the framework of the visual learning model. the vl model and its supporting modules are posted to a web site as indicated in figure 1. there are four supporting modules, namely the object-oriented concept module, the java concept module, the problem case module and the tutorial module.