Creating and administering interactive online tutorials and performance evaluation tests through a novel web platform

Abstract

Distance learning applications or computer supported collaborative learning (CSCL) are forms of education that use several resources and self learning mechanisms. There are pedagogical techniques, such as tutorials, which can help the process of learning if they are implemented with the appropriate technology. Currently, there are many tutorials accessible through the Web. However, the Web sites that provide the tutorials lack of a platform for their creation and administration. Also, the content of those tutorials is limited in most of the cases to only text and images, which avoids interactivity with the users. Moreover, these tutorials do not provide any means to evaluate the performance or progress achieved by the students. In this paper we present a novel Web platform that allows the creation and administration of interactive online tutorials and performance evaluation tests. This platform is easy to use and guides the tutorial creator to produce tutorials, which contain not only text and images, but also other types of multimedia elements, interactive examples, and a set of different tests to evaluate the performance of the students