Drug abuse learning tool
Tandra Lawrence
New Plymouth Girls High School
Year 11 Digital Technology
10 week project
Teacher: Carol Curtin
Today sees a generation of students with an unprecedented level of computer literacy and involvement with communications technology. This makes the computer an essential learning tool and one that schools have only begun to exploit in terms of developing targeted educational software.
With this in mind, teacher Carol Curtin asked one of her Year eleven students, Tandra Lawrence, to create an educational tool on an issue of her choice, using the Visual Basic tools inside Microsoft PowerPoint and Adobe Fireworks. Tandra then approached a local health teacher who agreed to be her client.
Tandra chose to focus her educational tool on drug abuse, and started by creating a questionnaire for her client to get a steer on how to appropriately address such a serious issue and find out who the target audience should be, what content would be suitable for them, and how they should be approached with that material.
This led to Tandra's first design brief, which identified the target audience as male and female students aged 13 and above. "We thought this age was perfect, as some of the content would be too graphic for younger kids, whereas 13-year-olds were new to secondary school and more likely to be exposed to, and experiencing, a lot of new things including drugs and alcohol. These students often aren't educated on the effects drugs have on the human body, so we thought that having them use the learning tool at this age would be great timing."
To give her ideas for creating her own educational e-tool, Tandra examined educational websites, particularly the visual and audio aspects that made them successful or unsuccessful, the teaching methods used, and the levels of functionality.
Tandra then further developed her brief and specifications, trying to strike the right balance of education, usability, and fun, so the tool was truly effective for its target audience. As Tanya continually refined the brief over the course of the project, constraints such as time, budget, copyright, and her skill level in using the required software were also considered.
In her final brief, Tandra specified that the project would have a minimum of 12 PowerPoint slides that would portray the effects of drug abuse, using suitable images as illustration. It was to be interactive, educational, and user-friendly with a good navigational setup.
Tandra began planning for the tool by creating a simple storyboard template for the entire project, specifying the purpose of each slide in the correct order as well as detailing the image files and animations used for each one. Work then began on creating the pages themselves.
Finding that animation was an engaging aspect of many online educational resources, Tandra created the animated character 'marijuana man', using Adobe Fireworks to grab the attention of young users. Each PowerPoint slide presented information about marijuana, cocaine, heroin, LSD, and ecstasy in the form of a multi-choice quiz, to present the information in an entertaining and interactive manner. The quiz tested the users knowledge on the physical, psychological, and social effects of each drug, with incorrect answers prompting a try again box and correct ones taking the user smoothly through to the next slide.
In creating the questions, Tandra attempted to give a broad range of information on the short and long-term effects of drug abuse, the costs involved, and the effects on friends and families of drug abusers. Each slide included images – sometimes shocking – of the physical effects of drug abuse on the body. For Copyright images and to not breach people's privacy, Tandra ensured that faces were omitted and was permission granted for all images to be used in a public forum.
To ensure that all aspects of her learning tool were working properly, Tandra created a test log to cover every possible problem that a user might come up against. "The test log allowed me to go through all the slides of my learning tool and test each one to see if they were functioning well. By doing this I came across some technical difficulties such as images, animations, and questions not loading properly and I also found that I had forgotten to add macros to insert the correct answers in the learning tool."
The test log also helped Tandra to prioritise her tasks, with each problem receiving a high, medium, or low priority rating to help with time-management and planning her next move effectively.
Once these issues were addressed and the learning tool was completed, Tandra created another questionnaire for her client to get her feedback on the effectiveness of the site and address any areas for improvement. "I asked my client questions such as, 'How clear was the purpose of the learning tool?' and 'What were its main learning objectives?'. I'm happy to say that overall the outcome was very positive and that the client was very pleased."
Teacher comment
"Tandra chose a topic which put her in immediate contact with potential users of her outcome. The outcome she produced underwent many changes as she regularly sought feedback from her captive audience – her fellow students. Before she commenced creating the product she ascertained what was likely to capture attention: she wanted to ensure that her informative tool did not appear as just another boring 'show and tell' approach, hence the addition of 'marijuana man'.
"Tandra's willingness to continuously refine her outcome and the research she did into the topic she presented resulted in an exceptional piece of work. It shows that while applying effective software skills is important, having the right approach to how you present your topic is critical if you are going to capture the attention of the audience."
A screenshot from the 'What is Marijuana?' page of the slideshow
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