October 2006 Volume 9 Number 4

2001). The system thus aims to assist teachers to produce outlines and plans in their own style. The model also
provides a teaching plan and drafting tools to facilitate collation of lesson plans and self-reflection upon past
teaching performances.
There are four tools used in the design stage. Weekly course scheduler provides an academic calendar and
monthly planner to facilitate time management. Syllabus builder assists teachers in developing, editing, and
managing syllabuses, which is a course plan for the whole semester. Unit plan builder assists teachers in
developing, editing, and managing unit plans, each of which is a teaching plan for a specific unit. Lesson plan
builder assists teachers in developing, editing, and managing daily lesson plans, and includes a memo feature for
particular lessons or classes.
Development stage
During this stage teachers prepare supplementary materials according to the draft teaching plan prepared in the
design stage and the actual teaching needs, and then place the completed materials onto the website for students’
review before and after class. Most of the available tools for web-based teaching material development and
course management lack the needed support for instructional webpage production and fail to provide assistance
with the preparation of supplementary teaching materials such as learning worksheets and slides. The key task in
this stage is therefore to produce all the materials (learning worksheets, slides, etc.) necessary for instructional
webpage production and teaching activity implementation in a web-based support environment. To familiarize
teachers with the new operating environment, the system incorporates the standard Microsoft Office editing tools
(MS Office 2000), which the majority of teachers should be familiar with. The tools in this stage are as follows:
1. Course page editor and manager: This tool provides teachers with an environment for instructional webpage
editing and combines real-time on-line multimedia functions to facilitate the production of instructional
webpages.
2. Personal webpage editor: This tool assists teachers in developing their own personal teaching pages through
which students can access the course pages designed by the teacher.
3. Learning worksheet editor: This tool helps teachers develop learning worksheets which are becoming more
popular with teachers.
4. Slide editor: This tool incorporates functions from Microsoft PowerPoint and assists teachers with slide
preparation.
5. Test editor and manager: This tool incorporates functions from Microsoft Word and assists teachers with
test question editing. It also helps produce a test template according to the type and number of questions
teachers need in order to reduce the extra work with test paper formatting and layout.
Practice stage
During this stage teachers utilize the Internet to conduct various classroom and after hour teaching activities and
employ online tools for distance discussion and evaluation. In addition to synchronous and asynchronous
network communication tools, the system also helps teachers evaluate students’ papers online. The following
four functions are provided by this stage.
1. Daily course bulletin: This tool provides an online bulletin for announcements and course daily messages to
students.
2. Online synchronous communicator: This function provides a discussion forum similar to online chat rooms
to allow teachers to provide counseling or respond to course related inquiries.
3. Online asynchronous communicator: This function provides an asynchronous discussion zone similar to a
message board to allow teachers and students to discuss course related problems.
4. Online assignment evaluator: This function allows teachers to evaluate and score students’ papers and
assignments on-line.
Experiment
Participants
Eight history teachers from three junior high schools in Taipei participated in this study. The participants have
one to nine years of teaching experience with an average of six years. They had a basic understanding of
computer operations such as word processing and surfing the Internet, but had no experience in the use of webbased
applications for the design or development of teaching materials.
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