October 2006 Volume 9 Number 4

Research design
The eight participating teachers were randomly divided into an experimental group (referred to as Teachers A, B,
C, and D) and a control group (Teachers E, F, G, and H). The subjects were requested to develop their teaching
materials for an assigned teaching unit. The experimental group was given the system, and the control group an
Internet browser and word processor.
Tools and materials
Course Content Material: The participants of this study were given the unit “Domestic Politics of the Ming
Dynasty” from the “Glories of the Late Imperial Era” section of the junior high school history book. The
participants were assigned the text of the unit along with the relevant parts in the teacher’s handbook as a
reference for designing the teaching materials and developing four hour teaching periods.
Scale for evaluating instructional materials: In order to analyze the differences between the materials developed
by the experimental and control groups, we developed a five-point Likert-type scale (1=strongly disagree to
5=strongly agree). Zero points were given when a desired item was missing from the teacher’s materials. The
scale comprises three categories of eight items (Table 2), including the quality of supplementary information
gathered in the analysis stage, the teaching plan developed in the design stage, and the teaching materials
produced in the development stage.
Questionnaire for interview: To obtain the opinions of the participating teachers in the experimental group, the
researcher developed a set of 21 structured questions for the interview. The questions are divided into several
categories such as background, opinions about the system interface, functions, guiding mechanism, system
usefulness, and the personal process of instructional design.
Procedures
The procedures of the experimental group were implemented in three stages: (1) Giving instructions and
background interview (60 min.). During this stage, a teacher’s general background is probed during the
interview, including his or her past experience with the use of computers in teaching. The proposed system is
also explained to the teacher. (2) Planning, data searching, and preparing worksheet. This stage starts with the
actual analysis and design done by the participants (80 min.). Based on the textbook and the teacher’s handbook,
as well as information gathered from the Web, teachers then proceeded to produce the “teaching plan,” the
“lesson plan,” the “learning worksheet,” and the “detailed activity plan” with the help of the system tools. The
researcher also conducted interviews with the participants regarding this particular stage of the experiment (30
min.). (3) Developing teaching materials as Web pages. This stage starts with the participants executing the
development stage (80 min.). The participants decide on the content for their Web pages, which they may
develop with the system tools. After developing teaching materials, the researcher interviewed the participants in
this stage for 30 minutes.
For the control group, due to a lack of Web page production experience, it was difficult for the participants to
implement Web pages with other Web page tools like FrontPage. So, they were asked to complete the analysis
and design stages. The data in the development stage was not included in the comparison. This part of the
experiment was thus divided into the following two stages: (1) Giving instructions and background interview (60
min.). The content of the interviews was the same as for the experimental group. The functions of Microsoft
Word and Internet Explorer were also explained to the teachers. (2) Planning, data search, and preparation for
worksheet. During this stage teachers conducted their own analysis and design of the teaching unit (80 min.).
This includes the course content analysis, the use of computers to prepare and save supplementary materials
(using Word or Notepad), formulating a teaching plan, and finally, developing learning worksheets. After the
teachers completed their work, the researcher then conducted interviews on this part of the experiment (30 min.).
Results
The finished instructional materials were evaluated by two junior high history teachers with 22 and 27 years of
experience. The materials used were the teaching plans, supplementary materials, and work sheets. The
evaluation results for eight teachers are shown in Table 3. The Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient indicates
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