Research in Engineering Education Symposium 2011 - rees2009

Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) Página 919 de 957
the collaboration between all members in order to ensure the cohesion of their objectives
and monitors their progress.
Implementation
MindBook is a novel mindmap based digital book and authoring tool which contains a
collection of topics, learning modules and resources. A well-defined MindBook can be a
digital textbook itself. The tool is represented in graphic form as a mindmap (Figure 2).
Our digital textbook data model was adapted from the industry standard topic maps data
model (Özsoyoglu et al., 2004; Ozel et al., 2004) and modified to be tailored into our
model. It is structured as follows:
• Topics, which are included via creating nodes. Each topic must have a unique
name.
• Metalinks, which are relationships between topics (which constitutes hierarchies
between topics, linking related nodes with connections),
• Modules which are paragraphs or sections consist of learning resources. In our
project we implement in a form of a flash based flip-book,
• Questions which infer the level of the students’ understanding from the results of
answered questions.
• Resources which are parts of the modules (e.g. text, video and figures, etc., ), and
• Levels of academic achievement.
The MindBook we have developed was originally designed as an authoring tool to create
digital textbook which is specifically designed to replace the traditional textbook. As mind
map requires visual cues for its implementation, we customized FreeMind (FreeMind,
2010) which is an open source software as part of our mind map design.
Figure 2 illustrates an example of the MindBook. A different way of structuring and
visualizing contents is possible by creating and inserting nodes. It also allows users to add
hyperlinks at an internal/external learning resource such as a local file or a web address.
Figure 2: MindBook of the software engineering course
Proceedings of Research in Engineering Education Symposium 2011
Madrid, 4 th - 7 th October 2011