Guenter Hilmer - Phd Thesis - Glamorgan Dspace - University of ...

8.1 Review of the EFTECS 8 DISCUSSION
Altogether, this means that one of the major goals of the project has been achieved,
because the separation of educational and technical content was feasible within the
EFTECS and the HEAT paradigm.
8.1.3 Reusability of material
The reusability of the created material in other EMs was one of the requirements
of this PhD. Only if existing material can be reused, will it be beneficial to educa-
tional experts in their work. As it was shown in the interview evaluation and the
practical evaluation, educational material has to exist in the content space before
it can be reused. This is a basic principle of IT applications, which usually need
work input before they can support the users.
However, once the material is authored it can be stored in the content space (cf.
section 4.6) and further on can be reused by other authors. This reusability of
material was confirmed in the interview evaluation (cf. chapter 6) as well as in the
practical evaluation (cf. chapter 7) and it was regarded as a major advantage of
the EFTECS. Additionally, the search functions based on EHPs were especially
useful to the members of the evaluation group (cf. section 6.5.4). After an author
has searched and found some educational material, he can insert it into his EM.
Altogether, it was shown that material authored with the EFTECS and the HEAT
can be reused.
8.1.4 Presentation and communication
The 3-Layer-Model and the EFTECS focus on the creation of educational material
based on teaching and learning strategies. The EFTECS model provides the option
of using different presentation technologies via the physical information layers,
but leaves the actual realisation of additional functions to the HEAT or any other
technical solution based on the EFTECS.
For example, communication between the teacher and the students could be es-
tablished by the creation of a special communication TLS and its implementation
within the HEAT. This implementation of a communication TLS could also cover
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