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

4 HEAT
4 HEAT
As mentioned in the previous chapter, it is necessary to build a prototype authoring
tool to demonstrate the practical usability of the EFTECS. This prototype appli-
cation will further on be called HEAT - Hypermedia Educational Authoring Tool.
It was developed to address the following issues:
• How can the EFTECS - a theoretical model - be converted into an applica-
tion?
• What technical solutions and standards can be used to implement the HEAT?
• How can the content space be realised without creating too much organisa-
tional overhead that would be out of scope for this PhD?
• How can existing material be searched and reused within the content space?
• How can a working example be created?
Due to the complexity of these issues it was necessary to break down the design
and implementation of the HEAT into several tasks.
The first task was to decide on a general approach that covers the technical aspects
like development tools or accepted standards as well as the general design aspects
of the HEAT like the implementation style of the EFTECS or the realisation of the
content space.
4.1 General approach
It was decided that standard software development techniques, for example object
oriented programming, should be used for the general implementation approach of
the HEAT. Additionally, the implementation task can be divided into the general
technical solutions and the software design aspects.
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