Re Multimedia dev

[Steve Messimer]

> I¹m going to make a multimedia application for the Windows and Macintosh
> platform. It will contain a presentation, or tutorial part and an exercise
> part. The user will be able to freely navigate within the tutorial and in
> between the tutorial and the exercise part.
> 
> The application will be distributed on a CD-ROM and should be
> auto-executable on both platforms.

Peter,

About three months ago I finished a very similar project using RR 1.1 It
worked great.  The project was designed to demonstrate the Theraputic
techniques used by Virginia Satir. It used quicktime movies, images, etc.
There were a few gotchas to begin with mostly related to RR and QT but those
have been resolved.  The CD that was produced was executable on both
platforms and is now being published by AVANTA as an adjunct to the Book
Entitled "The Satir Process".  For more info go to AVANTA's web site.

www.avanta.net

> 
> The content of the application is (1) a short tutorial on a medical disease,
> it¹s symptoms and possible ways to treat it followed by (2) three short
> exercises where the user can train, or test his skills. Each exercise will
> consist of a series images where the viewer will be asked to diagnose each
> image. A score will be given after each exercise is completed. The
> application will only contain still images and text (and maybe a couple of
> sound effects).
>

I am currently working on an educational development environment
(preceptorTools) built with RR that could be very helpful to you. It will
be going ß in the next week or two.  To get an idea of what it can do I have
posted some screen shots on my web site.

www.messimercomputing.com/pTools.html

I haven't gotten around to the pricing,the licensing or the legal issues so
it will be a while longer before it is available.
 
> I have developed the previous two applications for the client using
> Macromedia Director 7, but I would like to try using Revolution this time.
> 
> Could anyone please suggest, in very general terms, how I should approach
> this project with Revolution. In particular, I'd like to know how to create
> the exercise part of it. Are there any tutorials, or exercises describing
> similar projects?
> 
> Many thanks in advance.
> 
> -Peter

How you develop your project depends upon what outcomes you desire.  Do you
expect to track the performance of individual users of the tutorial?  You
suggest the use of some evaluative tools.  Will these tools keep track of
different student's performance or are they meant as competancy-based
learning tools that test the students knowledge?

Generally speaking your design will be dependent to a degree on the answers
to the above questions.  CD deployed apps can't store user input other than
temporary storage of inputs while the app is in RAM.  This then would
present a design challenge if you wanted to track performance of multiple
users.  It could be done but would require that answers were written to
separate files.  On the other hand if you were designing an instructional
module that was competency-based and were not overly concerned about keeping
score other than that it indicates to the learner their level of mastery. It
could all be done on the CD without the necessity of sending user responses
to external files.

I would generally set up something like this ...

Title card -- Introduce your project
main menu card -- navigation tools (buttons) that can send you to every card
in the stack.

- on the main menu card create a navigation group with next prev and main
menu btns. You might also want to add other objects like a card title field
etc. Set the group's background behavior to enabled. Developing a map object
is a formidable task for a new developer but it can be done.
(PreceptorTools Learning module stack comes with one already built for the
developer. All you do is point and click to add cards to your lesson.)

now create ...

n number of content cards -- one instructional point per card
assigment or evaluation cards  -- build all your evaluation tools here

What you propose to do is very straightforward and should work fine. I have
found RR v 1.1.1r2 to be very stable on both Windows and Mac platforms.

If you asked me th same question two months from now I would suggest that
you use PreceptorTools.  Alas it isn't ready for prime time at the moment.

:-)

Hope this helps.

Steve

Stephen R. Messimer, PA
Messimer Computing, Inc
208 1st Ave South
Escanaba, MI 49829
www.messimercomputing.com