Constructivist Design

Integrating Java Applets into the Webpages

LST 403 Constructivist Learning Environment Design Document Dr. Cates

Lifang Chang

1. Project Overview Title: Integrating Java applets into the Webpages

Target Audience: The primary audience for this lesson would be college-level or graduate-level students taking an instructional Website design course.

Overall Goal: Upon completing this lesson, the learner will be able to insert Java applets in the Webpages by using the open source codes from the Internet.

Rationale: Many instructional Website designers would not consider Java applet just because they are afraid of creating programming codes. Actually, some programmers have created thousands of free applets which are available on the Internet. This lesson is designed to help learners rethink Java applet and begin to utilize those free applets on their Webpages designing.

When instructional web designers create more attractive graphics and animations, they may face the problem of a Webpage’s greatly increased download time. One of the advantages of Java applets is that once a Java applet is executed on a web browser, this applet would run in offline mode without the need for Internet access. This feature is

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quite useful in a computer classroom with limited bandwidth and allows instructional designers to avoid their high relies on high-speed Internet.

There are numerous Java applet tutorials on the Internet; however, those Websites either mainly focus on the Java code writing or just provide open source codes of applets without any guidelines. This lesson will give the learners a clear sense of Java applet by applying a constructivist learning theory in the classroom. The lesson would be a taskbased unit. Learners are required to be involved in active learning and they are encouraged to explore Java open sources they don't completely know. In addition, learners would share their results with one another and benefit from the sharing of others going through the same learning process.

Description of the Project: This lesson will provide college or graduate students in instructional design with the experience of inserting Java applets into Webpages. Students will explore: 1. Why instructional designers need to know Java applet. 2. What the ready-to-use Java applet on the Internet is. 3. How to use the free open source codes of Java applet. 4. What the detailed parameters of an embedded java applet are. 5. How users execute the java applets in their Internet browsers.

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2. Needs Assessment Discrepancy Analysis Desired Performance: Instructional web designers should know of one or two programming languages. They may not need to write line by line codes, but they should understand the basic expression behind the logic programming scripts. They should know one of the popular techniques about dynamic Website designing. Therefore, students of instructional technology would be able to define the difference between Flash, JavaScript and Java applet. Also they should feel confident to use the already programmed Java applets as the components of their Webpages.

Current Performance: Students of instructional Web design are required to be proficient in vision design. They are good at Adobe Flash, Photoshop or something like that. As a result, they focus their design on either pretty graphic or attractive animation. When facing the demand of interactive communication with Website visitors, most students can only turn to HTML forms. Usually, there is only JavaScript used as client-side scripting language for web sites, but this client-side language used in conjunction with forms is limited. JavaScript often only serve to do pre-validation of the form data or to prepare for the form data to send to a server-side program. In addition, HTML forms need to be programmed in JavaScript language which is a totally different language with Java. Alternatively, students may download an already programmed HTML form from a few poor designed ones on the Internet.

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3. Goal and Purpose Goal: This lesson is to help the learner to establish his or her new knowledge of Java language’s application. Upon completing this unit, the learner will get a common sense of how to find a desired Java applet which is available on the Internet and how to add a Java applet in a Webpage with different Web designing software.

Purpose: The purpose of this lesson is to provide activities that will encourage students to understand how the open source codes could be used in their Web designing work and, also, to develop in them an increased awareness of the other way to create interactive forms on Webpages and how a Java applet can provide input into the Internet browser process.

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4. Learner Analysis General Description: The primary audience of this lesson would be college and graduate level students in an instructional Web design course. They likely have very varied backgrounds. Some are full-time students with a background in education and want to become instructional designers while others would be pursuing a degree part-time with a full-time job. The age range of the learners is 21 – 40 years old. There is a bit more women than men in the instructional web designing course. The students consist in different races, American, Hispanics, Blacks and Asians. The students may approach their learning in different manners because the full-time students need to balance a full academic load and social events, while the part-time students need to balance academic, jobs, and family responsibilities. They are used to using the Internet as a tool in studying and living life.

Strengths: Perhaps one of the biggest strengths of the students in an instructional design course is that they are highly motivated and disciplined learners. College and graduate students can think critically. They have an open mind toward the new ideas and have the capability to explore the unknown things. They are able to draw on prior knowledge and apply it to the current lesson. Moreover, since they are confident with their own future, they have a desire for knowledge.

College and graduate students may have good listening, reading and writing skills. Also, many have good communication skills and have a high desire to express their thoughts.

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They have developed some time management skills and organizational skills. The majority of the students have their own computers and can easily access the World Wide Web. Their ability to use a computer allows them to pursue independently many interests and instructions.

Weaknesses: Perhaps the biggest weaknesses of this unit’s students are their limited time on studying and multiple responsibilities with family, homes and jobs. Full-time students may involved several sorts of social events and part-time students have to spend lots of time on the real world pressures. Those social burdens may distract them from their studies.

Some students may have the difficulties to focus for a while on reading programming code. Forced to learn a complex concept about one kind of programming language in class may cause them to become disengaged in the learning process. Some may still have a degree of discomfort with searching on the Web. Others may feel overwhelmed when faced with the task of learning a new technique in addition to the new functionality of electronic communication such as Bulletin Boards, Blogs and Wikis.

Potential Areas of Difficulty: The learners may resist taking this lesson because they may not think that Java applet could benefit on their Web design. They may have trouble in understanding the relationship between the original Java codes available on the Internet and the application documents in an html file.

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Another area of potential difficulty with this content is that this lesson requires some prerequisite knowledge of basic programming skills including compiling, running and configuring.

Even though these learners are familiar with using Internet, they may not have developed good techniques for constructing searches. Accordingly, the results of their Java applet searches may be extensive and lead them to confused learning materials.

Strategies: The following is a list of strategies that should be used in this lesson to take advantage of the learner’s strengths, minimize the learner’s weaknesses, and resolve areas of potential difficulty.

1. In order to take advantage of the learner’s desire for new things, the lesson should introduce more knowledge beyond the necessary contents for this lesson.

2. In order to take advantage of the learner’s ability in using computers and the World Wide Web, this lesson should provide more online learning recourses.

3. In order to take advantage of the learner’s ability in independent study, the lesson should be individually centered

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4. In order to minimize the learner’s impatience on reading programming codes the lesson should introduce a few ready-to-use source codes. 5. In order to take advantage of the learner’s good communication skills the lesson should provide a collaborative learning environment.

6. In order to take advantage of the learner’s abstract thinking ability the lesson should require higher level thinking skills.

7. In order to minimize the learner’s weakness in lack of time on study the lesson should provide a number of learning materials on the Web.

8. In order to minimize some learners’ resistance in new techniques the lesson should assign all class in a couple of groups in which experts may take a model role.

9. In order to minimize some learners’ weakness in lack of basic programming knowledge the lesson should give adequate amount of examples that will give the learner a clear road map of their projects.

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5. Learning Resources: Even though the students do not need write their own Java applet codes in this lesson, it is recommended that the students have a Java compiler– Java Developers Kit (JDK) in their computers. The JDK provides an environment to compile and run Java applets. Certainly, this lesson provides every student a computer with Internet access. If some students prefer to use Macromedia Dreamweaver to create their Webpages, the Dreamweaver software will be installed in each computer. Furthermore, the lesson will provide a few handouts, list reference books and useful Web links to the students.

The following is a list of this lesson’s learning resources: Technology: 1. computers with Internet access 2. Java Developers Kit (free download from java.sun.com) 3. Macromedia Dreamweaver software 4. Bulletin Board system 5. Email account Handouts: 6. “Java applet, Flash and JavaScript” 7. “How to insert a Java applet with Dreamweaver” 8. “Guidelines for searching free Java applets on the Internet” 9. “FAQs of the Java applet with Dreamweaver”

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Books: 10. “Java in a Nutshell Fourth Edition” by David Flanagan (© 2002, ISBN: 0596002831). 11. “Java Tutorial, The: A Short Course on the Basics, 3rd Edition” by Mary Campione, Kathy Walrath and Alison Huml (© 2000, ISBN: 0201703939). Web links: 12. http://www.realapplets.com/tutorial/ : A good Java applet examples Website in which visitors would get a clear sense how a Java applet works. 13. http://java.sun.com/developer/codesamples/applets.html : A few useful and free Java applets code with carefully interpreting. 14. http://javaboutique.internet.com/cathome.html : There are hundreds of Java applets to browse and all are free to download. 15. http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/javanut/examples/ : A number of nice Java applets to be used directly.

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6. Assessment Plan: In the constructivist view, it is essential that the teacher is seen as a guide rather than an instructor. Thus, in the student-oriented learning environment, the main things that teachers want to know are whether students develop the abilities to self-assess and how to provide constructive feedback to students. This is not only an assessment process but also a learning process (North Central Regional Educational Laboratory, 1995).

A constructivist teacher would not simply judge his or her students’ answers with “right” or “wrong”. Alternatively, he or she may encourage and accept each student to try different viewpoints, desires and project works and tend to use some performance tests such as portfolios, exhibitions and demonstrations in the class.

At the beginning of this lesson, the instructor will provide students with two assessment rubrics. A summative evaluation focuses on the product of the students’ works. Therefore, this summative assessment rubric incorporates a set of criteria that indicates the marking scheme to be used for assessment. On the other hand, the formative assessment rubric is a guideline for each learning section. This formative assessment rubric evaluates students’ social and content growth. The instructor would ask the students evaluate their own work based on the formative assessment rubric and submit it in with their URLs to be assessed as part of the final evaluation.

The formative and summative assessments rubrics are attached at the end of this document in the appendix A.

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7. Instructional Plan: In the Constructivist theory, the learner is placed in the center rather than the instructor. The learner constructs his or her own conceptualizations and solutions to problems. Learner autonomy and initiative is accepted and even encouraged. From the Constructivist’s view, learning is the result of mental construction. Learners learn by filtering new information together with what they already know. Furthermore, learners are encouraged to create their own solutions and to try out different ideas and hypotheses.

Model:

This lesson is designed following Jonassen’s Model for instruction. The Jonassen’s model allows instructors to start with a problem, questions or a project proposal. In the instructional practice, the instructor may provide work examples and needed information in a collaborative learning environment. The constructivist design model for this lesson is as follows:

1. Start with a question, and then introduce the project ideas or describe a real-world case.

2. Provide some worked examples.

3. Decide upon the work as an individual or group.

4. Present communication tools such as: a Bulletin Board (e.g. Discussion Board), Email lists and a Wiki account.

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5. Provide scaffolding: adjust task difficulty, restructure task and low-risk work space, etc.

6. Supply rich learning resources.

7. Provide formative and summative assessments.

The Constructivist Learning model applied in the lesson:

Before introducing the project requirement, the instructor would ask learners a couple of questions such as: “what type of software do you use to create an interactive form and/or animations?” The responses may include HTML forms, JavaScript and Java applet. The instructor may continue asking questions about the dynamic web design, and further more the teacher suggests that students search for relative information on the Internet and discuss it with peers. Consequently, the learners will concentrate on the Java applet finding their own answers.

The instructor may provide two or more work examples from the Internet to the students. In addition, the instructor would display his or her works to the learners in class to support a learning environment based upon modeling.

The learners may decide their project scope, and in addition decide if they will complete the lesson as an individual or team. The learners will begin to work on their projects – inserting one or two Java applets in the Webpages. They may experience a series of learning sections as follow: •

Decide the content of the Java applet.

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Look for free source codes on the Internet.

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•

Compile the original codes in a Java class file.

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Insert the Java applet file in an html file.

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Set up the Java applet’s parameters in the html file.

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Test the Java applet in an Internet browser.

If they decide to work as groups, the team will start their work together searching free Java applet free source codes. The team can use the same applet, and they can discuss and learn from each other.

At the beginning of the lesson, the instructor will provide a summative evaluation rubric that contains criteria and grading points for the final product. The rubric will assess the learners’ growth in knowledge. The instructor also provides a formative assessment rubric at the beginning of the project which is used throughout the class. The formative assessment will guide the learners’ learning on their social and metacognitive growth.

Scaffolding strategies:

This lesson supplies rich learning recourses and gives work examples to the learners. When the learner might feel unsure of one specific knowledge or working point, the instructor would be available to the learner to provide suggestions. Another option of support is the technology tools. The learners could use one of their familiar communication tools to get support. Common questions or problems may be announced to all of the class by the instructor. The progress of learners’ social learning would be the focus of the team discussion. In addition, the learners’ metacognitive learning is assessed along with their self-evaluation in the formative assessment rubric.

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[References]:

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North Central Regional Educational Laboratory (1995). Rethinking assessment and its role in supporting educational reform. Available URL: www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/methods/assessment/as700.htmNorth Central Regional Educational Laboratory (1995). Rethinking assessment and its role in supporting educational reform. Available URL: www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/methods/assessment/as700.htm

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Appendix A

Webpages with Java Applets Summative Evaluation Rubrics Name: __________________________ Date: ___________________________ Criteria

Exemplary 3 points

Proficient 2 points

Partially Proficient 1 point

Incomplete 0 points

Relevance of Content to Webpages’ Theme

The applet is highly informative and provides essential information to the visitors. The Webpages have friendly interactions between visitors and designers.

The applet is informative and provides useful information to the visitors. The Webpages have interactions between visitors and designers.

The applet points visitors to information that does not relate to the purpose or theme of the Webpage. The Webpages include an interactive element between visitors and designers.

The applet points visitors to some information which is inaccurate or inappropriate for the intended audience. The Webpages do not include an interactive element.

Layout and Size

The layout and applet displaying size is artful and consistent across the Webpage and it enhances the readability of the information presented.

The layout and applet displaying size is consistent across the Webpage and makes it easy to read the information presented.

The layout and applet displaying size is distracting and it is difficult to read the information presented.

The layout and applet displaying size make the Webpage unattractive, and it is difficult to read the information presented.

Points

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Explanatory Notes

The applet is followed by Clear functional explanatory notes.

The applet is followed by functional explanatory notes.

The applet is explained by unclear functional explanatory notes.

There are no functional explanatory notes for the applet.

Tags

A descriptive tag for each applet provides applet non-displaying users with a good idea of what is shown in each applet.

Most applets include the alternative tags and the alternative tags are fairly descriptive.

Most applets do not include the alternative tags, and the alternative tags could be more descriptive.

All applets lack alternative tags.

Copyright Issues

Each Webpage includes a connection link to the applet’s original source.

The Webpage includes an incorrect or dead connection link to the applet’s original source.

The Webpage includes No copyright incorrect copyright information is on information without the the Webpage. connection link.

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Java Applets Project Formative Assessment Rubrics Name: __________________________ Date: ___________________________ Learning Section

Category

Content Selection

1. Does Java applet work on the client-side? 2. Can your applets be saved to a client’s hard disk? 3. Did you collect information for the group? 4. Did the team’s work help you?

Searching Applets

1. Can you clarify the difference between Java applet, Flash and JavaScript? 2. Did you find two or more free Java applet source codes? 3. Did your team work together? 4. Did your team find two or more free Java applet source codes?

Compiling Source Codes

1. Can you install JDK to your computer? 2. How do you view the error output from your Java applets in the Internet browser? 3. Did you discuss with your teammates when you encountered a problem? 4. Did you ask your instructor questions when you encountered a problem?

Yes/No Y N

Comments

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Inserting in the HTML File

Configuring the Properties of Applets

Testing on the Internet Browsers

1. Did you find Dreamweaver’s “insert Java applet” button? 2. Did you find the Java applet .class file on your disk? 3. Did you ask your teammate when you encountered a problem? 4. Did you ask your instructor questions when you encountered a problem? 1. Did you find the applet’s property inspector? 2. Did you give an alternative tag to your applet? 3. Did the team work help you? 4. Did the instructor give you help? 1. Does the applet work well in Internet Explorer? 2. Does the applet work well in Firefox? 3. Did your team perform troubleshooting work together? 4. Did you turn to the instructor for help?

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