THE DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF HYPERTEXT COURSEWARE FOR CAL IN DIAGNOSTIC RADIOGRAPHY

Educational software has been designed and developed for training with in the field of diagnostic radiography and is particularly concerned w ith the science and technology of diagnostic X-rays. The material has been structured into hypertext networks and as such allows interactive exploration of the available information. The courseware development platform was Microsoft Windows and authoring was accomplished using th e constructional tool kit ToolBook. The resulting CAL package is highl y graphical in nature with a user interface designed to meet the 'frie ndliness' demands of the end user group. Mechanisms for navigation thr ough, and orientation within, the hypertext have also been established which support two levels of user activities. By changing the level of user freedom, students using the system as a learning tool are restri cted to more structured routes than experienced staff using the course ware as an information resource. An aim of this work has been to provi de interactive educational activities to support the main courseware, and consequently a novel application has been developed using dynamic data exchange (DDE) and the spreadsheet software Excel. Through a Tool Book front end students can interactively alter an X-ray spectrum by c hanging the operating conditions of a simulated X-ray tube.