Communication courseware for college students

We present a multimedia courseware for the study of communication concepts, systems and related topics. The courseware is based upon graphical objects and temporal simulation. The main pedagogical aims of the courseware are t he following: (1) Enhance the students understanding of telecommunication c oncepts, such as attenuation, noise, modulation, time-frequency domains, fi ltering, cross talk, etc. (2) Provide the student with a computerized telec ommunication lab environment, where he/she can construct systems and conduc t a variety of experiments on various levels and subjects. (3) Encourage pr oblem-solving skills of the students - by providing them with a set of mini -projects, tasks and experiments. The main features of the courseware are t he following: (1) User interface - a system is constructed from a set of "b uilding blocks", using a simple (drag & click type) mechanism. (3) Simulati on environment - the courseware includes many types of building blocks, fou r types of virtual measuring instruments and several types of input signals (waveforms, sound signals, etc.), all of which result in long interaction time. (3) Task-oriented learning approach - the instructor can add his own experiments and tasks, and can also define a task-oriented path for the use r. (4) User help - didactic feedback is provided during the analysis and th e synthesis stages. Help is provided in an audio-visual form (including an animated introductory demo). (C) 1999 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. Al l rights reserved.