Client: Queensland Government, Department of Education and the Arts - Distance Learning Unit (DLU)
This project was developed in conjunction with DLU for the Department of Public Works.

DLU is a part of the Queensland Government Department of Education and the Arts that develops educational media for students across Queensland. DLU develops digital applications targeted towards distance education students. The content written for the applications is written by teachers in accordance with current curriculum.

Project: ‘Designing for Sustainable Living' Learning object.

The purpose of this learning object was to teach students the principles of sustainable housing design. It has the facility for students to design their own sustainable home and examine the impact of their choices on the environment.

Features:

• Developed using Flash
• Use of Flash Shared Objects enabling the user to save and load learning object progress

Client Problem Description

The aim of this learning object was to give users as much authentic interaction as possible, simulating housing design and construction. This included setting up the orientation of the house and landscaping of the block to the many choices required inside and around the house. For example, within the kitchen there were several choices to be made such as which fridge, lighting, taps, window, oven and bins where to be used.

The object needed to be built with a dynamic and aesthetically pleasing interface that did not restrict creativity or problem solving. The design included a feedback loop related to the quality of the choices the student made, while providing print functionality.

Due to the large amount of interaction and information, the client requested the user be given the ability to ‘save'. This allowed users to save their work, login at a later date and continue working.

Timeline

The entire project from planning to completion took approximately 12 months. The object development for QMG took approximately 6 months. During this time, QMG had to work closely with DLU, keeping the object under continuous scrutiny to ensure it was designed and developed in the most user friendly and appealing way, while still maintaining sound educational principles.

Delivery Method

This object had to be delivered online. The proposed size of the project had the potential to be too large to be viewed online. Our challenge was to organise the content so it could be viewed with as little download time possible.

Target Audience

The object has been targeted towards students in years 4-12, but the general public may also find the information very useful . For example, people looking to build or renovate their homes will find this object extremely helpful, no matter what their location throughout Queensland.

Implemented Solution/Service

The first challenge was to plan the structure of the object to minimise download time. This was solved by breaking apart the object into several smaller sections then loading them in order as the user advanced. This meant the initial stages could be downloaded and as the user worked through these stages, the rest of the object continued to download.

QMG incorporated a high level of interaction, while maintaining ease of use, functional navigation and maintaining user interest.

New technologies such as shared objects were researched and implemented to allow students to automatically save their information at any point within the object. This has rarely been utilised across the industry as this technology requires in-depth knowledge across a variety of media.

The result showcased a state of the art, highly interactive learning object providing current educational content.