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Education and training of the workforce have become an important competitive factor for companies because of the rapid technological changes in the economy and the corresponding ever shorter innovation cycles. Traditional training methods, however, are limited in terms of meeting the resulting demand for education and training in a company, which continues to grow and become faster all the time. Therefore, the use of technology-based training programs (that is, courseware) is increasing because courseware enables self-organized and self-paced learning and, through integration into daily work routines, allows optimal transfer of knowledge and skills, resulting in high learning outcome. To achieve these prospects, high-quality courseware is required, with quality being defined as supporting learners optimally in achieving their learning goals. Developing high-quality courseware, however, usually requires more effort and takes longer than developing other programs, which limits the availability of this courseware in time and with the required quality.
This dissertation therefore deals with the research question of how courseware has to be developed in order to produce high-quality courseware with less development effort and shorter project duration. In addition to its high quality, this courseware should be optimally aligned to the characteristics and learning goals of the learners as well as to the planned usage scenarios for the knowledge and skills being trained. The IntView Method for the systematic and efficient development of high-quality courseware was defined to answer the research question of this dissertation. It aims at increasing the probability of producing courseware in time without exceeding project schedules and budgets while developing a high-quality product optimally focused on the target groups and usage scenarios.
The IntView Methods integrates those execution variants of all activities and activity steps required to develop high-quality courseware, which were identified in a detailed analysis of existing courseware development approaches as well as production approaches from related fields, such as multimedia, web, or software engineering, into a systematic process that in their interaction constitute the most efficient way to develop courseware. The main part of the proposed method is therefore a systematic process for engineering courseware that encompasses all courseware lifecycle phases and integrates the activities and methods of all disciplines involved in courseware engineering, including a lifecycle encompassing quality assurance, into a consolidated process. This process is defined as a lifecycle model as well as a derived process model in the form of a dependency model in order to optimally support courseware project teams in coordinating and synchronizing their project work. In addition to the models, comprehensive, ready-to-apply enactment support materials are provided, consisting of work sheets and document templates that include detailed activity descriptions and examples.
The evaluation of the IntView Method proved that the method together with the enactment support materials enables efficient as well as effective courseware development. The projects and case studies conducted in the context of this evaluation demonstrate that, on the one hand, the method is easily adaptable to the production of different kinds of courseware or to different project contexts, and, on the other hand, that it can be used efficiently and effectively.