Design of an e-Learning System for Technical Chinese Courses Using CognitiveTheory of Multimedia Learning

JIN-HUA SHE,1 CHUN WU,2 HUI WANG,3 and SHUMEI CHEN11Tokyo University of Technology, Japan

2Nihon Dynamic System Co., Ltd., Japan3Jiangnan University, Japan

SUMMARY

This paper describes an e-learning system for techni-cal Chinese that integrates sounds, pictures, videos, andFlash animation into a Web-based multimedia course tooptimize learning efficiency. The design employs the AD-DIE (analyze, design, develop, implement, evaluate) modelof instructional design and the cognitive theory of multime-dia learning. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. ElectronComm Jpn, 92(8): 1–10, 2009; Published online in WileyInterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI10.1002/ecj.10204

Key words: technical Chinese; e-learning; multi-media text; instructional design; ADDIE (analyze, design,develop, implement, evaluate) model; cognitive theory ofmultimedia learning (CTML).

1. Introduction

The number of Japanese people studying Chinese hasbeen increasing rapidly, reaching 2 million in July 2005 [1].This has made Chinese second only to English in popular-ity. Along with the steady economic progress in China,there has also been a dramatic increase in the number ofscientific and technical exchanges between China and Ja-pan, and in the number of Japanese companies engaged inbusiness activities in China [2]. To facilitate manufacturingoperations in China, the technicians who Japanese compa-nies send to China need to provide technical guidance toChinese workers. This is often done through interpreters.However, most Japanese interpreters have a background inliberal arts and lack sufficient knowledge of science and

technology, which makes it very difficult for them to trans-late technical material. Furthermore, another big problemis the serious shortage of Japanese translators and interpret-ers in China. To ensure that the technical guidance isadequate, many Japanese companies require that Japanesetechnicians learn basic Chinese technical terms and waysof describing technical matters before they are dispatchedto China.

A course in technical Chinese is quite different froma course in ordinary Chinese in that it contains informationnot only on the Chinese language, but also on the history ofscience and technology, basic science, methods of repre-senting engineering concepts, and objective and logicalthinking. Due to the inherent problems involved in creatingstudy materials on technical Chinese for Japanese people,it is extremely difficult for just Chinese teachers of theChinese language or Chinese scientific researchers to do it.For this reason, to the best of our knowledge, there has beenlittle study of this topic; and no textbook on technicalChinese seems to exist in Japan. To overcome the difficul-ties involved in creating such a course, a research team wasorganized that contains people from both liberal arts, andscience and technology. One of them is a Chinese teacherof the Chinese language.

Most people use a conventional textbook to studyChinese; but modern technology has provided an alterna-tive, namely, a Web-based course. It provides greater vari-ety and intuitiveness in the manner in which materials arepresented, heightens the motivation of students to study, ishelpful in making difficult concepts easier to understand,and is convenient for students to use. With these things inmind, we integrated sounds, pictures, videos, and Flashanimations into a Web-based course. Taking the variety ofprospective students into account, we built an e-learningsystem for a technical Chinese course (eSTCC) that pro-vides great flexibility in learning. It allows students to studyanywhere anytime.

© 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Electronics and Communications in Japan, Vol. 92, No. 8, 2009Translated from Denki Gakkai Ronbunshi, Vol. 128-A, No. 6, June 2008, pp. 393–400

Contract grant sponsors: Supported in part by the Okawa Foundation,Japan, and a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C), Japan Society forthe Promotion of Science (JSPS) under Grant No. 19520521.

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Our research team has been investigating the creationof teaching material for technical Chinese, the compositionof a Web-based course on technical Chinese, the construc-tion of an eSTCC, and how to make the system available tothe public. This paper reports on the system we designed.The rest of the paper is organized as follows: Section 2 givesan outline of the basic principles employed in the design ofthe eSTCC. Section 3 explains the design of the eSTCC andsome results obtained with it. Section 4 summarizes theresults and makes some concluding remarks.

2. Basic Principle of Design of eSTCC

Over the last decade, a great deal of effort has beenmade on the research and applications of e-learning. Asshown in Table 1, there are four main kinds of e-learning[3]. The most widely used is WBT (Web-based training)because it is easy and inexpensive to set up. Our eSTCC isof the WBT type.

2.1 Instructional design

Instructional design (ID) [4, 5] is a method of design-ing teaching and training courses that provides a highlearning efficiency. The concept has been around for a longtime. Along with the spread of IT technology in teachingand training activities and the wide use of e-learning, asystematic way of designing education courses and settingthem up is needed. E-learning systems are very promisingbecause they incorporate progressive e-learning technolo-gies based on ID models.

Among the various ID models [6–10], the most com-monly used is ADDIE (analyze, design, develop, imple-ment, evaluate). Based on its impressive record of results,we selected it for the eSTCC developed in this study. AnADDIE model contains five phases (Fig. 1). The analysisphase examines existing courses and analyzes why a neweducational product is needed. The design phase determinesthe goal of the course based on the analysis results, and liststhe design specifications, which include the types of media.In the development phase, an education course is developedbased on the design specifications. In the implementation

phase, the course is actually used. Finally, the evaluationphase measures the effectiveness of the course, pinpointsproblems with the course and with the whole learningactivity, and attempts to fix the problems. Since each phasefeeds information back to previous phases and forward tolater phases, it is always undergoing improvement.

2.2 Cognitive theory of multimedia learning

Mayer and Moreno investigated multimedia learningfrom the viewpoint of psychology and developed the cog-nitive theory of multimedia learning (CTML) [11, 12],which describes the cognitive process in multimedia learn-ing using Fig. 2. They made three assumptions (Fig. 2):

• Dual-channel assumption: People use separatechannels to process visual and auditory informa-tion independently.

• Limited-capacity assumption: People can processonly a limited amount of information simultane-ously on each channel.

• Active-processing assumption: People engage inactive learning by paying attention to relevantincoming information, organizing selected infor-mation into coherent mental representations, andintegrating mental representations with otherknowledge.

A student first processes sounds using the auditory channeland saves the results in working memory. The student alsoprocesses images using the visual channel and saves theresults. Then, the student builds relationships between

Table 1. Main forms of e-learning

Form Outline

WBT A way of on-line edcuation, management, and instruction using Internet and WWWtechnology

Real-time distance education Information distributed via videophone and video meetings, satellite communications, etc.

Mobile learning Information distributed to a mobile terminal

Blended learning A way of teaching that combines conventional classroom teaching and e-learning methods

Fig. 1. ADDIE model.

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words and establishes a verbal model. At the same time,he/she also builds relationships between images and estab-lishes a pictorial model. Finally, he/she integrates priorknowledge into the verbal and pictorial models, and comesup with an understanding of the content. Seven principlesfor the design of multimedia presentations have been de-vised that provide guidelines on how multimedia should beused to improve learning efficiency:

[Multimedia principle:] People learn better fromwords and pictures than from words alone.

[Spatial-contiguity principle:] People learn betterwhen corresponding words and pictures are presented closeto one another rather than far from each other on a page orscreen.

[Temporal-contiguity principle:] People learn betterwhen corresponding words and pictures are presented si-multaneously rather than successively.

[Coherence principle:] People learn better when ex-traneous words, pictures, and sounds are excluded ratherthan included.

[Modality principle:] People learn better from anima-tion with narration (visual + auditory) than from animationwith on-screen text (visual + visual).

[Redundancy principle:] People learn better fromanimation with narration than from the combination ofanimation, narration, and on-screen text.

[Individual-differences principle:] The design has agreater impact on low-knowledge people than on high-knowledge people, and on visually oriented people than onnon-visually oriented people.

Various experiments have shown that, if the design ofmultimedia teaching material is based on the above princi-ples, students learn efficiently with a relatively low cogni-tive load. Many strategies have also been devised to furtherreduce the cognitive load (e.g., [13]). The above principlesprovide an effective means of learning through the integra-tion of the senses of sight and hearing based on the infor-mation processing model of a human brain, and describe aclear framework for designing multimedia courses in thenatural sciences. However, it has been pointed out that theymay need modification for the social sciences [14]. For

example, regarding the multimedia principle, the use ofequivocal graphical representations and/or unfamiliariconic sign systems imposes a high cognitive load on stu-dents, which could actually result in reduced learning effi-ciency. So, even though pictures are helpful in manysituations, they must be unambiguous and easy to under-stand. De Westelinck and colleagues [14] indicated thatthere was room for improvement in the multimedia, spatialcontiguity, and modality principles in the design of materi-als for the social sciences. Since the eSTCC covers both thesocial and natural sciences and handles topics in a widevariety of fields, these points were given careful considera-tion to ensure that students with different backgroundswould interpret pictures and icons in the same way.

3. eSTCC

The eSTCC was designed and constructed based onthe theory explained in the previous section. A question-naire was first sent to Japanese technicians and e-learningresearchers at several organizations, and to students of theTokyo University of Technology who were taking or hadtaken a Chinese course. The analysis and design was carriedout based on the results of the questionnaire, which aregiven below.

[Reasons for development:] There is a serious short-age of teachers with a knowledge of both engineering andthe Chinese language, and there are no textbooks on tech-nical Chinese.

[Target user:] The main target is a Japanese personwho understands basic Chinese and has a basic knowledgeof science and technology, and a special target is a Japaneseengineer who will provide technical guidance in China.

[Required skills:] Basic computer proficiency.[Course content:] General material on science and

technology.[Final goal of course:] To provide a student with the

ability to give simple technical guidance in Chinese.[Structure of Web text:] The Web-based course ma-

terial consists of lessons, each lesson concerns a singlefield, and each lesson is divided into several sections.

Fig. 2. Cognitive theory of multimedia learning (CTML).

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[Layout:] All the lessons employ the same layout sothat the course presents a uniform appearance to the student.

[Lesson:] The introductory part of a lesson should useas many images and animations as possible to focus astudent’s attention, and the amount of text should be keptto a minimum.

[Section:] Each section mainly contains Chinese text,vocabulary items, multimedia material (sounds, images,videos, animations), and Japanese translations.

[Pronunciation:] The pronunciation of vocabularyitems can be checked by clicking on them.

[Database:] Vocabulary items, sounds, images, vid-eos, and animations are stored in databases to make themeasy to manage and access.

[Tests:] Tests are included at the end of each sectionand the end of each lesson so that a student can check his/herprogress. The questions that appear at any given time on atest are randomly selected from the appropriate questiondatabase.

[Size of image, video, and animation files:] The im-age, video, and animation files should be small enough thata low-end computer can display them without difficulty.

[Basic Chinese:] To facilitate learning, an appendixon basic Chinese grammar is provided. It has the form of aWeb page, which is easy to check.

The topics for the course were selected based on theabove analysis and design results. This process had twostages. The criteria for the first-stage selection were:

• The topics should be easy to understand.• The topics should excite students’ interest. Thirty-

eight topics that have received considerable mediaattention in the last few years and that are relatedto Japan and/or China were eventually selected.

In the second stage, we narrowed the number downto 14 (Table 2) mainly on the basis of the following consid-erations:

• The topics should be easy to explain.• The signs, icons, and pictures for a topic should

be quite common; and a person with an engineer-ing background should have no difficulty under-standing them.

• The course should provide a good balance oftopics covering a variety of fields in science andengineering.

The system was constructed with the following tools:[System builder:] Wiki (PukiWiki 1.4.4) and PHP

(PHP 4.4.0)[Web server:] Apache/1.3.33 (Debian GNU/Linux)PHP (hypertext preprocessor) is a widely used gen-

eral-purpose scripting language. It has extended Web serverfunctions for the development of dynamic Web pages. Wiki[15, 16] is a system for creating hypertext files using a Web

browser. It features the automatic writing of HTML (hy-pertext markup language) and automatic link-building. Toensure simplicity and good functionality, we employedPukiWiki [16] in the eSTCC. The directory tree is shownin Fig. 3.

We selected the Apache Web server for the eSTCCbecause it is free of charge, very reliable, very stable, andlight on resources. It supports both CGI (Common GatewayInterface) and SSI (Server Side Includes).

Figure 4 shows the procedure from the time theeSTCC is first accessed until the content is displayed, andthe relationships among the browser, Apache, Wiki, andPHP.

To ensure that students with different backgroundsinterpret the pictures and icons in the same way, we invitedstudents from three schools at our university (Media Sci-ence, Bionics, Computer Science), who were taking or hadtaken Chinese courses, to look at them.

The configuration of the eSTCC is shown in Fig. 5.The first page is the entry point into the system. It is dividedinto two frames as shown in Fig. 6. The main frame on the

Table 2. Fourteen topics selected for technical Chinesecourse

Field Topic

Information Science Internet

New computer viruses

Fingerprint-based paymentsystems

Physics Principles of electric motors

Saving energy usingsuperconductors

Quantum-code communication

Electrical and Elec-tronic Engineering

Clean energy

New types of displays and LEDtechnology

Bionics Bio-robots

Analysis of DNA and constructionof DNA libraries

Civil Engineering Treatment of frozen soil alongQingzang railway

Mechanical Engi-neering

Space welding technology

Sociology Networks for prompt earthquakeannouncements

Pharmacology Chinese medicine and its beauty-enhancing effects

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left contains an introduction to the course, a table of lessons,an area to send in comments and reports, etc. The frame onthe right contains useful links for study. A lesson is selectedby simply clicking the name of the lesson in the table oflessons in the main frame. Each lesson is divided intoseveral sections, each of which contains sounds, pictures,videos, and Flash animations. The following functions wereimplemented in the system:

[Databases:] These are databases of vocabularyitems, sounds, pictures, videos, and Flash animations. Theyenable the huge amount of multimedia data for the courseto be searched rapidly and referenced.

[Search function:] The word-search function returnsa list of page titles containing the word being looked for.

[BBS (bulletin board system):] This provides a wayfor students to communicate with each other and discusstheir studies.

[Tests:] There is a test at the end of each section andone at the end of each lesson. They help students find out

what they have understood and what they do not understandyet. After a test is taken, the scores of all the tests that havebeen taken are sorted and displayed in descending orderalong with the log-in name.

[Questionnaire:] This is used to get feedback fromstudents. It not only allows a student to add choices to theones in the questionnaire, but also sorts the counts indescending order and the names of items in ascendingorder, and displays the total number of votes and the numberof affirmative votes.

[RSS (Rich site summary):] This is used to display asummary of the site contents and updated information. Theupdated entries can be checked in a Web browser with anembedded RSS reader.

For example, Lesson 1, The Principle of Motors (Fig.7), contains six sections: Shinkansen (Section 1, Fig. 8),What is a motor (Section 2)?, DC and AC motors (Section3), Principle of DC motor (Section 4, Fig. 9), Principle ofAC motor (Section 5), and Motors in daily life (Section 6).

Fig. 3. PukiWiki directory tree for technical Chinese course.

Fig. 4. Relationships between browser, Apache, Wiki, and PHP.

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Fig. 5. Structure of eSTCC.

Fig. 6. Screen shot of first page of eSTCC.

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In accordance with the modality principle, only animationsare played while the sounds explaining the principle arebroadcast; and the Chinese text is not displayed (Fig. 9).The Chinese text or a Japanese translation can be displayedon the screen by clicking the item of interest.

In the selection of key words and expressions for thevocabulary items and in the construction of the text, specialattention was given to choosing only the most commonterms in science and technology. We tried as much aspossible to use topics that appeared in the mass media in

Fig. 7. Screen shot of first page of Lesson 1.

Fig. 8. Screen shot of Section 1 of Lesson 1.

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the last few years and that provide not only basic informa-tion but also food for thought. One problem with wordselection is that there is usually a lag between the time whena term is created in a cutting-edge field and the time whenit becomes standardized [17]. To solve it, we show standardterms as main entries in the vocabulary list and otherwell-known expressions as subentries under the appropriatemain entry. For example, consider the word “Internet.” Inaddition to the standard term “yin1 te4 wang3,” we alsoadded the common term “hu4 lian2 wang3” to the vocabu-lary as follows:

[[[PDF file to be provided]]]There are more than four times as many Chinese

syllables as Japanese ones, and Chinese pronunciation em-ploys four tones. So, even if the syllables are the same, theuse of different tones produces different meanings. This isthe biggest problem that Japanese people encounter whenlearning Chinese. Our experience in the teaching of Chinesehas been that more students tend to quit the course whenChinese pronunciation is very strictly checked. Since thetarget users of the eSTCC should be in their 30s, the firstgoal is to ensure that they can continue the course withoutgetting frustrated and thereby quickly master the basics oftechnical Chinese. For this reason, we intentionally did notplace a great deal of stress on pronunciation and did notbuild a pronunciation-check function into the system. Theirpronunciation is expected to dramatically improve whenthey are forced to actually communicate with Chinese

people while giving technical guidance in China. On theother hand, even though pronunciation is not stressed, weincluded an appendix to the course containing a JapaneseTranscription of Chinese Syllables (j-pinyin) [18] (Fig. 6)for those who have trouble with even basic Chinese pronun-ciation.

4. Conclusion

We constructed an e-learning system for a technicalChinese course (eSTCC) to meet the increasing demand forstructured educational materials that provide basic instruc-tion in technical Chinese. Using ID theory and CTML, weintegrated text, sound, pictures, videos, and Flash anima-tions to build a prototype system of the course. It helpsJapanese technicians with a rudimentary understanding ofChinese to learn basic technical Chinese without muchdifficulty. The system has the following characteristics:

[Pioneering work:] The eSTCC constructed in thisstudy is the first e-learning system for technical Chinese inthe world. It meets the increasing demand for such a system.

[Potential:] The system uses the Internet to provide amethod of teaching a foreign language based on e-learning.It is a new type of instructional tool based on the principlesof the CTML.

[Practicality:] To make it easy for students to con-tinue the course, topics and content were chosen that are of

Fig. 9. Screen shot of Flash animation explaining principle of DC motor.

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current interest in Japan and/or China. The most commontechnical expressions were included in the text.

[Expandability:] The framework of this system al-lows not only e-learning systems for Chinese language inbusiness and other fields, but also e-learning systems forteaching any foreign languages, to easily be constructed.

We are planning to carry out test runs of the systemin China and Japan. Based on the results, we will modifythe course content and the structure of the eSTCC, and thenmake the system available to the public.

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Professor H. Kobayashi, OsakaInstitute of Technology, and Professors Y. Ohyama and S.Yokota, Tokyo University of Technology, for helpful dis-cussions and advice. This study was supported in part bythe Okawa Foundation, Japan, and a Grant-in-Aid for Sci-entific Research (C), Japan Society for the Promotion ofScience (JSPS) under Grant No. 19520521.

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AUTHORS (from left to right)

Jin-Hua She (member) received a B.S. degree in engineering from Central South University, Changsha, China, in 1983,M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in engineering from Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1990 and 1993, and joined the Department ofMechatronics, School of Engineering, Tokyo University of Technology. In 2008 he transferred to the University’s School ofComputer Science, where he is currently an associate professor. He received the control engineering practice paper prize of theInternational Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC) in 1999 (jointly with M. Wu and M. Nakano). His research interestsinclude the application of control theory, repetitive control, process control, Internet-based engineering education, and robotics.

Chun Wu (nonmember) received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in engineering from Tokyo University of Technology in 2006and 2008 and has been affiliated with Nippon Dynamic System since then. His main research interest is e-learning systems.

Hui Wang (nonmember) received a B.S. degree in physics from Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China, in 1982 and M.S.degree in engineering from Tokyo University of Technology in 2002. She taught physics at the First High School of Zhenjiangfrom 1982 to 1992 and is now a lecturer at the School of Information Technology, Jiangnan University, Jiangsu, China. She isa coauthor of two books on information technology and related experiments. Her research interests include e-learning, virtualreality and its applications, and education methods for information technology.

Shumei Chen (nonmember) received a B.A. degree from Tianjin Foreign Studies University, Tianjin, China, in 1983 andM.A. degree from Meiji University in 1992. After serving as a lecturer at Keio University, she transferred to Tokyo Universityof Technology, and is now a professor in the School of Media Science. She has worked as a lecturer on several NHK TV programson Chinese conversation since 2004, and was also a lecturer on an NHK radio program on Chinese conversation from April toSeptember 2006. She has published more than 10 books on the Chinese language and conversation. Her research interestsinclude the teaching of the Chinese language, comparative culture studies on Japan and China, and multimedia learning.

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