Swinburne Astronomy Online: Migrating from PowerPoint on CD to a Web 2.0 compliant delivery infrastructure

Abstract

We adopt the Web 2.0 paradigm as a mechanism for preparing, editing, delivering and maintaining educational content, and for fostering ongoing innovation in the online education field. We report here on the migration of legacy course materials from PowerPoint slides on CD to a fully online delivery mode for use in the Swinburne Astronomy Online (SAO) program. We chose to adopt a widely used, web based content management system, Drupal, a web based media management system, Coppermine, and our own plug in code. Together, these form the basis of an entirely browser based course development and deployment infrastructure. In this paper, we describe the new Web 2.0 SAO system, the Virtual Cadet, which we developed to simplify content migration, and the SAO Viewer, which is used by students to access the course material. We compare the merits of the PowerPoint and Web 2.0 formats of SAO, and describe the future innovations that are enabled by the move to web based content delivery. The arrival of Web 2.0 empowers content developers by rendering en-mass conversions of legacy content into web based content economically sensible, with potential for enhancing learning and teaching.