INSTAP: Experiences in building a multimedia application

Abstract

INSTAP is a multimedia program to teach Afrikaans at first year university level. The intended audience consists of students who come from non-Afrikaans speaking communities, and hence sound is a very important aspect of the program. The program is in the form of a number of lessons, each with exercises and test linked to the lesson. At any stage, the student has a number of tools available, such as a dictionary, grarnrnar, etc. INSTAP was compiled using a shell program developed at the KU Leuven, Belgium, as part of a European 1anguages project. The data is filled in with the aid of an authoring tool, and the database is then converted to a form in which the student program can read it. In this talk, I shall give a brief demonstration of the program. I also describe my experiences as technical consultant to the language instructors who filled in the data. In this part of the talk, typical problems which might be encountered in the building of similar large multimedia projects will be discussed.