JOURNAL: Education and Information Technologies
VOLUME: 01
ISSUE: 01
PAGES: 0055-0074

AUTHOR: Ant�ni� Jos� Mendes, Teresa Mendes

ADDRESS: Departamento de Engenharia Inform�tica da Universidade de Coimbra, P�lo II, Pinhal de Marrocos. E-mail: toze@eden.dei.uc.pt, 3030 Coimbra, Portugal. Departamento de Engenharia Inform�tica da Universidade de Coimbra, P�lo II, Pinhal de Marrocos. E-mail: tmendes@eden.dei.uc.pt, 3030 Coimbra, Portugal

ABSTRACT: Many authoring tools have been proposed in an attempt to find more effective ways to face the challenge of developing educational software. However, most of them are reported to be restrictive, since they are strongly connected to a specific educational software development methodology. The AIDA (Ambiente Integrado para o Desenvolvimento de Aplica��es educacionais) authoring environment was developed at the University of Coimbra having as its main objectives the support of most of the activities involved in authoring and making educational software development easier. The AIDA system is based on a design module, i.e. a prototyping tool allowing the creation of Windows-based software, including multimedia features. The system assists evaluation activities and it caters also for support on translation and cultural adaptation, as well as on the reutilization of educational materials. The use of the AIDA environment is illustrated by three small examples using different development methodologies.

KEYWORDS: software, authoring systems,