Education research shows that people learn fastest when they use information (for example, to solve a problem) soon after initially being exposed to it.
Accordingly, Teachpoint supports courses in which lessons are interspersed with exercises and feedback. A Teachpoint course involves the following types of material:
The navigation interface of an online course is the set of controls by which the student moves through the course. Many types of interfaces are possible. This interface might allow students to retake exercises, or it might force them to continue; it might or might not allow the student to view the course outline and jump to arbitrary points.
In Teachpoint, the navigation interface is defined by XSLT stylesheets, so it's easy to modify and experiment with the interface. The interface is completely independent from the content (lessons, exercises and answers); these are represented by separate XML documents.
Teachpoint supplies default stylesheets, which provide a default navigation interface. This interface provides a Next button for moving ahead in the course, links to the "home page" for the current course and for the student, and some context-specific controls.
Teachpoint exercises have right answers, and they are graded. But neither students nor course designers should think of them as tests - their purpose is to make ideas stick, not to judge the student.
In the default navigation interface, students are free to repeat exercises. Answer pages contain navigation links that let the student review the relevant lessons, then perform the same (or an equivalent) exercise.
Next-> Memory refresh and long-term retention