What does Mallard offer? For students, online, interactive tutorials and quizzes with immediate grading and feedback. For instructors, tools for creating and publishing online course materials, including Mallard-administered quizzes and homework that the instructor won't have to distribute, collect, or grade. Mallard also has facilities for doing administrative tasks such as maintaining class rosters, recording grades, viewing up-to-the-minute tables of student progress, and posting and modifying due dates. And Mallard provides a secure environment with authentication by Bluestem and authorization by the definition of a Mallard course site.

A Mallard course site can be short and simple, with a standard Web home page, a syllabus, some supplemental reading, and a couple of quizzes. Or it can be elaborate, with dozens of Web pages and randomly generated quizzes with extensive responses and complex grading policies.

And, of course, course hypermedia material is reusable.
 

Why Mallard? Select one:  Ducks are cool! Mallard is Lithuanian for "Asynchronous Learning." A Mallard is a (WW)Web-footed Animal. Did you get it right? To find out, check out the Mallard Demo at:  http://www.ews.uiuc.edu/Mallard/Demo/

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The Mallard server runs specialized CGI scripts that support the Mallard course sites. A Mallard course site is a Web environment providing access and navigation for all the pertinent materials for a particular course. The definition of a Mallard course site includes authorized instructor(s) and a list of authorized students. Bluestem authentication allows students to use their regular ADN netids and passwords to gain access the course sites for which they are authorized. Instructors and course developers also go through Bluestem to develop or use the system. Because Mallard uses the https: protocol, all course materials and interactions are secured and encrypted via SSL.

Mallard Web pages are formatted with standard HTML 3.0, including tables and forms, and with the Mallard HTML extension tags for questions and responses. You can use any Web authoring tool to generate your Mallard Web pages, including easy-to-use visual editors like Claris HomePage and Netscape Composer. Or you can use Mallard's tools for creating and editing course materials, which include new facilities for creating quizzes and inserting hypermedia and hints.

Mallard's user interface is intuitive and straight forward. Simple icons are used throughout a Mallard course site, to access the course's home page, the lessons page, the current lesson, announcements page, view grades, course information, and help pages. Instructors and course developers see additional icons to access the grade book, create or edit new questions and quizzes, and add or modify course materials and lessons pages.

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Questions can be multiple choice, true-false, fill-in-the-blank, and the blanks can even be filled in with arithmetic expressions. The questions and response documents can contain any type of hypermedia: text, graphics, hyperlinks, animations, video, and sound. When students complete their assignments, they get instantaneous grading and feedback. The correct answers are prepared along with the questions, providing consistency of grading policies. The Mallard quiz extensions are very flexible, and include parameters that can be used to check for capitalization, spacing, punctuation, levels of tolerance, and to round numbers and randomize questions or variables.

Figure 1: Sample Mallard Question:Web pages containing questions and answers can include any valid hypermedia, plus the necessary Mallard tag extensions to compose the question and optional answers.

What is the largest city in Illinois? <input type=Blank case=yes feedback=high>  </input> <answer>  <a href="http://www.ci.chi.il.us/">Chicago</a> <if answer = Springfield> No, Springfield is the <b>capital<b> of Illinois,  but not its largest city. <elseif answer = Urbana> No, but <a href="http://www.uiuc.edu/">UIUC</a> is there,  and it's the birthplace of Mallard. <else>Nope! Please try again</if> </answer>

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Figure 2: A Mallard Home Page, Instructor's View: The instructor's and student's view of a Mallard class home page begin the same -- icons and links to access various class materials. Instructor see additional icons for developing Mallard Web pages, for adding materials to the Web site, and for viewing class grades.

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Comments are welcome; please send them to
the UIC Mallard administrators at: mallard@uic.edu