Modelling and Analysis of Web-Based CourseWare Systems

Abstract

Designing reliable Web-based courseware systems is not trivial. Courseware authors need to allow as much flexibility in navigating through the system as possible on the one hand, and to ensure the satisfaction of properties and constraints in the system on the other. The problem is aggravated with facilities like Java applets which incorporate dynamic behaviour into the information structure. These issues motivate the need for designing such systems through rigorous modelling and analysis. We propose a scheme using a formal method called the Calculus of Communicating Systems (CCS) to unify the modelling of the courseware based on its navigational structure, semantics and dynamic components. Properties like ordering constraint, reachability and coverage constraint can be answered after a model is extracted from the implementation. Besides, our approach can be extended to assist in the design phase of the construction process, just like what computer-aided software engineering (CASE) tools do. A hypothetical example is used throughout the chapter as an illustration.