The Decibel
by Skip Testut

Skip Testut, Associate Professor and Clinic Director in the Department of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology, re-launches The Decibel. The Decibel is a ‘drill and practice’ approach to understanding the science of sound. In this application, a student explores five sections, each containing several multiple-choice questions. After answering a question, the user is instantly alerted as to whether his or her answer is correct. The Decibel was originally developed at Ithaca College in a cross-departmental partnership between the Department of Speech Pathology and Physics. Created over six years ago with Apple’s HyperCard authoring program, this popular application was beginning to show its age. As a result, The Decibel could only be accessed from Macintosh computers on campus.

Our solution was to port this HyperCard application over to a Web friendly environment built with Macromedia’s Flash. Why Flash? Flash is quickly becoming a Web standard. Flash files reach a larger audience because they are cross platform, Web accessible, and allow for a richer viewing experience.

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