Title: Welcome to
1- Welcome to
- e-sgh.pl system
- presentation
Warsaw School of Economics, www.e-sgh.pl
2The decision about launching the system was made
in May 2001. Since then, it has been continuously
developed - new functions and modules have been
added. From the very beginning the platform
was based on PHP scripts, supported by database
MySQL and XML language. That let us achieve
compatibility with many Internet browsers, such
as which makes the system accessible for
the majority of the Internet users. To their
convenience the system adjusts automatically the
size of the displayed elements to the currently
used settings of the screen.
History and technical solutions
Warsaw School of Economics, www.e-sgh.pl
3During the login procedure each user receives
particular rights in the system, a grade of
confidence which describes the extent of changes
which she/he can introduce to the system. These
are respectively guest, student, lecturer and
administrator. Setting the group of a user is
the next step. The group determines the lectures,
which are available to the user. This step might
be compared to assigning the pupil to a class,
and consequently to a suitable timetable,
protector and classmates, whom they will be able
to meet in a chat-room or on a forum.
Access to the system
Warsaw School of Economics, www.e-sgh.pl
4The last level is verifying the so-called
special authorizations. It is easy to imagine
one person in a group, who should have access to
one of the lectures more quickly than others. The
settings enable to give special rights to each of
the students separately. Everything is
verified when the login and the password are
entered. The data generated during the
verification process are stored within the system
at each of its levels.
Access to the system
Warsaw School of Economics, www.e-sgh.pl
5After a successful login procedure the user will
see an individually generated main page of the
system. Its main part contains a tree of links
connecting to the lectures available for a
specified person. The tree has a double level
structure. The course is the core unit. It may
consist of one or a few lectures (published as a
single one or in a cycle). There is as well
information about the current events concerning
e-sgh (e.g. launching a new subject) displayed on
the page. The main page also provides the
lecturers an access to the virtual registers,
which they use according to the lectures they
offer.
Already in
Warsaw School of Economics, www.e-sgh.pl
6After choosing the lecture, the system displays
the first slide. Each slide has got a similar
structure and composes of six fundamental parts
(which will be described below).
Lecture
Warsaw School of Economics, www.e-sgh.pl
7The upper part provides an access to the menu,
which enables the connection with several
functions (specified and different at the
different levels of the lectures). They will be
described widely in the following parts of this
presentation. There are chat-room, audio, forum,
calendar, register, e-mail to the lecturer, etc.
in the menu.
Lecture 1-menu
Warsaw School of Economics, www.e-sgh.pl
8Below the Menu there is a tree with subjects in
each of the lecture. It precisely describes the
structure of the given lecture. It contains a
list of the issues presented on the particular
slides. It is possible to go directly to a chosen
part of the lecture via the tree (e.g. to the
last viewed slide in the previous session or to
the slide which is subject to our special
interest) or to the list of the lectures placed
at the main page.
Lecture 2-tree
Warsaw School of Economics, www.e-sgh.pl
9In order to make the work easier for the users,
we prepared an option to personalize the font
size. Therefore the viewed text does not seem
overwhelming and is optimaly legible. Each user
may modify these parameters at any moment.
Lecture 3-type
Warsaw School of Economics, www.e-sgh.pl
10The comments area is a place on which the
lecturer puts additional information referring to
a given slide (e.g. source of the quoted
information, links to web sites containing
resources connected with the given issue, etc.)
Lecture 4-comments
Warsaw School of Economics, www.e-sgh.pl
11Lecture 5-contents
This is the biggest and the most important area
on the entire slide. Here, apart from the text of
the lecture itself, there are pictures,
animations, links and also interactive tasks and
tests aiming at the verification of the knowledge
acquired during a given course displayed.
Warsaw School of Economics, www.e-sgh.pl
12Lecture 6-navigation keys and additional
functions
The navigation keys are used to move within the
lecture (backwards and forwards). Below them,
there are three keys used to creating and viewing
the bookmarks and attaching the notes to a
currently viewed lecture. The Add a bookmark
function (the first key) enables the user to mark
the most interesting slides. The View the
bookmarks key directs the user to a page with
previously marked slides. The possibility of
taking notes at each slide (the third key) is
also very useful. It is possible to edit them
later as well. The notes are visible at the
comments area.
Warsaw School of Economics, www.e-sgh.pl
13As outlined at the beginning, the system has many
various functions which support the studying
process. They may be divided into three groups,
according to the user profile. The first group is
the functions available to the user, very common
and easy in use. There are audio, chat, forum,
system of messages, etc. Apart from this, there
are also the so-called hidden functions,
available only to the users with an appropriate
status. These are the virtual register and the
control panel available only to the
administrator.
Functions for the user
Warsaw School of Economics, www.e-sgh.pl
14Some of the lectures have the sound path
attached. All sounds have been recorded in the
WAV format and compressed to an MP3 format. They
are played by the system through the stream data
transmission so as to be easily accessible even
with the slow connection. As not every slide is
supplied with the sound path, the audio key
appears when the sound is available with the
given slide. There is a special chat room so
that the users may contact interactively the
lecturers and other participants of the course.
We hope that weekly virtual meetings with the
students will become an obligation for the
lecturers. It will be then possible to ask
questions referring to the lectures and resolve
problems. The forum (where each member of the
group may ask questions) may be of similar use.
Whats more, by this facility all other
participants will also be able to become
acquainted with new issues, not necessarily in a
real time of the meeting with the lecturer.
Audio, chat, forum
Warsaw School of Economics, www.e-sgh.pl
15We are aware of the importance of the contact
with the author of the lecture, which one is
viewing. The doubts or questions may appear at
any moment, so this option is available all the
time. In order to facilitate the identification
of the problem, the message will contain the link
to a page from which you sent the message. It
therewith allows to identify the moment when
doubts arose and the part of the lecture it
refers to. "Information" button is the
hyperlink to the place where one can get
information concerning his/her group. Inside, you
can find a list of participants and information
about the teacher. Each user can define their own
profile where they can put a brief information
about themselves (name, surname, e-mail, UIN,
webpage address and even a photo attached).
E-mail, info
Warsaw School of Economics, www.e-sgh.pl
16Our system enables the lecturers to present the
graphs. We herewith present the example of a
graph. We also provided the possibility of
interactive creation of the graphs (even the most
complicated ones). The animation is another form
of presenting the graphs. One of the features,
which makes this type of course different from
the others is the possibility of creating the
animations.
Generating graphs
Warsaw School of Economics, www.e-sgh.pl
17One of the functions available to a student is a
notepad. It can be extended e.g. by calendar or
news system. The news introduced into the
calendar might be attached to the specified
lecture and the slide and be marked with the
given day. The user may then view the messages in
a form of a daily, weekly or monthly report. The
list of the notes is permanently available.
Notepad and calendar
Warsaw School of Economics, www.e-sgh.pl
18E-sgh is also equipped with a project management
module. Each teacher can divide his group of
students into smaller teams (called case
study). Moreover, each case study can be divided
into many stages and tasks, individually for
every student. Each solution of individual
tasks has to be accepted by the group, then by
the teacher. When both conditions are fulfilled,
user can be promoted to next stage. Each case
study (or even simple task) is provided with its
own message board and individual
chat-room. Work progress is presented by
figures and charts so as to stimulate other
members of the group to work more effectively.
Project management
Warsaw School of Economics, www.e-sgh.pl
19Another important function of the system is the
virtual register. The teacher has an access to
the list of his/her students and can evaluate the
activity of the members of the group on the
discussion forum and during the chat. Also their
homework and other forms of the students
participation in the course may be evaluated. The
system automatically records the marks with the
date. It is also possible to set the date
manually. The virtual register also allows to
generate reports for the optionally chosen time
(which makes it easier to give the final note).
As far as the additional materials are concerned,
the final mark may influence the mark for the
stationary classes. With regard to the full
e-lectures, the mark from the virtual register
may influence the mark of the traditional exam.
Virtual register
Warsaw School of Economics, www.e-sgh.pl
20The e-sgh.pl system is also equipped with News
module. There is a table with the latest news
available on the left side of the tree with the
lectures (the first slide after login procedure).
The displayed information is of the individual
nature, whereas the ones in the table are
directed to the given user. Among the most
frequent announcements there are -gt information
about the new plots on the forum (the specified
message is displayed only once after the first
login procedure and e.g. only during the first
three days since its introduction) -gt information
about the chat hours -gt information about the new
lectures -gt other information, e.g. reminder
about the deadlines for the homework, test
results, etc.
News
Warsaw School of Economics, www.e-sgh.pl
21The control panel is an important module of the
system. It is a part of the service unavailable
to the user, but accessible to lecturers and
administrators. The panel allows to add new
users, edit their data and assign them the
authorizations to the particular parts of our
system. It also allows to perform a detailed
analysis of all questions to the system via a
suitable sorting of the connections
list. Adding new users Users data
edition Authorization edition Global
statistics Detailed statistics
Control panel
Warsaw School of Economics, www.e-sgh.pl
22Thank you for devoting your time to become
acquainted with our system. We hope that with the
help of this presentation we managed to outline
the idea of e-learning and majority of its
possibilities. Should you have any remarks or
questions, feel free to contact us Warsaw
School of EconomicsCentre for Development of
Distance and Permanent Education Building G, room
150Phone (48 22) 337 9723 e-mail
cren_at_sgh.waw.pl www.e-sgh.pl www.cren.pl/eng If
you wish to see the activity of the platform, we
invite you to view the available parts of the
lectures, which you will find at the main page of
the system.
Thank you
Warsaw School of Economics, www.e-sgh.pl