An online course in Information Theory Nadia Spang Bovey

1
An online course in Information TheoryNadia
Spang Bovey

• SVC 2001-13 Site visit 2005

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Attending team members

• Prof. François Bavaud, Project Leader
• David Carrillo
• Tutoring
• Content production, Technical maintenance,
  migration to WebCT Vista
• Nicolas Dunand
• Standardization and diffusion of course content
  scenario
• Project documentation
• Nadia Spang Bovey (CCSP)
• Coordination team management
• Related research/networking activities

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Project data

• Partner institutions
• Prof. François Bavaud University of Lausanne
• Dr. Jean-Cédric Chappelier EPFL (Swiss Federal
  Institute of Technology)
• Prof. Jürg Kohlas University of Fribourg
• Initial budget Sept. 2001 Dec. 2003 (Aug.
  2004)
• Total Fr. 700500.-
• OFES contribution Fr. 250000.-
• Leader partners virtual money Fr. 250000.-
• Leader partners real money Fr. 225500.-
• State subsidized work 10 months (full time)
• Maintenance budget July (Nov.) 2004 June
  (Dec?) 2006
• Total Fr. 266000.-
• SER contribution Fr. 130000.-
• Leader partners virtual money Fr. 96000.-
• Leader real money Fr. 40000.-

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Institutional context

• Fully integrated in all three partner
  institutions (credits or exams)
• Used by regular students since Oct. 2002
• Evaluated by students, teachers and SVC
  pedagogical adviser

• Epfl implementation
• Engineers, computer
• scientists
• Undergraduates
• Non-autonomous
• learners
• Familiar with math
• reasoning and notation
• French-speaking
• audience

• Unifr implementation
• Theoretical computing
• Postgraduates
• Autonomous learnimg as
• requirement
• Familiar with math
• reasoning and notation
• Multilingual English
• compulsary

• Unil implementation
• Faculty of Arts
• Advanced
• undergraduates
• Autonomous learners
• Not familiar with math
• reasoning and notation
• French-speaking
• audience

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Pedagogical model

• Guided autonomous learning
• A jointly written textbook (3 levels of
  mathematical abstraction)
• Learning aids of various kinds
• concepts maps
• online tutoring
• control questions with feedback
• assistance for project work
• collective construction of meaning through
  negociated exam contracts
• metacognitive online work

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Goal for the maintenance phase

• Creation of additional study helps (eg. treatment
  and integration of several videos) according to
  available students feedback
• Completion of migration to WebCT Vista
• Support to students and teachers in adopting new
  habits
• Diffusion of content and scripts in the academic
  community
• Participation in an international network for the
  development of educational technology
  interoperability standards

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Deliverable IStudy helps, content adjustment

• Initial learning material
• English online textbook French version
• Concept maps
• Control questions
• Demos and calculation tools
• Additions
• Intro/synth videos 80
• Adjustment of concept maps 50
• Adjustment of control questions 100

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Deliverable IICompletion of migration to WebCT
Vista
PLANNED Anticipation of possible future
problems related to the availability of the
national VLE

• Unil  100
• Epfl  100
• Unifr  0

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Deliverable III Support to students and teachers

• Adjustment from 2-sem. course to 1-sem. at Unil 
  100
• Introduction of a directed-learning scenario for
  Unil  100

UNIL Introductory meeting C1 video
intro C2 C3 Class meeting C4 G1 video intro L1
video intro S1 video intro
EPFL Introductory meeting C1 - C3 Video
synthesis C2 - I1 Video synthesis C4 -
I2 I3 Video synthesis Additional modules S1 L1
UNIFR Introductory meeting C1 I3 In class
introduction C2 - C3 - I1 In class
introduction C4 - I2
AVAILABLE FOR LATER USE Collective construction
of meaning Indiv. or group project Learning
journal

• Training of future teaching assistants 0

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Deliverable IV-1 Diffusion of content and
scripts to the academic community

• Adoption of Creative Commons licence on content 
  80
• IMS Content packages (French English)  70,
  ready to be distributed
• IMS Learning Design (2-semester learning
  scenario)  70

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Deliverable IV-2Rewritten LaTeX conversion script

• Source text LaTeX
• Conversion script Python
• Output php
• Each teacher can produce its own textbook
• Selected modules
• Selected level of difficulty
• With or without control questions
• French or English version
• Html and pdf files
• Completion 50, in use

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Deliverable V Contribution to UNFOLD site

• Contact established with UNFOLD
• Projects contribution ready and accepted for
  publication on network site (IMS-LD level B,
  package description files)
• Partnership for next phase under discussion

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