eLearning at Hull

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eLearning at Hull

• Professor Chris Jesshope
• Dept of Computer Science

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Broad spectrum of interest

• Corporate - Hull has an eLearning strategy and
  has made a significant investment in its Digital
  University project
• Pedagogical - wide use of different tools, e.g.
• Merlin a simple in-house VLE
• AudioGraph an easy-to-use in-house multimedia
  authoring tool - now a commercial product
  http//www.nzedsoft.com/
• Blackboard - Hulls supported and widely used VLE
  chosen by the new Hull-York Medical School (HYMS)
  to support its cross-site activity

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• Technical - there is ongoing development of tools
  and platforms in two areas
• Academic services are implementing the Digital
  University platform - based on the open-source
  JASIG U-Portal http//port.hull.ac.uk/
• Department of Computer Science which is
  interested in research-based solutions to some of
  the current eLearning systems problems

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The Digital University _at_ Port.Hull.ac.uk
A Portal designed to present all of the
Universitys business to all of its stakeholders
from a single-point of access with a single
sign-on
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Problems

• Typically learning environments exist to allow
  non-technical staff to publish on the web
• They are many and diverse and this leads to
  monolithic and inflexible systems, e.g.
• Use Blackboard and you must use it for everything
• We have standards but no inter-operation
• There is inflexibility in the presentation, e.g.
• Platform
• Device
• Users level and preferences

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A practical example

• Use AudioGraph to design a multimedia
  presentation, Reload to annotate it with metadata
  and Blackboard to present this online to a class
  of students
• How do I do this?
• Create presentation in AudioGraph and publish as
  a folder containing a web site
• Locate and annotate it with metadata using Reload
  and export an IMS content package
• Upload IMS contant package to Blackboard and link
  into a course page

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Problems in authoring/publishing

• Interaction between AudioGraph and Reload is via
  the published presentation
• If I edit the AudioGraph presentation the Reload
  annotation must be performed again
• Some exceptions if I understand the systems well
  enough to copy files around
• Blackboard will upload the IMS package but
  ignores the manifest
• So we lose the metadata anyway
• We also lose any organisations on the content
• Worse still Blackboard is very inflexible how its
  allows linking to the contents of an uploaded
  package

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Problems at run time

• Blackboard does not support a single sign-in (at
  least not not out of the box)
• A student going in through a portal like
  Port.Hull has to log in again to the course
• This may occur for many courses
• If I want to use the AudioGraph plug-in for
  presenting a test there is no way to administer
  and assign the marks

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Pushing the boundaries

• These problems are not found by simple or naïve
  use of learning environments
• VLEs like Blackboard are good for first-time
  users as they provide a quick and easy route to a
  basic service
• More advanced use, e.g.
• To share or discover content
• To use a mix of tools including audio, quizes etc
• To Integrate into existing enterprise systems
• Is not possible without significant programming
  effort

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Solutions and directions

• Our research aims to integrate a set of related
  and joined-up serviceswithin a standard
  environment, e.g.
• Management systems, e.g. finance, registration
  and authentication
• Learning management systems e.g. content
  delivery, interaction and feedback capture,
  etc.
• Content management systems e.g. repositories,
  discovery reuse, etc.
• Communication tools e.g. email, group discussion
  boards, instant messaging, etc.
• Authoring tools, e.g. quizes, multimedia, vanilla
  web pages
• Presentation control, e.g. a portal
• Non-learning specific

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Digital University revisited
Portal - presentation layer
Common Services
Collaboration Service
Event Management Service
Reporting Service
User Management Service
Learning Services
Learning Content Management Service
Learning Management Service
Assessment Management Service
Learning Administration Service
Data Layer
Learning Content Metadata
Learning Object Repository
Learning Interaction Data
Assessment Data
Administration Data
Courtesy of Stuart Sim Sun Inc.
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Conclusions

• eLearning as a set of web services provides a
  solution to many problems
• Separation of content from presentation
• Integration of legacy systems with novel new
  learning applications
• Interoperability between systems
• Interfaces are specified using standards e.g.
  WSDL, SOAP etc.
• eLearning tools may just become a collection of
  other web services (speech, graphics, IM etc).
• There are still problems to be solved in terms of
  making interfaces conform to externally defined
  schemas (e.g. IEE LOM)