The GETS Project

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The GETS Project

• International Cooperation Using Educational
  Technology In Graduate Studies In Computer
  Science And Technology
• EU/FIPSIE funded

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GETS

• Using educational technology to equip students
  for graduate study
• Software Engineering and its applications
• engineering of e-learning systems, embedded
  systems, e-commerce and hybrid systems
• Training
• mixture of electronic learning, face to face
  courses, workshops as well as innovative team
  working activities which develop real-world,
  professional skills

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Activities

• Specific course modules, generic transferrable
  skills courses (e.g., ethics, cultural training,
  research methodology, entrepreneurship).
• Global perspective
• Exchanges 30 students, 10 staff
• Workshops locally and internationally
• Evaluated from staff and student viewpoint
• Electronic interactions before, during, after

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Partners Questions

• Partners
• EU Universities Algarve, Hagen, Sunderland
• US Universities Arkansas, Auburn, San Diego
  State
• Loccioni (Italy), Twente University (Netherlands)
• Questions?

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Engineering Electronic Education

• Dr. Chris. Bowerman
• School of Computing Technology
• University of Sunderland

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Overview

• Background to CAL ILE
• Learning Environments mass education, right
  stuff, automatic assembly
• E-learning everywhere
• Excitement benefits, TL, classes
• Problems
• Engineering content, syntactics
• Conclusion

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Background CAL ILE

• Skinner Boxes
• CAL - didn't work
• ITS - too difficult
• ILE - new name same problems
• Telematics - DL OL
• CafeMondialbrowse, register,learn, certify
• Genesis satellite
• AES - ITS for the web
• Why bother nosey

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Learning Environments the Road to ELE mass
education

• 11 - early Greece
• Academies - mobility, esteem
• Schools - mass education
• Modularisation - commodity
• Students Tutors Location Awards split them up
• New model no tutor, JIT, Telematic ELE

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Electronic Learning Environments (ELEs) Made of
The Right Stuff!

• That's what JIT teaching is. Getting the right
  ...
• Content
• Person
• Time
• Device
• Context
• Way

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Electronic Learning Environments

• Content Assembly Delivery
• OO model
• Business model unclear
• Micro revenue
• Quality mixed?
• Will it work?
• Student info exposed
• Metadata standards
• students, teaching, technology, architecture, XML
  
• Authoring tools
• Tutors needed still - ask.com

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E-learning everywhere

• Much excitement
• Grown out of CAL, ICAL
• Lots of standards confusion over process,
  status, procurement
• Benefits
• Reuseable content providers, platforms
• Tracking learners, open access
• Assemble content just in time on demand

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Teaching Learning Good, Bad Ugly

• Pint Pot - bad (easy for CAL)
• Homebrew - good (hard for CAL)
• Common sense - in the middle
• Teachingclosed or open, contact a/synchronous
• Learning stages of development, preferences

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Whats in a class?

• Traditional
• Negotiated learning, teaching, assessment
• Perhaps authentic materials, relationship with
  humans Consistent approach
• Content creation on the fly
• E-class
• Differing approaches, interfaces
• Gaps and overlaps in knowledge
• Flexibly assembled materials
• Based on standards eg LOM, IMS/LIP, Ariadne

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There may be problems ahead

• but while theres metadata and screen light and
  RDF
• LOs are videos, texts, exercises, lessons,
  courses
• Can be discovered and combined post-query
• Need metadata descriptions, assembly tool
• Linear necklace or COM/CORBA crown jewel
• NB problem of re-use at different level -gt
  alternative metadata or artificial/real
  intelligence
• Lets take a VLE and advance

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Much ado about something

• Content production model (Plass)
• Have been pedagogicaly driven and written in
  anoraks
• Craft
• Enhanced SE with task analysis
• Technologist with emphasis on user interface
• Cognitive psychology approach based on user
  behaviour
• Consult once and develop standalone
• LOM, self-contained, no communication (not even
  OO)
• Pick and mix in hands of teachers
• Golden rule develop time lt contact time
• Integrate COM to allow coherence
• Develop useful objects on server let teachers
  edit
• A craft approach

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Syntactics

• Crafted based on SE - user task analysis
• Separate data/content from processing
• COM objects (MCQ, Cloze) on server
• Appear in web page editor, produces XML content
• Can be circulated
• Copied and pasted, edited
• Published re-used

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Conclusion

• Need to build web-accessible COM resources eg
  ODBC databases
• Select appropriate component architecture eg
  SOAP, CORBA, .net/COM
• Adhere to encapsulation and document public
  properties, methods, events of objects
• Create client-side interfaces as re-useable
  objects eg applets, activeX, DHTML-binary
  behaviours
• Use XML for dynamic editing/creation/storage of
  content from teachers
• Focus on architecture of system then pedagogy
  will follow as the community adopts