Towards a Generic Platform for Developing CSCL Applications Using Grid Infrastructure

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Towards a Generic Platform for Developing CSCL
Applications Using Grid Infrastructure
1st International Workshop on Collaborative
Learning Applications of Grid Technology

• by Santi Caballé
• Open University of CataloniaBarcelona, Spain
• with
• F. Xhafa, A. Daradoumis and J.M. Marquès
• Open University of CataloniaBarcelona, Spain

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Index

• Introduction the merging of CSCL, Generic
  Programming and Grid.
• Collaborative Learning Purpose Library a CSCL
  generic platform.
• A study into general requirements.
• CLPL on the Grid.
• A CLPL application a structured discussion
  forum.
• Conclusions and future work.

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Introduction (I) CSCL and Generic Programming

• The need for a CSCL generic platform
• reusable, robust, efficient, integrated and
  innovative.
• A paradigm to improve the generic software
  construction process
• in terms of quality, productivity and cost.
• resulting software applicable to a wide range of
  situations.
• Generic Programming as a technique to achieve
  these aims
• by identifying an interrelated high-level
  abstraction family from a common requirement set.
• making software as general as possible without
  losing efficiency.

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Introduction (II) CSCL and the Grid

• Construction of true collaborative learning
  environments.
• Participant scalability and resource
  availability.
• Hard and soft resource transparency
• in terms of location, management and access.
• Final client simplicity and variety
• highly powerful and with huge virtual data
  repositories.
• Reality scenarios
• Complex graphic user interface.
• High-throughput practical student activities.

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Introduction (III)Merging CSCL, GP and Grid

• A GP-based library using the Grid for CSCL
  applications
• exploiting the Grid high-throughput and
  data-intensive computing, distributed memory and
  network bandwidth.
• to satisfy a high user interaction, a complete
  resource management, a permanent user awareness
  and so on.
• to improve the system in terms of security,
  system monitoring and administration.
• How to incorporate Grid into the CSCL generic
  platform
• taking advantage of its generic entities and
  processes (such as statistics, authentication,
  user session, etc.).
• by the disk manager abstraction making it
  possible to particularize the data structure in
  different models.

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CLPL a CSCL generic platform (I)The General
Purpose Library

• The GPL creates the skeleton for the construction
  of complex systems
• requiring the management of system users and
  optimisation of system resources.
• Conceptualisation of generic entities
• generic user as the representation of a person,
  group, device, etc.
• user session, authentication, privilege, etc., in
  order to manage both control and security of the
  system.
• log, statistics, etc., to maintain user
  interaction data, enabling to export/extract in
  different formats for later analysis.
• GPL is found at http//cv.uoc.edu/scaballe/gpl/ap
  i

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CLPL a CSCL generic platform (II)A GPL
particularisation

• CSCL system domain forms part of the GPLs
• CSCL applications have a strong need to manage
  both users and resources.
• Security and monitoring issues are very important
  in this context.
• Need to obtain knowledge about what is happening
  in the system so as to keep user awareness high.
• Collaborative Learning Purpose Library a library
  as a GPL particularisation for the construction
  of specific CSCL environments.
• CLPL is found at http//cv.uoc.edu/scaballe/clpl/
  api

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CLPL a CSCL generic platform (III)Objectives

• Creation of a GP-based CLPL to make it possible
  to be widely reused for the construction of
  specific CSCL applications.
• Quality and efficiency will also be guaranteed.
• Robustness is offered by a full error treatment.
• A complete hierarchy of event treatment will be
  provided to obtain full knowledge of the system
  with which
• users are kept aware of what is going on in the
  system.
• Information can be exported/extracted in
  different formats for later analysis.
• Implementation with Java as this has great
  predisposition for reusability and portability.

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A study into general requirements (I) Component
representation

• The CLPL is made up of 5 components

Package diagram corresponding to the main
components and their dependency.
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A study into general requirements (II) Component
description

• CSCL User Management. This is made up of
• CSCL User Basic. Carries out the management of
  the users (i.e. students and learning groups) in
  the system.
• CSCL User Profile. Manages information that
  specifies how a CSCL user is interacting with
  the system (e.g. alias, user state, user
  language, group subject matter, etc.).
• CSCL Knowledge Management. This is made up of
• CSCL Activity Management. Manages the log files
  made up of all the events ocurring in the system
  as the source of information for the creation of
  statistics.
• CSCL Knowledge Processing. Carries out the
  statistical studies enabling the export and
  extraction of the log information in different
  formats for later analysis. The aim is to obtain
  knowledge facilitating the collaboration process.

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A study into general requirements (III)
Component description

• CSCL Functionality. This will define the 3
  essential parts involved in any groupware
  application as well as the management of the
  events generated by them
• Coordination. Carries out the group organization
  and monitoring to accomplish certain objectives.
• Communication. Manages the communication support,
  basically by messages between users in both
  synchron and asynchron modes.
• Collaboration. Lets members share any kind of
  resources also in both synchron and asynchron
  modes.
• User awareness. Communicates to the users all the
  events generated basically by both communication
  and collaboration subsystems after these events
  have been handled by the CSCL knowledge component.

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A study into general requirements (IV) Component
description

• CSCL Security. Basically manages authentication
  and authorization issues
• Authentication and user session. Validates the
  CSCL system users and manages user sessions.
• Security policy. Contains all the rules to
  protect the system resources from unauthorized
  users.
• Privilege assignment. Controls user access to
  system resources.
• CSCL Administration. The administrator/tutor of
  the system/group carries out the following basic
  tasks
• Resource management. Manages either the systems
  general resources or the resources within a
  group.
• System control. Includes the specific tasks to
  improve the system/group performance and
  maintenance from the information provided by the
  CSCL knowledge component.

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CLPL on the Grid (I) Exploiting the Grid for
event management

• Need of data intensive computing to structure and
  classify a huge amount of system events mainly
  generated by group member interaction.
• Formatting the obtained data into most popular
  statistical file formats requires high-throughput
  computing.
• Data access performance is essential to reduce
  response times providing students with crucial
  fast feedback about what is happening during the
  synchronic activities.
• Transparent and dynamic distribution is necessary
  to keep multiple and heterogeneous users aware of
  the new events ocurring in their workspaces.

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CLPL on the Grid (II) A real experience

• A study in a distance learning undergraduate
  course involving 12 groups was carried out

Number of students 60
Number of students per group 5
Duration 14 weeks
Number of events generated 12620
Raw data file size obtained 16.6 MB
Time to process the file on a single PC 1.03 h

• The events generated in a large collaboration
  involving hundreds of groups with full event
  management need another processing context.
• Grid is the solution.

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CLPL on the Grid (III) Incorporating Grid into
the CLPL

• Grid distributed memory and processing capacity
  need a new data structures.
• A solution Scalable Distributed Data Structure
  (SDDS).
• CLPL makes the logic of the application
  independent from its data and so supports any
  data structures such as SDDS.
• CLPL is well-suited to support OGSAs grid
  services
• e.g. notification service is an effective way for
  CLPL particularisations to notify users of new
  events occurring in their workspaces.
• CLPL generic security systems can be implemented
  by any specific cryptographic system
• such as X.509 certificates which is the current
  mechanism of the Globus consortium.

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A CLPL application A structured discussion forum

• The important social task of the discussion
  process in CSCL environments.
• A complete discussion process is proposed based
  on the 3 types of contribution
• Specification as the statement of the problem.
• Elaboration in which a solution arises.
• Consensus to approve the solution found.
• CLPL Knowledge and User components are essential
• to keep participants aware of others
  constribution.
• to provide outcomes of group analysis.
• to add discussion group participant features.
• Grid greatly improves the discussion process
  features
• such as user awareness by processing log files in
  real time.

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Conclusions and future work

• We have shown how CSCL applications can take
  advantage of the Grid benefits and have proposed
  a generic platform called CLPL to develop robust,
  reusable and efficient CSCL applications.
• An application that validates the use of CLPL was
  described and we plan to use this application in
  a real environment to gain experience with it.
• Further work will focus on studying the
  possibility of adding P2P architecture to Grid
  infrastructure to improve even more Grid
  potential for CSCL applications in terms of
  robustness and scalability.

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• Thank you !
• Questions?