Thesis Proposal: The Net Education System

By Aileen Tang
Thesis Consultant: Professor Hal Abelson
Supervised by: Philip Greenspun

I. Abstract

The Net Education Technique is a database-backed Web service for your purpose in learning and teaching. It will make social systems of individuals and will be offering a practical system in order to perform their roles, whether or not they are professors, students, teaching assistants, course managers, or class secretaries. The Durch Sloan School of Management offers to adopt exercising system as being a replacement for current system, The Virtual Campus. Consequently, exercising system’s first release can be a customized adaptation for the Sloan School having a personalized portal page, a searchable file archive, along with a system for managing and administrating classes. The unit creates social systems of faculty, students, staff, and alumni at Sloan and will be offering mechanisms for interaction and collaboration among people of people communities.

II. Introduction

In the last decade, we’ve observed a ongoing information revolution introduced about online. We began to harness the internet for more efficient communication and ubiquitous information. These benefits have enabled us to create many regions of our approach to existence online. On television and broadcasting we’ve sites like cnn.com in finance and exchanging we’ve internet.etrade.com operating a company and commerce we’ve internet.amazon . com . com . com.com. But we’ve not seen a considerable impact on the internet in education. Granted, individuals have developed services that host classes online or supplement the traditional classroom experience, and lots of courses their unique homepages to distribute class material and bulletins.

But we’re missing a centralized, integrated system for online education that’s extensible and customizable enough to obtain adopted by classes trained both at institutions by individuals.

The objective of the net Education Technique is to supply several new abilities that boosts the traditional classroom experience. Through the use of the advantages of the internet to learning and teaching, the unit helps the teaching staff perform their responsibilities better and boosts the students’ learning encounters by searching into developing a broader selection of sources readily accessible. Exercising system models the classroom as being a database-backed Web service, where individuals of each class take part in well-defined categories of users. Consequently, these user communities can remotely speak with other users, have asynchronous usage of information, and manage their individual roles/contributions as being a community member. How much does this imply the system’s application to education? Students can purchase the help of the teaching staff remotely during online work hrs. They might share understanding that assist answer each other peoples questions once the teaching assistant isn’t available. The teaching staff can collaboratively develop course materials and distribute them employing a centralized mechanism. Instead of collecting student grades from many TAs, each maintaining his/her records differently, professors connect immediately to everyone student data in one format, managed by one database.

Finally, all users access a dependable archive of reports, bulletins, and activities which are tightly related to them.

III. Related Work

Command could be a Web-based course management and delivery system developed at Durch along with industry partners like Apple, IBM, and Lotus. It models carrying out a traditional course homepage, which provides a repository for course documents and understanding. Consequently, Command is heavy on course information management and delivery but doesn’t provide enough functionality for collaboration. The unit has poor usability by not too user-centered. For instance, the calendar, a larger-demand and helpful feature, is hidden three levels deep. Command doesn’t provide support for grades and student evaluation the client interface has low customizability. There’s not enough file versioning, that’s needed for collaborative course development. Defining course material to just lectures, assignments, and readings, coupled with insufficient support for grades assessment, limits the unit to traditional classroom courses on academic topics. In addition, the unit doesn’t provide enough ability for professors to build up course material, manage course staff, and monitor user stats.

To summarize, Command is some everything you presently have as course homepages in a single central place but without integration/communication incorporated in this particular. The unit isn’t user-centered, i.e. make the most of knowing the user’s identity and displaying the data that’s dedicated to his/her roles.

The Academic Fusion project. headed by Professor Seth Teller, happens within the Durch Computer Graphics Group. The study concentrates on interactive and collaborative formula visualization. We’ve got we have got we’ve got the technology targets helping students interactively develop algorithms web to visualise their algorithm’s output. Even though the project includes a specific target at learning and applications within the technical area like computer graphics, we are in a position to possibly integrate their technology to enhance the net teaching/collaborative experience. Nonetheless the work is usually completely different from ours, which provides collaborative education Web service, whereas Educational Fusion concentrates on developing technology in the area through which of interactive visualization.

Bloackboard.com will get the machine that’s nearest concerning the our project is attempting to attain. In addition towards the opportunity to manage classes and develop course materials online, it provides numerous tools for synchronous and asynchronous collaboration and communication. The asynchronous collaboration tools include story boards, bulletins postings, email, and audio/visual media files. The synchronous collaboration tools include forums and virtual white-colored-colored-colored boards. Blackboard.com offers other functionalities like a calendar for personal time management planning and electronic blackboard to consider notes.

The benefit about Blackboard.com can it be provides a fairly complete quantity of services for hosting and develop course material web tools to assist students collaborate both while using the teaching staff certainly one of themselves. However, people who use system are not appearing to make the most of these collaboration tools because they are not readily available. If you sign towards the category Site, it requires 3 more levels to get involved with the virtual chat, for instance. To make certain that students to collaborate online as opposed to through more fliers and business card printing like telephone, face-to-face, or even email, collaboration tools needs to be readily accessible inside the class site. They should be carefully along with abilities within the system where students probably want collaboration, that might include assignments, team projects, and exams.

Another improvement that folks need to achieve over Blackboard.com is integration. Blackboard.com hosts many disjoint classes that don’t share information among one another. However, students (especially one inch a college) is extremely susceptible to take greater than 1 class, along with a effective education system can host all his/her classes via one Web service. This Web service should be capable of integrating information of all of the his/her classes and display it within the helpful way. For instance, the unit should display assignment payment dates, approaching exams, and team conferences for people classes a student consumes one calendar. Students must be able to view news and bulletins its his/her classes via one page as opposed to getting to logging towards the homepage of each class.

Finally, our physiques could be a module which can be adopted and customised as being a single Web service by institution or individual. Basically, somebody who would like to host a domain that gives training on creating MIDI can install exercising module and run their particular Web service. This really is frequently different inside the Blackboard.com model because each class has become running within unique service as opposed to within the standard service of Blackboard.com. Designed for universities and academic departments, acquiring the device install as being a single service is an important advantage due to the ability to personalize and fully integrate towards the university’s existing system. Instead of having the ability to view class sites on blackboard.com, students can click sloan.durch.edu, for instance. The unit thus remains more effective because we’re able to fully integrate existing department data like student registration and faculty contact details with class-specific data generated by our physiques.

IV. The Architecture

Exercising Module will most likely be built-inside the TCL language on the top within the Arsdigita Community System (ACS), which is run on AOLServer according to an Oracle database. ACS began as some tools Philip Greenspun authored to produce his Site, photo.internet. Later, the ACS was extended in a package of free modules for building database-backed Web services that offer collaboration and user tracking tools rapidly and merely.

Presently ACS modules vary from organizing traditional Web communities and fostering online collaboration to hosting E-commerce services and tracking customer behavior. It’s also lately expanded to incorporate online polls and file system management and it is growing with new modules in every single release. Exercising system represents a totally startup company for the ACS within the general community/collaboration tool or possibly the too specific E-commerce application in a system with new educational focus. The Net Education System will harness existing tools within the ACS to produce while using system’s current abilities in education and extend it with elevated specific functionalities which are unique to education, such as the administration of internet classes, new tools for academic collaboration and mechanism for effective Web-based teaching.

V. Design Details

The Net Education System’s purpose should be to provide functionalities to cope with and administer classes online. It has to contain the following components and skills:

People who use system manage to specific roles (e.g. professor, student, and teaching assistant) and may perform appropriate actions according to their roles. The unit manages information tightly related to each role, in order that it knows the teaching assistants’ work hrs along with the students’ username and passwords. Each user might take part in groups for example classes, departments, and teams. Regarding that membership, the client has appropriate permissions to get involved with story boards, new bulletins, grades, and handouts of his/her classes. Because the technique is user-centric, it uses its understanding within the user’s identity and will be offering the client with efficient and comprehensive usage of information that’s tightly related to him/her.

The unit also manages user information in order to be used easily. For instance, the professor will uncover which students prosper or badly within the class, which has been most positively helping other students on story boards plus forums, and schedules of other educate staff so he/she’ll schedule conferences anytime the training session attend. However, students can certainly lookup specifics of other students, their interests, and availability as potential teammates. Inside the department level, a Sloan School adminisrator can view reports that relate, for instance, how long a teaching assistant has spent online helping students and exactly how student enrollment varies within the particular class after a while. A student’s academic consultant can also get utilization of additional information regarding the student’s performance within the particular class.

The unit features a file storage system that organizes and serves all course material and student assignment submissions. This can include multimedia lecture demos, problem set handouts, research papers, and student projects. The interface for uploading and disbursing these files must be simple to use can be found while using the appropriate permissions control to help the next scenerio:

Every week prior to the quiz, the professor uploads a draft strategy to the quiz and notifies the teaching staff to determine through and discuss it. A teaching assistant downloads the answer, corrects some typos, and uploads the modified version. Later, a recitation instructor downloads what’s the new edition and adds another to among the problems. Carrying out a quiz operates, the professor dates back, changes the permissions across the solutions file which makes it viewable by students within the class.

The unit also functions like a central spot for that expansion, distribution, and submission of assignments. The professor can upload an activity and its deadline. Students can upload his/her strategies to employment prior to the deadline, along with the teaching assistant can download the student’s submission, grade it, and enter a test within the student’s assignment towards the database.

The traditional classroom experience encompasses two crucial elements: collaboration among classmates and training using the instructor. Our physiques hopes not just in imitate but in addition enhance the educational experience past the classroom.

Using the online education system, students can speak with other students through both asynchronous and synchronous collaboration. Asynchronous collaboration can be a classical concept in Web-based communities, where users speak with one another through non-real-time types of communication. Asynchronous collaboration is prevalent today via online question and answer forums (e.g. story boards) and email forms. Synchronous collaboration, however, is gaining more presence much like real-time interaction can get to get more crucial in the manner popular bands are utilizing the internet today. For your system, synchronous collaboration means students can speak with other students or possibly the category instructor in solid-time employing a Internet browser. A chat forum enables students to speak about an activity along with other students or ask a teaching assistant attempting to describe an idea. A Java-based white-colored-colored-colored board program further enhances synchronous collaboration by permitting exchange of ideas having a real-time drawing program. Offering students the opportunity to speak without dealing with become restricted to the standard character dedicated to a keyboard is particularly helpful for sophistication material that entail not only prose, for example complex equations, sketches, or algorithms.

An indelible part of the classroom experience is coaching. A teacher must have a student’s progress carefully, help help help remind students if he/she’s falling behind, and offer detailed feedback about his/her current performance. The net education system wants to make coaching more effective for the instructor and even more ubiquitous and efficient for the student. The unit can send periodic reminders for that student regarding progress round the term project. It may coach students about where they should be within the class readings so they don’t get behind. It has to instantly issue indicators (cc’d to his/her academic consultant) for that student who’s susceptible to failing the program. Generally, we are attempting to produce a system this is actually the most responsible instructor who infallibly tracks each student’s individual progress and knows to devote more focus on students who’re falling behind.

The portal, just as one doorway somewhere, could be a page our users might wish to visit several occasions every single day. Our users must be ready to employ this site as being a centralized management place for his or her academic (extensively) and (having a lesser degree but whenever feasible) non-academic existence. The portal imitates the benefits and features of My Yahoo:

• convenience – products from the portal may be added/deleted/moved around effortlessly along with a large member list is understanding this interface
• diversity of content – many features which are helpful for that user: least costly airfares, movies and showtimes, email alerts, stock analysis, etc. in addition for that conventional portal features like weather, stock quotes, and news headlines.
• integration – the portal is extremely well integrated wonderful individuals other yahoo.com site. For instance, you will notice for people who’ve new mail without logging into yahoo mail and sign up for modules from yahoo chat and clubs.
• good design – the situation is accessible within 2 clicks inside the top level portal page. useful to individuals who as people need to access information rapidly and merely.

Some elementary pre-packaged content for the portal includes stock quotes, current weather, news headlines, along with other system integrated information for example class calendar, story boards, recent news, bulletins, assignments, and projects. The portal will most likely be as carefully integrated while using the system as possible, meaning students will uncover a calendar that’s instantly populated significant dates from his/her classes as well as any relevant new bulletins made since he/she last logged in.

Mire. Division in the office

This thesis could be a collaborative effort between myself and Randall Graebner. Generally, we’ve labored and could interact to accomplish the responsibilities. Our collaborative efforts include data modeling, designing and coding the manager and user pages within the primary class system, contacting Sloan about project needs, and bug fixes. We mainly focused individual efforts on integrating ACS modules into our project and updating them necessary to fulfill our project needs. Thus far, we’ve labored across the file system module (Randy) along with the portal module (Aileen). We still integrate the updated bboard, chat, user group, and news modules somewhere, along with the division of individuals responsibilities will most likely be further documented within the final thesis write-up.

VII. Schedule

Beginning Spring term 2000, we’ll release the unit with fundamental functionalities of sophistication hosting/management and collaboration having a class at Durch, 6.916 Software Engineering of Innovative Web Services. Our physiques can help roughly 60 students within the class along with a collaborative staff of two lecturers and a lot of teaching assistants. According to feedback from people of 6.916, we’ll continue making usability enhancements and possess enhancements. In addition, the module’s personalization for Sloan School will most likely be tested for own needs. Al Essa, our project contact at Sloan, will submit a testing intend to us including a number of short-term class and significant amount of sample data for usability and scalability testing.

1. December 15, 1999 – Site administration
   1. Defining and adding departments, classes, and subjects
   2. Charge of user information
   3. Allowing the portal
2. The month from the month of the month of january 6, 2000 – Class administration
   1. Adding/installing/submitting assignments/class handouts
   2. Grades and student/team evaluations
   3. Textbooks
   4. Managing/updating class and user characteristics
   5. Dividing students into teams
3. The month from the month of the month of january 31, 2000 – User pages more class administration
   1. Students to find out specifics of class, other students, and instructors
   2. Integrating good news module
   3. Strategies to junk e-mail individuals the program
   4. Students to find out feedback on their own assignments
   5. Students to find out specifics of their teams
   6. Allow professors to produce story boards and forums for almost any class
   7. Portal
4. Feb 1, 2000 – Launch beta version for Spring term classes
   1. 6.916
   2. bootcamp
   3. possibly a Sloan class or two
5. March 1, 2000 – Grades and security
   1. Security and permissions
   2. More functionality with grades
      1. viewing students by their grades
      2. for school kids to find out their grades
      3. instantly flag students who’re in danger
      4. generate grade statistics for sophistication
6. April 15, 2000 – Refining the client experience
   1. Get user feedback and refine the client interface
   2. Make system better to utilize
   3. Raise the functionality for synchronous collaboration (Java white-colored-colored-colored board)
   4. Make additional enhancements as necessary

VIII. Bibliography

• Blackboard.com. Blackboard, Corporation. blackboard.com
• Course Management and Delivery. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. command.durch.edu/
• Educational Fusion. Professor Seth Teller, Durch Computer Graphics Group. vector.lcs.durch.edu/efaaron/
• Ellis, B. Virtual Classroom Technologies for Online Learning: The issue for On-line Synchronous Delivery. In Proceedings of United states . States Web-developers Conference, Alberta, Canada. October 1997. internet.detac.com/solution/naWeb97.htm
• Greenspun, P. Philip and Alex’s Self-self-help guide to Web Publishing. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers. April, 1999
• Wilson, J. Online Learning for Continuous Education, 1997. internet.ilinc.com