An interactive and pen-based simulator to enhance education and research in computer systems: An experience report

The active uses of simulators to facilitate and/or promote learners’ experience in many applications has significantly reshaped the latest educational technology or training methodologies in the past decades including the training of engineering students to understand the actual working mechanisms of specific engineering principles, or the military officers on tactic planning in a simulated combat environment. In many cases, it was clearly revealed that the appropriate uses of simulators not only avoids the indispensable costs of human lives or money lost in the hostile combat or investment field, but also effectively motivates and/or enhances the learners’ interests in the relevant fields of study, thus fueling significant impacts on their actual performance. However, many conventional simulators often require the users to input a formal specification file such as a script or program to specify about the simulation settings. Besides, even in many Window based simulators, the users may need to explicitly memorize about the meanings of various system variables and their proper settings before running a simulation to observe the imparted changes. All these unnecessary hassles will drastically reduce the interactivity of simulators, and also lower the users’ interests in using them. With the fast developing tablet and ultra-mobile PCs, we have seen ample opportunities of employing sophisticated pen-based computing technologies to improve the interactivity of simulators in order to enhance the learners’ experience to learn, reason or visualize with simulators in more effective ways. Therefore, in a recent pen-based simulator development project awarded by the Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA), we proposed to use the Microsoft digital ink library to support fast symbol/character recognition and the XML technologies to flexibly define various models of computer architectures so as to build an innovative and pen-based simulator for mobile computing devices. With pen-based or other inputs, our simulator allows the instructors/students to flexibly add or modify instructions that will generate live animations to facilitate interactive discussion for teaching undergraduate to postgraduate courses. Besides, our simulator has the full potential to support research on computer systems through visualization of new results generated out of new computational models or optimization strategies. A prototype of our simulator was completed and then released to all our Year-1 students for trials in the last month in which we collected some initial and positive feedbacks. A more vigorous evaluation was planned and would be conducted by the end of this spring semester. All in all, there are many interesting directions for further investigation including the integration of relevant course materials in the form of digital resources or pointers to online databases into our simulator, and a careful study of the pedagogical changes brought by our innovative and pen-based simulator.published_or_final_versio

Building an interactive simulator on a cloud computing platform to enhance students' understanding of computer systems

Cloud computing technologies have been widely adopted to improve the competitiveness and efficiency of core operations in many enterprises through additional computational resources and/or storage as provided on the underlying cloud platforms. Yet there are relatively few studies on how cloud computing may enhance students' understanding of a specific subject in e-learning systems. In a research project awarded by the Microsoft Research Asia, we successfully developed an interactive simulator aimed to enhance the students' understanding of essential concepts related to computer systems through live animations on a cloud computing platform. Essentially, we propose to integrate the latest technologies of cloud computing and learning objects into an efficient, flexible and interactive simulator to deliver powerful computing services for dynamic simulations of various computer systems specified as 'reactive' models of learning objects on the cloud storage. More importantly, through adopting the IEEE learning object metadata standard to represent each key concept/component in different computer systems, our proposed simulator can readily facilitate the sharing and reuse of relevant concepts for future e-learning applications. The system design and prototype implementation of our cloud-based interactive simulator is carefully considered with a thorough evaluation plan to investigate on how learners may benefit from our interactive simulator in various ways. And there are many directions for future extensions. © 2013 IEEE.published_or_final_versio

In-situ simulation: A different approach to patient safety through immersive training

Simulation is becoming more and more popular in the field of healthcare education. The main concern for some faculty is knowing how to organise simulation training sessions when there is no simulation centre as they are not yet widely available and their cost is often prohibitive. In medical education, the pedagogic objectives are mainly aimed at improving the quality of care as well as patient safety. To that effect, a mobile training approach whereby simulation-based education is done at the point of care, outside simulation centres, is particularly appropriate. It is usually called “in-situ simulation”. This is an approach that allows training of care providers as a team in their normal working environment. It is particularly useful to observe human factors and train team members in a context that is their real working environment. This immersive training approach can be relatively low cost and enables to identify strengths and weaknesses of a healthcare system. This article reminds readers of the principle of « context specific learning » that is needed for the good implementation of simulation-based education in healthcare while highlighting the advantages, obstacles, and challenges to the development of in-situ simulation in hospitals. The objective is to make clinical simulation accessible to all clinicians for the best interests of the patient.Peer reviewe

Improving an interactive simulator for computer systems with learning objects

In the 21st century, learning is a crucial activity through which people can assimilate or acquire new knowledge. However, many existing e-Iearning systems contain complicated knowledge structure that hinders the reuse or sharing of knowledge. In a previous project awarded by the Microsoft Research Asia, we successfully developed an interactive simulator to facilitate the learning of essential concepts related to computer systems through live animations. Here, we propose to integrate learning objects and relevant technologies into our interactive simulator to illustrate the underlying knowledge structure and, more importantly, facilitate the sharing and reuse of relevant concepts. Through adopting the IEEE learning object metadata (LOM) standard, our simulator can easily exchange relevant learning objects with other e-Iearning systems. The system design and prototype implementation of our LOM-based simulator is considered in this paper to evaluate how general and experienced users can benefit from our LOM-based simulator in various ways. © 2010 IEEE.published_or_final_versionThe 2nd International Conference on Education Technology and Computer (ICETC 2010), Shanghai, China, 22-24 June 2010. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Education Technology and Computer, 2010, v. 3, p. 16-2

Online Support and Online Assessment for Teaching and Learning Chemistry

In this chapter, examples of innovative approaches that use educational technology to support active learning in chemistry lectures, tutorials and laboratory sessions are considered. The scope of the chapter is limited to blended learning. The strengths and weaknesses of e-learning are examined and the options available for online assessment using electronic tests and e-portfolios are discussed. In addition to the literature references provided in the chapter, several examples of good practice involving the implementation of information and communication technology for chemistry teaching in higher education are incorporated. A list of online resources for lecturers is also included

Game play in vocational training and engineering education

Educational games may create a new and improved learning culture by drawing advantage of the new knowledge and skills of today’s students obtained from extensive use of interactive game software. This paper presents a design basis and online learning resources taking advantage of game-related features like a high degree of interactivity, attractive graphics, a dynamical virtual universe, and an incentive system to promote prolonged and more advanced use. The educational resources, denoted PIDstop, are targeted towards the engineering domain. Feedback from over 2000 users clearly indicates that PIDstop has a positive learning effect. Training packages for vocational training of Automation Technicians is emphasized in this paper. Such learning resources must have a limited mathematical complexity; hence, the representation should be rather descriptive. Evaluation of learning resources to assess the actual learning effect is important, and a two-step procedure based on formative and summative evaluation is proposed for this purpose

Virtual reality-based cloud BIM platform for integrated AEC projects

Building Information Modelling (BIM) has demonstrated the need for integrating collaborative design teams’ “project data”, to not only help coordinate the design, engineering, fabrication, construction, and maintenance of various trades, but also facilitate project integration and interchange. Numerous potential benefits have inspired several countries to consider the implications of implementing BIM Level 3 (Cloud) as an innovative way of further enhancing the design, management and delivery process, ergo - a paradigm shift towards Integrated Project Delivery (IPD). Amongst the myriad of the available innovative approaches, web-based platforms are particularly beneficial for integrating visualisation components to give continuous sharing of relevant information for geographically dispersed end users. This study presents a game environment supported by a web-based Virtual Reality cloud platform for integrated AEC projects. This paper further explains the adapted Unified-Software-Development-Process of specifying this cloud computing platform, which employed iterative phases of Elaboration, Construction and Transition. This study presents new understanding and insight into the causal drivers and influences associated with successful decision-making design in non-collocated design teams. Research findings form a stepping-stone for developing new relationship models in collaborative environments, particularly gaming interfaces