A review on massive e-learning (MOOC) design, delivery and assessment

MOOCs or Massive Online Open Courses based on Open Educational Resources (OER) might be one of the most versatile ways to offer access to quality education, especially for those residing in far or disadvantaged areas. This article analyzes the state of the art on MOOCs, exploring open research questions and setting interesting topics and goals for further research. Finally, it proposes a framework that includes the use of software agents with the aim to improve and personalize management, delivery, efficiency and evaluation of massive online courses on an individual level basis.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Plagiarism in e-learning systems: Identifying and solving the problem for practical assignments

A big part of life long learning is the move from residential lectures to distance education. Distance education falls under the multi-modal policy of the teaching institution and thereby a change in student contact. The lecturer facilitating the distance education course is also faced with a problem where the quality and originality of submitted assignments need to be checked. This has always been a difficult task, as going through practical assignments and looking for similarities is a tedious job. Software checkers are available, but as yet, have not been integrated into popular online e-learning systems. If closer contact and warning to students are given at an early stage the problem is minimized as they know they are being closely monitored. As will be shown in this article, plagiarism is a current problem with online practical submissions. We will also show how this problem can be minimized through the integration of plagiarism checking tools and other checking methods into e-learning systems

Computer‐aided assessment in statistics: The CAMPUS project

This paper describes the specification, features and implementation of computer‐aided assessment software designed primarily for conducting assessments in Statistics but equally applicable to other quantitative disciplines. The CAMPUS (Computer Aided Marking Program Using Spreadsheets) package has been developed in Microsoft Excel so as to provide a familiar computing environment for both assessors and students. The principal feature of CAMPUS is the facility for setting questions containing random elements (including random graphs), so that each student sits essentially the same questions but with different answers. This helps to eliminate plagiarism and allows a single test to be used many times, either for reassessment or additional practice. CAMPUS has been implemented in a higher‐education context but could also be used at school level

Introduction of CAA into a mathematics course for technology students to address a change in curriculum requirements

The mathematical requirements for engineering, science and technology students has been debated for many years and concern has been expressed about the mathematical preparedness of students entering higher education. This paper considers a mathematics course that has been specifically designed to address some of these issues for technology education students. It briefly chronicles the changes that have taken place over its lifetime and evaluates the introduction of Computer Assisted Assessment (CAA) into a course already being delivered using Computer Aided Learning (CAL). Benefits of CAA can be categorised into four main areas. 1. Educational – achieved by setting short, topic related, assessments, each of which has to be passed, thereby increasing curriculum coverage. 2. Students – by allowing them to complete assessments at their own pace removing the stress of the final examination. 3. Financial – increased income to the institution, by broadening access to the course. Improved retention rate due to self-paced learning. 4. Time – staff no longer required to set and mark exams. Most students preferred this method of assessment to traditional exams, because it increased confidence and reduced stress levels. Self-paced working, however, resulted in a minority of students not completing the tests by the deadline

Living City, A Collaborative Browser-Based Massively Multiplayer Online Game

This work presents the design and implementation of our Browser-based Massively Multiplayer Online Game, Living City, a simulation game fully developed at the University of Messina. Living City is a persistent and real-time digital world, running in the Web browser environment and accessible from users without any client-side installation. Today Massively Multiplayer Online Games attract the attention of Computer Scientists both for their architectural peculiarity and the close interconnection with the social network phenomenon. We will cover these two aspects paying particular attention to some aspects of the project: game balancing (e.g. algorithms behind time and money balancing); business logic (e.g., handling concurrency, cheating avoidance and availability) and, finally, social and psychological aspects involved in the collaboration of players, analyzing their activities and interconnections

Exposing the Intellectual Assets of a University Department

Works for designing and deploying a university department repository are presented. General considerations about policies and functional requirements are outlined with respect to the institution context. Technical and system issues are briefly discussed. Finally the benefits and usability of the repository are summarized