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

Demystifying the Educational Benefits of Different Gaming Genres

As research continues into the use of computer games for educational purposes, educators still appear reluctant to incorporate them into their teaching. One contributing factor to this reluctance is the lack of information regarding the benefits offered by the different games available today. These differences appear to have been largely overlooked by the academic community, resulting in a lack of information being made available to both the academic and education communities alike. Without this information, educators will find it difficult to determine whether a game will suit their teaching needs, and will continue to avoid using them. This paper studies a selection of games from several different genres, assessing each one in its ability to fulfil a set of previously identified requirements for a good educational resource. The results of the investigation showed that there were indeed strong differences between the genres, allowing for some suggestions to be made regarding their use in education, as well as leaving room for some interesting future work

Demystifying the educational benefits of different gaming genres

As research continues into the use of computer games for educational purposes, educators still appear reluctant to incorporate them into their teaching. One contributing factor to this reluctance is the lack of information regarding the benefits offered by the different games available today. These differences appear to have been largely overlooked by the academic community, resulting in a lack of information being made available to both the academic and education communities alike. Without this information, educators will find it difficult to determine whether a game will suit their teaching needs, and will continue to avoid using them. This paper studies a selection of games from several different genres, assessing each one in its ability to fulfil a set of previously identified requirements for a good educational resource. The results of the investigation showed that there were indeed strong differences between the genres, allowing for some suggestions to be made regarding their use in education, as well as leaving room for some interesting future work

Giving You back Control of Your Data: Digital Signing Practical Issues and the eCert Solution

As technologies develop rapidly, digital signing is commonly used in eDocument security. However, unaddressed issues exist. An eCertificate system represents the problem situation, and therefore is being used as case study, in a project called eCert, to research for the solution. This paper addresses these issues, explores the gap between current tools and the desired system, through analysis of the existing services and eCertificate use cases, and the identified requirements, thereby presenting an approach which solves the above problems. Preliminary results indicate that the recommendation from this research meets the design requirements, and could form the foundation of future study of solving digital signing issues

Solving the e-Portfolio Certificate Problem

ePortfolios are of particular interest as a means of supporting and encouraging life-long learning and continuing personal development. A current problem in this context concerns the inclusion of certification of attainment – the electronic equivalent of paper award certificates. At its heart is an interesting problem of three party trust extended over the lifetime of the student. This paper outlines the key issues, offers a proposed solution, and indicates how work is proceeding on an on-going UK-funded project which will deliver and evaluate a demonstrator to test the effectiveness of this solution

Learning Through Rich Environments

Research into games in education most frequently expresses itself in the form of noting that games interest and motivate, and that we might therefore find the learning process improved if we were to use games as a vehicle for the delivery of learning content. We do not wish to take this approach, but to analyse what it is that makes games interesting and motivating and apply this in the context of designing learning scenarios. Many papers propose taxonomies of game style and criteria for good game design, tending to list good ideas and observed issues, but meeting difficulties when trying to generalise. We review some of the more important contributions in the area, and distil these into models to help us understand what's involved by defining the concept of a “Rich Environment.” We conclude with an example of how these models may be applied to the design of a learning environment

Transparent authentication methodology in electronic education

In the context of on-line assessment in e-learning, a problem arises when a student taking an exam may wish to cheat by handing over personal credentials to someone else to take their place in an exam, Another problem is that there is no method for signing digital content as it is being produced in a computerized environment. Our proposed solution is to digitally sign the participant’s work by embedding voice samples in the transcript paper at regular intervals. In this investigation, we have demonstrated that a transparent stenographic methodology will provide an innovative and practical solution for achieving continuous authentication in an online educational environment by successful insertion and extraction of audio digital signatures

Teaching the Grid: Learning Distributed Computing with the M-grid Framework

A classic challenge within Computer Science is to distribute data and processes so as to take advantage of multiple computers tackling a single problem in a simultaneous and coordinated way. This situation arises in a number of different scenarios, including Grid computing which is a secure, service-based architecture for tackling massively parallel problems and creating virtual organizations. Although the Grid seems destined to be an important part of the future computing landscape, it is very difficult to learn how to use as real Grid software requires extensive setting up and complex security processes. M-grid mimics the core features of the Grid, in a much simpler way, enabling the rapid prototyping of distributed applications. We describe m-grid and explore how it may be used to teach foundation Grid computing skills at the Higher Education level and report some of our experiences of deploying it as an exercise within a programming course

eIDeCert: a user-centric solution for mobile identification

The necessity to certify one's identity for different purposes and the evolution of mobile technologies have led to the generation of electronic devices such as smart cards, and electronic identities designed to meet daily needs. Nevertheless, these mechanisms have a problem: they don't allow the user to set the scope of the information presented. That problem introduces interesting security and privacy challenges and requires the development of a new tool that supports user-centrity for the information being handled. This article presents eIDeCert, a tool for the management of electronic identities (eIDs) in a mobile environment with a user-centric approach. Taking advantage of existing eCert technology we will be able to solve a real problem. On the other hand, the application takes us to the boundary of what the technology can cope with: we will assess how close we are to the boundary, and we will present an idea of what the next step should be to enable us to reach the goal

Exploring the affordances of virtual fieldwork in a multi-user, 3-D digital environment

The Open University has developed virtual field trips for teaching over a number of years, as a necessary supplement to their residential field schools. In common with many online virtual field trips (VFTs), these generally offered fairly simple, linear, isolated experiences. Users progressed from an overview/orientation page with some background information through to a series of static pages, each corresponding to a field locality and containing a set of resources (text, photographs, animations, questions, links). Little interactivity was possible, and most students experienced the VFT in isolation, whether studying it from a DVD or web browser. In 2013, a new VFT, Virtual Skiddaw, was produced via a collaboration between a virtual worlds expert (Shailey Minocha), a geologist (Tom Argles), and Daden, a software development company specializing in virtual worlds. The result is a rich, interactive virtual landscape in which detailed 3D localities are embedded in context, allowing users to follow a guided excursion or explore at their leisure. The VFT runs in a web browser using the free Unity 3D plugin. The Unity 3D gaming engine behind the VFT brings with it a number of features new to virtual field trips: multi-user capability (and interaction), ambient noise, avatar navigation (including flight for aerial views), teleporting (within world only!), 3D models of hand samples. Virtual Skiddaw offers distance students in particular a chance to learn together in the virtual environment, while tutors can lead a group activity in-world. The VFT is now embedded in a core second level Earth science OU module, S209, along with other assets from the recently launched OpenScience Laboratory at the OU (http://learn5.open.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=2). This session will introduce Virtual Skiddaw, and then progress to a hands-on demo, in-world, to showcase some of the features. Participants are invited to discuss affordances and pitfalls of the VFT, and its potential application beyond HE (for example, into schools)