COLLEGE is a platform for the development and delivery of interactive learning content for individual students or groups and will be built during 2005-2007. Phase I will deliver primarily video- and audio-based learning content together with tools to provide automated assistance and assessment of student progress. Phase II will increase the options for the learning content to include non-time-based media and will increase the level of Just- in-Time support for students. The COLLEGE toolset will be based around virtual metaphors corresponding to traditional tools for learning, recording, interacting with the source of the learning material, and assessment.peer-reviewe

3rd Computer Science Annual Workshop (CSAW’05)

Staff, Chris

OAR@UM

COLLEGE: A Collaborative On-Line Lecture Environmentfor Group and Individual eLearningChris StaffUniversity of Malta,Department of Computer Science and AI,MaltaAbstract. COLLEGE is a platform for the development and delivery of interactive learningcontent for individual students or groups and will be built during 2005-2007. Phase I willdeliver primarily video- and audio-based learning content together with tools to provideautomated assistance and assessment of student progress. Phase II will increase the optionsfor the learning content to include non-time-based media and will increase the level of Just-in-Time support for students. The COLLEGE toolset will be based around virtual metaphorscorresponding to traditional tools for learning, recording, interacting with the source of thelearning material, and assessment.1 IntroductionModern digital environments and affordable broadband Internet connections enable us to re-visitsolutions for delivering video- and audio- based learning content over the Internet. We can nowalso provide automated assistance to students to construct individualised interactive learning ex-periences. These can also be extended to group and collaborative learning experiences.COLLEGE, which is being developed at the University of Malta, builds upon work that has been on-going since 2001. Four BSc IT (Hons) Final Year students and one MSc student have researched andworked on various aspects of a collaborative on-line lecture environment and automatic question-answering system. In 2005, the University of Malta awarded funds to COLLEGE to engage apart-time developer and award a grant to an MSc studentship. The project has two phases. Thefirst phase (2005-2006) will consist of combining existing work ([1], [2], [3], [4], and [5]) under aunifying project and evaluating the result. The second phase (2006-2007), if the funding is renewed,will involve rolling out learning material selected from a variety of certificate, diploma, and under-graduate degree programmes offered by the University of Malta. Further evaluation studies willbe carried out, by comparing the progress of different students following the same course throughCOLLEGE and traditionally. Additionally, alternative non-time-based learning content materialwill be incorporated into the eLearning delivery platform to reach students who may not havehigh bandwidth access to the Internet; for learning content that is not best suited to audio- orvideo-based delivery; and to analyse alternative delivery methods.2 Further details about COLLEGEThe initial motivation for COLLEGE and its predecessors was to recreate a virtual environmentthat would mimic a ‘real’ lecture environment. We wanted the lecture to follow a time-line, withlecture materials displayed to the student at the appropriate time. We also wanted to give studentsCOLLEGE: A Collaborative On-Line Lecture Environment for Group and Individual eLearning 43the ability to interact with the lecturer or his/her proxy, including asking questions, but also takingadvantage of the benefits offered by on-demand lecture service.In COLLEGE, a lecture is primarily driven by a media stream that has a time-line (e.g., videoor audio) against which events can be triggered to occur ([3]). A lecture can be subdivided intosections, and the designer of the lecture can decide how students may progress from one section tothe next. For instance, although a student’s progress will normally be unhindered, it may be thecase that a student is required to successfully perform some task in order to proceed. This couldtake the form of a pop quiz or question that the student must answer correctly. Through these andsimilar mechanisms it is also possible to monitor individual students’ progress in the course.A lecture may be supported by visual aids, animations, on-line documents, lecture notes, studyaids, etc., which are triggered to be made available to the learner at the appropriate time duringthe lecture.Fig. 1. The role of the lecturer in the classroom (left) is replaced by a video stream (right) (from [3]).The video stream takes on the lecturer’s role of delivering content and controlling the flow ofthe lecture (fig. 1). However, just as a student may be asked questions, so may a student ask aquestion. In an educational programme for which the content is relatively stable over a numberof years (with different students passing through the course each time it is given), we expect thatover time the number of previously unheard (or unseen) questions that students ask will becomeminimal. For instance, the first time a course is given all questions are previously unseen. Of thequestions that are asked in the second year of the course, some may have been asked the previousyear. Galea’s MaltaQA “stores” answers to new questions and then supplies the same answer tosimilarly phrased questions in the future [4].Borg [2] converted Ellul’s proprietary lecture delivery platform to a Web-based platform usingcurrent W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) standards for synchronised multimedia (e.g., SMIL),and has extended it to support virtual classrooms that can contain students distributed, potentially,around the globe. In this case, a (digitally recorded) lecture is advertised for delivery at a particulartime and students can register to virtually attend it. It is also possible for the lecturer to attend,in which case the lecturer may elect to take student questions himself or herself. At the advertisedtime, the lecture is broadcast to participating students. The toolset required to support thesestudents is extended so that when a student asks a question, all participating students will hear(or read) the question. The lecture must then be suspended for all students so that the questioncan be answered. The lecturer has the choice of answering the question, asking the audience toprovide the answer, or requiring all students to attempt to answer. Unlike non-interactive Internetradio which does not need to cater for listeners to be hearing the same thing at the same time,it is necessary to ensure that all students are synchronised with respect to each other, becauseotherwise students could be receiving questions which relate to a part of the lecture they have notyet seen, or which was seen several minutes earlier.Bezzina’s PS4School [1] is a Just-in-Time Support System for Curriculum based Learning. This44 Chris StaffeLearning platform assumes that the main learning environment is a real (or virtual) classroom, andthat the student using PS4School is currently performing a learning task outside of the classroom.Students and tutors connect to PS4School. PS4School knows in which areas each tutor is proficient.A student who requires assistance is automatically connected to an on-line tutor who is in a positionto help. PS4School uses policy mechanisms to determine the degree to which a student can seekhelp. Policies may also be used to ensure a fair distribution of requests for assistance among allon-line tutors who are capable of providing that specific assistance. Spiteri built an open sourceWeb-based version of PS4School and extended the policy mechanisms [5].3 Future WorkPhase I of the COLLEGE project is expected to run from October 2005 to September 2006. In thisphase we aim to consolidate the work that has already been done in [1], [2], [3], [4], and [5], andmake it available as a common eLearning platform for delivering video- and audio-based lecturesto individual students or groups of students simultaneously. COLLEGE will provide an editor forthe development of COLLEGE-based learning content, and toolkits for students to interact with aquestion-answering system, assessment exercises, the lecturer/tutor, the lecture itself, each other,and to seek and obtain assistance both inside and outside of the virtual classroom. A motivatingshort course will be developed for delivery through COLLEGE for evaluation purposes.Phase II of COLLEGE will run from October 2006 to September 2007. COLLEGE will be furtherdeveloped to include support for non-time-based learning material. Although time-based material,such as video and audio, provides a convenient time-line against which events (such as changinga visual aid) may be triggered, non-time-based material does not. Additionally, some studentsmay not have broadband access to the internet, and some course material may be better suitedto a non-time-based delivery mode. Students will still require just-in-time support, mechanismsfor collaboration, and interaction with a question-answering system and the tutors, which can allcontinue to be provided as in Phase I. However, the delivery of the learning content will now centrearound knowledge concepts to be learned, the interdependence of concepts, the mechanism forknowledge communication and transfer, and guiding students through a knowledge space consistentwith their aims and experience.4 ConclusionThe availability of relatively cheap broadband access to the Internet makes on-demand lecturedelivery viable. COLLEGE will be an on-line environment that mimics a real lecture environment,with a toolset to enable students to participate in lectures either as individuals or as part of agroup.By the end of Phase II (September, 2007), we expect COLLEGE to be a robust, evaluated platformthat can be used to develop and deliver University of Malta learning content to students who areunable to regularly physically attend classes; prefer to use alternative mechanisms to learn at theirown pace; are resident in other countries; or require additional support to supplement their regularattendance.References1. R. Bezzina. Peer-to-peer just-in-time support for curriculum based learning. Final Year Project Report,Department of Computer Science and AI, University of Malta, 2002.COLLEGE: A Collaborative On-Line Lecture Environment for Group and Individual eLearning 452. R. Borg. Virtual collaborative classrooms. Final Year Project Report, Department of Computer Scienceand AI, University of Malta, 2004.3. C. Ellul. Just-in-time lecture delivery, management and student support system. Final Year ProjectReport, Department of Computer Science and AI, University of Malta, 2002.4. A. Galea. Open domain question answering systems. Master’s thesis, Department of Computer Scienceand AI, University of Malta, 2004.5. J. Spiteri. Web-based open source just-in-time support for elearning. Final Year Project Report, De-partment of Computer Science and AI, University of Malta, 2004.

COLLEGE : a collaborative on-line lecture environment for group and individual eLearning

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COLLEGE : a collaborative on-line lecture environment for group and individual eLearning

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