Socrates Minerva 99807-CP-1-2002-1-MINERVA-M

Student support services in e-learning

Analysis of major systems

Truls Fagerberg NKI, NorwayMorten Flate Paulsen NKI NorwayTorstein Rekkedal NKI NorwayGearoid Kenny LMI, IrelandPaul Landers LMI, IrelandGearóid O Suilleabháin DEIS, IrelandGeorg Ströhlein FeU, GermanyHelmut Fritsch FeU, GermanyLaura Palmerio URomaIII, Italy

June 2003

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Student support services in e-learning

Analysis of major systems

CONTENTS

PageCHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 3

CHAPTER 2 STUDENT SUPPORT SYSTEMS FOR ONLINE EDUCATION AVAILABLE IN NKI’S INTEGRATED SYSTEMS FOR INTERNET BASED E-LEARNING by Morten Flate Paulsen, Truls Fagerberg & Torstein Rekkedal 13

CHAPTER 3 STUDENT SUPPORT SERVICES: ANALYSIS OF MAJOR SYSTEMS by Gearoid Kenny and Paul Landers 26

CHAPTER 4 A DESIGN ANALYSIS REPORT OF STUDENT SUPPORT SERVICES AVAILABLE IN THE WEBCT LMS by Gearóid Ó Súilleabháin 46

CHAPTER 5 STUDENT SUPPORT SERVICES PROVISION OF THE ELEARNING PLATFORM LVU AT THE FERNUNIVERSITÄT IN HAGEN by Georg Ströhlein & Helmut Fritsch 52

CHAPTER 6 THE BLACKBOARD PLATFORM FOR THE CREATION AND MANAGEMENT OF ONLINE COURSES by Laura Palmerio 74

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Chapter 1 Introduction

The first volume in this series was entitled Student support services in elearning: overview. It dealt with the pedagogical issues involved in student support services and in elearning.

The second volume was entitled Student support services in elearning: analysis of existing systems. It dealt with the presence of student support services in functioning elearning systems in Europe today.

The title of this volume is Student support services in elearning: analysis of major systems. It deals with the presence of student support systems in leading Learning Management Systems (LMSs) available today.

The LMSs chosen for analysis are:

WebCT of WebCT Inc (USA) TEDS of CBM Technologies Inc (USA) TopClass of WBT Systems (Ireland) SESAM of NKI (Norway) Class Fronter (Norway) LVU of the FernUniversität (Germany) Blackboard of Blackboard Inc (USA).

The purpose of this volume is to measure the presence of student support services in major elearning LMSs today. For this purpose the grid already developed by the project is used. This grid is reproduced here:

Grid for the analysis of student support services in elearning systems

Information Phase A pre- registration phase. The principal activity conductedduring this phase is exploration and examination of the available student material. Information is typically gained through an examination of material issued in support of the course.

Information relating to course. The presence of information for each course relating to course content, duration, target audience etc.

Information relating to the program to which the course belongs The presence of information relating to the larger program of which the course is a part.

Information relating to pricing Information relating to the cost of the course ( may include payment options).

Vendor contact capability A facility for the student to contact the vendor / course

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administrator for further course or program information

FAQ Section A list of commonly asked questions, together with solutionsto those questions.

Guidance Phase A pre- course registration phase. This phase typicallyinvolves human intervention, to give the student guidance /direction on what courses / programs to study and whatcourses / programs are not applicable.

Student specific information concerning choices of courses and / or programs.Guidance to the student, typically by an institutional representative, on what course( s) most accurately meet his/ her specific requirements.

Optional Extras These include any services that the student may purchasethat are additional to the basic course / program material.

Software VersionThe student is given guidance on any software or hardwarerequirements that must be met to run the course material.This will typically only be applicable in the case of commercial implementations.

Financial questions regarding loans and grants Questions that allow the student to determine if he or she is eligible for financial assistance such as government grants, scholarships etc.

Costs The student is offered a price for the course / program selected for him / her.

Registration Phase The student is enrolled in the course / program. The typicalelements of this phase involve processing course payments and issuing the student with a course / program access etc.

Guidance on practical matters This might include Guidance on how to complete the registration form, campus facilities, directions to campus, when 'live' / real- time components have been scheduled for.

Registration information user identity and passwords A facility to issue the student with a user identity and or password to allow him / her to enter their courses programs and if applicable services.

Integration Phase This phase involves giving the students technical information relating to the possibility of physically placing the learning material on the customers learning infrastructure. Typically, this phase would be performed inthe case of a commercial organisation providing online learning.

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Technical Recommendations Might include recommendations on the Client Browser required, database requirements, windows platform etc. Information on compatibility with standards such as SCORM may also be included.

Help Desk The activities associated with this phase are likely to be performed during all phases. The activities typically relate to resolving problems with passwords, error messages, problems resolving URL's, general technical queries etc.

Technical Support The facility to receive live support in the event of studentsbeing unable to satisfactorily access the content and services for which they have paid.

Student Self Tracking The facility for user to map his / her progress and / or check progress against the objectives set for the course / program.

Learning Phase This phase facilitates online learning. Online learningtypically occurs via access to eLearning content, discussion fora, bulletin boards, email queries, telephone support, group work etc. These support both student to student and student to instructor interaction.

Dispatch of printed and other physical learning materials A facility for students to check on the status of the hard copies of their course material

Instruction on Online Learning techniques User instructions / demonstrations on how to use the eLearning material / services they have access to.

Student Learning Support

Bulletin Boards Online discussion rooms for all users to post comments,questions, learning support documents etc.

email The facility to contact tutors and / or peers. online tutorials Online tutorials to support students in meeting their learning

objectives. face to face tutorials The facility to arrange online, face to face tutorials that

support the students in meeting their learning objectives.

Resources / Library Online access to additional material to support studentlearning.

Student - Self Assessment The online facility to check learning progress during thecourse. The results of these tests are not usually recorded towards the final result.

Automated Assessment Typically occurs at the end of a course, produces a result which may count towards certification.

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Tutor Assessment The facility to send work to a tutor / teacher for correctionand evaluation.

Assessment Feedback – electronic Electronic method of giving students feedback on their work. The results may include guidelines on what areas thestudent needs to repeat.

Assessment Feedback – manual Instructions on how to submit work for analysis and correction. Results may include guidelines on what material needs to be repeated.

Student Portfolios A personal home- page per student to allow them tointroduce themselves to online colleagues, showcase their work. Provide alternative sources of course information to colleagues etc.

Final Results Phase Post study phase where the student is given his / hercourse / program result.

Accreditation Here the student is issued his / her results. These resultswill have an influence on what further courses / programs are to be taken.

Guidance on further study The facility to get additional information on what othercourses / programs are available

Thorpe views of separation breakdown

The identification of student support services in elearning LMSs has been commented on by Thorpe, of the Open University of the United Kingdom. She writes:

The use of computer-mediated communication (CMC) as an integral part of the design of distance taught courses raises interesting challenges to our thinking about course design and learner support. These have typically been conceptualised as two complementary but distinct systems in distance education, characterised by different practices often carried out by different groups of staff. Where CMC is designed as an integral part of the course, with collaborative learning as essential to assessment and study, this separation breaks down. The design of online activities is integral to both learner support and the course content, with new possibilities for open and distance learning as a result. Where the learning group itself is a resource for study and personal development, it also becomes feasible to orientate courses and programmes towards local teams and communities. Online tutors play a key role and need to develop 'the technology of conversation' and expertise in the design of activities, as part of their facilitator role.

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Thorpe’s position that ‘Where CMC is designed as an integral part of the course, with collaborative learning as essential to assessment and study, this separation breaks down. The design of online activities is integral to both learner support and the course content’ is not accepted here. It is believed that it is still possible to identify course content development and student support services as component parts of an elearning system.

There are three reasons for this:

Some elearning systems are today rich in student support services and some are not

It is possible to identify in functioning elearning systems today clusters of activities which match the definition of student support services

There is a clear distinction in elearning theory today between Learning Management Systems (LMSs) and Learning Content Management Systems (LCMSs).

It is clear that some elearning systems today are rich in student support services in a way which others are not. The NKI (Norway) system presented in this study is particularly rich in student support services. Theoretical and technical justification of this richness is fundamental to the organisation. In contrast to this many corporate implementations of elearning are fragile in student support services and tools for these services, if present in the system, are little used. Thus, it is felt, that Thorpe’s assertion that the distinction between course content development and student support services breaks down in elearning goes too far.

In a similar way this study has demonstrated that the student support serivces in an elearning system can be identified and analysed. The grid developed for this project identifies clusters of tools under the headings:

Information phase Guidance phase Registration phase Integration phase Help desk Learning phase Final results phase.

These facilities are either present or not in an elearning system and the system can be analysed to evaluate and measure the degree of use of the facilities. The tools listed under the heading ‘learning phase’ are central to the richness or other wise of student support services.

It is appropriate to ask what is the difference between a Learning Management System and a Learning Content Management System? On the face of it it would

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appear that the LCMS was the software used in the creation of course content and the LMS would contain the student support services and other administrative and management tools for the system.A generally accepted position holds that Learning Management Systems (LMSs) are reporting systems and generally do not include ways to create new content or to deliver small packets of learning.

This position holds that LMSs were created for: tracking registration

attendance

class lists

grades

test results

class scheduling

other administrative requirements of schools and instructor-led classes.

An LMS helps in running a learning organisation. It does not help create or deploy content. It does not track students through a particular course. It does not enable Tutors to communicate with the students. The need for companies to be able to create their own SCORM compliant learning objects drove the development of the LCMS. Business on the internet is in real time, therefore content development and knowledge access must also be in real time.An LCMS provides authoring, sequencing, and aggregation tools that structure content to facilitate the learning process. This position holds that the components of an LCMS can be identified as:

an authoring application,

templates and storyboarding capabilities, and may be used to convert existing content.

a data repository,

uses meta data to store and manage individual learning objects.

a delivery interface, dynamically serves content that can be modified to reflect a certain

look or feel, such as organizational branding. administration tools.

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manage learner profiles, course catalogues, offer collaboration tools, including chat, integrated email, and threaded discussion groups.and so forth.

It is considered that an organisation has training content such as Word files, PowerPoint presentations, Flash animations, and assessment spread throughout its departments. Using an LCMS, an organisation can aggregate content in a single system, then manipulate it and apply structure to create and deliver coursesCompanies have the ability to take these knowledge blocks and assemble them anyway the user wants. An LCMS will manage the workflow of the content. Real time business means a continuous flow of information and this needs to be managed. In particular the LCMS gets the right content to the right people and at the right time. These versioning capabilities of a LCMS are essential to communicate between authors, collate from remote sites (update, review status), and track the information by date.

A quality LCMS adheres to industry standards like IMS (Instructional Management System) and SCORM (Sharable Courseware Object Reference Model). It supports and manages internally and externally (third party) created learning context, and thus preserves the investment companies make in learning content.

To be a learning content management system, the content should also be aware of learners. At a minimum, learning content should recognise who the learner is and record information about the learner's experience. When the learner logs on to the system and launches the content, they should be taken straight back to where they last left off.

As the learners interact with the content, results are passed back to the system. The system can also change its behaviour based on real time student interaction. This would be based on test scores, learning style preferences, skills, communication abilities, organisational roles or any other relevant data. This presentation places within the LCMS some of the functions that might be considered as part of student support services. This observation is true also of one of the major LMSs analysed in this study, TopClass from WBT systems.

TopClass analysis

TopClass is a product of WBT Systems, and Irish-based elearning system provider. It describes itself thus: WBT Systems is one of the leading providers of Enterprise e-Learning Solutions in the world. WBT Systems’ TopClass e-Learning Suite™ is a robust, easily deployed, web-based e-Learning platform with over two million users worldwide.

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The TopClass architecture is presented thus:

The various components of the TopClass elearning suite are described thus:

TopClass® LCMS

Our award-winning Learning Content Management System is a powerful e-Learning platform that delivers personalised learning, assessment and testing, and built-in asynchronous collaboration. TopClass LCMS distinguishes itself with its ease of usability and unique Learning Object architecture.

TopClass LMS

TopClass LMS provides complete Catalog and ILT Management functionality. The ability to list any online learning, ILT event and any offline type (Books, CDs, DVDs etc.) enables a one stop shop for all learning in the organisation. Approval workflow processing and waitlist management for streamlines training administration processes.

TopClass Competencies™

TopClass Competencies manages an organisations skills and competencies inventory, while users themselves can identify skill gaps and map training programs specific to their competency shortfalls.

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TopClass Mobile™

TopClass Mobile enables offline delivery for users without a network connection to access learning materials exactly as they would with TopClass, with the same interface, personalised learning, and assessments. TopClass Mobile also facilitates the deployment of content on CD-ROM and DVD.

TopClass Publisher™

TopClass Publisher enables fast conversion of existing content and powerful course assembly with drag-and-drop ease. Quickly and easily create Learning Objects-based courses and integrated testing using content that can come in the form of Word, PowerPoint, Macromedia Dreamweaver, text, SCORM-conformant content and any HTML documents.

TopClass Virtual Classrooms™

TopClass Virtual Classrooms provides seamless integration with leading live e-Learning providers such as Centra, InterWise, and WebEx, enabling flexibility to choose the virtual classroom solution that best suits your needs.

TopClass XML Toolkit™

TopClass XML Toolkit provides everything you need to integrate TopClass with your existing business systems such as Peoplesoft or SAP. Through this integration, state of the art e-Learning can become an intrinsic part of your business processes.

In this presentation the student support services are contained in the Content Delivery and Management System (CDMS), especially the ‘collaboration’ and ‘testing’ layers, and also in the Learning Management System (LMS).

Chapter 2 Student Support Systems for Online Education available in NKI’s Integrated Systems for Internet Based E-learning.

This chapter contains studies of two Norwegian systems. The integrated systems of NKI built around the self-developed LMS called SESAM is rich in student support services and theoretical and practical justifications for this provision has been given in these volumes. The second system, Class Fronter, is a Norwegian system that has gained the major share of the market in that country.

Chapter 3 Student support services: analysis of major systems

This chapter presents analyses of two major systems: the TEDS system from North America and the TopClass system from Ireland. Both are analysed and presented using the grid developed specially for this project.

Chapter 4 A Design Analysis Report of Student Support Services available in the WebCT LMS

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WebCT is arguably the world’s most successful Learning Management System, at least for academic use. This chapter presents this LMS and analyses it from the point of view of student support services.

Chapter 5 Student support services provision of the eLearning platformLVU at the FernUniversität in Hagen

This chapter is a presentation of the student support services in the new LMS, called LVU, developed in Germany by the German Open University, the FernUniversität in Hagen. The chapter contains many illustrations from the LMS and concludes with an analysis of the system in accordance with the grid developed specially for this study.

Chapter 6 The Blackboard Platform for the creation and management of online courses

The creation and management of elearning courses by the Blackboard suite from Blackboard Inc of Washington DC, USA is the subject of this chapter. The Blackboard Learning System and the Blackboard Community Portal System are described and analysed and the chapter closes with an example of using the Blackboard platform from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Maine, USA.

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Chapter 2 Student Support Systems for Online Education available in NKI’s Integrated Systems for Internet Based E-learning by Morten Flate Paulsen, Truls Fagerberg & Torstein Rekkedal

The first part of this chapter presents the systems NKI Distance Education apply to facilitate student support services for online education. The second part discuss the services with regard to the grid of student support services developed by Student Support Services in e-Learning (http://learning.ericsson.net/socrates/), a project supported by the European Socrates program.

NKI’s Integrated Systems

NKI has a number of self-developed and commercial applications that together make up a comprehensive system for student support services. The integration of the systems is extremely important for the total functionality, effectiveness, and quality of the student support services. As shown in Error: Reference source not found, STAS is the pivotal master system that holds the core data that many of the other systems depend on.

Figure 1. NKI’s integrated systems for online student support

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STAS: A Self-developed Student Management System

STAS is NKI’s system for administration of distance students and it is developed by NKI. STAS holds all relevant data about our students, teachers, courses and study programs. One of the largest advantages with STAS is that it is developed to handle students with free starting time and progression. This system also contains very good tools for generating various reports and statistics.

STAS is to consider as NKI master system and is tightly integrating other essential systems such as accounting, logistic, prospective and partner systems. STAS is also the master system for NKI’s Learning Management System (LMS) SESAM, www.nettskolen.com, and NKI’s business portal, www.nki.no.

Agresso: A commercial accounting system

Agresso (www.agresso.com) is a commercial accounting system that handless tuition fees, invoices, wages etc.. When a course enrollment is registered in STAS, the corresponding student account is debited in Agresso. When tutors register grades in SESAM, they are transferred to STAS and the remuneration is added to their accounts in Agresso.

SYSA: A self-developed partner system

SYSA is a system NKI has developed to present information about the local partners that organize face-to-face classes based on NKI’s distance education courses. It provides contact information about the local partners and the classes they offer for NKI courses. SYSA supports the local partners’ marketing and student recruitment. The partners’ contact information is forwarded to STAS.

Onyx: A commercial prospective system

Onyx is a commercial system that is purchased to handle marketing activities and requests from prospective students. Each advertisement, brochure, TV commercial, web-campaign etc. is identified with a unique media code. The advertisements result in thousands of requests that are registered with contact information and media code. The requests may come via NKI’s website, telephone, e-mail etc. from people who consider to enroll in a course. Onyx is also used to follow up prospective students who have showed their interest, but never enrolled in a course. Onyx has access to STAS data so that it knows which prospective students that actually enroll in a course. As a result of this, Onyx provides a number of reports and follow-up services for the marketing department.

Multi-Case: A commercial logistic system

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Multi-Case is a commercial logistics system for administration of purchases and shipments of textbooks and miscellaneous physical course material. When course enrollments are registered in STAS, Multi-Case automatically initiate shipment of the corresponding course material. Multi-Case also provides a number of reports about royalties, material on stock etc.

SESAM: a self-developed learning management system

SESAM is NKI’s self-developed learning management system. It is developed to support the services that are important to NKI, and it is therefore well adapted to NKI’s special needs. SESAM is excellent for handling continuous student enrollment 365 days a year. The major, additional advantages it has compared to commercial LMS systems, is its focus on cost-effectiveness and the necessary integration with all the critical student support systems.

SESAM provides a number of services for students. Among them are:

Access control Personalized user-interfaces Access to course content and assignments Discussion forums Class lists Student presentations Information about grades

The teachers have access to additional services such as:

Online registration of grades Tutor support services Wage and payment data

NKI employees also have access to a number of additional reports and statistics on information about course enrolments, user statistics, etc.

SESAM is developed for large-scale online education and it applies state-of-the-art web technologies including Java, XML, XSL, Oracle 9i database and Apache web server.

FEB: A self-developed business portal

FEB is NKI’s self-developed business portal. It is the main portal for the NKI online course catalog. This online catalog presents all courses and programs offered by NKI. This includes information about course content, necessary prerequisites, credits, exams, tuition fees, etc. Prospective students may register or apply to courses directly via FEB. In addition to course information FEB also include a comprehensive database of article with news, frequently asked

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questions, and more general information about distance and online education. A number of research articles and reports are also available in FEB.

FEB also provides a search engine covering the course catalog, www.nki.no and www.nettskolen.com. FEB is built on current web technologies including Java, XML, XSL, Oracle 9i database and Apache web server.

In February 2003, FEB for the first time automatically provided the course information used in the printed course catalog.

The Grid of Student Support Services

The project Student Support Services in e-Learning has developed a grid of student support services. The following, second part of this article, discusses NKI online student support systems according to the following elements of the grid:

The information phase The guidance phase The registration phase The help desk The learning phase The final results phase

The Information Phase

The NKI Marketing department is responsible for the activities related to the information phase. The pivotal systems the department uses to handle this are FEB, Onyx, and SYSA.

FEB presents information about the courses and program for potential students. It also includes additional information about NKI and the services that are available for students. Ideally, FEB should provide the information students need before they decide to enroll in a course. The online information presented via FEB is available at www.nki.no.

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Figure 2. Front page of the NKI marketing/information site.

The front page of the information/marketing site is developed with the main goal of supplying information about NKI courses and programmes in a way that is easy to understand and access. The front page has links “studies and courses”, “corporate training” and to the “NKI Internet College” (i.e. to SESAM and the course pages). In addition the front page links to news and other information about NKI aiming to create contact and credibility. FEB includes both a free text search function and a function for searching for courses and study programmes.

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Figure 3. Courses and programmes search page.

The search page contains in addition to the search function information about how to order more information or enrolling, information about possibilities for loans and study grants and more information about study forms and methods (i.e. correspondence education, on line learning, combined education) and where in Norway on can participate in local face-to-face support in different programmes. The page also contains a FAQ unit.

When searching whether NKI offers a programme in psychology, one may search for psychology in free text or click on P in the alphabetical search. A click on P gives a page with 50 different options of courses and programmes delivered either as correspondence education or as online education, while a click on psychology gives you all courses and programmes where the word “psychology” is included in the description.

Clicking Psychology leads you directly to the course page of the Psychology programme delivered as correspondence study, while clicking Psychology leads you to the page informing about the Psychology programme delivered as e-learning on the Internet.

This course page gives complete information about the programme with links to course descriptions, prices, prerequisites, expected study time, exams etc.

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Figure 4. The information page for the Psychology programme.

The marketing department advertises NKI courses in newspapers, magazines, brochures, catalogues, radio commercials, TV commercials etc. The commercials refer to NKI’s addresses, telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, and web-addresses. These may vary according to product and campaign. As a result of these marketing efforts, thousands of prospective students contact NKI to get additional information. This is entered into Onyx so that NKI can provide prospective students with the information they request. Onyx also provides statistics and opportunities to follow up prospective students later.

NKI collaborates with local partners throughout the country. They offer face-to-face classes based on NKI’s distance education courses. SYSA holds information about the partners and the NKI courses they plan to provide. This information is forwarded to FEB so that prospective students can find information about local classes in their region.

The Guidance Phase

For many prospective students, it is a major decision to enroll in a course or program that could take many months to complete and could cost a substantial amount of money. They often want some individual and personal guidance. Hence, the most important tools in the guidance phase are telephone calls, e-

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mail messages, and student fairs. This personal guidance is very time consuming, but hard to automate.

NKI has not implemented any computer systems to support the guidance phase. But it could be worth wile to consider using support software such as for example Rightnow.com to organize and reduce inbound guidance loads.

The Registration Phase

On registration, student information is entered into STAS and forwarded to SESAM, Agresso and Multi-Case.

When students enroll, information about the enrolment is entered into STAS. This includes information about their names, addresses, and e-mail addresses. Each student is assigned to a course, a class, a tutor and a payment scheme. An e-mail is automatically issued to each student providing an individual password and information shipment of textbooks.

STAS also forwards information to SESAM about the new students and the courses and services they should have access to. STAS forwards account and payment information to Agresso. Similarly, STAS forwards information to Multi-Case about shipment of textbooks and other physical material.

The Help Desk

Students may need help and guidance with regard to technical problems, financial requests, local exams, etc. These requests are time consuming and could be reduced by providing comprehensive, well-organized and searchable web-services. Still, it is important to allow student to contact people who can help them via telephone, e-mail or other services. Since distance students often study during weekends and in the evening, the services should be available after the ordinary office hours.

NKI has not implemented any computer systems to support these individual requests. But it could be worth wile to consider using support software such as for example Rightnow.com to organize and reduce inbound guidance loads.

The Learning Phase

SESAM is NKI’s self-developed learning management system that is developed to handle the learning phase. As soon as a student is enrolled, she receives a personal password that provides access to all course material and services. This includes access to a personal tutor, one ore more discussion for a, a class list etc.

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In SESAM each student and tutor have their personal page with information about which Courses they have access to, News from NKI, link to a page for Settings, where they can change settings (password, e-mail address, personal presentation and how frequent they wish to receive e-mail about new entries the their course forums (immediately, once a day, once a week or never (!))). The personal page for students also contains links to Resources (such as FAQs, search engines, archive of previous exams, and form for registration to exams, software, instructions for tutors). There is also a link to registered information about study progression and grades in all courses.

A tutor’s personal page includes in addition a System for registration of grades, overview of assignments commented and graded, overview of salary earned, practical advice for tutors, access to a senior tutor for personal guidance.

The student and tutor pages also include a quick menu for direct access to all pages and information in SESAM to which the person has access rights. All pages have a printer friendly version.

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Figure 5. Personal page of a tutor.

Student follow-up

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The support functions in SESAM were described by Sjaastad, Akre and Rekkedal (2003). Through the SESAM system for registration of graded assignments, information about study progress is transferred to the STAS system that follows up students continuously according to their plans and real progression schedules.

Course content

The course content in NKI Internet based e-learning courses is delivered both as printed materials (textbooks) and as web materials. In some courses, as the one presented below in figure 6, all course content is delivered on the web. Whether to study on the screen, on line or off line may be dependent on the preferences of each individual student and/or type of course content, interactive, with links or long texts. All course materials are presented in forms meant to be studied on the screen and in printer friendly versions. Preferences concerning studying on the screen or on paper have been examined in different evaluation studies. It seems clear that students generally prefer reading from paper when the materials do not include interactive elements (se e.g. Rekkedal 1998). See also discussion in Ströhlein & Fritsch 2003.

Course content may include text, pictures, graphics, multi media, interactive assignments, multiple-choice assignments or essay assignments. All courses will include obligatory assignments to be submitted to the personal tutor for comments and evaluation.

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Figure 5. Course page of the course, Introduction to international online education.

The Final Results Phase

The students may register for exams via SESAM. When course completion and exam grades are registered in STAS, course certificates or program diplomas are printed and mailed to the students.

References

Rekkedal, T. (1998): Courses on the WWW - Student Experiences and Attitudes Towards WWW Courses. An Evaluation Report Written for the Leonardo Online Training Project - http://www.nki.no/eeileo/

Sjaastad, J., Akre, A.-K. L. & Rekkedal, T. (2003): NKI Distance Education – Case Study Student Support Systems in E-learning. http://learning.ericsson.net/socrates/doc/norwayp2.doc

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Ströhlein, G. & Fritsch, H. (2003): Student support services provision of the eLearning platform LVU at the FernUniversität in Hagen. http://learning.ericsson.net/socrates/doc/germanyp3.doc

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Chapter 3 Student support services: analysis of major systems by Gearoid Kenny and Paul Landers

Introduction

The Learning Management Systems (LMSs) analysed in this chapter are TEDS and TopClass. The student support systems of this LMS are analysed in the context of the Student Support System grid for the Student support services in e-learning Socrates Minerva project.

TEDS

TEDS is an LMS owned by the American corporation CBM Technologies Inc.On its website at http://www.teds.com it is presented thus:

With millions of users in more than 90 countries, TEDS is recognized as the global leader in people resource planning and learning management. The TEDS suite of LMS software products provides organizations with the infrastructure, tools, and support to maximize and strategically plan workforce performance. TEDS allows its customers to take control of learning, performance, competencies/certifications and create an enterprise learning community of employees, customers, suppliers and vendors.

TEDS is compliant with the major industry standardisation protocol, AICC, as the following quotation shows:

The Aviation Industry CBT Committee (AICC) announced today that TEDS® has been certified as compliant with its Web Based Computer Managed Instruction Systems (CMI) guidelines. TEDS, a world leader in Learning Management Systems, has long been AICC compliant and is a strong supporter of the AICC.“We are deeply committed to true interoperability and to the AICC’s formalcertification process”, stated Joe Ellis, President and CEO of TEDS and its parent company CBM Technologies. “The AICC’s industry standards for Internet-based learning systems enable TEDS to interface with AICC-compliant learning content regardless of vendor. We were among the first Learning Management Systems to become AICC compliant, and our world-wide customers will certainly benefit from our new certification and our continued support of AICC’s widely accepted CMI standards.”

TEDS customers include Applied Materials, BellSouth, Celanese Acetate, DaimlerChrysler, Dominion Resources, Eastman Chemical Company, Ericsson, Florida Power & Light, GE Capital, GE Medical Systems, InterGen, KeyBank, Nissan North America, Norfolk Southern Corporation, Nortel Networks,Philips Medical Systems Division of Royal Philips Electronics, Qwest, Sandia National Laboratories, Telcordia Technologies, Thiokol, and Verizon.

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In early 2001, a decision was made at Ericsson corporate level to purchase and rollout the TEDS LMS system to support the work of Ericsson Education, the training wing of Ericsson.

Since then, TEDS Learning Management (LMS) and Human Capital Development System has been installed at Ericsson’s nine training centers worldwide. The first installation was completed in June, 2001 at Ericsson’s North America Training Center in Richardson, Texas. Ericsson’s European Training Center, located in Stockholm, Sweden, went live next. These first two installations were followed in succession by centers in Sao Jose dos Campos, Brazil; Rijen, Netherlands; Dublin, Ireland; Mexico City, Mexico; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Beijing, China and Melbourne, Australia. In a little over six months, installation at these nine regional training centers and an additional eight local training centers in various countries were completed.

The installation of TEDS at Ericsson is thought to be the largest international implementation of a Learning Management System to date. TEDS was rolled out to a combined internal and external learning community of 180,000 users in 20 countries. TEDS pioneered international implementations of Learning Management Systems in the late ‘90s. TEDS’ first international implementation took place at Texas Instruments in 1998 when 37,000 users in 30 countries were up and running in less than nine months. Ericsson Education uses TEDS for its online education programme and also for its ILT (Instructor Led Training) offerings.

Following is an analysis of the TEDS system and how it assists the implementation of Student Support Services in online educational environments.

Student support services

In an e-learning system student support services can occur at various stages in the learning process. These are:

Information phase Guidance phase Registration phase Integration phase Help desk Learning phase Final results phase

Information phase

The information phase is a pre-registration phase. The principal activity conducted during this phase is exploration and examination of the available

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student material. Information is typically gained through an examination of material issued in support of the course.

Ericsson Education makes extensive use of the Information phase in providing relevant information at an individual course level:

By clicking on one of the courses listed one is taken to a page for registration and further information. This includes a course description, list of learning objectives, target audience, prerequisites,duration and class size, learning situation. This is displayed as follows:

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When there is enrollment available for a particular course the student can choose to view information about a particular course such as where the course is taking place, the cost, duration etc. This information view is illustrated in the screenshot below.

Note however that in the example given some of the fields are set at their default values. This is because the course administrator has not altered the default values in the supporting ‘back-office’ software where the events have been scheduled. For example the cost is set at 0 as this an internal event for which there is no charge for Ericsson employees.

In this information stage it is also very important to give information on availability and on the option of being placed on a waiting list. This option is activated once the student selects the option to Enroll on a course that is full. In the Ericsson implementation of the User Interface there is an option for the student to contact ‘User Support’ should he or she have any questions. There is also a ‘Help’ tab that guides the user with straighforward advice on navigating the various pages.

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Guidance phase

The guidance phase is a pre-course registration phase. This phase typically involves human intervention, to give the student guidance / direction on what courses / programs to study and what courses / programs are not applicable.

In the TEDS system the main vehicle for guidance is the use of curriculums. These are predesigned course flows beginning at a defined point and moving through various steps to reach a higher level of knowledge and skills. The steps could be various types of courses administered by the TEDS system (ILT or Instructor Led Training courses), VCT or Virtual Classroom Training courses using TEDS partner system Centra, elearning modules, self-study involving articles etc). The curriculums are designed through extensive consultation with training program managers and students should be informed beforehand of recommended curriculums for their specific job category. Once the student knows the curriculum he can add this curriculum to his To Do list. The To Do list is accessible at any time from the Tasks section under Catalogs. The following screenshot illustrates a curriculum comprised of two courses, one elearning course where the delivery method is marked ‘Web Launch’ and one Instructor Led Training (ILT) course where it is marked ‘Traditional Classroom’.

Experience has shown that this system of using curriculums requires a lot of face-to-face consultation outside of the TEDS system in the early stages to actually devise the curriculums. However, once they have been agreed upon their implementation in TEDS is quite straightforward. Again, back office software

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supplied as part of the TEDS product is used to set up the curriculums and to make them visible from the end-users point of view.

Registration phase The registration phase in the TEDS system is very straightforward. Once the student has chosen which course he wishes to attend he has to click on Enroll for the relevant course.

Presuming that there is availability etc then the student will immeadiately be issued with a registration number:

This registration number is used mainly by administration personnel rather than by the student as a booking reference. It identifies the particular student with the individual class than he has enrolled on. The booking reference is used for many purposes including billing. It is also used for other purposes such as the dispatch of student documentation. Each user enrolled in the TEDS system has a profile which includes information such as their work address. In the example of the dispatching of student documentation the address information is collected from this profile and passed on to the disptaching and logistics organistaion (outside TEDS). For elearning courses where there is no extra student documentation, the student’s email address is used to contact him with the relevant logon information to the elearning course (suchas web address, logon user name and password etc).

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Integration phase

The TEDS system does not have a major part to play in the integration phase as much of this work has been decided and resolved beforehand. In addition this phase is mainly only concerned with elearning courses and elearning integration activities. For example, in pre sales discussions with customers all technical and integration issues have to be resolved. This includes the ability of all proposed students to be able to enroll on the TEDS system and for them to have the required software and any other technical requirements to be able to enroll on the elearning courses in the various curriculums that he or she may have access to.

Help Desk

In the Ericsson implementation of TEDS help desk functionality is provided for two different types of help. In the first case there is ‘User Support’. This support is divided into two sections: Application Support and Business Support. Application Support: This is for technical support and assistance with the use of the global LMS (TEDS) i.e. if you need to get access to the global LMS, if you wonder how you get the application installed on your computer, or if you have forgotten your password. Application support can be contacted by either phone or email.Business Support: This is for business support and assistance in finding the right course information. . Users requiring this kind of support are advised to contact the Administrative Support Site. This is divided globally into regional responsible organizations. By clicking on the relevant section of the map you will be transferred to the relevant contact information:

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There is a third form of help that comprises of an on-line help for users. For example from anywhere in TEDS one can click on the Help button and a pop-up window will appear with help information. The example below shows the information that appears when clicking on Help when the Courses window is open:

Learning phase

The Ericsson implementation of TEDS is a corporate provision of elearning. Whereas both academic and corporate implementations of elearning may be similar in the provision of information and guidance in the information and the guidance phase, in the learning phase there may be extensive divergences. The richness of the NKI provision, for example, of student support services in the learning phase is matched by few corporate providers.

The reason for this is that the three justifications for student support services provided by Tait (2003) in his ‘Reflection on student support in open and distance learning’ are not present to the same extent in corporate elearning. These justifications are:

Students want support The reduction of drop-out The nature of learning.

Tait writes that ‘While students look for the flexibility that ODL offers, especially freedom from time and place that is restricted by conventional part-time study, this is not the same for the great majority as saying that they do not want support. In the OU UK student feedback tells us that some 10 per cent of students do not want interaction with other students’. There is no evidence that students in corporate elearning share this view. Most Ericsson elearning students

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appear to want to enrol in a course and complete it without other support than want is integral to the elearning course as available on their screen.

The reduction of drop-out is a constant theme in distance education courses and a constant source of criticism of this form of education. It was one of the great achievements of the Open University of the United Kingdom and the other open universities founded from the 1970s onwards to provide a rich range of student support services which reduced the incidence of avoidable drop-out to acceptable levels. The reason for this is that the open universities and other distance learning institutions are dealing, in general, with mature adult students studying in their spare time for whom university study in terms of priority came after their work, their family and their social obligations. Much corporate elearning on the other hand is work related, often done in company time or with a perceived impact on company obligations and the problem of drop-out has a different emphasis.

Tait writes on the nature of learning ‘A further mode of explanation for student support, especially for tutoring in group work in study centres or online and in the teaching given through the return of assignments, lies in the impact this makes on the learning process. Essentially this has been termed ‘mediation,’ that is the role that the tutor performs in relating the teaching content to the student as an individual in her or his situation, including the social, economic, geographic and cultural dimensions. In other words, the tutor in coming alongside the student and the teaching material adds a voice that helps the student to relate concepts, values, and lines of enquiry to the particular situation’. Here one confronts the nature of learning in education as opposed to training. Most corporate elearning deals with training and the practical implementation in the workplace of what is learned. The emphasis is on accuracy and transferability of what is learned and assessment and certification focuses on the competency with which technical content is mastered.

For these reasons one can posit differences in the learning phase between university education and company training and justify a less rich provision of student support services during the learning phase in corporate elearning.

This becomes apparent in an examination of the TEDS LMS as implemented by Ericsson as it shows that the system is used predominantly in the other phases of student support rather than the learning phase.

In fact key student learning support services such as online tutorials, assessments (of different types) are contained within the online learning products themselves. In reality they are produced, packaged and administered separately from TEDS. TEDS is utilised as the administration tools to enroll and in some cases to actually launch the elearning course but it does not administer the inbuilt learning support services of the course. This is not to say that TEDS does not contain such features, but rather in the corporate telecommunications world there

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presence as part of an online LMS is not as necessary as for example would be the case when dealing with the academic community.

One example is Virtual Classroom Training (VCT) which is an area rich in student learning support services. TEDS through its partner company Centra makes many learning support services available to the student. In the Ericsson implementation a student can enroll on a VCT course from within TEDS and then use Centra as the deploying tool for the actual training. The kinds of learning support services that are available are assessments (both electronic and manual), tutor assessments where the student can send work to the tutor for correction and evaluation as well as automated self assessments.

Final results phase

In the final results phase Ericsson mainly use TEDS to provide information on what other courses/programs are available. This is part of the curriculums section as mentioned in the section on guidance. Once a student has completed a course from a curriculum in which he is enrolled his profile will be updated. When a student selects his ‘To Do’list he will be given information on what courses remain to be completed and on whether or not he has enrolled on them. This feedback is necessary for the student to make decisions on the next learning steps that he needs to embark on.

TOPCLASS

This purpose of this section is to analyse student support services in elearning as offered by WBT Systems in the form of their TopClass learning management solution. This elearning solution is typically offered in a corporate environment to companies in diverse industries such as financial services, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, telecommunications and operations and manufacturing.

Introduction The TopClass learning management solution and associated training courses are analysed in terms of how they support each of the elearning phases defined in the evaluation matrix produced during output 2 of the project ‘Student Support Services in eLearning’.

The reader should note that this analysis is based on a demonstration site that was made available to Ericsson by TopClass, so that certain functionality was not

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activated, thus limiting certain parts of the analysis process. Two access permissions were defined for use within this demonstration site; one for an instructor and one for a student.

Course access was also included in the trial site, however this access was limited to Web Based Content – no access to CD-ROM based, Virtual Classroom or DVD based content was provided, thus the analysis is limited solely to this course category. Diagram 1.0 below shows a page from the TopClass System,

Diagram 1 – TopClass Key functions

the key functions / navigation menus are located on the left-hand side of the screen. WBT Systems have been providing eLearning content since 1995. Due to the diverse customer base of the company there is no typical student profile for the courses offered. The courses offered are also of a diverse nature – ranging from generic / overview courses to off the shelf courseware to heavily customised / tailored solutions.The different phases of elearning that are identified and discussed in this paper are the:

Information phase

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Guidance Phase Registration Phase, Integration Help Desk Learning Phase Final Results Phase

Information Phase

The principal activities conducted during this pre-registration phase are an exploration and examination of the available student material via an examination of the material issued in support of the eLearning courseware.

The Topclass learning management system supports the following components of the Information phase:

Information relating to the course Information relating to the program to which the course belongs. Vendor contact capability FAQ section

Each of these components is discussed below.

Information relating to the course

Course content is offered to students using the TopClass solution via the following methods: Network access via the Internet or Local Area Network CD-Rom DVD Virtual Classroom. Our access allowed us to view three Web Based Learning courses - each of these courses included a document that listed the: Key components included in the course Details of the technical requirements (hardware and software) required by the

student to run a course Information regarding any related ILT or eLearning courses / programs The courses to which we had access omitted information relating to the

duration of the course.

Due to the method used to present the content the student was not obliged to view the course description document. In other words, the student could navigate through the courses in any order and could thus omit or revisit any components as appropriate – including the course description document.

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No standard format was used for presenting the course description document – it is assumed that this is because there was no specific group for whom the course is intended i.e. the courses are applicable across a number of levels and industries.

Information relating to the program to which the course belongs

In the “Home” section of the TopClass solution there is a section titled “MyClasses” this section details any classes / programs in which the student is enrolled or has enrollments pending. Clicking on one of these classes / programs allows the student to see a list of the courses included in the class / program.

Vendor contact capability

In the test version to which we had access there was no specific method for contacting the vendor. However, it is reasonable to assume that in a live commercial system, users would be provided with the contact details of relevant contacts in the vendor organisation.

One method that might be used in a real situation for Vendor contact the system is the email facility included in the Communications section of the TopClass solution.

FAQ section

The site contains a very comprehensive Help section. Within the Help section there are separate help files for both the student and the instructor.

For the student the help section contains the following topics: Getting Started – how to log in, add and view user pictures etc. Communicating–how to send email, participate in discussion groups etc. Taking a TopClass course - this section contains definitions relating to the

concepts of courses and classes, it also contains instructions relating to opening a course, navigating through it, searching for content etc.

Taking a test - this section contains information relating to tests i.e. how to open tests, answer them and get and check results

Reference - this section consists of what can best be described as a set of frequently asked questions relating to concepts such as sending and receiving messages, creating and editing folders, passwords etc.

For the instructor the help section contains the following topics: Getting Started –how to log in, add and view user pictures Managing Users - here those with instructor privileges are given information

on creating, registering and deleting students and classes

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Communicating - This section contains information on how to use email and manage discussion lists i.e. it explains how to create user privileges for the discussion lists, prevent inappropriate content being displayed etc.

Creating Courses here the instructor can get information on adding course material and importing / exporting it within the system

Creating Tests this section the instructor can find out information on the concept of tests, how to generate question pools and individual questions

Reference as is the case for the student section the reference section consists of a set of frequently asked questions relating to concepts such as sending and receiving messages, creating and editing folders, passwords etc.

In the Evaluation Matrix - information relating to pricing is included as a component of the information phase. The TopClass solution to which we had access did not include any pricing information. It is assumed that this is because the solution would have been presented to the customer subsequent to discussions taking place with the customer regarding pricing.

Guidance Phase / Registration Phase Guidance Phase

In the evaluation matrix we defined this phase as being a pre-course registration phase, typically involving human intervention to give the student guidance / direction on what courses / programs to study and what courses / programs are not applicable.

The TopClass Learning Management System does not provide any functions to meet any of the sub-phases defined in the guidance phase. This situation probably arises because all guidance activities would have been completed prior to the student being given access to the TopClass learning management system – ie the system to which the student was given access would represent the solution to the requirements expressed by the student during the guidance activities.

Another reason for the lack of inclusion of sub components related to this phase is that many of these sub-phases, such as resolving questions in relation to loans and grants and costs are not applicable to commercial organisations like WBT Systems

Registration Phase

As a result of this phase the student is enrolled in the course or program they have selected. The typical elements of this phase involve processing course payments and issuing the student with password access.

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Access to the TopClass Learning Management system is password protected ie to gain access to the system and all of its components the student needs to enter a username and password assigned by TopClass. The system also contains a timer that ensures that the users access rights time out if he or she does not use the system for a period of ten consecutive minutes. Finally the system contains a facility to allow the student to change their password as often as is necessary. In relation to the second sub-phase “guidance on practical matters”, while there is no specific component that deals with this phase there are a numbers of components of the solution where relevant information could be distributed. For example, in the Communications section there are two sections titled “Announcements” and “Discussions” – it is feasible that these sections could be used to provide the student with information relating to practical matters such as directions to the campus, when the real-time / live components of the program have been scheduled for etc.

Integration \ Help Desk \ Final Results Phase

Integration Phase

The evaluation matrix developed in the ‘Student Support Services in elearning’ states that this phase “involves giving the users technical information relating to physically placing the learning material on the customers learning infrastructure”. Within the TopClass LMS certain information relating to Integration issues is included within the course description documents. The type of information provided in these documents relates to issues such as the operating system, web-server, databases and report generating applications used by the course.The Help section (for both the student and the instructor) also contains information relating to Integration issues.

Though we have no concrete experience of real life implementation scenarios involving the WBTSystems group, it is logical to assume that more complex issues, such as the integration of content onto the customers system, are handled via face-to-face meetings between customer representatives and dedicated integration personnel from WBTSystems.

Help Desk Phase

In the earlier consultations with our partners we stated that the activities associated with this phase e.g. resolving problems with passwords, error messages, problems resolving URL's, general technical queries etc. are likely to be performed during all of the phases outlined in the evaluation documents.In the TopClass solution, this phase is facilitated using electronic support. The electronic support mechanisms consist of an email facility that allows the student to contact personnel who will be able to assist with any problems encountered. In the site which we accessed there was no contact details

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specified, however, it is assumed that such details would be provided to the student prior to LMS access being granted. The Test component within the Coursework section allows the student to perform many self-tracking operations. The students can for example see the results and grades awarded for all assignments and tests submitted during the course of the program of study.

Student self-tracking as defined in the earlier documentation, i.e. the ability to check his / her progress and / or check progress against the objectives set for the course / program is supported in the Coursework section of the online site.The mechanisms in this section that support it are the “Tests” and “Submissions” sections. In these sections the student can view the salient details of each test and assignment submitted i.e. he she can view the date the date the work was submitted, the title, the score awarded and the details of the reviewer.

Final Results Phase The earlier documents produced defined this as the phase where the student is given his / her course / program result. There are a number of mechanisms in the TopClass solution that support this function, however we would need to have access to live, customer solutions to see how the various functions are used in reality to support the components of the Final Results Phase. The various components that could potentially be used are as follows: The “Tests” and “Submissions” functions, within the Coursework section, both

allow the student to review his / her results from all tests and coursework submitted.

The “Communications” function allows for email to be sent and delivered between course participants, including leaders. This function also contains a section where relevant course announcements can be made – it is conceivable that any of these functions could be used to facilitate the distribution of course and program results.

Learning Phase

The Learning Phase facilitates online learning. Online learning typically occurs via access to eLearning content, discussion fora, bulletin boards, email queries, telephone support, group work, assessments and tutorials etc. Included are services that support both student-to-student and student-to-instructor interaction.

For the learning phase WBT Systems offer a variety of elearning delivery formats with asynchronous delivery formats such as Internet and CD-Based learning products as well as synchronous learning via the virtual classroom.

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In elearning supplied by WBT Systems the different delivery formats and associated content can be used as a stand-alone training solution ie one that the student takes in isolation. They can also be used as part of a Blended Learning solution – a learning solution that combines a number of different types of learning products. A typical Blended Learning Solution might combine Instructor Led Training, Virtual Classroom based training products and Internet or CD-Based products to produce a Blended solution, designed to achieve the pre-defined goals and objectives of the participants.

This section contains a comprehensive analysis of the student support services associated with the Learning Phase that are included in the TopClass solution from WBTSystems.

Dispatch of printed and other physical learning materials

This is a facility for students to check on the status of the hard copies of their course material that have been dispatched. This feature is not supported by the TopClass learning solution. Instruction on Online Learning techniques

This is a facility that provides user instructions / demonstrations on how to use the eLearning material / services they have access to.

While there was no distinct element in the web-based courses to which we had access, that supported this function, it is possible that it may be supported in other courses not viewed by us.

Note: The TopClass solution did contain a comprehensive Help section, containing information relating to how the student could navigate through and use the course material.

Student Learning Support

There are four categories under the umbrella Student Learning Support - these are bulletin boards, email, online tutorials and face-to-face tutorials. Each of these categories will be dealt with separately in this section.

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Bulletin boards are facilitated in the Communication section, where the student has the facility to engage in the discussion forum titled “Discussions”. (See figure 1.1 below)

E-mail – the facility to send and receive eMail is included in the Communication section. (See figure 1.1 below)

The facility to set-up online or face to face tutorials was not included in the product to which we had access. Note, within the tool there is a link to the Centra application that could be used to facilitate these tutorial sessions in a customer implementation.

Figure 1.1 The Discussions and email functions

Resources / Library

This feature allows online access to additional material to support student learning. In the solution presented to Ericsson by TopClass no resource library was provided. However, there was a link to a section titled Catalog in which information regarding additional course titles was included – it is possible that in a live system, this component of the application could be used to act as a resource library, containing relevant information.

Student - Self Assessment

This is an online facility that allows a student to check learning progress during the course. The results of these tests are not usually recorded towards the final result.

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The email function

The discussions page

This feature was not included in the courses to which we had access, however, it may have been present in other courses in the TopClass portfolio.

Automated Assessment

This feature typically occurs at the end of a course and may produce a result which could count towards certification. It may also occur at the end of a set of different courses of different formats, for example at the end of a blended learning module with a mixture of streaming video, virtual classroom training and/or web or multimedia based learning.

This feature was included in the demo site that we had access to – in the site students were able to see the results of tests and assignments as well as details regarding who marked their assignment and the date it was submitted etc. See Figure 1.2 below.

Figure 1.2 The Tests and Submissions functions

Tutor Assessment

This is the facility to send work to a tutor / teacher for correction and evaluation. The asynchronous elearning courses to which we had access did not include this feature.

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The tests and submissions sections

The TopClass system did however include access to a Virtual Classroom application. In these synchronous systems it is possible to include a self-study sessions where the students are expected to work offline to complete assignments either alone or through discussion with fellow students. These assignments are typically set by the teacher and the students then work offline away from the direct supervision of the teacher. These assignments could take a variety of formats but would typically involve the student gaining hands-on experience in a particular area.

After a certain time period the synchronous classroom session can resume and the students present their assignment to their teacher either via the shared application feature or via email. The assignment is then assessed by the teacher.

Assessment Feedback – electronic

This feature covers electronic methods of giving students feedback on their work. The results may include guidelines on what areas the student needs to repeat. This feature is included in the TopClass system via the Tests and Submissions sections in the coursework area of the application – in both these sections the student can view a list of the results of each of the tests and submissions made by him or her.

It is also possible that such a functionality could be included in certain asynchronous eLearning courses, however it was not included in any of the courses to which we had access.

Assessment Feedback – manual This situation occurs where instructions are provided on how to submit work for analysis and correction. Results may include guidelines on what material needs to be repeated. Manual submission of feedback is normally covered in the section entitled Tutor Assessment.

Student Portfolios

A Student Portfolio consists of a personal home page per student to allow them to introduce themselves to online colleagues, showcase their work, provide alternative sources of course information to colleagues etc. This is a feature of the TopClass system – each student is provided with a facility to include a picture of themselves, as well as personal attributes such as; their name, email address and details of groups to which the user subscribes. These details are searchable i.e. other users can retrieve this information regarding other system users.

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Chapter 4 A Design Analysis Report of Student Support Services available in the WebCT LMS by Gearóid Ó Súilleabháin

The following comments are based on the experience of the DEIS department of the commercial LMS WebCT which they have been using to support student learning and ongoing research and development work into the field of e-learning for the past two years. Since its inception the department has researched and piloted a number of innovations in the general ODL area based around a number of different pedagogical models and supporting technologies, including

Traditional paper-based materials Early Disc-based CAL

Dedicated video-conferencing systems, based around the notion of a virtual classroom.

Web-based learning models based around a number of different commercial learning management systems since the early 1990s

The department and the author are thus well-placed to assess the relative merits of the system features with regard to student support. The version of WebCT the department uses is the Standard Edition (v 3.6.3.8). The author is aware however of the main changes made in the roll out of the new Campus Edition (Focus Licence) of the software and, where relevant, reference is made to these points. Having said as much however few of the main differences between SE and the Focus License (e.g. The addition of a Math ML-based Equation Editor, a WYSIWYG editor and drag-and-drop “webdav” content management feature) impact directly on the system’s capacity to support student services, and are more to do with content design and management than explicit learner support.

It should be noted however that there is also what the vendors refer to as an institution license for Campus Edition, a solution specifically designed with campus-wide implementation in mind and which integrates with existing digital systems such as student information systems (specifically Datatel, Peoplesoft, SCT et al); Campus Portal solutions (such as Campus Pipeline and uPortal). The institution version of license, once integrated with other information systems, thus addresses many of the key issues below relating to the provision of effective student support missing from the SE and Focus Licenses.

One final point to be made with reference to LMS (commercial and ‘home-grown’) is that their effectiveness depends as much on their intelligent and pedagogically judicious use than on their technical features and functionalities. Few of the features provided in the commercial LMS are explicitly for student support services but, for example, discussion fora can, if properly managed and facilitated, become the basis for what Thorpe refers to as a four-point model of

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learner support1 with a highly-interacting student group acting as a forth point of orientation in addition to the usual three way traffic around the triangle of course materials, tutor and learner. An innovative use of relatively low-tech features then can be more effective from the point-of-view of both the learner and the tutor/instructor as the provision of relatively hi-tech system features such as ‘intelligent tutoring’ or knowledge-paced tutorials. This also means that whether we say this or that LMS provides ‘good’ or ‘bad’ student support services is very much predicated by the way a course designer or institute uses the system and how much importance they put on the provision of good learner support.

Information Phase

Information relating to course

Typically this could be provided in the pre-login area for the students or using the course syllabus tool which offers the designer pre-set fields for information such as Course Goals; Instructor Information; Course Requirement etc. This can then be posted as a link on the (post-login) course homepage or elsewhere within the course content.

Information relating to the program to which the course belongs

As above. In addition the myWebCT area (where the user goes immediately after logging in) is a central location that lists all of a user’s ‘courses’. It can also be used to post announcements, scaffolding comments and institutional bookmarks.

Information relating to pricing

This would only apply really for the provision of costed online courses online (which the department does not do) but common sense suggests this would need to be posted in a pre-login area (presumably based on an XML-generated script).

Vendor contact capability

Within the WebCT system users can communicate with the system administrator using any of the communication tools (mail, discussion, chat etc.) if provision is so made. There is also a large and active WebCT community which the vendor supports in sharing experiences, solutions, services etc over the web and elsewhere. A useful area for students is provided at http://www.webct.com/oriented which includes information on how to be a successful distance learning student, an overview of WebCt, online tutorials etc. The means by which a licensed institute can contact the vendor directly with regard to technical issues etc. depends on the nature of their support agreement.

1 Thorpe, 205

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FAQ Section

The discussion for a tool can be used to populate such an area and the link can be posted anywhere within the system (though typically on the course homepage)

Guidance Phase 

Student specific information concerning choices of courses and / or programs.

This is probably most appropriately done through face-to-face contact between student and a qualified mentor but could be provided online through a combination of the usual communication tools or even through online surveying/quizzes.

Software Version

A handy ‘browser tune-up’ tool is provided by the vendor on their site. Further information (such as the need for certain players or internet connection speeds) can be dictated by the institute or course designer and provided along with any other content elements (though ideally, I suppose in a pre-login area).

Financial questions regarding loans and grants

NA

Costs

NA to our provision

Registration Phase Guidance on practical matters

NA to our provision

Registration information user identity and passwords

Using the Institute-wide license of WebCT the system can be integrated with student records to automatically provide each user with a username and password. Otherwise the process can be carried out by the system administrator via a batch registration process or even left to the learners themselves to self-register for courses

Integration Phase

Technical Recommendations

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See above under ‘Software Version’

Help Desk

Technical Support

Typically support by phone and e-mail is provided in addition to the usual LMS-based channels.

Student Self Tracking

The Course Map allows users to view and navigate through the entire course on one page. The tool appears on the top Menu Bar throughout WebCT. Automated feedback can be provided on quizzes and tests and the course designer/instructor can make student management data available to students also in order to help them place themselves in the context of the progress of their class mates. The “My Gardes” tool also allows student to check on their ongoing marks for online assignments and quizzes. The “My Progress” tool allows students to track the pages they have visited and the total number of pages on which they have worked – this is integrated with the Page Tracking tool so designers can monitor student progress. In addition triggers can be set to prevent users from progressing beyond a certain point until certain criteria (e.g. based on the results of a test or a time-based criterion) have been met. A well-planned course will tend to have milestones, dates by which certain activities/assignments have to be completed, set against it at any rate.

Learning Phase

Dispatch of printed and other physical learning materials

Typically in CIT lecturers will begin using WebCT to post materials hitherto handed out in class. These can be posted as single links on the course homepage (and linked to Word Documents, pdf files or what-have-you). Tools such as Search, Compile, and Index can be provided by the course designer in order to aid the student in finding their way through and in managing this material

Instruction on Online Learning techniques

Provided by the vendor in a number of forms, most notably as downloadable pre-made content for the provision of a mini-course for the induction of new WebCT students. Further content can naturally be provided by the course instructor. This last may make use of a Student Tips tool that allows designers to include a "Tip of the Day" for students from a pool of such comment (the tip appears when the student enters the course).

Student Learning Support

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The usual communication features are provided: discussion fora, chat, white boarding, mail etc. Student can also use the Calendar tool to post entries on a shared Calendar to organise other support (such as face-to-face meetings etc.).

Resources / Library

Probably best done by creating a web-page of links (internal and external) but can also be done using the References tool which is then linked to course content or ‘on the fly’ through the Single URL tool which allows the designer to add a single link to an external Web site.

Student - Self Assessment

The designer can add Self Test questions in multiple-choice format to any page of a Content Module or as a stand-alone link on the homepage.

Automated Assessment

The Quiz and Survey tools allow the designer to create and administer online tests which can be marked automatically. The process is much simplified however by a package called “Respondus” which works with LMS and a number of leading LMSs.

Tutor Assessment

The Assignments tool allows the designer to distribute and receive course assignments via the WebCT system. A number of options are available within the tool, including the ability for designers to:

describe the assignment and set its grade value set a date and time for releasing the assignment to students attach files containing images and spreadsheets to an assignment evaluate and comment on submitted assignments

Assessment Feedback – electronic

Automated feedback can be set as part of the automated assessments tool.

Assessment Feedback – manual

A tutor’s own comments can be attached to returned assignments within the Assignments feature. Tutors can of course use the mail feature to contact an individual student at any time.

Student Portfolios

Another feature designers can associate with a course, Student Homepages, allows students to create their personal Web page within a course area. These

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personal Homepages promote communication between class members and peer learning activities. Using the tool students can:

create and customize their Homepage

see a list of other students who have created a Homepage

link to other student Homepages

Final Results Phase

Accreditation

NA to our online provision

Guidance on further study

Students can get an overview of the total range of online learning options available to them trough the standard See courses on this server link provided on the homepage. Many of the tools used above could be used to provide automated or tutor-mediated guidance through these modules or objects.

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Chapter 5 Student support services provision of the eLearning platformLVU at the FernUniversität in Hagen by Georg Ströhlein & Helmut Fritsch

Introduction

The eLearning platform of the FernUniversität in Hagen (FeU) is being developed further towards the vision of a virtual university, which means to find purely internet-based forms for all student-related processes of a real university; the corresponding eLearning portal is called LVU (Lernraum virtuelle Universität; learning-space virtual university). Some processes like enrolment or final examination are not yet included because there are still basically unresolved problems with personal authentication over the internet. Nevertheless, the efforts in developing and testing the platform during the past 8 years now allow the FeU to offer its first study programme that is studied solely via the internet, i.e. the ‘bachelor of information and communication engineering’.

There are four main areas of internet-based processes and services that have been realised up to now: related to provision of information, related to course content, e.g. content delivery, search for additional

material, related to communication, e.g. between student to tutor, student to

student, and student to administration related to exercises and testing, e.g. Services related to provision of information

These services can be sub-divided into two areas: the general or publicly available information services, which typically aren’t included in the learning portal software, and the specific or confidential information services, which typically are part of the learning portal software, because the kind of information given is subject to data privacy or copyright laws, for example.

Web pages or front-ends

The general information services typically are concerned with the provision of information on the organisational aspects of the FernUniversität and its faculties, the focus of research at the different faculties or chairs, the study programmes at the different faculties and even maps which show how to reach the FeU or its study centres for the face-to-face final examination, e.g. The general information services are typically provided on the publicly accessible website of the organisational unit being responsible for the content, via the central newsgroups portal of the FeU or using the ‘search’ procedure provided on the home page. The latter is the most efficient method for information retrieval if the keywords are known…

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The specific information services typically are concerned with delivering confidential information about the study record, about the admission to a restricted study offer etc. As this kind of information is related to very personal study situations, the corresponding services are typically implemented in the LMS and are accessible only for the persons involved, i.e. students, tutors, and administrators. The services can be accessed via a web front-end through which a password-protected and personalised web page is delivered to the querying person.

Newsgroups

There is a discussion whether course related newsgroups should be regarded as a general or specific information service. At present, these newsgroups are publicly accessible and meant for general discussions related to a course or other subjects mentioned in the title of the newsgroup. Some students feel uncomfortable this way because they think of being observed all the time. And we’ve read some postings of tutors who seem to be angry that the subject of a posting wasn’t discussed in a non-public email exchange. But we think that if all participants use the newsgroups only for postings of a more general interest, is does make sense that they are public. As an example for a short but publicly important thread in is given in figure 2-1.

The text is in German and essentially deals with help for a person that does not know how to access the newsgroups at all with a local software but only using a web front-end. This example shows why archived postings are generally a valuable source for creating an FAQ.

Additionally, it reveals the importance of conditioning the students on first using the help function of any software, if this fails then read through an FAQ page, if this fails, too, then post in a newsgroup and only when this still does not lead to a solution for their problem they should contact a tutor. The next example

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Figure 00: Short thread solving a basic problem

shows a long thread in another newsgroup related to a public information service of the library. They have signed a contract which allows students to access some books relevant for their studies on-line. This seems a very good service, as it considerably shortens the period of time between finding a book and being able to read it; via surface-mail request this period may easily reach some weeks.

The example in fig. 2-1 below deals with solving a very sophisticated problem occurring when trying to use the on-line book service. It develops from the poor communication in the first posting which does not mention all the prerequisites necessary for using this service. The company offering this service has implemented two hidden access-restricting mechanisms, an IP-based general access control and additionally a traffic (maximum users at a specific time) restriction.

The IP-based control forces nearly all of the students to set-up a VPN to the VPN gateway of the FeU, because otherwise they are not identified as FeU students as their IP does not belong to the FeU domain. We think that this hurdle is not easily cleared even by students of a technical study programme (on the FeU web pages concerned with the VPN subject it is mentioned that only the VPN client from the manufacturer of the FeU hardware is known to work properly but that there is no chance to use a firewall at the same time…). Moreover, the hidden traffic control frustrates those people having managed to use a correct IP-address.

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Figure 0-2: Long and nested thread solving a sophisticated problem

This example shows how a valuable service can be damaged by a bad user interface. It is surprising that large companies or even public institutions still launch software which is in clear contradiction to at least ISO standards but sometimes even laws. Relevant for the wide subject of electronic student support services are the international norms ISO 9241, ISO/IEC 12119, ISO 13407 , and additionally in Germany the Bildschirmarbeitsplatzverordnung. All these documents deal with usability, software ergonomics and testing procedures to assure ‘smart’ interactions between the humans on the one hand and hard- and software on the other hand.

These aspects become even more important for the services related to course content, as self-developed software is widely used for that purpose at the FeU.

Services related to course content

Currently, there are basically two different LMSs in use at the FeU, i.e. LVU and ET-Online. These two use other self-developed components, such as WebAssign® for testing (introduced in chap. 4) and an off-line navigator (introduced in this chap.) for administrator-controlled download and usage of the course content. The two LMSs will be integrated into the next version of the LVU which will be based on the so-called PLATTFORM 2003.

The decision of using self-made software can only be understood from the tradition of German universities obeying the principle of ‘unity of research and teaching’. In practise, this means every generation of students and post-graduates of the faculty of information sciences develops programs that are used in research and teaching, e.g. this procedure seems useful from an academic and financial point of view, but it bears the danger of turning into an ‘academic flow heater’. At least, concerning large and thus long projects, it might well happen that the usually few people starting a project do not stay at the university until the project is finished. And because the development is relatively slow as compared to the fast changes in the ‘real world’ IT environment, some kind of re-design may become necessary besides the main implementation process.

LVU and Plattform 2003®

The PLATTFORM 2003 is designed to comprise web-based realisations of all relations between students, research and teaching, and the administration. Thus, it has to connect the client computer of a student of to the confidential databases of the administration, e.g. In order not to compromise security and to provide a maximum of flexibility to the typically different developers for different tasks, a five layer model shown in the following figure was developed that allows a relatively free ‘horizontal’ exchange of information on each layer but heavily restricts the ‘vertical’ exchange. The model is briefly shown in the following table.

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‘Owner’ Label Functionality Programs, e.g.

Client Connect users to the presentation layerand handle all related data exchange

Web browsers,Java REs

PresentationEdit data necessary for clients and

applicationsto provide a smart user interface

Web server,Java servlets

Application Main layer, comprises all servicesimplemented in the LVU Java 2

Imparting

FeU data model (OO),input: different data structures of database

layer,output: unified data structure for application

layer

Java 2

Database Storage of all data in traditional manner Oracle,Informix

Table 0-0: The 5-layer model for the LVU

All different kinds of users of the LVU are described by a very strict role model (student, tutor, corrector, author, course administrator, enrolment administrator etc.) that assures data privacy where necessary. Authentication for a specific LVU service is usually achieved by requesting a username and password, but to circumvent some problems experienced due to the strict role model, a certification authority was set-up to create a second authentication method basically independent from the role model. A ‘nice’ example shall illustrate why this is necessary: in the strict model, course authors may upload exercises but they can’t view ‘their’ page (cf. fig. 4-1) until the course administrator has created a ‘dummy’ student that is registered for the course, but now this student appears in the main database.

Many of the problems could be solved if quite a different approach for billing would be used: provide all courseware publicly accessible and charge students only when demanding services that require interaction with staff, e.g. administrators, tutors, correctors. If the point of view is right that self-study is very much inferior to guided study, there should be no fear that these services won’t be demanded. But at the moment, the implemented content-delivery services and proposals for their further development point just in the opposite direction: let a student access a course only during the time he is assigned to it. We think this is worse than learning from a book and will discourage students using the LVU.

Another problem is how to make sure that students download all the courseware that is meant for download and is essential for success in the study programme and that they download it at the proper time. For that purpose, an off-line navigator was developed.

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Off-line navigator

The off-line navigator is a client-server application that keeps track of all material a student has to work through and automates the process of download and local installation of those software that is meant for off-line work. This seams an easy task for a student, but reality proved it was not. This may be due to the very complicated structure of the study material. Usually, a student is assigned to approximately 5 courses and the courseware of all courses is delivered in pieces meant for a workload of two weeks. These pieces usually comprise several course units and exercises which have to be sent in every two weeks. Thus, a tool that keeps track of all tightly scheduled operations is a valuable service for the students. The sketch gives a brief introduction to the off-line navigator.

Remarks on the content-providing services

As can be seen from the following figure, students generally feel a great need for a paper copy of those parts of the courseware that a made of lengthy text passages. And they try very hard to clear any hurdles set out by the providers of the course that shall prevent students from downloading the course, as can be seen from the following discussion in a newsgroup.

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Request list creation services

Off-line Navigator client Off-line Navigator serverand ET-Online databasePhase

1.Create course list

(on-line)

Send personalised course list

2.Choose material

(off-line)

3.Course synchronisation

(on-line)

Request new material

Download (packed) material

4.Work with material

(off-line)

Figure 0-3: Newsgroup excerpt concerned with download and print-out of courseware vs. on-line access

From all newsgroup postings we have read it is obvious that the students want a paper copy of their course material whenever possible. This may be due to the fact that the electronic document provision is relatively new at the FeU and thus students are not used to it, but there seems to be evidence for a general dislike of reading from a screen and a lack of interactive document formats that allow for personalisation of the material. Therefore using HTML documents is often rated as being worse than reading a booklet. The ability to search through an HTML document or to simply follow links seems to be less important than the ability to add remarks, sketches, stand-outs etc. The LVU project group has therefore decided to use the flexibility of the new XML standard to provide versions of the courseware suitable for on-line work as well as for print-out.

Brief evaluation of course-related newsgroups

The thee most frequently visited newsgroups in the faculties corresponding to the authors’ skills were chosen for a first, brief evaluation. Some characteristic numbers of these newsgroups are shown in tab. 3-2 and some graphics is shown in fig. 3-2.

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Kurs no. students

no. news-active

students

ratio no. news-active studts. / no.

students

no. postings

no. tutor postings

no. student postings

ratio no. stud.

postings / no.

students

ratio no. stud. postings / no. news-active

students

Fig. 3-2

20022 73    17     23,3%    145    42    103     1,4     6,1 (median 4) a2110 617    24     3,9%    178    35    143     0,2     6,0 (median 3) b4751 1238    37     3,0%    86    0    86     0,1     2,3 (median 1) c

Table 0-1: Characteristic numbers of the selected newsgroups

Comparing the different newsgroups leads to some important findings. The course corresponding to the newsgroup from which fig. 3-2a is derived belongs to first study programme of the FeU that only is offered via the internet. The choice of such a study programme obviously corresponds to the proportion of assigned students that actively take part in the newsgroup; the proportion is 6 to 8 times higher than for the two newsgroups accompanying paper-based courses (cf. tab. 3-2). The presence or absence of a tutor in the latter two newsgroups does not remarkably influence this proportion (cf.tab.3-2).

But the presence of a tutor does matter for the average number of postings an active student writes; if a tutor is present, the average number of postings an active students writes is 3 to 4 times larger than in the un-moderated newsgroup, regardless of the way the course is taught, i.e. paper- or internet-based. This effect can be attributed to the observed correlation between the level of activity of a tutor and the number of students posting only once. In the newsgroup where no tutor shows up (fig. 3-2c)more than half of the students (54%) post only once; this means they get no answer if they posted a question.

In the two newsgroups where a tutor is active an activity ratio of tutor postings to total postings of approx. 30% (fig. 3-2a) resp. 20% (fig. 3-2b) corresponds to a proportion of approx. 18% resp. 38% of students posting only once. The same trend holds for the proportions of three relatively loosely defined groups of students, the highly active students (H.A.), the medium active students (M.A.) and the less active students (L.A.). The same trend is found for the number of students as well as for the number of their postings; the latter is shown in the right column of fig. 3-2.

As only three newsgroups are evaluated so far, this findings cannot be claimed to be statistically significant, but they clearly indicate a trend which is well worth to be examined in detail in order to get sound recommendations for good practises for this part of tutoring.

Another problem for a tutor is how frequently the newsgroup should be visited by him. Fig. 3-3 shows the normalised, cumulated number of postings as a function of the normalised time. Normalising the number of postings is simply achieved by dividing all accumulated numbers by the overall number of postings,

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normalising the time is achieved by referencing the time stamp of all postings to the difference between the first and the last posting. This yields the following figure, in which the postings of all three newsgroups displayed in fig. 3-2 are compared.

All three newsgroups show a ‘tough’ start, but after that phase the dominating effect is whether the students have to send in assignments or not. From fig. 3-2 it is evident that the number of postings per time is highest shortly before the assignments have to be sent in, in fact, even the proportions of postings observed before the assignments is nearly identical in both courses, the graphs only differ because of the different time-line for the assignments. In the newsgroup corresponding to the course without ‘forced’ assignments the final exam takes the role of a single assignment in the other courses, i.e. it shows a nearly exponential growth towards the end of the assignment period. Indeed, the graphs corresponding to the ‘forced’-assignments newsgroups seem to be built of reduced and linked pictures of the graph corresponding to the no-assignments newsgroup.

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(a)

62

(b)

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Figure 03: Cumulative distribution function of postings

(c)Figure 0-4: Number of postings in the newsgroups sorted by frequency Proportions of grouped postings

Thus, a tutor has to choose a different strategy when assigned to a newsgroup accompanying a course with ‘forced’ assignments or not. If there are ‘forced’ assignment, it is sufficient to implement a script that notifies the tutor if a certain amount of new postings has been published, because the time span between a posting and a possibly required answer is short enough. On the other hand, if there are no ‘forced’ assignments, a tutor has to regularly look into the newsgroup because otherwise questions might remain un-answered and students might get frustrated. We think this effect is the

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main cause for the large number of students posting only once in the un-moderated newsgroup. Thus, assigning tutors to newsgroups is recommended. And students should be encouraged to use newsgroups to put forward questions instead of mailing them directly to the tutor. This is not only because it is more efficient for the tutor but also because the shy and only reading students may become aware of problems they otherwise might not have realised. Approximately a quarter of the postings we have read through is concerned with real or suspected errors in the courseware which are most probably added when creating an on-line course from its paper-based version.

Conversion problems

Because the FeU traditionally sent out booklets, the on-line versions of the courseware often are converted from this material. But adding hyperlinks and re-typing formulae is likely to add more errors than can be removed from the old script. Authors and tutors became aware of this problem and decided to implement a student rewarding scheme. But obviously, there are students who are much ‘smarter’ than expected.

Figure 0-5: Student rewarding services

Services related to exercises and testing

Traditionally, students sent in the exercises to the FeU as paperwork via mail, within the FeU these work was distributed to the correctors’ internal PO boxes, eventually sent out to external correctors, hopefully corrected, sent back to the chair teaching the course, the grades were submitted to a central department responsible for the students’ records and finally hopefully sent back to the students. When the FeU looked for ways to find proper representations of these complex correction procedure in the internet, large simplification for all involved parties should be achieved. Finally, a pilot corrections system called WebAssign was set up.

WebAssign

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WebAssign is a large, integrated web and Java server and database application. Three groups of users are defined, i.e. students, tutors and administrators, and graders. For each user group a specific web front-end was developed which focuses on their needs. The WebAssign system as it is delivered can process three different kinds of corrections: yes/no questions, single and multiple choice questions, and exercises with a numeric answer. It is possible and intended to extend this basic system so that it can process more complicated questions-answer schemes, but then the corresponding modules have to implemented in Java 2. The faculties of information technology implemented modules for automatic correction of programming language code, e.g. Three modes of automatic correction are provided, an instant correction procedure which allows the students to use some trial and error scheme to find the solution, and correction after the due date of the assignment, and a combination of both.

There is some ‘funny’ experience with the instant correction procedure: a problem which had proven to be tough for the students in examinations (usually 90% failed) was prepared for this method. In the exercises, now all students finally solved the problem. But in the final examination, again 90% failed. This indicates that trial and error is not the optimal learning principle for all problems. Thus, the author of the exercises has to judge whether to use it or not. But the system can also handle manual correction, which is obviously not done as paper-pencil work but by adding remarks to the students’ work which is submitted as HTML file via email. Thus, the graders must have some skills in using this meta-language. Very sophisticated methods for distributing the work to be corrected on the graders can be specified.

The authors of the exercises have to obey a relatively strict syntax when creating the corresponding HTML pages, e.g. there are rules for the names of the files, the directories in which they have to be uploaded, the variable names etc. And due to the strict role model, an author may not be able to view ‘his’ page for some specific courses, as can be seen from the following newsgroup posting. We find it an interesting fact that in all documents related to the LVU the role of the students, tutors, administrators, and authors is discussed in detail, whereas the correctors seem to have much less focus. But if it is true that people have difficulties reading longer text passages from a PC monitor, what about the difficulties a corrector experiences? And how can a corrector get a feeling for the grading of different errors if the whole spectrum of errors is unkonown to him because only a fraction of exercises is sent to him? And should all exercises of a certain student be corrected by the same corrector or not?

Figure 4-1: Consequences of a (too) strict role model in WebAssign

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The next chapter focuses on the aim of student support services, i.e. to minimise the drop-outs.

Contrasting Distance education drop out experienceby Helmut Fritsch

There have been long discussions about the use of media in education. Many reports during the sixties of the last century dealt with the question of aptitude-treatment- interaction. Until the eighties many projects proposed the instalment of new media for education.

It seems that the times of academic discussions in the field of instructional technology had reached their end when it became possible to realize all dreams having defined learning goals operationally, having developed assessment procedures, being able to prove that learning had happened.

For distance educators it was clear that learning takes place in the central nervous system of the learner and not within the medium, neither book nor TV. And distance educators knew that help in optimizing, individualizing the path to learning needs personal communication.

Yet distance education until this period still seemed to be something out of norm, something secondary, specialized for people with disabilities either in time or place, the distance educators worked in a sort of ivory tower: only when the peer group of academics came into closer contact with these people they found that their didactic credo made sense also for the "normal" education. Then they all came, universities trying to find their way for better instructional design, for using media in universities.

Lots of money has been put into such projects in many universities with the effect that many a project died exactly the moment when it should have been transformed into the normal system. Nowadays the project workforce, at least in Germany, turned into a second labour market attached like a planet to university structures.

The ease with which distance education institutions could cope with new media resulted from the consciousness that such new efforts did not imply a structural necessity to change the theory. Media, for a long time, belonged to the structural setup of distance education and had been under consideration for a long time. It seems that many universities were shocked with the necessity to re-think media and their roles in university teaching and had to think about the basics of didactical use of media in university teaching. Distance education institutions did not have this transition problem because of the definition of distance education:

Distance Education is an organizational form of education where

instructional provisions,

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tutorial interactions,

monitoring of practice as well as

individual control of learning

may take place via media making the simultaneous personal presence avoidable.

Sir John Daniel of the British Open University referred to "Mega-Universities" - , the institutions enrolling regularly more than 100.000 students a year, such institutions growing in the far East more than in Europe. Without the continuing Education branch Europe hardly could present such numbers. Such "mega-universities" depend on the use of media. And there is not a hint to an inferiority complex of distance education compared with traditional education: on the contrary instructional "design",

structured instances for communication

regular assessment of individual progress

continuous evaluation,

all belong to the standard procedures and constitute the success of distance education institutions, also for mega-universities.

Success story for distance education

If it wasn't for the drop-out rates: Up to 85% drop outs from the initial enrolment figures! Whenever institutions have to report this, they will indicate similar figures in the case of competing distance education institutions. It seems to be a worldwide phenomenon.

This phenomenon is based in the heterogenity of the adressees. "Students" in DE often are studying parallel to a job, have social obligations and a family and are attracted by distance education because of the possibility to participate in a continuing education program otherwise not possible. The question is now: what can we do, that drop-out does not question the whole system of distance education?

Sometimes definitions help: Not in the way the Open University introduced a so called "preliminary enrolment" and this way got rid of the dramatic drop-out of the first year. No, on the contrary, it is necessary to take a closer look at the individual biographies of the students enrolled. In 1988 we studied this at FernUniversität using the learning biographies of a compulsory regular course (mathematics for busines adminitration). The figures read like this:

Non-starters : of the 1900 enrolled students 650 stopped reacting after they received the material.Draw-backs: of the 1240 "starters" (at least one assignment turned in) 420

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stopped after thatDrop-outs: of the 833 "active students" (more assignments) 314 dropped out or failedNo-shows: of the 519 "admitted students" (prerequisites fulfilled to sit the exam) 248 did’nt show upFailures : of the 269 students sitting the exam 90 failed and 179 passed

We tried to find the motif to stop and found for the first group, the "non-starters", that the 34% of the original enrolments just were interested in obtaining the material for individual autonomous reference or for the bookshelves because many thought that it represents the "state of the art" presented in a didactically comfortable way. Most of these have been quite happy with it. Of the second group (22%) we learned that many of them wanted to "keep up" with the development in their profession, tried to really work but found out that it is more work than they wanted to invest: Most of these took the decision not to continue without bad feelings.

Then we found 16.5% of drop-outs: these people sent in more than two assignments, wanted feedback, got feedback and stopped working with the material, either frustrated or not- they indicated that they meant to do the course and found that their time or effort was not enough. A fairly large group of students fulfilled all prerequisites to sit the exam but did not show up: These no-shows terminated their study mostly because they felt no need to sit an exam, travel there etc., because many of them already took the same exam many years ago or have the degree to which the course curriculum belongs. It is in this group where we also have to look for students with a manifest test anxiety- more research is still needed. Anyhow, after the exam we find a pass-fail ratio of 2:1.Roughly speaking 10% of the original cohort passed and 5% failed the final exam.

Solving the problem

Success-rates of 15% of the originally enrolled cohort are not very seldom in the difficult courses of FernUniversität: the course curriculum is not different from many normal university course curricula. But when we see in another course of the FernUniversität a success rate of 85% over several years we must look for explanations. The course now under consideration is a course in special education for teachers working already in schools for the handicapped but not yet having had a special training for their job. The curriculum is specialized but roughly the same in normal universities for on-campus-students being trained in special education.

The description of this enrolled group gives the hints for all differences in comparing them with the normal students. This course is meant for training on the job. The course design does not differ much from all the other courses but the cohort is homogenuous: all are school teachers (they know how to learn) , all

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are in-service, regionally put together into regional study groups (many of them know each other: either they are from the same school or neighbouring schools), so there is a certain infrastructure among them, and, I think the most important feature is that their work is not aside from their study, what they learn today can be practised tomorrow, evaluated by practice and colleagues, and what they do is officially recognized by the authorities in that they receive a reduction of workload to a certain amount. All these characteristics seem to have favoured the results. So if distance education or in future the so called e-learning meets the following structures in recruiting students, drop-out seems to be a phenomenon of history:

students should be used to systematic learning

in a course there should be a homogenous student body

there should be at least the offer of regionally organised seminars

there must be regular assessment

the curriculum should be job related as close as possible

acceptance by the employer is favourable

If these characteristics are given, you can expect a high ratio of success.

References

FernUniversität Hagen, website with homepage http://www.fernuni-hagen.de/ (2003), especially for the LVU, PLATTFORM 2003 and WebAssign (in German)http://poplar.fernuni-hagen.de/Infos/architektur.pdf , http://poplar.fernuni-hagen.de/Infos/funktionen.pdf, http://poplar.fernuni-hagen.de/Infos/projektserver.pdf , http://poplar.fernuni-hagen.de/Infos/rahmenrichtlinien.pdfhttp://www.et-online.fernuni-hagen.de/programme/download/OfflineNavigator/navigator_m.htmlhttp://niobe.fernuni-hagen.de/WebAssign/index.html

Chap. 5: http://www.fernuni-hagen.de/ZIFF/contrast.htm

Appendix: the ‘grid’ filled with answers from Helmut Fritsch

Items relevant for phase of study

sub-items Comments on Items Standard of service at FeU

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Information Phase A pre-registration phase. The principal activity conducted during this phase is exploration and examination of the available student material. Information is typically gained through an examination of material issued in support of the course. Series of material

 

Information relating to course.

The presence of information for each course relating to course content, duration, target audience etc. Course descriptions

Information relating to the program to which the course belongs

The presence of information relating to the larger program of which the course is a part. Curricula available

Information relating to pricing

Information relating to the cost of the course ( may include payment options). Hard to calculate

Vendor contact capability

A facility for the student to contact the vendor / course administrator for further course or program information possible

FAQ Section

A list of commonly asked questions, together with solutions to those questions. n.a.

Guidance Phase A pre-course registration phase. This phase typically involves human intervention, to give the student guidance / direction on what courses / programs to study and what courses / programs are not applicable. possible

       Student specific information concerning choices of courses and / or programs.

Guidance to the student, typically by an institutional representative, on what course(s) most accurately meet his / her specific requirements. possible

Optional Extras

These include any services that the student may purchase that are additional to the basic course / program material. free

Software Version

The student is given guidance on any software or hardware requirements that must be met to run the course material. This will typically only be applicable in the case of commercial implementations. Version support

Financial questions regarding loans and grants

Questions that allow the student to determine if he or she is eligible for financial assistance such as government grants, scholarships etc. none

Costs

The student is offered a price for the course / program selected for him / her. no

Registration Phase The student is enrolled in the course / program. The typical elements of this

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phase involve processing course payments and issuing the student with a course / program access etc.

 

Guidance on practical matters

This might include Guidance on how to complete the registration form, campus facilities, directions to campus, when 'live' / real-time components have been scheduled for. newsgroups

Registration information user identity and passwords

A facility to issue the student with a user identity and or password to allow him / her to enter their courses programs and if applicable services. official

Integration Phase This phase involves giving the students technical information relating to the possibility of physically placing the learning material on the customers learning infrastructure. Typically, this phase would be performed in the case of a commercial organisation providing online learning.

Technical Recommendations

Might include recommendations on the Client Browser Required, database requirements, windows platform etc. Often outdatedInformation on compatibility with standards such as SCORM may also be included. n.a.

Help Desk The activities associated with this phase are likely to be performed during all phases. The activities typically relate to resolving problems with passwords, error messages, problems resolving URL's, general technical queries etc.

Technical Support

The facility to receive live support in the event of students being unable to satisfactorily access the content and services for which they have paid. e-mail

 

Student Self Tracking

The facility for user to map his / her progress and / or check progress against the objectives set for the course / program. possible

Learning Phase This phase facilitates online learning. Online learning typically occurs via access to eLearning content, discussion fora, bulletin boards, email queries, telephone support, group work etc. These support both student to student and student to instructor interaction.

Dispatch of printed and other physical learning materials

A facility for students to check on the status of the hard copies of their course material given

 

Instruction on Online User instructions / demonstrations on how to use the eLearning material / missing

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Learning techniques services they have access to.

Student Learning Support Bulletin Boards

Online discussion rooms for all users to post comments, questions, learning support documents etc. given

emailThe facility to contact tutors and / or peers. given

online tutorialsOnline tutorials to support students in meeting their learning objectives. newsgroup

face to face tutorials

The facility to arrange online, face to face tutorials that support the students in meeting their learning objectives. offered

Resources / Library Online access to additional material to support student learning. supported

Student - Self Assessment

The online facility to check learning progress during the course. The results of these tests are not usually recorded towards the final result. regularly

Automated Assessment

Typically occurs at the end of a course, produces a result which may count towards certification. given

Tutor AssessmentThe facility to send work to a tutor / teacher for correction and evaluation. given

Assessment Feedback - electronic

Electronic method of giving students feedback on their work. The results may include guidelines on what areas the student needs to repeat. given

Assessment Feedback - manual

Instructions on how to submit work for analysis and correction. Results may include guidelines on what material needs to be repeated. Still possible

Student Portfolios

A personal home-page per student to allow them to introduce themselves to online colleagues, showcase their work. Provide alternative sources of course information to colleagues etc. possible

Final Results Phase Post study phase where the student is given his / her course / program result.

 

Accreditation

Here the student is issued his / her results. These results will have an influence on what further courses / programs are to be taken. difficult

Guidance on further study

The facility to get additional information on what other courses / programs are available difficult

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Chapter 6 The Blackboard Platform for the creation and management of online courses by Laura Palmerio

Blackboard is an online course management system used by over 2,600 universities and colleges in 140 countries.

The Blackboard suite is composed of three subsystems: the Blackboard Learning System, Blackboard Community Portal System and Blackboard Transaction System. The three subsystems are integrated via Building Blocks technology and enable the designing and provision of a flexible, integrated and customisable e-learning environment.

Building Blocks technology allows integrating the three subsystems and their relative functions both with each other and with external applications and tools in order to meet the specific educational and administrative needs of client institutions.

This inter-operability is possible thanks to the use of so-called Integration Agents, which enable data exchange between systems and various commercially available or Blackboard user created software.

The Building Blocks Manager uses specific components (APIs – Application Programming Interfaces; SDK – Software Developer Kit etc.) to develop an Integration Agent in order to connect the Blackboard Suite to an external system (e.g. the user’s computer), an application, a hardware component or to educational material. Next, the Blackboard Administrator installs the Integration Agent in the Blackboard Suite and configures it so that it can exchange data with an external system. The combination of an Integration Agent with an external system is called a Building Block; this makes Blackboard extremely flexible since the number, type and combination of Building Blocks within each Blackboard Suite are potentially infinite and adaptable to the specific needs of each institution or individual user.

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BLACKBOARD

Blackboard Learning System

Blackboard Community Portal SystemBlackboar

d Transactionnn System

The Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) available with the Blackboard Learning System enable integration between administrative systems, teaching functions, educational content areas, teaching tool areas, notice board, course schedule and student grade book. There are also APIs allowing the support of different languages within the same course.

In the Blackboard Community Portal System, instead, the APIs enable the integration of the organisational control panel with the organisational contents areas, organisational tool areas, notices and course schedule.

Moreover, both systems have APIs enabling user authentication and thus the integration of the Blackboard Suite with the student information system and the relative central authentication system of the client institution.

By consulting the catalogue available at the Blackboard website (www.blackboard.com), the user can examine and download Integration Agents, many of which are available free of charge. In this regard, via its Blackboard Enabled Compatibility Program, Blackboard also gives the opportunity to test Building Block compatibility with the Blackboard platform and, if successful,

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INTEGRATION AGENT

BUILDING BLOCKS MANAGER

BUILDING BLOCK

provides the Building Block concerned with a special mark: the Blackboard Enabled logo. This certification guarantees that the Building Block in question conforms to quality standards and that the relative explanatory documentation is clear and complete. It also allows for reliable testing of applications created by users themselves who would otherwise not have this opportunity.

The compatibility tests are organised in different ways according to the subsystem in which the Building Block is to be used:

- if the Building Block must be used in the Blackboard Transaction System, then the application is validated by the Blackboard Technical Services;

- if the Building Block must be used in the Blackboard Learning System or Blackboard Portal System, then the test is carried out by an independent testing firm, Product Quality Partners Inc. (http://www.qpqa.com), according to well-defined criteria and via tests illustrated and documented in the Compatibility Program's Developer Guide, which may be downloaded from the website: http://www.qpqa.com/blackboard/.

The Blackboard Learning System

The Blackboard Learning System is a platform created with third generation technology in order to handle courses and educational contents. The stated aims of its creators include:

- improving and measuring student performance;- enhancing teacher productivity;- strengthening classroom teaching and learning by using the web;- enabling distance learning;- bringing together face-to-face and online teaching-learning benefits via

hybrid courses;- providing a platform enabling the integration of course management with

organisational, administrative, security and authentication aspects.

The creators of the Blackboard Learning System say that the platform is designed to meet clients’ needs for carrying out successful e-education initiatives; in particular, they refer to five pillars:

1. Simplicity and ease of use, to encourage its use not just by expert users but also by beginners.

2. An open architecture, to provide flexibility at both educational and administrative level.

3. Enterprise technology.4. Value maximisation and the optimisation of institutional investments.5. Innovation, to encourage the adoption of new technologies for achieving

educational and strategic objectives.

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The teaching-learning environment of the Blackboard Learning System

The teaching-learning environment of the Blackboard Learning System acts both as an e-education platform and as a tool for supplementing traditional face-to-face learning. The utilities making up this environment are:

Content Management and Content Sharing Assessment Management Gradebook Collaboration and Communication Assignment and Portfolio Management

Content Management and Content Sharing

This utility greatly helps in establishing the teaching-learning process because it gives teachers considerable flexibility in creating educational contents, by linking tasks and assignments, as well as by adding tests, surveys, self-administered questionnaires etc. according to each student’s needs and learning process (a curriculum-driven process).

It is thus possible to create learning units, arrange them in sequenced files and to send notices, learning materials, tasks and links to the course website. The teacher can also decide when to present certain materials (learning units, contents, tasks) to each student according to his/her learning process and results.

At the technological level, the teacher is facilitated both by the number of electronic formats available (Microsoft Office, PDF and HTML files, digital images, digital audio files, digital video files, and multimedia files, such as Flash) and by the wide range of educational packages already available for dozens of academic courses (Course Cartridges).

Assessment Manager

The Assessment Manager allows teachers to use different types of tests (multiple-choice, multiple answer, true/false, matching, ordering, cloze as well as open answer tests or short essays, even with the possibility of images, URLs and links to other files) in order to assess the achievement of learning objectives and to collect and store the student’s answers. Teachers can also provide personalised feedback to students as regards correct answers and any mistakes made.

Evaluation is carried out via a step-by-step process which is rather intuitive and easy to understand.

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The Assessment Manager also allows storing groups of questions, importing and extracting series of items and randomising questions during an examination. The teacher can also decide when a certain student can take a certain test. The Assessment Manager can also be used to generate statistics and for item analysis of the students’ answers to objective tests.

The Gradebook and Assignment Manager

Within the Blackboard Learning System, the Assignment Manager is the system which allows teachers to create, evaluate and handle tasks, as well as to record each student’s performance in the Gradebook. The data entered in the Gradebook can also be processed to produce statistics and percentages according to criteria established by the teachers themselves.

Collaboration and Communication

The Blackboard Learning System contains a multifunctional environment for synchronic and asynchronic communication, enabling teachers to set up a virtual classroom for interactions between all course participants, small groups or even for one-to-one communication. These virtual classrooms can use chat sessions, conferences, archives, group explorations of websites and so on.

The teacher also has sophisticated tools for conducting online discussions. In these discussions, it is possible to view and to edit the educational materials, such as a Power Point presentation. The discussions are all recorded and stored for future use.

These instruments can also be used to run classroom tours in order to introduce new students to the course environment.

System Administration

Blackboard also has a system administration environment which enables the handling of student information and authentication protocols as well as system configuration and organisation, course scheduling etc.

The Blackboard Community Portal System

The creators of Blackboard say that they were inspired by four fundamental principles when they designed the Blackboard Community Portal System, both for real and virtual communities.

1. Common areas: spaces for people to meet and exchange views.2. Content management: a centralised management of documentation and

the sharing of ideas in order to facilitate knowledge dissemination and group work.

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3. Customisation: providing individualised information according to each user’s specific experience in order to strengthen his/her role within the organisation.

4. Collaboration and exchange: stressing communication between community members by providing tools to facilitate knowledge transfer.

Some universities, such as the University of South Florida, have used the Blackboard platform to create a portal for linking students, faculties and staff within courses and communities, and to provide users with important web services for their academic life. For example, students can access their account, via a password, in order to check their administrative situation; lecturers can inspect the minutes of faculty meetings and so on.

The Blackboard Community Portal System also provides administrative staff with a set of tools designed for a wide range of academic functions. The package for universities, for example, includes:

• Alumni Affairs• Arts and Culture• Bursar• Campus Bookstore• Career Center• Dining Services• Faculty Senate• Honor Council• Human Resources• IT Help Desk• IT Training Opportunties• Library• Parking• Registrar• Residence Life• School Newspaper• Student Association• Student Health• Volunteer Opportunities• Women’s Center

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An example of using the Blackboard platform

The Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) is a private university based in Worcester (MA) and has been using Blackboard since 1999.

Within the portal created through Blackboard, lecturers can load a vast array of learning materials to make sure each student can find the kind of materials that best suit his/her learning style. Pennie Turgeon, Director of the Instructional Media Center and Advanced Distance Learning Network of the WPI, says that this feature helps students to become strategic learners by stressing the relations between educational contents and curriculum objectives. The use of such varied multimedia materials also facilitates the learning of abstract concepts, which are particularly prominent in mathematics and science courses.

The WPI considers the context, i.e. the teaching-learning environment, fundamental and has employed the Blackboard platform to create an environment available to students 24 hours a day and seven days a week. The chance to take part in online discussions encourages all students, even the shyest ones, to have their say, and allows distance learners – those who cannot be physically present on campus – to cooperate. Lecturers can give each student greater attention through e-mail messages and virtual student receiving times and, in the students’ view, this chance to interact with teachers and with other students allows them to devote more time to classroom learning.

As regards learning appraisal, the Blackboard tools enable teachers to assess student performance and to detect any problem areas and concepts that students find difficult to understand. As a result, teachers can adjust the course features so that all students can achieve the established objectives.

The sense of belonging to a community is enhanced by the chance for distance learners to take active part in campus life thanks to chat rooms and other online discussion tools enabling these students to interact not only amongst themselves but also with their peers residing on campus.

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