The TU Graz E-book Strategy: from Content Management to Online Mutliple Device Usage

Draft version, originally published in: Ebner M., Nagler W., Wiesenhofer K., Scerbakov N., The TU Graz E-‐book Strategy: from Content Management to Online Mutliple Device Usage, Непрерывное образование в общеевропейском образовательном пространстве (workshop proceedings), Dr. Ihar Sazonau int. al. (Ed.). 5th International Workshop on Lifelong Learning within European Framework, Mogilev 2014, 154-‐161. Belarusian-‐Russian

University (Mogilev, Belarus). ISBN 978-‐985-‐492-‐131-‐0

THE TU GRAZ E-BOOK STRATEGY FROM CONTENT MANAGEMENT TO ONLINE MULTIPLE DEVICE USAGE

EBNER Martin, NAGLER Walther, WIESENHOFER Karl

Department of Social Learning, Graz University of Technology

SCERBAKOV Nikolai Institute of Information Systems and Computer Media, Graz University of

Technology

This paper presents an authoring tool for creating content for teaching and learning purposes at universities in the meaning of e-learning2.0, named the ABC-Manager. The paper focuses on the advantages of the tool as well as its didactical background. The current use of the ABC-Manager as an integrated part of the e-learning strategy of Graz University of Technology especially in the face of its online version, the e-book platform of the learning management system in use called TU Graz TeachCenter.

In Times of Web2.0 In times of Web 2.0 (O’Reilly 2006) efforts are made to make it as simple as

possible to support user YOU (Grossmann, 2006) to create and manage online content. Not only personal information should be provided and treated but also the one for educational intentions (Ebner, 2007). The range between private and educational information becomes blurred evidently exercised by using the possibilities of mashups (Kulathuramaiyer & Maurer, 2007) where the content is put together from different sources by linking or embedding them (Tuchinda et al, 2008) (Zang et al, 2008). Nevertheless, creating and managing content as well as collaborating with it should be as simple as the ABC, instinctually, and without any special system-syntax needed regardless whether the content shall be part of a personal learning environment (PLE) (Schaffert & Hilzensauer, 2008) (Taraghi, 2009a) (Taraghi, 2009b), an online office system, a social website, or a “classic” Content Management System (CMS). Just for a CMS the system should have its priority on creating and working with but not on developing or programming content.

In the paper we describe a strategy for editing, managing, and working with multimedia content realised as e-books within a university given structure. The aim is to enable various possibilities to arrange already existing content as well as new content to an e-book and have it released in different output formats including those for e-readers or smart tablets such as the iPad. For this purposes two platforms are in use: The TU Graz TeachCenter (TUGTC), which is the learning management system (LMS) of TU Graz and the special authoring software called ABC-Manager developed by the Department for Social Learning (DSL) at TU Graz. To understand



the strategy first a short look must be taken at the entire e-learning concept of TU Graz and the way it is embedded within university-wide policy.

The TU Graz Teaching and Learning Service System The DSL is a service centre for all non profit internal and external questions

regarding e-learning at the TU Graz since 2006 whereas the focus is on the possibilities of networked based, communication guided teaching and learning processes to stay sustained integrated into TU Graz. Technology enhanced learning (TEL) – simply called e-learning – is one chance to support the individuality of the learners study as well as to enable, coach, and attend a customized offer of modern facilities for teachers to teach. This concept excellently fits into the principles of TU Graz to encourage its students and teachers with best didactical and up-to-date technological assistance for their study. To understand today’s TU Graz Teaching and Learning System displayed in Fig 1, it must be said that this term comprise a couple of different platform and services. The basis of the whole system is the so called TUGRAZonline portal. The TUGRAZonline portal is for any administration purposes providing institutional, systemic, and personal data as well as individual study or work management (Haselbacher, 2002). It holds the central database of TU Graz and has been developed at the Information and Technology Services Center (ITS) of TU Graz which the DSL is a part of. It basis on the internationally awarded university management software of the ITS, the CAMPUSonline – EUNIS-Elite-Award and Award of the Austrian University Board – which has been launched in 1998 and is now used at most universities and institutions of education in Austria and some in Germany.

Fig. 1: System of portals and services in use at TU Graz for teaching and

learning support. Another platform focuses on the content and communication related teacher’s

demands as well as general university education, the TU Graz TeachCenter. The TUGTC bases on the so called WBT-Master platform that has been developed by the team of Prof. Nikolai Scerbakov at the Institute for Information Systems and Computer Media of TU Graz (IICM) since the later 1990s (Maurer & Scerbakov,



1996). In 2006 it became the official e-learning platform of the TU Graz. It is directly connected to the TUGRAZonline system to get user’s and lecture’s data from the database when needed. It is a highly flexibly and fast running system with an ultimate possibility to individualization. The TUGTC offers an e-book environment this paper is about too. For DSL does a lot of research work in the field of e-learning regarding to technological aspects and didactical scenarios a lot of in-house developments have been integrated to the TU Graz Teaching and Learning Service System. One of these developments is the CMS called ABC-Manager that is linked to the e-book environment of the TUGTC.

The TU Graz TeachCenter – Not Just Another E-‐Learning Platform As mentioned before, the system of TUGTC goes back to the WBT-Master that

has been programmed (Helic et al, 2004), tested, and improved by the team of Prof. Nikolai Scerbakov under the leadership of Prof. Hermann Maurer, head of IICM at that time. It is a platform of single courses which have their corresponding lectures registered within TUGRAZonline. TUGTC courses can be restricted, opened, or semi-opened. Access can be given to anybody not necessarily being member of TU Graz. There is a mobile version of TUGTC courses for smart phones and smart tablets. By winter 2012 a third of all lectures at TU Graz are serviced courses on TUGTC´(more than 1000), up to 400 people are using the system at the same time, and more than 80GB data are transferred daily.

The advantages of the TUGTC platform unlike to comparable (non-)commercial systems or open source solutions are not only its autonomy to licenses, versions, and update options but first of all its philosophy of modular structure. In practice this means that each course can be individualized and therefore is highly adaptable to the requests of the single teacher by adding teaching tools and applications or removing them from the basic course equipment offered. There are far more than 200 items to be selected for different teaching purposes. The term module in our context must be understood in a technical and structural way more than in a didactical one; therefore a module has definitely not the meaning of a learning unit or learning object. Any item, any entity is meant to be a module and generally can be linked to each other. By setting a link to a module, different modules are summed up to so called structured collections (s-collection). They can be seen as single modules also. Therefore a module is any peace of enclosed content, tool, or structural option, and individual “item” (media-file, a contribution to a forum, the forum itself, the entire course, one user …). This system architecture of linked modules ensures a very high solid performance.

E-‐Books at TU Graz TeachCenter One of the modular features of TUGTC is its so called e-book environment. For

to avoid misunderstandings, there are a couple of different meanings according to the



term “e-book” that need to be explained briefly. Currently the most popular interpretation is the one that equals e-books as content for e-readers. Since Amazon released its e-reader Kindle the subject e-books boomed at least in the USA, whereas e-readers slowly capture the market of German speaking countries. The format of such e-books differs very strongly in regard to the e-reader but is by now dominated by the formats EPUB and Amazon´s Mobipocket. The second interpretation of e-books is mainly used in the context of digital libraries. It is the oldest and traditional meaning of e-books in terms of online available content of written books; usually those e-books are offered as format PDF but are more and more supplemented by modern formats such as EPUB. The third meaning of e-books is the one of our interest in the following and refers to Computer Based Training (CBT) courses of the 90s. CBT presented digital content within a didactical setting and environment a student can pass through and interact with. The format today is mainly HTML and therefore can easily be received more or less independently from devices; only a browser is needed in principle. Therefore an e-book in our context can be primarily seen as a number of HTML elements combined into reusable, navigable collections that are displayed within a highly interactive environment. TUGTC e-books can be released in various formats: online displayed with in the e-book environment (internal s-collections), as SCORM packages, as a downloadable offline version for CD usage, as a PDF including personal notes, as EPUB and Mobipocket, as well as mobile version. According to the different output formats not all multimedia content can be converted to all formats so far.

The generation of such an e-book can be realised using two different ways. Fig. 2 schematizes the possibilities of e-book generation serviced by DSL. In case it is done via the TUGTC the author uploads any content-files to TUGTC. The files are compiled together to an e-book with a table of content. On base of this e-book the listed output variants can be released or the e-book is embedded in a TUGTC course. The second way of generating e-books is by using the ABC e-book system of the DSL. The generation of the content and the compilation of it to a so called ABC e-book take place independent from the TUGTC using the authoring tool ABC-Manager. The ABC e-book then can be uploaded to the TUGTC or released as various outputs.

The ABC E-‐Book System The following chapter describes the basic ideas of the ABC e-books system. It

must be said that today’s ABC e-book system goes back to five years of experiences (2001 to 2006) with a forerunner model developed and extensively used at the TU Graz Institute of Electrical Power System (IFEA). Actually the labelling of ABC has its origin during those times but the system developed at IFEA differs from that at the DSL a lot. In the following the forerunner model will be mentioned as IFEA-ABC when needed for better understanding.



Fig. 2: E-books generation via two different ways. Using the ABC-Manager for

generation and possibility of further upload to TUGTC or using TUGTC itself.

The ABC-‐System in General How can you structure and create content for flexible usage? The primary idea was to split teaching content into small peaces of micro-

content which can be individually and exchangeable arranged together later on demand. This assembled micro-content can be used for teaching online and offline as well as for learning purposes (paper printed version) or as a presentation in classroom. The demand to create a structural design that closes the gap between presentation and script was to be challenged. The realisation of these requirements is a pool of standardised stand-alone micro-content units called ABC screens on base of HTML. Each screen can be attributed to one of different classifications - the number of different classifications can be adapted if required. The screens get selected to a collection simply called “course”, the later e-book. Within the later online e-book the user decides which part of the course should be displayed by choosing one or more classifications. All those screens assigned to the chosen classification(s) will be displayed, the others are set hidden. This makes it possible to have them all, presentation screens as well as script screens within one course. The teacher only may display the presentation screens during the lecture; the learner may print out the whole e-book by selecting all classifications.

We call this system the ABC system which goes back to the IFEA-ABC system. The terming ABC relates to the way the content is structured according to its importance for the learner whereas A describes the main content, B helps to understand A better, and C is defined as additional content which the learner does not need to reflect for examinations but is for deeper comprehension. A- and B-contents are realised together within standardised ABC screens; C-content can only be reached



over linking from an ABC screen and may be anything from multimedia-files to internet-links or documents contributed by students.

Fig. 3: The parts of one IFEA-ABC screen; left without explanation, right with explanation

Fig. 3 shows one IFEA-ABC screen; once plain (left) and once with explanation

of its parts (right). Besides the A, B, C-content the standardized design of an ABC screen provides a couple of useful possibilities to optimize the structuring and presenting of the content. Each screen has fixed dimensions for to avoid scrolling within the content displayed and to have two screens on one site of a later PDF output. Furthermore, they fit onto smart tablet screens well. Wildcards lead to lists of legends, citations, and of questions used for lecture exam as well as to a list of links, the corresponding C-content of a screen. A whole ABC e-book consists of ABC screens that are placed within three layers of directories. The root layer has all the chapters of the e-book. Each chapter consists of several modules – not to be mistaken for the module-character of the TUGTC structure –, a module consists of units. The units finally hold the individual ABC screens. The number of screens in one unit shall suffice for one lecture hour and therefore depends on the content itself and on the lecturing “speed” of the teacher.

To subsume the didactical advantages of the ABC-system we can state the following:

• the uniform structure • the arrangement in three levels that fits in individual teaching habits • the splitting and classification of content according to its importance, • the classifying of content according to later purpose All in all, the ABC-system allows a wide ranged usage as for the lesson in

classroom, for online variant, for offline version, and for the hardcopy paper script (Fickert et al, 2004) (Nagler, Ebner & Sherbakov, 2007).

Summary and Future The TU Graz systems described in this paper have a variety of different aspects

and focuses. On the one hand there is the development of an authoring tool for the



generation of well-structured content following didactical principles, the ABC-Manager. On the other there is the adequate environment to use this content in a Web 2.0 meant way to enlarge the possibilities for teaching and learning, the TUGTC e-book environment. The overall strategy focusing on embedding, connecting, and complementing each other systems in use, the TU Graz Teaching and Learning Service System (Fig. 1) accomplish the big picture.

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The TU Graz E-book Strategy: from Content Management to Online Mutliple Device Usage

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