Next Generation E-learning based on Grid Technologies and ...Technologies, Learning Management...

Conference ICL2009 September 23-25, 2009 Villach, Austria

Next Generation E-learning based on Grid Technologies and Web 2.0 Olga Boronenko1, Vassil Alexandrov1 1ACET Centre, University of Reading, UK Key words: e-learning, E-learning Virtual Centre, Grid Architecture, Grid Technologies, Learning Management System, Virtual Organization, Web 2.0 Abstract:

In recent years, with the rapid development in communication and network technologies, e-learning has been popularized and become one of the most popular teaching methods in educational community. In this paper, the Grid technologies and e-learning are combined to present a new e-learning Grid platform model to facilitate the e-learning Virtual Organization implementation. The detail design of the proposed e-learning platform is presented through the precise description of its main parts: e-learning Grid architecture and new e-learning Web portal model, entitled E-learning Virtual Centre (ELVC). Moreover, as a proof-of concept investigation the e-learning VO is created as a prototype of the proposed e-learning platform model.

1 Introduction In recent years, with the rapid development in communication and network technologies, e-learning has been popularized and become one of the most popular teaching methods in educational community. Nowadays, e-learning utilizes electronic devices to assist the education or training process, taking advantage of the Internet or any other communication channel to connect other devices, to deliver information and knowledge. This model of learning has many advantages with respect to traditional model:

• better interaction between student and learning resources he/she uses, i.e. learning process is not passive;

• learning can happen anytime/anywhere, i.e. there are no boundaries tied to time/place; • tutor and/or student are able to monitor progress and to customize learning experience

basing on student skills/preferences [[12], [19]].

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Moreover, according to report a “eLearning: A Global Strategic Business Report” published by Global Industry Analysts, Inc., e-learning is on the rise, and demand for it is expected to exceed $52.6 billion by 2010 worldwide compare to worldwide revenues exceeding $29.2 billion in 2007 [[8]] and around $3 billion in 2002 [[15However, there are some drawbacks related to current e-learning solutions. Firstly, they are mainly focused on the content delivery, leaving in the background the collaborative view. Secondly, current e-learning platforms only support a specific learning-domain and are not able to support learning in different domains [[4]]. Thirdly, many e-learning platforms andsystems have been developed and commercialized, where the most popular ones are client-

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server, peer-to-peer and web services architectures. Key drawbacks of these architectures are often their limitations in terms of scalability and the availability/distribution of resources, i.e. computing power, storage capabilities, etc. The mentioned limitations have been successfully overcome by applying Grid technology to the e-learning system. To illustrate Grid applications in e-learning the following approaches to learning resources sharing can be mentioned:

• The service-based implementation of the e-learning system is discussed in [[18], [21where the authors propose to provide a uniform, service-based realization of both learner and content management and the context itself.

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• Edutella project [[5]], although it is a peer-to-peer network for searching semantic webmetadata, adds another perspective to the Grid infrastructure being is one of the impacts to the semantic Grid initiative, where the semantics’ importance in distributed and cross-organizational applications is stressed out, because content and functionality need to be adequately described and understood by all participants.

• The authors in [[23]] have presented another approach to sharing learning resourcesusing a Data Grid infrastructure. It is based on distributed learning object repositories, where learning objects are compatible to the SCORM content objects.

• ELeGI is the European Learning Grid Infrastructure (23 partners from 9 EU countries) [[6]], which aims at a pedagogy-driven, service-oriented software architecture based on Grid technologies, providing a more contextualized, personalized and ubiquitolearning through knowledge construction and collaboration.

• GridCole (Grid Collaborative Learning Environment), one of the research projects of the EU-funded Kaleidoscope initiative [[14]], is a new tailorable collaborative learningsystem that provides guidance to the participants of collaborative learning scenarios defined by educators and enables the use of tools requiring supercomputer capabilities or specific hardware resources for the support of such scenarios.

• DIOGENE is an EC project [[3]] aimed at the realization of a distributed VirtuaOrganization for the provision of learning services, where the services notion and semantics play central roles. Despite the fact that it is based on Web service technology, it provides a migration path toward a Grid environment.

• Akogrimo (Access to Knowledge Through the Grid in a Mobile World) framework [[1]] is targeted to scenarios where mobile dynamic Virtual Organizations (MDVO) require the ability to dynamically adapt the organisational structure to changingsituation, to dynamically establish and process complex workflows, and to access data and compute intensive services from distributed, sometimes even mobile resources.

• GRASP (Grid Based Application Service Provision) project [[10]] aims at studyingdesigning and validating a new Grid-based system infrastructure for achieving innovative business interaction models based on the patterns of Application Service Provision and Virtual Organization. To validate project results in real business scenarios, the project includes a test-bed on e-learning involving orchestration of different services (simulation, graphical rendering) and provision of different QoS on the basis of the learner’s request.

• LAGrid (Distance Learning Assessment Grid) [[22]] is the first phase of the projec“Grid-based Collaborative Platform for e-Learning” that aims to develop a scalable collaborative environment to meet the increasing requirement of national education by integrating the learning, software and teacher resources from more than 40 autonomous organizations in China, which are distributed in location or network.

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Thus, the design of the e-learning platform based on the Grid infrastructure enables robust, distributed collaboration and ubiquitous computing environment and secure mechanisms for resources sharing and integration, taking into the account the user interface, data storage and management aspects. Based on wide perspectives of the given above approaches and Grid technologies overall, the Learning Virtual Organization (VO) creation concept has been chosen for the research investigation, because of its advantages for e-learning in terms of integration and coordination facilities, openness and adaptability, resource distribution and service provision. Thus, VO enables number of different distributed organizations to share their data and computational resources, where the sharing approach is defined through sharing rules, i.e. these sharing rules actually define the VO. In the research, the investigation of the current state-of-the-art in the e-learning and Grid computing areas has been carried out to point out the advantages, which the implementation of the Grid computing could bring into the e-learning system. Based on the analysis of the existing e-learning projects with different architectures, the new e-learning Grid platform model to enable the e-learning VO implementation has been proposed. The proposed e-learning Grid platform model besides the detailed Grid architecture development for the e-learning VO, includes also the investigation of the pedagogical aspects implementation in e-learning and drawbacks of the existing e-learning portals/frameworks. As a result, a new e-learning web portal based on the Grid portal with Grid portlets concept is proposed to overcome the pointed out drawbacks of the existing e-learning solutions and increase the e-learning process effectiveness. 2 E-learning Virtual Organization Describing the Virtual Learning Organization it is possible to emphasize two fundamentals categories: e-learning systems and Grid computing.

2.1 E-learning System General e-learning systems have four components (Figure 2.1): People, Authoring System, Run-Time System, and Learning Management System (LMS) [[18]]. People in these systems are the students, authors, tutors and administrators. The main players are students and authors. Authors, that may be tutors or instructional designers, create content stored under control of LMS, and typically in database. Content, consumed by learners and created by authors, is usually handled, stored, and exchanged in units of learning objects.

People

Authors Learners

Authoring System

Run-Time System

Learning Management System (LMS)

Content Storage & Management

Import/Export Interaction

Tutors

Content creation Learning

Administrators

Figure 2.1. General E-learning System Schema



Also, existing content can be updated, and it can also be exchanged with other systems. LMS is managed under the control of an administrator and interacts with a run-time environment, which is addressed by students, who in turn may be coached by a tutor. All LMSs manage the course catalogues and log-in of registered users, record data from learners, and provide reports to management. Nowadays, with the rapid development of the e-learning, the LMS market also evolves facing up some major challenges, mostly because of the rising level of the competency among different LMS vendors, especially between commercial and open source LMSs. However, the most commercial LMSs have failed to achieve their forecast success acquiring the low customer satisfaction in such aspects as:

• out of the box functionality; • management reporting; • ease of customisation; • inflexible data models and architectures; • rapid return on investment; • vendor service and support.

On the other hand, each of these weaknesses is strength for Open Source LMSs. Since, the very nature of open source means, that features can be customised and changed to meet customers’ needs. Sustainable communities of developers and users provide excellent support in the form of forums, email lists, knowledge bases and documentation. In the rare event, when the community cannot help, the development team is often available on contract rates. In addition, there are official partners and third party service providers offering services such as support, consultancy, hosting and customisation. As a result, there are over 60 open source LMSs to choose from. So, it is obvious, that nowadays the choice of the proper LMS, which would suit the customer’s needs in the best way, is not easy. But it is possible to narrow the choice. Thus, analyzing the customers’ requirements and needs in the case of any software they plan to deploy in general, and in the case of LMS platform in particular, it is possible to define a variety of factors, where the most important ones are [[1]]:

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• size and sustainability of development and user communities; • provision of informal community support; • stability of the core development team.

According to the technical report “Open Source Learning Management Systems” of the Epic (the UK market leader in e-learning, blended learning and knowledge solutions) [[1]] the following five open source LMS are recommended for the use in the educational system (in alphabetical order):

• ATutor; • dotLRN; • ILIAS; • Moodle; • Sakai.

Also, the components of an e-learning system can be logically and physically distributed [[21]]. To enable interoperability between different LMSs, and the distribution of the e-learning system components, by providing uniform communication guidelines that can used throughout the design, development, and delivery of learning objects, the various e-learning standards have been developed by four main organizations: AICC, IEEE, IMS anADL (SCORM). The e-learning standards provide a mechanism for repeated use and sharin



of courseware as a way to reduce time and cost in developing courseware and make courseware reusable and interoperable with different LMS, where Grid technologies can be used to set up a courseware-sharing platform [[17]].

Figure 2.2. The Grid Architecture

Moreover, recently it becomes essential during learning process to be able to provide course material personalization, to track the work and performance of a learner automatically, to deliver content or process feedback, i.e. these requirements bring semantic Web/Web 2.0 technologies into e-learning system establishing new generation of the e-learning called e-learning 2.0. In this case the e-learning system is turned into a collection of Web Services that handle content and course offerings, and other LMS processes.

2.2 Grid Computing The concept of Grid computing focuses on resource sharing, which is not primarily file exchange, but rather direct access to computers, software, data, and other resources, as is required by a range of collaborative problem-solving and resource brokering strategies emerging in industry, science and engineering. The Grid architecture identifies requirements for general classes of Grid system components, defines the purpose and functions of the components and indicates how the components interact with each other. The architecture is organized into component layers. Components within each layer share common characteristics, but can be built on capabilities and behaviours provided by any lower layer. The main attention of the architecture is on the interoperability among resource providers and users to establish the sharing relationships. This interoperability means common protocols at each layer of the architecture model, which leads to the definition of a layered Grid architecture and its relationship to the Internet protocol architecture, as shown in Figure 2.2 [[7]], where the protocol architecture definescommon mechanisms, interfaces, schemas, and protocols at each layer, by which users can negotiate, establish, manage, and share resources. Each layer shares the behaviour of the component layers described below.

Application Layer

The Grid Fabric layer contains the resources that are to be shared. This can include computational power, data storage, sensors, and network resources. The sharing is controlled by Grid protocols, but the resources can include local networks. In this case, local protocols take over at this point. The Grid system is just concerned with access above this point. The Connectivity layer contains the communication and authentication protocols required for

Collective

Resource Layer

Connectivity Layer

Fabric Layer

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Internet

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Internet Protocol Architecture

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Grid-specific network transactions. Communication protocols enable the exchange of data between different Fabric layer resources. Authentication protocols are built on communication services to provide secure mechanisms for verifying the identity of users and resources. The Resource layer uses the communication and security protocols of the Connectivity layer to control secure negotiation, initiation, monitoring, control, accounting, and payment of sharing operations on individual resources. Resource layer protocols call Fabric layer functions to access and control local resources. Resource layer protocols are concerned entirely with individual resources. While the Resource layer is focused on interactions with a single resource, the Collective layer contains protocols and services that are global in nature and capture interactions across collections of resources. Collective components are designed that they implement a wide variety of sharing behaviours without placing new requirements on the fabric resources being shared, such as: a directory service may allow users to query for resources by name or by attributes such as type, availability, or load. The final layer in the Grid architecture comprises the user applications. Applications are constructed in terms of, and by calling upon, services defined at each layer in a Grid structure. At each layer, well-defined protocols provide access to some useful services; resource management, data access, resource discovery, and so forth. Also, at each layer, protocols and services are used to perform desired actions. 3 Proposed E-learning Grid Platform

3.1 E-learning Grid Platform Architecture From the analysis of the current state-of-the-art and based on the Grid Architecture (Figure 2.2), it can be concluded, that Grid computing can be implemented in e-learning through the e-learning Grid architecture that contains five layers and has structure displayed in the Figure 3.1, where the architecture layers functionality is described in detail below.

E-learning Grid Portal

Content Layer Content Repository Learning Objects Standards

Grid Middleware Layer Data Management: GridFTP & RLS

Information Service: MDS

Security Services: GSI

Service Oriented Architecture Layer

Infrastructure Layer

Resource Management: GRAM

Figure 3.1. Proposed E-learning Grid Architecture

Infrastructure Layer supports basic networking environment, including computing devices, networking and networking protocols etc.



Basic Service Oriented Architecture Layer is for implementing the basic web services related protocols (XML, UDDI/SOAP/WSDL, etc.). This layer provides the elementary connectivity, interoperation, reliability and flexibility for the layers on top of it. Grid Middleware Layer is the core of the architecture and the crucial layer for building a Grid environment. It should be based on existing OGSA compliant middleware, such as Globus Toolkit Version 4 (GT4) [[9]]. The Globus project provides open source software toolkit thacan be used to build computational Grids and Grid based applications. It allows sharing of computing power, databases, and other resources securely across corporate, institutional and geographic boundaries without sacrificing local autonomy. It implements services for:

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• Security Services, where the Grid Security Infrastructure (GSI) provides methods for authentication of the Grid users and secures communication. It is based on SSL (Secure Sockets Layer), PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) and X.509 Certificate Architecture. The GSI provides services, protocols and achieve the following aims for security:

o Single sign-on for using Grid Services through user certificates; o Resource authentication through host certificates; o Data encryption; o Authorization; o Delegation of authority and trust through proxies and certificate chain of trust

for certificate authorities. • Resource Management, using a set of standard interfaces of the Grid Resource

Allocation and Management (GRAM), involves the coordination of components number, including resource registries, staging of executable files, discovery, monitoring, allocation, and data access.

• Information Service by means of the Monitoring and Discovery Service (MDS) fulfils the following requirements: a basis for configuration and adaptation in heterogeneous environments; uniform and flexible access to static and dynamic information; scalable and efficient access to data; access to multiple information sources; decentralized maintenance capabilities.

• Data Management services provide standard means for the Grid computing environment management:

o GridFTP is a standard that provides GSI security, parallel transfer capabilities, and channel reusability;

o Replica Management Service provides guarantee for better quality of resource sharing implementing functions of transparent data transfer/copy, transparent copy selection in Grid;

o Replica Location Service (RLS) maintains and provides access to mapping information from logical names regarding data items to target names.

Content Layer is on the top of the Grid middleware layer to store all of learning contents in the platform, including a LMS that is used to store and manage teaching content of the e-learning system. Learning Grid Portal is the unified entry for all Grid platform users. It enables users from different organizations, who logon it, to share learning resources without knowing where they come from. Moreover, the portal is responsible for assisting authenticated users when operating within the Grid environment. To speed up the design and maintenance of the Grid portals, especially in the case of the multi-institutional and multi-virtual organization issues, Grid portal toolkits have been increasingly developed and implemented. Nowadays, there are four major portlet-based Grid portal solutions: GridPortlets, the Vine Toolkit, the Open Grid Computing Environments Collaboration (OGCE), and GridPort.



3.2 General Features of E-learning Portals Analyzing the existing e-learning Web portals based on the Grid, peer-to-peer or client-service architectures, it is possible to form the list of the most required general features that the proposed portal model should have to provide the high-level effective e-learning process supported by the LMSs, which are compliant to the e-learning standards:

• Individual Personal Desktop for every user. It collects all resources that are needed by the e-learning process to fulfil the daily learning tasks. The general personal desktop features are: News, Personal Messages, Learning Resources, Personal Notes, Bookmarks, Calendar, and other information. User can re-arrange these information blocks according to his needs.

• Course Management should allow efficient creation of courses and course materials through standardized tools and templates for the learning and working process including integrated navigation and administration.

• Group Management is essential tool to enable collaborative learning without additional tools. Learning groups, working groups or groups for certain fields of interest can be supported. Generally, groups can use all portal tools like forums or file sharing. Users can create groups that are open for everyone or have specially defined access restrictions, e.g. access with a password.

• Repository with Role Based Access Control allows users to find all available resources for learning and working like learning modulus, digital books or SCORM modules, learning objects, courses, forums, files, or working groups, i.e. role based access control of repository objects restricts the access according to the roles’ permissions.

• Learning Content usually can be delivered in multiple ways. Moreover, in general, all types of document files can be uploaded. Also, often the portal includes an internal authoring environment to create XML-based learning modulus that can include images, flash, applets and other web media files. It is possible to create glossaries and reuse term definitions within other learning modules.

• Standards Compliance is required vital feature of the any e-learning portal to support the re-use of the Learning Objects and interoperability between different LMSs’ repositories that helps to expose Grid functionality and services in e-learning Grids. In general, the e-learning portal should accomplish the SCORM e-learning-standard (SCORM 1.2 and SCORM 2004 are desired) and LOM metadata standard.

• Test & Assessment are usually created and enforced through an integrated environment, and can be used for the monitoring of learning progress by the users, as well as by the tutors and examiners. In general, Test & Assessment support multiple choice, single choice, allocation questions, cloze questions (free text, select box), ordering, matching, hot spot and more question types.

• Surveys integrated into the portal model can be used to easily collect information from a large number of users, for example to evaluate courses or other events. Surveys should be easy to create and administer, even for non-experienced users. With a sufficient basis of survey questions, teachers could create their own evaluations fast and efficient.

• Chat, Forums, Discussion Boards, Blogs, Wikis and Mails are the standard ways of communication for all e-learning portals. It is useful, when the personal desktop includes an awareness function that shows users that are currently online, new posts and mails announcements, etc.

• RSS support enables the e-learning platform to send information via RSS to the users



and displays external RSS feeds in the system. • Authentication is implemented in different, mostly multiple ways. The most popular

authentication methods are: Standard Login/Password Authentication (Database), LDAP and SOAP based Authentication.

• Web Service Interface (SOAP) implementation lately becomes more and more important, because LMSs are usually integrated into a larger environment of institutional administrative systems. Therefore, to enable information exchange with these systems, portals should offer a SOAP interface that allows controlling almost everything in portal with an external application.

3.3 Major Drawbacks of E-learning Web Portals In spite of significant improvement in functionality of nowadays e-learning portal solutions, the development of the e-learning web portal based only on the listed above features would not overcome the major drawbacks of the existing e-learning platforms, such as:

• Absence of the strict deadlines that leads to the lack of the students’ motivation, because of the lack of self-discipline that increases more by the flexible deadlines availability and assignments re-submission option.

• Non-systematic learning that is inherited from the classic educational system, where students mostly learn hard closer to the deadlines or when they “have time”, etc. According to the e-learning philosophy, the learning can happen anytime/anywhere, but in practice, students also do not study systematically because of the tiredness or lack of time/motivation, etc. Non systematic learning leads to the usage of the short-term memory instead of the long-term one, i.e. most of knowledge is quickly forgotten.

• E-learning is usually free or very cheap, i.e. there is a limitation of available resources and, also, lack of the students’ motivation, because of the financial interest absence.

• Awarded degrees are not enough appreciated, because of the possible identity frauds. As a result, e-learning is popular for training/tutoring, but not for obtaining the degree. Moreover, the top universities avoid having degree programmes carried out only by means of the e-learning platforms, i.e. without face-to-face meetings with students.

• Educational stereotypes inherited from the classical educational system (exams fear, disliking of certain activities, e.g. essay writing, etc., hope for “luck” at the exams without in-depth studying) prevent students from gaining the in-depth quality knowledge. Thus, the problem of studying for the degree instead of studying for gaining knowledge still exists.

• E-learning Web portals do not provide the entertainment activities, like educational games, tests, quizzes and competitions, besides general chats, wikis, blogs and forums that are important for the active learning, and encourage students to use e-learning portal during a longer period of time and more often, than it usually happens. In general, a course instructor is enabled to implement such kind of activities into his course, but in this case the additional time, knowledge and finance are required. Moreover, even when learning entertainment activities are embedded into the course materials, they are connected with the course content, i.e. do not influent the students’ skills improvement, such as logic, savvy, creativity, etc.

• Lack of the professional psychological support on the e-learning portals does not help their users (students and instructors) to overcome phobias, wrong beliefs, daily pressure, depressions, etc. As a result, the e-learning process is not developed for full by instructors, and it is not fully accepted by students.



3.4 Proposed E-learning Web Portal Model In order to overcome the mentioned above e-learning portals’ drawbacks, the new e-learning web portal model with the features that attract students and inspire them to use the learning portal because of the increased motivation and interest has been proposed. The structure of the new portal model has been developed taking into account the Activity Centres infrastructure that comprises the shopping centres, and a mix of medical and fitness facilities, beauty salons, game rooms, restaurants and Council facilities, and where people are ready to spend the whole days, because the all needed types of facilities and goods can be found there in comfort and friendly atmosphere. As a result, it is proposed to develop the e-learning portal to deliver the learning process by means of the E-learning Virtual Centre (ELVC) based on the VO concept and facilitated by the Grid technologies embedded into the e-learning architecture shown in Figure 3.1. The aim of the proposed ELVC is to make its users (students and course instructors/tutors) to spend more time using e-learning portal, than they would spend using the nowadays e-learning systems, and to do it regularly. To achieve this, the different activities besides e-learning courses should be supported to satisfy the different tastes and age groups interests. Also, it is desired to let the interested users to enjoy the classic university social life in its virtual analogue, e.g. to take part in the ELVC governance, to organize own activities, etc. Moreover, the accessibility aspects should be taken into the account to facilitate the users with disabilities. In the case of the e-learning facilitated by the modern technologies, it is much easier for people with disabilities to take part in the virtual analogue of the regular university social life, develop the talents through the personalized learning process and make friends all around the world. In analogue with the Activity Centres and large universities, when they are often called “the City inside the City” or even “the State inside the State”, the proposed ELVC is also developed along this concept. Thus. its main features are:

• ELVC has own President and the Government that are elected on the regular basis through the online voting system

• The ELVC statute book is represented by the “Terms and Conditions” accepted by its all citizens (users) during the registration; the “Terms and Conditions” are included into the Service Level Agreement (SLA) produced by the ELVC members along with the Code of Ethics

• ELVC has own currency called “bonuses” that has an official exchange rate to the world currencies

• ELVC provides the learning process compliant with the e-learning standards, i.e. SCORM, LOM metadata standard, etc.

• ELVC supports different activities to diversify the learning process on the one hand, and satisfy the various interests of the users on the other hand

• ELVC provides the professional online psychological support to help its users to overcome their phobias, daily pressure, depressions, etc.

Concerning the details of the ELVC structure, first of all, as any state, activity centre or classic university, the proposed ELVC begins from the access to its resources, i.e. “territory”. It is offered to enable three types of the access:

• Guest has free access to the training courses and portal activities, e.g. intellectual tests and quizzes, e-learning games; user is enabled to view different competition participants’ entries, but is not eligible to vote and gain the bonuses; registration is not needed. Also, a lot of “smart advertisement” of the ELVC commercial partners is

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presented to guest users. • Demo registration provides free access to a one chosen learning course during 30 days,

unlimited access to the training courses and portal activities; user is enabled to view the different competition participants entries, eligible to vote and gain the bonuses, but is not allowed to take part in the competitions and voting as a competitor; if the demo registration is continued by the full registration, the bonuses amount gained during the 30 days period of the demo registration is doubled and added to the obtained full registration account. The amount of the “smart advertisement” presented to demo registered users is less, than for guest users.

• Full registration gives the unlimited access to the chosen during the registration degree courses, electronic libraries that ELVC has the access to, unlimited access to the training courses and portal activities; user is eligible to take part, to vote and gain the bonuses in competitions, voting and betting. After the full registration the amount of the bonuses equal to the paid degree course registration fee in British Pounds (GBP) is added to the obtained account. Also, the amount of the “smart advertisement” presented to registered users is a minimal.

The demo registration is aimed to let the users to get to know the ELVC functionality, to check if it satisfies their requirements and the effectiveness of the delivered e-learning process in their particular case. It may seem, that demo registration has the advantages compare to the full registration by allowing the users to gain the additional bonuses for free, i.e. users are intended to go first through the demo registration instead proceeding straight to the full registration. Actually, the demo registration is implemented to decrease the number of the disappointed users, who have paid for the full registration, but did not like the offered services. Therefore, the full registration is recommended for the students who know about the ELVC functionality from their friends, relatives or from the own previous experience with ELVC. The full registration’s privileges compare to the demo version are the opportunity to enjoy the ELVC functionality for full and save time by having access to the several courses instead only one offered by the demo version. The ELVC virtual social live consists of two main parts: Governance and Entertainment. The implemented in the proposed portal users’ Governance system consists of President and Government. The latest is headed by Premier and Vice-Premier, and consists of:

• Minister of Communication: has to help the users in the technical aspects, e.g. hardware/software choice and configuration, Internet connection, etc.

• Minister of Foreign Affairs: is responsible for the communication with the users from the other e-learning portals and foreign languages learning facilities of the ELVC

• Minister of Economic Affairs: has to solve economics problems connected with the course fees, bonuses exchange rate, bonuses transferring between the users, etc.

• Minister of Emergency Situations: is the first who is contacted by the users in the case of the emergency situation, e.g. ELVC hackers attack, user’s fraud identity, spoofing, flooding, etc. The solutions can be produced in the cooperation with the Minister of Communication

• Minister of Internal Affairs: is responsible for the solving the problems between users, between user and instructor or the user’s misunderstanding of the ELVC statute book rules

• Minister for Family, Youth and Sports: analysis the supported by the ELVC activities, the new activities offered by the users and proposes for the users’ voting the changes in the activities system



• Minister of Environment: is responsible for the ELVC portal usability evaluation, analysis the new changes to the ELVC design offered by the users and proposes for the users’ voting the changes in the ELVC design

• Minister of Healthcare: analysis the psychological support effectiveness offered by the ELVC and the users’ problems connected with it

• Minister of Culture and Tourism: is responsible for the users’ blogs content approval, virtual video and photo exhibitions topics, the content of the gallery of the links to the virtual museums, art galleries, blogs about travelling, etc.

• Minister of Education: analyses the users’ problems with the particular courses’ content, checks the courses’ usability and the suggestions for the course improvements received from the users.

Each of the Ministers has his own blog, where users can leave their problems and/or suggestions, and rating of the popularity. President, Premier, Vice-Premier and Ministers regularly discuss the ELVC social life problems through the video conferencing facilities. The most important questions are proposed for the users’ online democratic voting or addressed straight to the ELVC administrators. President, Premier, Vice-Premier and Ministers receive the fixed monthly salaries in bonuses, and are periodically elected through the ELVC users’ online voting from the self-proposed candidates or can be re-elected before time, if their popularity rating is too low during the long period of time. Entertainment part of the proposed ELVC virtual social life besides the popular Chat, Forums, Discussion Boards, Blogs, Wikis, consists of:

• e-learning games that involve the users creativeness, decision making skills, the ability to observe, explore or analyse the situation in order to solve the problem. In the end of the game the user’s points are converted into the bonuses and added to user’s account

• social competitions, e.g. the best graphical solution, course logo, thematic video, programming solution, etc. The competition winner receives the official certificate, fixed amount of bonuses and the entry at the ELVC virtual “Alley of Fame”

• intellectual tests and quizzes that similar to e-learning games, also involve the users creativeness, decision making skills, the ability to observe, explore or analyse the situation in order to answer the question or solve the problem. Depending on the complexity of the test and quiz, the gained points are converted into the bonuses that are added to the user’s account

• voting system besides President, Premier, Vice-Premier and Ministers elections, and voting for the innovations to the ELVC portal raised by the President and Government, it provides the entertaining voting, e.g. the best instructor/tutor, programmer, designer, helper, etc. In this case, the winner receives the fixed amount of bonuses and the official certificate for the won title

• bookmaker office enables users to bet on the ELVC competitions or voting winners in bonuses. Depending on the result and rates, the corresponding amount of the bonuses is added or taken from the user’s account

• alley of fame is used to present the profiles with the photos, personal details and achievements of the social competition winners

• groups by interest are aimed to encourage the users collaboration and develop the users’ talents and interests by providing facilities for the group blogs and mailers creation, specialized courses development, virtual video and photo exhibition organization, etc.



• online shop where the users can buy on their bonuses different goodies with the ELVC logo and discount vouchers from the ELVC commercial partners.

The other activities’ implementation is negotiable. And if the ELVC users vote for any other additional activities, the ELVC members will take it into the account. It should be mentioned, that virtual social live is additional to the e-learning process provided by the ELVC functionality, and is not compulsory. It is aimed to increase the user’s interest and make him to use ELVC for longer and regularly, improve his social skills and self-confidence, help to overcome lack of motivation and communication, to get rid of phobias, wrong beliefs, daily pressure, depressions, etc. However, the main purpose of the ELVC is delivering of the effective e-learning process through the implemented in the ELVC portal general for the nowadays e-learning portals features that are described in detail above. Moreover, to overcome the e-learning portals major drawbacks, it is proposed to implement the unique “Bonus System” that is aimed to encourage the students’ self-confidence, motivation and, especially important for the teenagers, spiritual/moral independence feeling. Besides the mentioned above ways to earn the bonuses through the governance duties, victories in competitions, voting and betting, the “Bonus System” allows students to gain their bonuses during the learning process:

• completing the coursework within the defined period of time: o the time periods are defined for the each course independently based on their

content and complexity; o the sooner coursework is completed, more bonuses are received; o after certain time period end the bonuses are not available for earning;

• helping to the other students, who asked for help. Thus, in ELVC to encourage students collaboration the helping system is implemented, where students can ask for the help from other students by spending certain amount of bonuses to solve the problems with coursework completion or course material understanding;

• completing required or additional course assignments in virtual teams that also are implemented to encourage the students collaborative work.

Moreover, students can buy the bonuses using the offered exchange rates, receive from the other users or can “earn” them by visiting web-sites of sponsors. Besides earning the bonuses, the proposed “Bonus System” enables students to spend their bonuses by:

• getting help from other students. Thus, in ELVC to encourage students’ collaboration the helping system is implemented. It enables students to ask for help from other students by spending certain amount of bonuses to solve the problems with coursework completion or course material understanding; when the help is received student can leave the feedback for a helper’s profile and well-reasoned rating)

• paying for additional degree courses or the specific courses developed by the mentioned above groups of interest

• taking tutoring from the top professors/professionals, who are accredited in the ELVC, but can be from the organizations that are not the members of the e-learning VO, etc.

• nominating himself for the governance position voting, if the user is interested in taking active part in the governance part of the ELVC social life

• betting for the favourite candidate in the competitions and/or voting through the bookmaker office

• transferring bonuses to the other users’ accounts as a gift



• buying in the ELVC online shop different goodies with the ELVC logo and discount vouchers from the ELVC commercial partners.

However, students CANNOT sale the bonuses or exchange them into the other currency. Besides the described “Bonus System”, it is proposed to implement in the ELVC portal the “Rating system” for students and tutors/instructors. The “Rating system” consists of several categories and presents the overall rating and particular subtotal ratings. Thus, for students the overall rating is calculated as average of the subtotal four rating categories:

• Progress in studies rating is given to students by the course instructors and is based on the student’s assignments fulfilment, collaborative work participation, period of course execution, etc.

• Helper rating is given to students by the other students, who asked them for the help in the course work fulfilment or material clarification, etc.

• Social worker rating is based on the student’s popularity during his governance work position.

• Entertainer rating is calculated through the student’s success in the ELVC competitions, e-learning games, intellectual tests and quizzes.

For tutors/instructors the overall rating is calculated as average of the subtotal three rating categories:

• Course design rating is given by students after the course completion, and evaluates the course structure usability, effectiveness, diversity of the course content, etc.

• Feedback rating is given by students as their evaluation of a received from the tutor/instructor help for course related problems, quick response, friendliness, etc.

• Professional rating is given by the other ELVC tutors/instructors anonymously and based on the tutor/instructor professional skills and experience evaluation.

3.5 Implementation of the Proposed Platform Prototype As a proof-of concept investigation, it has been decided to create VO to provide the Erasmus Mundus MSc in Network and e-Business Centered Computing (EM MSc NeBCC) course as a prototype of the proposed e-learning platform model, i.e. there are three member universities: University of Reading (UK), Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece) and University Carlos III Madrid (Spain) that obtain the corresponding Service Level Agreement (SLA). The prototype of the proposed e-learning platform model has a structure shown in Figure 3.2. Thus, for its implementation the four servers have been used, where the specifications of the installed software are given in Table I.

Domain Name Operating System Grid Middleware Software

ob1.rdg.ac.uk Ubuntu 8.04.1 Globus Toolkit 4.2.1 GridSphere 3.1, Vine Toolkit 1.0

ob2.rdg.ac.uk Ubuntu 8.04.1 Globus Toolkit 4.2.1 ILIAS 3.10.4

ob3.rdg.ac.uk Ubuntu 8.04.1 Globus Toolkit 4.2.1 Moodle 1.9.4

ob4.rdg.ac.uk Ubuntu 8.04.1 Globus Toolkit 4.2.1 ATutor 1.6.2

Table I. Software Configuration on E-learning Platform Prototype Nodes

Thus, on each server Ubuntu operation system and Globus Toolkit have been installed. Then, three different open source LMSs: ILIAS [[13]], Moodle [[16]] and ATutor [[2]], have been



installed to check the interoperability. Finally, for the overall Grid environment, the GridSphere [[11]] has been chosen as a portal server and the Vine Toolkit Grid portlets [[20have been used to bring the Grid functionality into the portal.

]]

Figure 3.2. Prototype of the Proposed E-learning Grid Platform

As a result, after the software corresponding installation and configuration, the customized e-learning web portal has a look shown in Figure 3.3.

Figure 3.3. GridSphere Customized Portal Home Page Screenshot

This portal allows user to login. After successful authentication, the user’s credentials are retrieved, and the user is enabled to use the File Manager Portlet to access the repositories of the LMSs installed on the other servers of the implemented e-learning Grid platform prototype.



4 Conclusions In the research paper, it was intended to combine e-learning and open source LMSs with Grid technologies through the e-learning VO concept implementation that offers several advantages for e-learning in terms of integration and coordination facilities, openness and adaptability, resource distribution and service provision. As a result of the carried out research, the new e-learning Grid platform model for the e-learning VO implementation has been proposed to provide scalable, open, dynamic and heterogeneous learning environment. The Grid architecture of the offered e-learning platform consists of five layers that correspond to the layers of the standard Grid Architecture to ensure interoperability in cross-organizational environments. For the Grid architecture implementation the Globus Toolkit 4.2, GridSphere 3.1 and Vine Toolkit 1.0 have been used together with the three open source LMS (ILIAS, Moodle and ATutor). Moreover, in order to provide the desirable e-learning portal functionality and overcome the pointed out major drawbacks of the existing e-learning platforms, an e-learning web portal model has been proposed. The new portal model, besides the general for the e-learning portals features, implements the innovative “Bonus System” and “Rating System” through the unique interface architecture that forms the E-learning Virtual Centre (ELVC). In the end, as a proof-of concept investigation, the VO to provide the Erasmus Mundus MSc course in Network and e-Business Centered Computing has been created as a prototype of the proposed e-learning platform model.

Acknowledgments This research has been carried out during the Erasmus Mundus MSc course in NeBCC funded by the European Commission.

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Authors: Olga Boronenko, PhD ACET Centre, University of Reading University of Reading, Whiteknights, Philip Lyle Building, PO Box 68, Reading, RG6 6BX, Berkshire, United Kingdom [email protected] Prof. Vassil Alexandrov, PhD ACET Centre, University of Reading University of Reading, Whiteknights, Philip Lyle Building, PO Box 68, Reading, RG6 6BX, Berkshire, United Kingdom [email protected]


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mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

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