Designing a Collaborative Educational System: A ...

Designing a Collaborative Educational System: A Competitive Approach to E-Learning Ali Sajedi Badashian Software Engineering Department, Azad University – Lahijan Branch, Lahijan, Iran [email protected]

Asghar Dehghani Firouzabadi Software Engineering Department, Azad University – Meibod Branch, Meibod, Iran [email protected]

Morteza Ashurzad Delcheh

Seyyed Hamidreza Afzali

Mehregan Mahdavi

Software Eng. Department, Azad University – Lahijan Branch, Iran [email protected]

School of ICT, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Sweden [email protected]

Department of Computer Eng., University of Guilan, Iran [email protected]

Abstract— Tens of thousands of universities are today educating students with different methods for a vast variety of majors. This paper aims to introduce Knowledge Tree (KT) as an integrated virtual structure to be used in the educational systems. A collaborative structure is utilized to define a universal curriculum for various university majors worldwide to maximize e-learning capabilities. Then, a collaborative competitive approach is introduced to enrich the contents of course topics offered based on the mentioned structure. The results based on both educational facts fetched from the search engines and a questionnaire filled by a group of academics from different universities show that this system performs well in educational systems in terms of time, effort and cost.

I.

INTRODUCTION

Nowadays, we hear too much things about console games like Xbox, PS2, PS3, Nintendo [1] and thirst of children and teenagers for playing with them. Think about this generation when they are in university or academic places for learning lessons in a boring condition which constitutes only of books, notebooks or blackboards. It is very likely that they refuse this method. This is due to the fact that they have played so interactively and dealt with digital gadgets from the first years of their life. Thus, they need a more interactive means for studying. It is the educators’ responsibility to allow them to choose new methods or ways of studying and guide them on most useful ways so that they learn fast and remember learned materials for a long time. Note that it is so good that they choose it since using computers and postulate their interactive methods. This makes it easier for teachers and people who are responsible for designing it since they can use everything like computer, internet, game, etc. This generation is eager to use these methods of teaching as they study in higher levels. There are a lot of hardware and software with which they may work to increase the performance of learning [2]. We are exactly in a situation that students are eager to turn to these technologies, so why not to use them? Using these software and hardware and more generally elearning [3] is expensive and needs very subtle designs and a

great amount of time. This is true both in accustoming students to these methods and educating teachers how to use them. In this article, new aspects are emerged to approach this problem by a web-based system containing numerous tools and technologies. There is a motivating scheme in the article [4] that introduces five main phases for web based learning: Course content design, course development, course implementation, course evaluation, and course revision. The system described in this article would focus on improving these phases by a collaborative competitive approach. E-Learning provides learners with accessing information independent of space and time [3]. E-learning’s position in education is so important. It must be very comprehensive and universal so that the traditional education systems could be replaced by it. This is due to the fact that resulted experiences from E-learning are more extensive than ordinary classrooms [3], [5]. An important problem in learning systems is inaccessibility of educational concepts. Contrary to the belief that Internet can solve this problem; there are a lot of countries that do not have high-speed internet and a lot of countries in which people still do not know how to use it [6]. These days, lack of proper methods for teaching is not the only problem. In fact, there are instances in which teachers use suitable methods to teach materials which are not derived from reliable academic sources [7]. This problem directs our attention toward another phenomenon: “unreliability of materials being taught despite of a good teaching method”. There are many reasons for this phenomenon [8]. Sometimes teachers do not put adequate efforts to find reliable sources for teaching. Access limitations to reliable sources are another frequent problem, especially in developing countries [6]. However, no matter what causes this phenomenon, it is obvious that using the best methods of teaching to teach unreliable material is a futile act which penalizes the academic world with great deals of time, energy and cost. Thus, it helps professors in different universities to enrich their knowledge substances

about the curriculum. Deriving the teaching material is as important as helping them in choosing the teaching method. The second problem is lack of knowledge about ways of teaching and presentation of educational concepts. Another problem is that many top universities and chief teaching institutes make their methods private and do not publish them for lower-ranking universities to use, although it is not a secret topic for them. In fact, it is just not to share these methods. So each university defines just its own methods itself. With the above mentioned problems, one can see very often that many works in universities are repeated futilely. Since teachers that are teaching the same topics in different levels do not have enough interaction to discuss the taught material, many concepts are repeated for students in different levels. This also leads teachers not to pay enough attention to some other educational contents since they assume students have already learned or will learn them in other levels.

academic experts as mentioned in the next sections. The following example will make the subject clearer. Suppose you intend to learn “Quick Sort” as one of the subjects of the “Data Structure” course of software engineering programs. You have to start from the root of the tree and follow the right path through many options to find it. In order to reach this topic, you may select path in this order: Engineering, Computer Engineering, Software, Data Structures and then Quick Sort. In fact, there will be a list of different sort methods in the previous level from which you can select Quick Sort (see Figure 1). In fact, these items are examples of final structures as Leaves in the Knowledge Tree and will be offered as course subsections namely topics.

The problems mentioned above lead to a new subject called p-learning [9]. In p-learning, all important units should be integrated within a system to increase the performance. Moreover, in this system, before starting teaching, a big design is needed which should meet all the standards of p-learning. In personalized learning the teaching method should be customized to students’ interests [9]. However, the extent to which teachers can grasp this concept and the amount of time they wish to allocate to test different methods and find the best way may cause the teachers and students get tired of the system, which in turn leads to decrease in performance. In the next sections, a new collaborative system is introduced to overcome many of the problems and increase learning performance. II.

KNOWLEDGE TREE

The first considerable issue in designing a learning system is to specify the fields of study, and their detailed curriculum. In this article, the knowledge is organized into a structure designed for academic learning purposes. Knowledge has different contexts, each of which includes majors. In this view, knowledge can be seen as a hierarchical structure, categorized into related branches of a major, its offered courses and even the topics in a universal comprehensive curriculum. The structure resembles a tree, which contains almost all useful topics of offered courses in the universities worldwide. In this article, the structure is referred to as Knowledge Tree or shortly KT. Therefore, there will be a dynamic resource of knowledge. The structure of the KT can be constructed or customized by TABLE I.

In Knowledge Tree Main branch Moderate branch Minor branch Branchlet

Level First Second Third Fourth

Leaf

Fifth

Figure 1. Path and final topics.

A.

Definitions Here, the structure of the Knowledge Tree and its correspondence with knowledge is defined (See Table I). The Knowledge Tree, like any other tree has a root and different branches, each of which has possibly different branches again. Root of the knowledge tree represents the global knowledge of human beings. The main branches of the tree represent the main categories of knowledge, also called contexts. The second level branches or the moderate branches in the tree represent different contexts in knowledge. These Branches in the Knowledge Tree breaks again into several branches as Minor Branches to represent branches of the majors. Minor Branches are broken into branchlets and each branchlet contains some Leaves. Branchlets and Leaves in the Knowledge Tree are equivalent to courses and their topics respectively. A leaf as the end point of the tree is the smallest unit of division, which is also called

THE STRUCTURE OF KNOWLEDGE TREE.

In Knowledge Instance Contexts; Main categories in knowledge. Majors; Main subjects in a context. Branches; Different attitudes in a major. Courses; Different units offered in the universities/colleges. Topics; different parts of a course usually presented in a quarter hour in the classes.

Examples #1 #2 Engineering Human science Industrial engineering Psychology Production & operation man. Clinical psychology Project control Pathology Resource allocation

Down’s syndrome

“topic”. Topics resemble atoms of a particle. Although atoms contain sub-atomic particles, they are known as the smallest part of a matter. Similarly, Topics themselves can consist of Sub-Topics. However, we consider the Topic as the smallest division of the tree for simplicity. This was just a general overview of the Knowledge Tree and the tree itself is to be so enormous that needs weeks of work of coordinated teams of scientists from different disciplines; hence, the perfect understanding of how the tree works requires explaining the tree’s details more extensively. The examples for two different paths to topics are shown in Table 1. It is important to specialize topics for different academic majors and branches. For example, consider “Newton’s Equation” as a topic offered in “Numerical Calculations” course. This course is offered in both “Practical Mathematics” and “Computer Science” majors. The topic is also offered in some other majors or branches. However, considering the topic in the two mentioned majors, it is found that the approach in “Practical Mathematics” is to consider equation from mathematical point of view, but the approach in “Computer Science” is simulation-based equation solving. So they are offered with little differences in the two mentioned majors or in other similar majors or branches. So as it is mentioned earlier, these two versions of a single topic may be compared to isotopes of a single element. B. Contents for the Topics Note that the structure of the KT described above inspires a good sight on categorizing knowledge into small fragments (i.e. the topics), but each leaf in the KT itself points to an ordered set of useful resources about that topic (see Figure 2). These resources are one of the main subjects of this paper and will be discussed later in this context. The contents provided for each topic in the KT have to be considerable resources for that topic. Topics may refer to texts, presentation slides, pictures, films and other types of digital media file that should be kept on a gigantic database. There will be huge amounts of data; thus, large data centers will be

needed to save them. These are to be referred to as the main resources for teaching or studying each topic. So any remarkable piece of information needed for studying or teaching a curriculum material is accessible from part of our KT. C. Accessibility Data of these data centers will be accessible by a website on the internet and users can easily access the topics. In this way there will be a Knowledge Gateway that is accessible worldwide. A Tree structure that is designed for the website will guide users to find courses in each field and make access to the Knowledge Tree Topics easier. Users can traverse node by node and level by level to find what they need. They may also see courses offered for each branch of each major and Topics offered for each of them. Users can download courses from the website and start learning. There will be several choices. They may download single Topics, a full course with its Topics, or presentations of each area of knowledge corresponding to a node in the Knowledge Tree with all its sub-branches. Search capability is an important property of such a universal database. It allows users to eliminate extra topics with massive amounts of data provided for the topics. The search capability can be done based on either knowledge tree needs (such as course topics) or the provided contents for the topics. A tree search [10] with advanced capabilities is desirable. III.

COLLABORATIVE COMPETITIVE APPROACH TO FORM THE SYSTEM

A. Confirmation The topics of the courses in the tree can be offered by people since the tree is an open system. However, to prevent chaos in the system, there should be some filters to choose which topics can be incorporated into the tree and in which part of the tree they should be included. Usually the contents provided for the topics offered by professors of a special field would be the most proper offered topics in that field. On the

Figure 2. A sample of Knowledge Tree structure

other hand, there may be someone who suggests a better content for a topic in a special field despite the fact that he/she is not necessarily teaching that topic. The filters mentioned above act as mechanisms which ensure that good ideas are incorporated into the system without any bias in choosing them. This filter is a scientific committee consisted of a group of leading experts in that special field which decides on incorporation, arrangement and final confirmation of the structure of the topics and also on the contents provided for the topics. B. Cooperative Nature of the System This system can be compared with open-source software [11]. This means that it is accessible for free, updatable and spreadable system that is not made by or limited to predefined authors and editors. Everyone can attend this project and offer his/her own course topic presentation. Of course, they should consider some rules and filters to ensure that some standards in manner and quality are met. For example, size limitations (i.e. word or page count, video size, sound clip size, etc.), time limitation (such as enforced deadlines for the scientific journals or conferences), format control and subject conformity are some of the most important possible considerations. Hence, the open source aspects of the system remained useful such as wiki based web sites [11], but more considerations are needed in the form of rules, controls and limitations. So because of academic nature of the system, the preciseness of the system is assured more than wiki based web sites [12]; besides, extra considerations of our system guarantees its contents. C. Competitive Nature of the system All Topics are revisable and may be revised or modified any time a better replacement is offered. A revise may be a new version of a topic presentation modified by the same author or a new presentation offered by someone else. These revisions will increase quality of the system all the time and the system is refreshed toward better presentations. Consequently, new aspects of the topics arise in each course. Although a group of professors and professionals in all fields have to design the Knowledge Tree’s structure, the contents of the Knowledge Tree is not to be presented by a group of selected people. This is very important that everyone can offer his/her method of teaching in each field. A group of professors and professionals in different fields and sciences as scientific committees would be gathered from top universities around the world to peruse and compare all offered representations and methods. As mentioned before, note that all presentations are in the form of e-learning virtual objects (i.e. a document, a sound clip containing a talk about the subject, a video clip, a software executable simulation program, etc. or a composition of them regarding the rules and limitations). They may just judge about the scientific and educational worth of offered presentations. All these presentations would be surveyed and also be compared with last year’s top presentations, and the best offers would make the final Knowledge Tree. 1) History

All accepted representations will be kept in data centers even after renewal by new ones. It means that a “history” section will be available and users can view lists of the best offered topics, old topics, etc, even lower-ranked representations for the topics. For example, the three best representations can be accessed directly, but all other representations would be accessible in a history for that topic. Yet the lower level representations for the topic can be useful in many cases, even though they have not been accepted as one of the best. A poor representation of a topic may contain some useful parts in understanding different aspects of that topic. The whole topic may not be the best, but users can use it to understand that special aspects better. D. Competition Each time the competition is held to update the contents for the topics. The structure of the branches won't be updated by the contributors who attempt to represent the new versions for the topic. In fact, the structure of the KT is only improved by the scientific committee for different subjects. Since our primary goal is to choose the best methods of teaching for each topic (such as “Quick Sort”), we will have a worldwide competition in which teachers from all universities of the world can attend and represent their method of teaching for the topics. In this Internet based competition, for each particular topic, the best methods of teaching are chosen from different representations. The selections of the best methods are the responsibility of a team of experts in each particular subject. In order to ensure as many teachers as possible from different parts of the world take part in the competition, a grant called “B.T.M” (“Best Teaching Method”) is suggested for the winner. Besides, there may be some prizes in cash (by the sponsors) to make more motivations. Granting these prizes ensures that more teachers will take part in the competition and also ensures that teachers have enough motivation to do their best while coming up with a teaching method. After being granted the “B.T.M” prize for a particular subject, the teacher whose method has been selected has the brand for that method over a period of one year. After reviewing all the represented methods, the winner’s would get credit for announcing his/her method for one year, until the next competition is held. This would be a great scientific honor that would bring a high academic position for the owner. 1) Selection Factors There are several factors that may cause a method to be selected by the scientific committee as the best. Being attractive, using clear examples that stick in mind, simplicity of explanation, good classification and ordering of contents, proper use of technologies, etc. can be mentioned as important ones. Although new methods or new technologies are likely to make a presentation or video more attractive, sometimes the presentation with old equipments like chalk and blackboard are so complete that the subject is described as well as or even better that the ones with new technologies. The selection team shouldn’t attend to unimportant features to select the best method; they should attend to items which have influence on understanding usefulness and attractiveness of a method. For

instance, they should not select a method because of superficial features or personal interest to teacher. E. Structure Refinements It is obvious that not every person can change the structure of the Knowledge Tree. As mentioned before, the scientific committees in each field of study are to be selected to help improving the Knowledge Tree in two cases: defining the Knowledge Tree structure as the preliminary activity and choosing best presentations as the principal activity. Every time appearing new majors in science they only modify the structure of the KT in the related subjects. However, the structure of the KT does not observe the Wiki-like formation [13], [14]. In other words, all the changes have to be done by the scientific committee in the related fields. IV.

ANALYSIS

The presented idea pertains to academic space worldwide. The goal of this paper is only to introduce an idea as a manifest so that later can be extended and distributed. So several aspects of the current educational system is studied regarding the new introduced system for further argument. A. Questionnaire Analysis A questionnaire containing 41 questions was designed and filled by respectively 52 professors of different fields from different universities of Iran. The goal was to evaluate the TABLE II.

SUMMARY AND RESULTS OF QUESTIONS

Category

Question areas

value

Familiarity with none of the three mentioned tools Disagree with repetitive educational materials Not teaching an educational subject completely for any reason Need to scientific Ask students to self-study in case of not materials completing whole subjects in the classroom Hardly found or not found special scientific resources that were needed Agree with designing complete educational materials by leading Resources scientists in a universal database Agree with designing an accessible database for best teaching methods Like to be compared with leading professors in the case of teaching methods Ideal Their students’ perception about the situation positive effect of new methods compared with old ones

Current status drawbacks

TABLE III.

subject

63% 67% 74% 79% 78% 93% 94% 71%

1) Current status drawbacks According to the results, most of professors were disapproved respective educational materials. Therefore, need to well organized structure for the academic curriculum that is offered by KT is felt. OneNote, Encarta and Intelligent-Board were the three tools that the professors were asked about. Unfortunately, 63% of professors were familiar with none of these tools. So it is important to encourage professors to use new tools and methods for teaching. 2) Need to scientific materials Most of the respondents stated that there have been subjects which they had not completely presented to the students in their classrooms. Most of them also stated that if they do not completely teach a subject, they would ask students to study remained materials by themselves. Proper self-paced resources that are accessible publicly offered by KT, would help students in such situations. 3) Resources The majority of the respondents claimed that there have been special scientific resources that were needed, but they could not find them or found hardly. Nearly the same percent of them believe that designing complete educational resources by leading scientists that are accessible publicly is a good idea. It is noticeable that 93% of them were eager about designing an accessible database for best teaching methods so that it may be used by professors all over the world. Organizing educational materials offered by KT can cover all these needs easily. 4) Ideal situation: To be compared with the topmost professors of the world was what 94% of the participant professors were eager about. 71% of them also declared that using new methods of education had positive effects on their students. All mentioned advantages are to be available by KT. B. A Short Survey on the Internet The second evaluation was based on the information provided from the Internet. Searching educational resources in Google amazing results were found (see Table III). Thousands to millions of results were found for .pdf, .ppt, .doc and .swf search about “Quick Sort”, OSI (Open System Interconnection) and Determination (three topics from Software Engineering, Hardware Engineering and Mathematics courses). Then the related items were downloaded and counted exactly (considering the first 100 items one by one and sampling one per 10 of the next 700 items, the others were discarded due to

FOUND RESOURCES IN THE INTERNET (BY GOOGLE SEARCH) FOR THREE SAMPLE TOPICS

Type of resources

Quick sort OSI Determination

87%

disadvantages of the current educational system and try to show ideals in their mind. Questions are summarized and grouped into question areas for brevity as shown later (see Table II). Each question area stands for several questions of the original question sheets.

total

.pdf .ppt related percent total related percent

total

.doc .swf related percent total related percent

257000

148

0.06%

1430

113

8%

18000

75

0.41%

36

5

14%

2200000

309

0.01% 20000

228

1.4%

80000

173

0.34%

5610

15

0.27%

18000000

158

ε 95500

249

0.26% 1580000

238

0.02% 13300

4

0.03%

the trivial amount of relatedness). It was found that hundreds of each item is produced till now by different people saying the same thing. The results show that they made tens or even hundreds of similar redundant documents for each topic just because they don’t know about the previous ones. Using Knowledge Tree, the whole contents for a topic would be known and accessible easily from within a topic; furthermore, the professors and educators do not spend extra time to develop another version for an existing document / resource. Considering the low relevancy rate of the found items to the goals, KT can improve resource access as well. V.

CONCLUSION

Today, the academic world has reached the conclusion that they need universal references for education to improve the quality and the maximize quantity of educational programs [15]. Although some different books are offered by different universities as main references to guide students to go through the right path to learning, there is no global knowledge reference categorizing all fields of knowledge. Besides, despite the fact that books and e-books are good references for further studies, they cannot offer complete e-learning capabilities. Students usually do not interact with them easily and key concepts may be neglected. Furthermore, the appropriate curriculum along with enough resources and expert teaching skills are less completely assembled together or at least expensive to establish. These resources are now provided and customized locally. As a result, many aspects or subjects remain neglected in university curriculums, even in the top universities. Using KT, a sort of globalization helps universities to both develop e-learning capabilities of their offered courses and use appropriate curriculum with enough educational resources. This is useful especially in developing countries. One of the advantages of this system is gathering top professors and presenters together in all fields and giving them the chance of getting acquainted. The teaching methods for each topic are then accessible for all professors and students. Thus, the better presenters of each topic would be more familiar and well-known worldwide. This is because of the brand and the accessible data in the publicized website. This occasion also leads to accustoming professors to new methods of teaching. The Knowledge Tree offers both universality and e-learning features that can be used by both the classic academic centers and virtual universities. In the virtual universities, it can be referred to as the principal educational resource with numerous amounts of data for each course; besides, in the academic centers they can use KT as the further resource for students’ self studies. The quality and quantity of subjects offered in the virtual programs would vastly increase, as these structures and courses are standardized by chief universities and professionals. In this way, anyone would have access to standard and rich sources of learning. This will lead to a great progress in learning. The traditional programs can focus on some special aspects (e.g., research, troubleshooting for the students, educating the practical skills and expanding the knowledge boundaries to

appear new majors) instead of teaching or just remain unchanged using KT as useful curriculum resource. VI.

FUTURE WORK

A new capability in evaluating an offered course is peoplebased community evaluation which is done by visitors, students and other professors like wiki-based websites. This evaluation can help students to select the best learning sources among the top-rated ones. It can also be considered as an additional capability of the system to demonstrate the popularity of each representation. Although English language is the general language in science expansion, students study in different languages, so the Knowledge Tree may be extended to a multi-lingual service in the next phases. This can be done either by translating the best offered courses to all supported languages, or to define separate representations for each language. The recent approach seems to be more applicable and well structured for growth. VII. REFERENCES [1]

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