operating system Mac OS X Tiger prepares of: - Quick time 7, which integrates a set of advanced technologies to create good quality videos with less data rates.
,QWHJUDWLQJ6\VWHPVWR(QKDQFH/HDUQLQJ(QYLURQPHQWVLQ$FDGHPLD $&DVH6WXG\DW8QLYHUVLW\RI%DUL Agostino Marengo, Michele Scalera, Nicola Convertini, Antonio Diego Albanese Statistical Sciences Department, Faculty of Economy, University of Bari Via C. Rosalba 53 – Bari ITALY {amarengo, mscalera, nconvertini, dalbanese}@dss.uniba.it
Abstract. In 2005, the Italian Ministry of the University, has granted a financing to the University of Bari for the planning and development of the project "Advanced services for e-learning in Puglia”. The research group has focused the necessary resources following a direct approach, integrating the goals determined for an academic environment with the fundamental criteria of the integration of “ICT tools” in higher education. The project has needed a careful evaluation of the relationship between quality, performances and costs. This paper shows the reasons of the project and the methodology used to fit the systems inside the Campus environment.
Taranto. Those classrooms are composed by PC clients and servers and the videoconferencing system that allows the didactic and operational interaction among the three distant centres and from any centre to other videoconferencing systems all around the world. In every classroom has been installed a wireless system based on 802.11b/g standard.
Keywords. e-learning, information systems, LMS, distance learning, multiconference. 1. Introduction The goal of the project it's been the creation of an "integrated system" [1] for the Distance Learning that, besides the access-points inside the structure of the Faculty, pits endowed with fit additional systems to the instant activation of distance learning classrooms inside remote centres (see Fig.1) that will ask for some courses (lifelong learning for the employees or some focused seminars) from the Faculty. The mobile systems [2] are carrying out an independence from the physical classroom, will allow preparing more classrooms contemporarily and, therefore, realizing courses also for small classes. In synthesis, the project has been divided in two different phases of progress. In the first phase, a number of multimedia didactic classrooms have been realized inside the Faculty, but not in the same place: some of them are located in Bari and the others inside the separated centres in the cities of Brindisi and
Fig. 1. Project scheme
The point of diamond of the project is the "Technical Centre for the Distance Learning" CTE-FaD, used for the development and the feeding of multimedia services as: - streaming on demand of the lessons made face2face in the classroom; - management of multiple sessions of videoconference; - editing of multimedia contents for the didactics; - development of all web-learning tools for the support to the traditional learning. In the second phase, some new “yards” have been built: - yard for the development of learning; - yard for the development of laboratories; - yard for the videoconferencing tools.
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2. The settled financing With a communication on July 21st 2003, the MIUR communicated to the University of Bari [6] to have admitted the project to a financing for an amount of € 982.560,00 with the requirement for the University to participate in the financing of the project in the 16,1% measure equal to € 158.192,00.
3. Project development phases As said, the project has been split in two phases. We can call First Phase as “technical” phase, because it was projected to provide some advanced systems inside Faculty buildings, to supply new methodologies in teaching and delivery support of knowledge. Second Phase will be the “yard” phase as it was projected to provide the fitting of existing systems with the aim to integrate them with new systems provided in the First Phase [13].
In the specific: - Multiservice router to connect the areas with RPV and university WAN; - Workgroup switch with VLAN support; - 1 Server for network management; - Access Point Wi-Fi 802.11b/g - Wireless Adapter 802.11b/g - 40 PC workstations; - Laser printers; - Projector with DLP technology; - Radio microphones; - Equalizer and amplifier; - Switcher–splitter SVGA; - Enhanced Videocamera; - Codec H320/H323 with videoconferencing inputs; - Software and antivirus licenses;
4.2. e-learning providing centre This centre is called “CTE-FaD” (see Fig. 3) and is composed by some different servers used for different multimedia and e-learning services.
4. The first phase – Technical phase The goals fixed in this phase have been concluded with the planning and building of a lot of new technical tools and environments, as mentioned behind.
4.1. Three multimedia classrooms These classrooms (see Fig. 2) are composed by 40 PC clients and 1 PC server each, connected in wireless and Fig. 3. Network scheme
Fig. 2. Multimedia classroom
provided by an integrated videoconferencing system; one of these three classrooms is located inside Faculty centre in Bari and the other two inside the separated Faculty centres in the cities of Brindisi and Taranto.
In the specific, the CTE-FaD has composed by: - Web server supporting the LMS – learning Management System; - Database Server; - Server Multiconference-Unit on H323 Protocol with gatekeeper functions to provide videoconferencing between 2 or more points over IP; - DNS and DHCP server; - Multiservice router to connect the centre with RPV and university WAN; - Laser color printer; - Firewall; - Proxy server;
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Multimedia and management software, as like as SQL server, MS Office, Antivirus, editing software, streaming providing software, etc. The Hardware and Software elements composing CTE-FaD are very dissimilar, because it’s necessary to provide different services to support different activities inside the Faculty environment [7]. Inside the CTE-FaD is built a “Multi Conference” Unit that allows the connection between 12 sites at 384Kbps or 24 sites at 128 Kbps on H323 IEEE standard. Videoconferencing and multi-conference tools can (see Fig. 4): - Consent the delivery of distance learning, allowing foreign students to participate to learning path, interact actively to the lecture held by the professor in a distant site. The professor makes his lecture in one of those technological areas and can have the constant control of his classes (the physical one and the distant one). - Consent meetings between different users (professors, students, etc), inside discussion groups that will have the need (necessity) to get some offered services using technological areas. - Share documents, files and images required during lectures or meetings. Videoconferencing has, today, a fundamental role, for example, to enrich learning/teaching efforts with lectures and seminars that are difficult to organize because of the distance and different time gap. Talking about the web server, connected with GARR network (Italian universities network) with a fixed IP address, it’s the server on which is installed the Learning Management System – LMS. LMS is a management system working with SCORM standard technology, allowing to trace students doing their own learning paths. Every significant content about courses and users will be saved inside the database system: this feature allows user to access their own learning paths from every computer connected online, without the need to download ad hoc software for clients and without cookies allowing. The user is totally delocalized and, just because of this, the access, anywhere and anytime, to user’s learning path and material will be much easy. Where LMS is a fundamental component for elearning, the virtual/collaborative class is the learning methodology that allows the interaction (above all in synchronous delivery) between
users: those are instruments that consent the communication using chat, shared whiteboards and videoconferencing. More, the software for collaborative learning can manage the asynchronous learning: forums, document repositories and so on. LMS installed is called Moodle (www.moodle.org) and it’s an Open Source software distributed under GPL 2.0 license. The Open Source LMS has been implemented with Macromedia Breeze [8] to easily convert audio, video and multimedia contents into Macromedia Flash standard, synchronize and deliver them in
Fig. 4. Multiconference scheme
streaming mode. More, it’s possible to produce contents starting from powerpoint slides. Macromedia Breeze Meeting Module allows the videoconference communication through web browser, offering everybody the tools for collaborative learning. In order to allow network streaming, meetings and online presentations, the project team has chose an Apple XServer, because it’s the best performing for this kind of services. QuickTime features and its integration with Leopard OS, are perfectly fitting the XServer’s software for the management of movies in streaming mode. In the specific, the movies made in H264 IEEE standard are managed natively for QuickTime Streaming Server both with MPEG-4 and 3GPP standars. Besides, the integration of the software "QTSS Publisher" in Mac OS X Server v10.4, allows the distribution of available contents on any average's players, compliant to the standard Mac and PC Windows, as well as on a variety of
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compliant devices as mobile phone and TV decoder. Finally, the Mac OS X, deriving from the core FreeBSD, allows the access to the networks without the necessity to use antivirus or advanced firewall. In such way the contents can quickly be saved on the streaming server or on the LMS for further editing before the integration inside Learning Objects managed by Macromedia Breeze.
second and true colour to 24 bit, without the use of expensive and bulky external equipments. The recording of movies is made, therefore, through compact devices built expressly to a mobile use.
4.3. Four mobile multimedia classrooms These classrooms (see Fig. 5) are composed of 10 notebooks based on Windows OS and 4 Apple Powerbook G4 working as servers with mission of interconnection, management of the traffic on the network, storage, conversion and dispatch of multimedia contents. The reason for acquiring the Powerbook G4 is the necessity to save contents through mobile devices which can swiftly be integrated inside the Learning Objects for the delivery of distance learning. In the specific, the notebook’s operating system Mac OS X Tiger prepares of: - Quick time 7, which integrates a set of advanced technologies to create good quality videos with less data rates. - The Standard H.264 supported by the applications allows: - The fine-pass coding, an “intelligent code” to get the best results to the desired bit rate; - The rapid coding, "single-pass", to create contents in draft, to respect deadlines and to codify “live” with QuickTime Broadcaster; - The VBR option, with the “peak control” for restricted data rate applications, as streaming and reproduction CD/DVD; - The tool for the frames’ rearrangement to represent the movie in more efficient way; - The “conversion 4x4” to reduce the noise, especially in the movies with a lot of details; The Apple Powerbooks G4, has been endowed with “Cam iSight”, with a sensor CCD of 1/4" with resolution to 640x480 (VGA). The opening of the objective of the webcam is F/2,8, a very high value. All this characteristics allow iSight to record in fluid full-motion and high quality to 30 frames a
Fig. 5. Mobile classroom
In the specific: - Multiservice router to connect the centre with RPV and university WAN; - Workgroup switch with VLAN support; - 1 Server/notebook for network management; - Access Point Wi-Fi 802.11b/g - Wireless Adapter 802.11b/g - 10 PC notebook, Centrino technology; - Software and antivirus licenses; - Portable Laser printers; - Projector with DLP technology;
4.4. First phase – the steps The project has been realized seeking out some critical steps, as we can see observing the Gantt image: - Investigation study (analysis) about the Faculty environment and clients (stakeholders); - Report on existing infrastructures and its measurement; - Executive project; - Purchase and installation of technological systems; - Realization of network infrastructure and technical validation of systems (looking at existing standards); - Start-up of services: e-learning, multimedia and learning objects production, streaming, etc. - Marketing and advertising; The end of this phase was up to May 31, 2006.
5. The second phase – Yard phase As the first phase (the technical one) have had the aim to realize a distributed environment to let Faculty delivery its learning/teaching with
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enhanced ICT tools, the second phase (the yard one) was projected looking at the existing systems (inside the three Faculty’s centres) to realize an integration between old systems, already used in the Faculty since years, and new (made in 1st phase) enhanced systems. To do this, the yard phase has considered some specific “Yards” looking at the learning/teaching improvement and the best employment of Faculty systems and facilities: - Yard for the development of learning: some classes have been converted in a dynamic didactic environment as they have been implemented with specific systems for the fruition of digital contents/learning objects and through the use of some electronic enhanced blackboards, that are enjoyable and simply to use, with the aim to stimulate the interest by the students and transform every single lecture into a cooperatively learning experience with an high level of interactivity. With these tools, the images are shared using a related software and are managed by the professor using specific tablets and electronic optical pens. Electronic blackboards allow to: - Control software tools from native PC using optical pens used in spite of the simple mouse; - Make notes on images shared with the class on the projected area on the wall, simply writing in a natural way; - Import every image the professor needs from the Campus network or Internet; - Digit text on the images using a virtual keyboard; - Save, print and send by e-mail notes and drafts. - Yard for the development of laboratories: inside this yard, the project group has compared the hardware and software technologies to international qualitative standards, looking at the inner features of each laboratory (informatics labs, languages labs, etc). In this yard has been provided a so called “didactic software” that allows professor to: - Show, to the class, images and document from his own notebook monitor; - Control student work while he’s using the PC inside the class;
- Distribute and recover directly files and documents; - Manage help calls from working students. This way, professors can control in every moment what’s happening on each PC on the class network and, also, control the class in a much efficient way, without leaving his own desk. - Yard for the videoconferencing tools: with the intent to promote a better use of multi-conference systems installed during the “Technical phase”, in this yard have been projected and built three more technical areas with videoconferencing systems and streaming servers. The goal was to “move ideas and not people” with the necessity to have a continuous and clear audio signal and the possibility to share documents and files. This yard is fully integrated with the “Multi Conference” Unit built inside the CTE-FaD.
5.1. Second Phase - The steps With the aim to reach, efficiently and efficaciously, the goals of this phase, the project team have divided the phase in six steps: 1. Analysis of the needs; 2. Executive project; 3. Acquisition of systems; 4. Realization of technological yard; 5. Verification of yards; 6. Start-up of the delivered services.
6. Conclusions With this project the Faculty of Economy reaches a notably advanced technological level that allows, both, the professors, to delivery lectures and learning paths using a fitting multimedia support, and the students of get useful services to enrich their skills and learning opportunities.
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