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© 2005 ICECE05, International Conference on Engineering and Computer Education

MAKING GOOD USE OF AULAWEB IN COMPUTER SCIENCE LEARNINGTEACHING Ángel García-Beltrán1, Raquel Martínez2, José-Alberto Jaén3, Santiago Tapia4, José-María Arranz5 Abstract ⎯ The main purpose of this work is to describe the use of a web-based training environment as a facility to assist undergraduate students of engineering to learn computer science subjects and to practice computer programming techniques. Furthermore, this paper presents the pedagogical methodology and the results drawn from this experience. AulaWeb is a WWW-based interactive elearning system which assists students/teachers to learn/teach courses. The system helps students to learn the course content, to deliver practice exercises and to do selfassessment exercises and, furthermore, provides teachers with the possibility of publishing content, creating and configuring exercises and tracking student learning progress. Students and teachers only need a computer connected to the Internet and a WWW browser in order to take advantage of all the application functions. The system architecture, the graphic user interface design and an online help system eases user interaction with the system.

The AulaWeb system is presented at the beginning of this paper; the rest of the paper describes its use in support of traditional instructional methods in some subjects taught in the Computer Science Department of the ETSII-UPM, by clearly indicating the initial objective, the procedure adopted, and the conclusions drawn from this experience.

Index Terms ⎯ blended learning, interactive learning environments, teaching/learning strategies, programming and programming languages. INTRODUCTION

Many authors report on the use of different web-based systems to help not only in distance courses but also in traditional and semi-presential ones [1]-[6]. AulaWeb is a web-based, interactive e-learning system which assists students/teachers to learn/teach subjects and courses of any kind. The whole system interactivity, based on a clientserver arquitecture, is carried out by means of a web server and a computer connected to the Internet with a web browser [7]. This innovative web-based tool has been developed by the Computer Science Department of the Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros Industriales of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and has been installed in seventeen faculties in this University, where it has been used by more than twenty thousand engineering students and teachers at the UPM [8] for the last six years (since 1999). During the last term, the AulaWeb server at the ETSII-UPM attended to 3.000 registered users (students and tutors) and 700 courses and had more than 350.000 hits. Figure 1 shows the home page of the ETSII-UPM AulaWeb server. 1

FIGURE. 1 AULAWEB-ETSII SERVER HOME PAGE.

AulaWeb highlights The system helps students to receive course content, deliver practice exercises and do self-assessment exercises. Furthermore, the application provides teachers with the possibility of publishing content, creating and configuring exercises and tracking the student learning progress. There is also a System Administrator to carry out user management and administrative tasks. The system architecture, the graphic user interface design and an on-line help system make help the user interact with the system. The system includes a password authentication for all the three kinds of

Ángel García-Beltrán, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, ETSI Industriales, C/José Gutiérrez Abascal, 2, 28006, Madrid, Spain, [email protected] Raquel Martínez, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, ETSI Industriales, C/José Gutiérrez Abascal, 2, 28006, Madrid, Spain, [email protected] 3 José-Alberto Jaén, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, ETSI Industriales, C/José Gutiérrez Abascal, 2, 28006, Madrid, Spain, [email protected] 4 Santiago Tapia, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, ETSI Industriales, C/José Gutiérrez Abascal, 2, 28006, Madrid, Spain, [email protected] 5 José-María Arranz, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, ETSI Industriales, C/José Gutiérrez Abascal, 2, 28006, Madrid, Spain, [email protected] 2

users or profiles: system administrator, teachers or tutors and students. The System Administrator Role This role is played by the Academic Chief or Secretary of the faculty. The System Administrator user interface has an specific graphic design (light green background) and the following features: • Easy graphic user interface (GUI) and no programming required. • Secure and personalised access to information and services (includes remote access tools and password authentication). • Careers, courses and subjects management. • Content reporting. • Users, teachers and students, management with streamlining of administrative procedures such as enrolment, registration and search processes. • Statistical processing of access data.

• • • •

• • • •

On-line graphic assistance to publish adaptable content including standard SCORM specification. Content downloading report. On-line homework collection and delivery system. Flexible generation and configuration of self-assessment exercises with random and/or multimedia questions with different types of answers (true/false, single/multiple choice, numerical -integer or real-, string, variable data values, programming code...). Analysing and tracking tools (includes student progress tracking). Asynchronous and syncronous communication tools (chat room, forum, frequently asked questions, flash news…). Electronic survey configuration. Statistical processing of access data.

FIGURE. 3 TEACHER-TUTOR INTERFACE.

The Student

FIGURE. 2 SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR INTERFACE.

The Teacher/Tutor The Teacher or Tutor (and also the Course developer) user interface also has a specific graphic design (beige background) and the following features: • Easy GUI and no programming required. • Secure and personalised access to information and services (password authentication). • Course content management (includes syllabus, course planning, integration of existing multimedia material, support tools, creation of quizzes, tests and surveys…).

The student user interface has a specific graphic design (light blue background) and the following features: • Easy GUI and no programming required. • Secure and personalised access to information and services (password authentication). • Course content access: syllabus, course multimedia content, documentation, references, links, timetable, calendar, previous exams and problems and solutions. • Content downloading and search facilities. • On-line homework collection and delivery system. • Self-assessment system (includes tests to be scored online). • Asynchronous and syncronous communication tools (chat room, forum, frequently asked questions, flash news…). • Electronic survey completion. • Open library services.

there is a three week period of exams, followed straightaway by the second semester. At the beginning of June, the classes finish, and another three weeks of examinations starts. Several years ago, the teaching style for programming was fairly traditional, with lectures and laboratory work. Currently, AulaWeb is used as a support to the traditional instructional methods. It can become an interactive learning system helping students to learn the basic concepts of computer programming. Its interactive nature allows the large group of students of Computer Science courses not only to study the material and see programming code examples, but also to edit, compile and run programs written in TurboPascal, and to evaluate their level of learning. AULAWEB EXPLOITATION

FIGURE. 4 STUDENT INTERFACE.

COMPUTER SCIENCE SUBJECTS CONTEXT

Computer programming subjects might only make up a very small part of the first year programme of an engineering career. From the beginning of the first term, it is important that students develop confidence and competence in basic programming techniques, which will be required later in other engineering courses and/or their professional tasks. The Computer Science Department of the ETSII-UPM, with five tutors in all, teaches the following courses shown in Table 1 in several degree programmes (each credit corresponds to ten hours of traditional lectures). TABLE I Code 1016 2016 3808 4001 9005 9006 9013

COMPUTER SCIENCE COURSES Name Credits Term Computer Science (Ind. Eng.) 7.5 1º Computer Science (Ch. Eng.) 7.5 1º Object Oriented Programming 4.5 3º (Control and Electronics Eng.) Computer Science (Org. Eng.) 6 1º Information Technologies 3 1º-6º (Elective) C/C++ Programming (Elective) 3 1º-6º Java Programming (Elective) 3 1º-6º

Students 569 105 16

Tutors 5 1 1

4 34

1 1

31 32

1 1

There are seven Computer Science or Programming courses included in this web-tool. TurboPascal is taught in a first programming course (called Computer Science or Informática) to Industrial, Chemical and Industrial Organization Engineering students in the very first semester (term). The other courses (Object Oriented Programming, Information Technnologies, C/C++ Programming and Java Programming) are elective ones and have less students than Computer Science. The academic year begins with the first semester at the end of September and lasts until the end of January. After that,

During the 2004-05 academic period, AulaWeb exploitation consists of four main activities: theoretical and practical content, open discussion forums, self-assessment exercises and homework delivery. Each tutor can exploit these activities depending on the course methodology and its characteristics. For instance, the last one, self-assessment, may appear as the key activity in courses with a big number of students (i.e. Computer Science courses): a major challenge for tutors is to encourage the majority of students, whose primary interest is not computer programming, to engage actively in learning programming basics, and, in this way, a regular assessment system is fundamental. The web assisted assessment has made this possible with large groups of students and few lecturers. Theoretical and practical contents The content of each computer programming course is organized as a set of documents, structured into several chapters or sections of the course syllabus (Figure 5).

FIGURE. 5 THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL CONTENT (STUDENT INTERFACE).

These documents include theoretical explanations, problems, exercises, exams, book references, external link images, diagrams as well as software tools and source programs, which can be edited, compiled and executed by the corresponding programming environment. They can be published in any electronic format: HTML format, PDF, Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint, ZIP, JPEG, GIF, simple text, EXE, etc. There is an online assistant in order to help the teacher to add or update content. Open discussion forums

TurboPascal code answers (Figure 7) and questions with randomly generated wording. The self-assessment module is based on a questions database, with a friendly and easy-touse interface for adding and updating questions. The students can configure an exercise depending on the number and level of difficulty of questions and the syllabus chapters. Tutors can also configure exercises for a student or a group of students. The student can interrupt and postpone the end of the exercise at any time, in order to revise the required knowledge. After that, the student can carry on with the exercise.

This activity can facilitate the interchange of ideas among teachers and students, who can publish news and express their own ideas, doubts and comments, and ask or answer questions posed by other students or by the tutor (Figure 6). If necessary the tutor can remove the unsuitable discussion topics.

FIGURE. 7 FIGURE. 6 1016-COMPUTER SCIENCE COURSE FORUM (TUTOR INTERFACE).

Self-assessment Many authors report about different web assisted assessment tools [9]–[14] to develop a regular testing system with large groups of students and few lecturers: it would be impractical, tedious and slow to implement this kind of assessment without computers. These exercises are used to improve the performance of the students, focus their activities and so drive them to practice computer programming during the academic period. To encourage them, the test questions are similar to the final written examination, and the test results make a contribution (10%) to the subject grading, so these marks are meant to be motivate than to assess. Students can take each test more than once to improve their score. The questions have been distributed in chapters and can incorporate graphics and multimedia. There are also many types of questions (single choice, multiple choice, numeric input, text, etc) implemented in this tool. However, in the TurboPascal course, usage has been given preferentially to questions with

TURBOPASCAL CODE QUESTION EXAMPLE (STUDENT INTERFACE).

When finishing the exercise, the system allows the student the possibility of checking his exercise and comparing his/her answers to the correct solutions. Solution of the test provides the user's level at that moment and updates the values in the database. Evaluation of the exercise is, therefore, automatic, and the student and his/her teacher can access the results of the self-assessment activities. Therefore, the system allows the teacher to track the student’s progress during the course. Moreover, the system provides some statistical tools to compare the theoretical and experimental level of difficulty of the questions and to revise the first ones. Homework delivery The AulaWeb homework module makes not only the publishing of the homework wording by the tutors easy but also the delivery of the corresponding report by the students. Once the content of the student’s work has been revised, the teacher can mark it, and send the corresponding comments to the student. The tutor can also publish the solution to the

exercise and control the group of students that have completed it. This activity score can also contribute (10%) to the course final mark of the student.

the database, the number of proposed SAE by the tutors (Proposed) and the number of exercises done by the students (Done) for each course.

RESULTS

TABLE IV SUMMARY OF SELF-ASSESSMENT EXERCISES

The AulaWeb server has been working and attending to more than three thousand students and tutors each academic year without performance failures since 1999. In order to avoid this kind of problems, during this period the server hardware has been improved twice and the application software has been continuously optimized. The results of the system exploitation in the Computer Science courses taught in the ETSII-UPM can be summarised with the following numbers: • 5 tutors and almost 800 students have used AulaWeb and taken advantage of its functionalities in 7 Computer Science courses at the ETSII-UPM. In the 1016Computer Science course alone, there were more than 31.000 hits by registered users. Average: more than 60 hits per user during the academic period. Table II specifies the corresponding hits for each course.

Code 1016 2016 3808 4001 9005 9006 9013





Hits 31491 4711 1098 34 1380 1070 828

600 educational contents for all the courses, including documentation, references and external links. Many of these resources were downloaded by more than 1000 users since they were published. Table III shows the total number of theoretical and practical contents of each course. TABLE III TOTAL NUMBER OF THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL CONTENTS

Code 1016 2016 3808 4001 9005 9006 9013



Name Computer Science (IE) Computer Science (CE) Object Oriented Programming (AE) Computer Science (OE) Information Technologies (E) C/C++ Programming (E) Java Programming (E)

Proposed 11 11 5 0 0 0 7

Done 7705 1216 212 0 0 0 108

115 participations (by students and tutors) in the course forums. Students were able to publish doubts and comments and ask or answer questions posed by other students, and tutors were able to publish news. Tutors did not need to erase any student’s participation. Table V specifies the total number of participations in the forum of each course. TABLE V Code 1016 2016 3808 4001 9005 9006 9013

STUDENTS AND TUTORS HITS DURING THE TERM

Name Computer Science (Industrial Eng.) Computer Science (Chemical Eng.) Object Oriented Programming (Aut. and Electr.) Computer Science (Organization Eng.) Information Technologies (Elective) C/C++ Programming (Elective) Java Programming (Elective)

Questions 826 826 121 826 10 10 143

FORUMS PARTICIPATION

TABLE II Code 1016 2016 3808 4001 9005 9006 9013

Name Computer Science (IE) Computer Science (CE) Object Oriented Programming (AE) Computer Science (OE) Information Technologies (E) C/C++ Programming (E) Java Programming (E)

Total 141 141 54 141 42 29 52



Name Computer Science (IE) Computer Science (CE) Object Oriented Programming (AE) Computer Science (OE) Information Technologies (E) C/C++ Programming (E) Java Programming (E)

Participations 53 16 30 1 12 1 2

Students completed 220 questionnaires in AulaWeb, providing anonymous and very interesting information and feedback about the course and the methodology. Ease of use, flexibility and instant feedback were seen as one of the major benefits. Although primary interest of many students was not computing programming, according to the questionnaires results, 92% of students used to employ web-browser before the first year course beginning, 97% of them enjoyed using AulaWeb and 90% of them thought that AulaWeb is very useful. On the other hand, many students had problems with their Internet connection, particularly on the day before the test deadline and also using certain ADSL connections with TurboPascal code questions. Overall comments were positive, so much so that the majority would be pleased if a similar system were used in other courses.

CONCLUSIONS 2762 questions in the course database. Many of them were selected over 3000 times to take part in selfassessment exercises (SAE). In the 1016-Computer Science course alone, students did 7705 SAE configured by the corresponding tutors. Consequently, tutors avoided having to correct 73.735 questions during that term. Table IV shows the total number of questions in

The overwhelming conclusion is that this type of blended methodologies is generally viewed positively by students. Academic staff acceptance is also overwhelmingly positive, showing that not only the system is very easy to manage but also has a very intuitive interface and gives very useful feedback to students.

AulaWeb facilitates innovative and easy forms and tools to plan courses and evaluate students. Depending on the course characteristics tutors can choose to give more emphasis to a specific activity. For instance, a regular self-assessment system is more suitable in courses with a big number of students and homework delivery may fit better in courses with a little number of students. In public universities there is no chance to test the system with an only student. Moreover, some ideas and suggestions, obtained through the forums, were useful to identify topics which required a more detailed and clearer description, or to add new exercises to those courses which were particularly difficult to understand. This kind of web-based systems may help to reduce distance barriers not only for local or national students but also for other students from international institutions. For all these reasons it is worth developing a system like AulaWeb for, at least, two years, including application design, software implementation, content development and validation phases. Although in this type of projects, tutors and software developers must keep on working indefinitely to support online contents and activities and to update technologies.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT This work is partially funded by the Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros Industriales and the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. The authors would like to acknowledge the implementation support of A. Alonso, J. M. Arranz, P. Avendaño, M. Aza, J. A. Criado, F. de Ory, C. Engels, M. Fernández, P. García, J. Granado, T. Hernández, I. Iglesias, A. R. López, J. A. Martín, F. Mascato, D. Molina, L. M. Pabón, J. C. Pérez, A. Rodelgo, A. Valero, E. Villalar and C. Zoido.

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