Open Source Course Management Systems: The Need for Open Source Open Standard Angelito O. Carbonell Lorma Colleges San Fernando City, La Union, Philippines
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I. Summary Education continues to learn. Information technology is a great catalyst to these changes. The way of how students receive their lessons continue to change but the learning state is kept the same. Instructors are equipped with monitoring tools and gadgets rather than meter sticks and board erasers. The continuity of these changes contributes a lot to the developing environment in learning institutions. Schools must come up with viable tools and aides students would use and exploit not only on expensive books that at times are scarce in copies. Today, with the Internet lingering in almost all homes of learning students and online education is the next field in teachinglearning method, the selection of a course management system is vital. These course management system must serve a purpose of helping both faculty and students in improving teaching and learning as we knew from our four-walled classrooms. Robust information must be a quality where its access is limited to almost anything you would need in class to learn. With too many choices and too many companies offering differing features of their own “cooked” CMS released both in commercial and as open-source product, there is a need for a standard. Open source continue to lure system development toward a unified goal – let knowledge be shared and build the system to be of use for the public. Open-source system is a product of an open-source initiative. Code isn’t only the contribution to an open-source development, your comments and suggestions are a start. Towards a more controlled and better output of such CMS the need for an open-source-open-standard is undeniable. In this material, let’s venture to the roots of these CMS and its need for a well-accepted standard for the open-source community.
II. Introduction Learning challenges our daily lives as we move to a more technology-based living. From classroom lectures to a more sophisticated virtual learning experience. Learning from a distance have now bee drawn closer. Far-reached campuses have been driven nearer to our homes. Distance learning precedes from correspondence education that developed in the United States, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom during the mid 1800s. Home-study programs began in 1870s in the US [Horton]. Correspondence teaching-learning was one of the first form of distance learning. Education materials have been ushered “to those who lived in remote areas or worked jobs during school hours.” Flexibility have been an answer for those who care less about the schedules made for classroom education. “It also opened the doors of education to women, who could not enrol in male-only institutions, and to those whose physical handicaps prevented them from attending conventional schools”.
Despite o the complexity of the learning experience, “both resident and distance education are intended to provide students with valid, useful information that promotes learning” [Swan & Jackman, 2000]. Distance education had never been aimed at replacing the traditional setting but should be at least equal to how much learning have to be absorbed by the students. During World War II, military trainers experimented many techniques to train recruits to operate weapons and equipments. “These trainers discovered that audiovisual materials were effective, not just as aids to paper and classroom training, but also as the core method of training. This style of training, which uses film and audio-recordings along with richly illustrated training manuals, became known as audiovisual education” [Horton, p3]. As it had proven effective in classrooms, audiovisuals, have continued to stimulate and motivate learning experience of learners.
Web-based Training Several forms of computer-conveyed education preceded WBT. These forms all use computer systems to store and deliver educational lessons. These forms take various names, some are computer-aided instruction (CAI), computer-based education, computer-based instruction, and computer-based training (CBT). They will be referred in this text as one in context and principle. One of the most powerful features of computer-aided instruction is its capacity to individualize instruction to meet the specific needs of the learner. The use of CAI in education has burgeoned in recent years. Faced with increasing class sizes and heavier work loads, teachers are looking towards CAI as a means of supplementing classroom instruction. CAI software continues to improve in its ability to engage learners and provide realistic and stimulating learning environments [ROSS]. The limit of correspondence education was at the time being caught up by emerging technologies. The learning method was then channelled through courier mails, frequency receiver radios, telephone lines and printed media. “We have seen the gradual accumulation of invention upon invention. Then, with one critical development, the worlds truly shifted to a different place. The critical development behind this shift is the World Wide Web (WWW) and the infrastructure that makes the Web application possible is the global Internet” [Boettcher]. Since the offering of public access to the Internet drew a lot of interest in forth-coming developments. Beta testing and experimental researches have been exploited that much of it now are enormous to mention. Schools and colleges, primarily in the US regions, “adapted their teaching and learning activities to take advantage of the Web’s communication capabilities. [It is] believed that the Web supports the first truly innovative environments for teaching and learning since the introduction of books into classrooms”
[Boettcher]. The results were e-mail, file-transfer programs, newsgroups, and repositories of text documents. Some required highly technical skills to implement these things during the early days of the Internet. Sooner, the operations on the web have been easier. As the Web was then intended as a way that researchers share their academic papers over the Internet, instead of footnotes, researchers would insert hyperlinks to cited papers. The links would let other researchers easier access to the cited papers. To organize their pages, the creators of the Web defined a simple set of tags called HyperText Markup Language (HTML). Soon universities and private companies were creating programs called browsers to display HTML documents. Training materials were then experimentally presented in HTML documents that were viewable on Internet users’ browsers. As the Web quickly became a graphical user interface (GUI), these training materials where little more than paper pages on the computer screens. In the Philippines, such method of learning “is still an emerging phenomenon” (Khanser,2003). Some reasons cited for the slowness in the adoption and integration of e-learning in teaching and learning in the Philippines were: lack of awareness of the potential to enhance learning; prohibitive cost of Internet access; high investment on infrastructure; technical capabilities; and; management support. Conferences, consortiums and cooperatives are being formed and initiated to address this issue. Studies were then conducted to evaluate learning experiences both in traditional classroom settings and on WBT. Swan and Jackman’s findings (2000) have been almost the same in other studies that there exists no significant difference in grades for both distance learners and in-house students. Course Management Systems Over the past decade, Institutions of Higher Education have been increasingly keen to adopt various combinations of technicallyadvanced management systems to deal with the growing complexities of modern educational delivery. Other media were then included with HTML pages for motivational teaching students. Some also included alternatives for their teaching materials that can be downloaded to students’ desktop for faster and portable access to the materials. The use of HTML have been too limiting to the continued creativity of educators and the continued desire of learners to experience new endeavours. Sooner, more programming technology have been introduced for the Web and the Web browser. This continued to organization of learning materials for a more controlled learning environment. Further, this gave birth to system packages offering virtual learning environment and course management systems. “CMS emerged in response to an institutional need: how do we ‘make it easy’ for faculty to use the Web in instruction?... CMS looks like a mature market with immature products… Colleges and universities have made a commitment to a single product standard. But the products are young, the product category less then a decade old.” [Green,2004] With a lot of experimental systems being available, both commercial and not, standards have been swayed back and forth by the differing need of each institution.
III. VLE vs. LMS vs. CMS vs. Etc. It is easy to be confused with the differences of independently acclaimed definition of the terms: Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), Learning Management Systems (LMS), Course Management Systems (CMS), Learning Content Management Systems (LCMS), Academic Management Systems and more as to this writing. All together, in this text, they are considered and interchangeably used as one context. These applications and system builds are software that are built and used through the Internet or Local network that responds to a student-teacher communication in the course of learning and teaching experience. Moreover, this text does not reference each against or in contrast with one another. These are inclusive on the definition of Computer-Based Training (CBT). They will be used as a single context and as defined above. IV.
The need for standards Early attempts at WBT just dumped classroom materials online or let learners download and play existing materials or modules. Few of these lived up to their potential. With so many possibilities, ways are being conceptualized to address issues and concerns facing the new method of learning and teaching. Some of these constraints commonly encountered in physical classrooms are: (1) concept of classroom attendance; (2) physical presence of teachers and students; (3) concept of class schedules; (4) geographical distance; (5) concept of time; (6) physical boundaries; and (7) when and where to study. [Khanser,2003] Course management systems are concerned with what needed to be done to rework student management and learning management processes in terms of possible IT solutions. These were earlier perceived to improve learning quality, make student services more effective, reduce costs, maintain position in the internationalization of higher education, compete effectively for students, cater to the changing profile of the student base, service small multiple campuses or learning centers, and, collaborate effectively with other institutions. The monolithic CMS These monolithic CMS are the first generation of learning systems where tools and features are bundled into one package. There are no standards to disaggregate features and capabilities. Each contain any variation of the following: Grade Book; Chat Room; Quiz Authoring; Content Management; Discussion Board; Student Tracking; Assessment; Student Projects; and Grade Reporting. Each feature is packaged separately from another. Flexibility and customization only occur during setting it up. Interoperability between each module is scarcely available. The Functional Model One purpose of these CMS is to blur if not to eliminate the difference or boundary of the classroom experience with that of the online. During the early stages of such CMS, concerns from faculty, administration and students arises not only on the accessibility of the materials but also on the control and its possible tie-up with the centralized school system in place. An alternative approach to building a CMS is by building or acquiring best-of-breed components into one system. This model now integrates those modules into common functions. It now also involve interaction between each of the modules to a definitive method – not only on delivery but also on content
authoring, assembly, cataloguing, planning, profiling, and repository.
part of the article, he would like to include confidence as the fifth factor. Greene may still be agnostic to this day but not realizing the effect if these ideas – same ideas that made today’s IT world – a success in the field. In the Philippines, the pursuit for free education have been the favourite tagline of some politicians aspiring for next term’s public office. In such scenario, access to educational materials should be kept to at most the cheapest schools can afford. Additional investment in IT infrastructure are keeping students and parents to their feet in front of school buildings protesting the increase of tuition fees – the only source of payment to these infrastructures.
The learning environment is separated into: planning, registration, delivery environment, collaborative environment, and assessment. These modules interact with the learner profile manager in a consumer-producer process. The system helps students do their course planning, organize course materials, enable communication channels between students and faculty and formidable assessment methods. Learning materials are stored in a single content repository made by course developers, designers and facilitators. This enables collaboration and reuse of learning materials allowing a more open use of resources.
The rise of the open-standard-open-source movement is a manifestation of education and rightful training into practice. The more learning ideas or learned solutions shall not be kept only in shelves or banks but must be a proof of usefulness for the general public.
This model introduces external co-functional modules into the CMS. This may also required other systems to co-exists with the core system. At some point, data integrity and inter-operability of the different parts of the system is being sacrificed for the use of functional features.
Sakai’s initiative to an annual US$10,000 campus commitment for each of the partner institution is deteriorating the effort to promote the project. This amount may seem be less than the annual CMS licensing fees they shell out to commercial proprietary vendors, but the long term effect may now be traced. The Sakai will not invest much from the community but rather among partners.
The Layered Architecture Another approach to building with components is to define a layered architecture with domain specific application components that access common services and the network infrastructure through standard interfaces. This will now involve organization of the different layers in an application system: Application Layer, Application Services Layer; Common Services Layer; and Infrastructure Layer.
As quoted by Mark Samuels of VNUnet.com on the £62m UKEU project, Paul Leng, head of the KIT e-learning courses at the Univeristy of Liverpool, the “platform” is where the project “didn’t go along” [Samuels, 2004]. There are differing needs of each institution. They had not settled for some features that each most probably need. Some must have to agree to others in terms of implementation. “Major software developments always take up huge amounts of resource and a lot of time. In my view, it wasn't necessary to do that.”
The application layer is the component of the system that the users usually see and perceived to be the core part of the system. On top of it is the User Interface – users interact with the system through this interface. In a web-browser the user interface may come as buttons, links, forms, images and text. The largest chunk of the system is the Application Services layer. This provides interaction between the interface and the services and infrastructure layers of the system. These come as application services components and object classes. The common services layer are the common features we see from most monolithic systems aggregated to independent services. Educational Content Standards The Nomad research team has setup a Wi-Fi network on a Dublin university to investigate how wireless services affect group interaction (Sheriff, 2004). The evolution of another technology that might have relative impact to online learning would need certain standards during implementation. Each of these standards are set to identify ways and means of having all the techy gadgets to form a solid foundation. The Nomad Research team believes that carefully-designed technology can have a positive effect on the way people interact, particularly in developing social capital, or an individual’s sense of belonging in a group. V.
The open-standard-open-source approach Recently, the University of Michigan, Indiana University, MIT, Stanford and the UPortal have formed a consortium “to integrate and synchronize their considerable educational software into a pre-integrated collection of open source tools” (SAKAI). In his article at Syllabus Magazine, Greene (2004) presented the four factors that fuel the Open Source CMS activity/movement in higher education in relation to the Sakai project. These are (1) code, (2) control factor, (3) cash, (4) community. At the latter
VI.
Evaluation Carefully-designed technology is an output of good planning and implementation. Attaining this level of satisfaction for the learners and teachers may be derived from educational content standards. However, the success of the online course also depends on the delivery of the course. CMS standards are meant to enhance the teaching-learning experience of both teacher and student. Open source initiatives have proven ways to encourage further developments of systems both for commercial and noncommercial. These open source projects can be trimmed down to come out with more qualified course management systems by following an open-standard. Some institutions worked together to develop initial specifications, which they propose as e-learning standards. Some of these consortia are: IMS Global Learning Consortium, Aviation Industry CBT Committee (AICC), and, HR-XML Consortium, to name a few. These specifications will then be evaluated for validation testing by vendors and developing organizations. The SAKAI project promises an open-source-open-standard by the end of year 2005 through institutional partnering. It aims “to integrate and synchronize different educational software into a modular, pre-integrated collection of open source tools”.
VII. References Boettcher, J. V., et. al. (1999). Faculty Guide for Moving Teaching and Learning to the Web. League for Innovation in the Community College.
Samuels, Mark (2004). E-learning scheme ready for change. VNUnet.com. Retrieved March 15, 2004 from http://www.vnunet.com/Features/1153524 .
Green, Kenneth (2004). Sakai and the Four Cs of Open Source. Syllabus Magazine, March 1, 2004. Retrieved March 10, 2004 from http://www.syllabus.com/article.asp?id=9030 .
Sheriff, Lucy (2004). Students warm to Wi-Fi insteraction. The Register. Retrieved February 27, 2004 from http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/69/35853.html .
Horton, W. K. (2000). Designing Web-Based Training. Robert Ipsen. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.. USA.
Swan, M. K., & Jackman, D. H. (2000). Comparing the Success of Students Enrolled in Distance Education Courses vs. Face-to-Face Classrooms. The Journal of Technology Studies. Retrieved February 25, 2004 from http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JTS/Winter-Spring2000/swan.html
Khanser, M. A. (2003). Electronic Learning in the Philippines. Khanser Publishing House, Davao City, Philippines. Ross, J. L., & Schulz, R. (1999). Can computer-aided instruction accommodate all learners equally?. British Journal of Educational Technology.. Vol. 30 No. 1, 5-24.
SAKAI Project. http://www.sakaiproject.org/
