interactive self study, participation and threaded bill board conferences and
sharing of documents. The virtual college is run primarily in a local network
environment in order easily to monitor and control the students and technology.
Then, when there are several countries participate, each sites are connected by
the JAMES (Joint ATM Experiment on European Services) broadband network. 3.3.3
ACTS Project AC052 (RACE Project Report) This is a big project on
Tele-education. It covers the whole aspects that should be taken into
consideration for implementing Tele-education in Europe such as service aspects,
management aspects, network architecture, etc. In this project, there are
several trials have been done in order to obtain an effective Tele-education
system. The details of this will be discussed later throughout this report. 4.0
CONSIDERATIONS It is not easy to find materials or any papers reporting the
architecture of Tele-education. Most of the materials found are basically
discussing about the general idea on what Tele-education system is, for example
some papers discuss about the general system of a Tele-education service
offered, its advantages over current educational environment, etc. However, I
managed to find a very interesting material discussing about Tele-education as a
whole, that is the ACTS Project AC052 (RACE Report Project). Therefore, I choose
this report as my main reference in doing my study on Tele-education overall
system description covering the architecture. There are basically five main
topics that are going to be discussed in quite detail regarding the
Tele-education as a whole in this report. These main topics are: ·
Tele-education service · Tele-education content · Network
architecture of Tele-education system · Performance of Tele-education
service · Operation and management of Tele-education service 4.1
Tele-education Service The multimedia tele-service provides both core and
management services. The multimedia tele-services are briefly described as
Video/audio conferencing service, which based on the MBONE (Multicast Backbone)
tools VIC (video conferencing) and RAT (audio conferencing). Hypermedia service
allows access to be provided to hypermedia information stored on a WWW server.
The WebStore service is a managed WWW based multimedia document store, which
allows users to store and retrieve arbitrary documents (text, video, audio,
etc.), using the well-known interface of the WWW. The management of the WebStore
includes subscription, accounting and access control. A mapping between the
learning forms and the multimedia teleservices has resulted in a list of four
basic paradigms: a) Self-study · Individual work with web based course
material including exercises and discovery/reference search. · This
paradigm is supported by the hypermedia and WebStore services. b) Lecture
· Teacher to class presentation. · Supported by the conferencing
and hypermedia services. c) Group work · Discussions, exercises or
project work performed by the students in groups. This paradigm can also include
shared discovery/reference search. · It is supported by conferencing,
hypermedia, and WebStore services. d) Consultation · Student to tutor
consultation · Supported by video/audio conferencing and hypermedia
services. In order to support these four paradigms the multimedia services are
integrated into a Tele-educational Services (TES) which provides both the core
service and the management service functionality. The core Tele-educational
service provides two user interfaces, one for the teacher and one for the
students. In Tele-educational service, each course, presented as part of
Tele-educational service, would involve the rendering and seamless integration
of audio, text, graphics/bitmaps and appropriate video segments, to suit the
presentation of the course material. An educational service would also
facilitate the interaction of course participants with one another in class
discussions, as well as with the course tutor. In this way, a course tutor can
guide debates on issues arising from course material and allow participants to
exchange views and share experience. This interaction is very important, as
participants need to be encouraged to learn both from the tutored course as well
as from each other’s practical experience. This forum of discussion also
supports the tutor in assessing feedback from the participants concerning the
comprehension, benefit and effectiveness of a course for participants. The
educational service could also facilitate access to simulation environments and
‘live systems’, which are parts of the participant’s course material. For
example, it could provide access to specific commercial database information,
which would be part of a Database Modeling course. In this way, access may be
gained to systems and information, which would otherwise not be available on the
participant’s site. Course could be taken when the participant’s work schedules
permitted. Similarly, participant/participant interaction could be scheduled
flexibly. An educational service can be seen as incorporating several
interaction (tele-services) and course presentation mechanism, for example,
multimedia presentation tools conferencing, e-mail or notice board systems. The
following is an example of service layer used in the ACTS Project AC052: Figure
2 : Service Layer In the ACTS Project AC052, there are two Tele-educational
courses offered as a trial of the management service. These courses are "
An Introduction to ATM " and " An Introduction to Relational Databases
and SQL ". 4.1.1 An Introduction to ATM The course includes both
synchronous and asynchronous delivery methods. The duration of the course is
three to four days with approximately three hours of teaching and studying each
day. The course consists of five lectures, three self study modules and three
group exercises with a follow-up discussion of the results. The different
modules and modes of the course are conducted in a Tele-educational environment
which includes course outline information, a database of participants with
pictures and CVs, a WWW billboard supporting off-line discussions, access to a
WebStore and a tea-room which participants can visit for informal chats. The
lectures are performed by using video/audio conference tools. A system was used
to show slides on the participants web-browsers. The self study modules
contained web pages with information to read and small built-in exercises. The
group exercises consist of a number of questions to be answered by the group and
returned to the teacher for correction afterwards. When the teacher has
corrected the answers they are discussed in a conference with all the
participants. In the first trial a shared editor was introduced for use in group
exercises. The shared editor is a tool for synchronous collaboration on smaller
texts, and is meant to complement the chat and whiteboard tools used in earlier
trials. An illustration of the new shared editor can be found below. In the
second trial, a new floorcontrol-system for use during lectures as well as a
complete new graphical design of the virtual learning environment was tested.
The floorcontrol system was used by the teacher during lectures, to determine
which students wanted to ask a question, and to mute or unmute the microphones
and video cameras accordingly. A new graphical design of the User Interface (UI)
was introduced, in an attempt to create an even more homogenous UI. The
floorplan metaphore was kept, but new images and controls where implemented
throughout the environment. 4.1.2 An Introduction to Relational Databases and
SQL This course covered the theoretical principles of relational database
technology as well as supporting the hands-on skills of using relational
database language (SQL). Students took the course over a three day period, for
two hours each day. At the beginning of the course a one hour lecture outlined
the objectives of the course and provided an introduction to the topics. The
educational content comprised of text, graphics, and animation and was divided
into four sections, consisting of a total of twenty one modules (a module
typically being 1-5 pages). The course was made available via the Prospect
Tele-educational environment. On accessing the course, a separate courseware
browser window was opened, called the Virtual Student Desktop (VSD). All student
interactions with the courseware are facilitated via this VSD. The
Tele-educational environment is also accessible by the student for conferencing
and synchronous interaction. The VSD is rendered as a set of WWW windows,
frames, tool bar and icons. All native WWW browser buttons are suppressed
(hidden) so as not to distract the user from the main goal of education. A tool
bar specially designed for educational use is provided by the VSD at the bottom
of the screen. From this tool bar the student is able to contact tutors or
fellow students (asynchronously), access external systems, as well as navigate
and interact with the educational course material. Figure 3 illustrates a page
from a module in the course, and shows the educational toolbar at the bottom of
the screen and an index of the topics dealt with by this particular module in
the course on the left hand side of the screen. Figure 3 : page from module in
the course Overall the course comprised several different types of information:
Administrative (i.e. how to use the course etc.); A database of (self contained)
modules; Indexes or Roadmaps of specific courses through various modules;
Evaluation Forms and a Case Study. The roadmaps were important as the modules
can be combined in several ways to satisfy the different requirements for
different student objectives. Each roadmap corresponds to different learning
objectives of the RDBMS course. Thus the roadmaps provide a means of re-using
existing modules with as little redundancy as possible of educational material
and administrative overhead. A significant feature of the system was to provide
direct access to a real ?commercial? RDBMS via the same interface as the
educational course. The relational DBMS is seamlessly integrated into the
student educational desktop. Thus the tool bar offered by the VSD contains an
icon which allows students to issue SQL queries on a live database. The idea of
this is to deliberately blur the distinction between the educational environment
and the ?target? systems. This encourages students to ?try out? various
parts of the course before attempting a larger project. Another feature was the
ability of the student to store references to distinct locations in the course
material (bookmarks). Traditionally these are stored locally on the student?s
machine. However this has disadvantages as students rarely use the same machine
all the time. The VSD allows such bookmarks to be stored within the educational
service and are thus (privately) accessible to an individual student at any
time. Also if the student has logged off the course and logs back on, the VSD
allows him/her the ability to resume at his/her most recent position or restart
at the beginning. Various forms of on-line tutorials are embedded into the
course. ?True or False? and ?Multiple Choice Questions? are supported,
with automatic correction and notification of marks to the student. Form based
(short unstructured text style) answers are also facilitated in some tutorials.
In these cases the student answers are automatically delivered to course tutors
for subsequent correction. Also integrated into the course are evaluation forms
which, when completed, are automatically submitted and stored for later analysis
by course tutors. The VSD provides buttons to contact other class members or to
seek tutor assistance. Again, this is offered via WWW forms and integrated
transparently with an email delivery system. 4.2 Tele-education Content There
are several modes of educational interaction, which could be supported by a
virtual theatre/study room. These would include lecture presentation, course
material presentation and browsing, self-study, group work (shared
application/work, class discussions, group presentations), consultation
(tutor/participant, participant/participant), tutorial sessions, virtual coffee
room/virtual lounge, and continuous assessment. There are also some other form
of learning that have been identified. These forms of learning are: ·
Self learning · delivery of formatted courses material for students own
study · Lecture presentation · a one-to-many presentation by the
tutor of course or organizational material. · Exercises · the
facility to perform exercises either in groups or individually · Project
work · the development of sizeable projects using software outside the
teaching environment. · Discovery/Reference research · ability to
locate and access background or supplemental learning material ·
Seminar/Class discussion groups · many-to-many communication between
participants. · Consultation · private one-to-one communication
between participants. There is some overtap between these learning forms. For
example, exercises, project work, discovery/reference search can be part of the
self-learning form, but all of learning forms are listed here for completeness.
It has been pointed out that not only should the different modes of teaching be
supported in the Tele-educational environment but also the different styles of
learning adopted by the students need to be supported. So for instance students
who like to annotate their work or their course material should be facilitated
in doing so. This is very much in the spirit of hypertext origins of the WWW.
Another point raised is that multimedia activity in the virtual classroom should
be captured and associated with relevant course material. For instance, the
teachers comments on a particular slide could be captured with the slide in
question. Also the conversation of students working on group could also be
recorded and stored with the exercise. Course material could be presented as a
hyper-document with the participant capable of navigating through the document
or choosing the prescribed ordering of the presentation. In addition, the
participant could also be given access to the more traditional learning
material, for example, notes, books, etc. Course assignments could also be
electronically submitted to promote fast feedback on performance. An important
element of assignments and project work is the need to allow participants to
co-operate in groups. 4.3 Network Architecture of Tele-education System From the
application’s point of view, network operates as IP (Internet Protocol) network
routing both multicast and unicast IP packets. Connection from network level to
the Q-adapters managing the switches communicate via ISO stack over X.25 links,
but apart from this instances all network infrastructure is in support of IP
traffic. This network structure connects seven sites. The aim of the logical
network infrastructure is to provide stable network interconnections as well as
to be managed to some extent by the network management, and to provide a
working, broadband network infrastructure while also supporting an enterprise
model suitable for multi-domain environment. For the separate customer networks,
each sites posses of LANs of Ethernet, or mixed ATM/Ethernet LAN technologies.
For maximum efficiency of scarce international, broadband resources, only one
site in each countries (that taking part in Tele-education system) are
connected. The connection, internationally connected customer sites access the
public network ATM service via an ATM cross-connect (ATM XC) providing ATM
public network provider’s Point-of-Presence (POP) in each of relevant countries.
Each customer sites posses ATM Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) which is used
to interconnect ATM public network with local routers. For the connection within
the same country, it is performed via leased lines between routers at
internationally connected customer sites and sites not connected to ATM public
network provider. The ATM CPEs at internationally connected sites and routers at
all customer sites managed by VPN (Virtual Private Network) provider. It is
performed in concert with management of ATM public service by VPN provider to
provide Intranet style connectivity between hosts on customer site LANs. This