A MULTIPURPOSE ENVIRONMENT OF TYPE “VIRTUAL UNIVERSITY”

A MULTIPURPOSE ENVIRONMENT OF TYPE “VIRTUAL UNIVERSITY”

George At. Totkov, Elena P. Somova

The University of Plovdiv,

Department of Computer Science

Received 15.07.01; Cited 10.08.01

Abstract

Changed social and economical conditions are the main precondition for the development of distance education in Bulgaria. For the needs of this education in Bulgaria software Web-based environment of type “virtual university” in the spirit of Bulgarian traditions and conditions is developed. In this paper the concept “virtual university” is determined and the analysis of the participants in the process of distance education together with activities that characterizing them is done. On this basis the appropriate architecture and structure for this virtual environment is proposed. The main elements of the virtual environment are presented: subjects (student, teacher, author, administrator, visitor) and objects (learning program, learning course, learning material, learning test, library recourse, message from message board, message from forum, e-mail, group, etc.) and the relationships between them are explained. The characteristics of the five subsystems (information, test, communicational, author and administrative) that the environment proposed to its users together with different oportunities for access of the subjects to the components of the environment are examined.

Key words: distance education, virtual university, web-based environment

Introduction

Changed social and economical conditions are the main precondition for the development of distance education (DE) in Bulgaria. The development of information society puts new requirements to the educational system, in order to satisfy continuously changing and various needs of the working market. The new needs of the learners require giving an opportunity of continuous professional development, frequent retraining and obtaining of new specialities, mastering new technologies, education during one’s life, etc. For the needs of DE in Bulgaria software Web-based environment of type “virtual university” in the spirit of Bulgarian traditions and conditions is developed.

In this paper are represented main participants together with their activities in one environment of type “virtual university”. The architecture and the structure for this virtual environment are also given.

What is virtual university?

The concept “virtual university” [1, 2, 3, 4] is widely used in reference of many and various Web-based DE environments. Generalizing international experience, it is expediently to give the following definition for the concept “virtual university”:

Virtual university (VU) is a Web-based environment, which models the process of education.

The VU maintains all participants in the DE process, providing various opportunities for them to show their functional characteristics.

The VU through using the new information and communication technologies gives easy accessible friendly interface (multilingual site), different methods for online access to the necessary recourses and services, and communication between participants in different medias (text, audio and video).

Preliminary Analysis

The users of DE are learners with life status (place of residence, marital status, workers, disabled people, etc.) which do not allow them to choоse the traditional forms of education; learners who need training and retraining without breaking away from common life and work environment; specialists who need continuous professional education or new speciality; people who learn during their life (foreign languages, new technologies, hobby, etc); suspended and interrupted students from traditional education system; etc.

The centre of distance educational process is not the teacher, but the student. The student is motivated to determine by oneself – program, course and content of learning (what), time and place of studying (when and where), pace and way of studying (how), choice of support (who and how), used learning, information and communication recourses for one’s own needs (with what), etc.

In DE, students have a new role – they can not stay passive consumers of knowledge any more, they have to answer questions and to decide problems in the process of obtaining new knowledge; to learn through solving tasks and using large variety of learning resources; to present purposefully and share their ideas and opinions; to contact with other learners and share their experience; to organize, selfassess and control their work in the process of education, etc.

The students studying one course and supported by one teacher are organized in an administrative group.

The role of the teacher in the learning process is also changed: from source of information to tutor in education. The teacher motivates the student and carries out the education, putting the goals, formulating the tasks and discussing the problems with the learner; holds consultations and evaluates student’s progress; determines proper learning resources for each distant student, etc. Because of appearing of these new functional characteristics of the teacher, his duties are usually distributed between other participants in the process of carrying out of DE – the so called distance consultant, tutor and evaluator, as we all commonly call them teachers.

The author of the distance learning materials is a main and key figure in the process of organization of DE, and his choice is of great significance for the successful (or the unsuccessful) carrying out of education. That is why, a special place in DE is occupied by methodology and technologies for developing and producing materials and information learning resources based on different medias.

The learning information resources used in the process of DE, have to assume a number of functions of the teachers and consultants in the traditional forms of education – to orientate, motivate and intrigue distance students, to expand their knowledge and to offer proper and interesting forms of selfcontrol, to discuss eventual altered answers and to allow selfassessment of obtained progress in studying, to provide suitable help, etc.

The administrator is another key figure in the process of carrying out the DE. His or her role is to maintain the necessary information of serving all participants in DE.

The functionality of the virtual environment is determined from the activities of the participating subjects in it (Table 1).

Visitor

Access to common information

Student

Registration

Access to common information

Examining and downloading learning materials

Selftraining

Answering the questions for selftraining

Filling in examination tests

Communication with the teacher, administrator and other students

Participation at discussion forums

Sending tutor-marked assignment (TMA)

Requiring reports from administrator

Sending and reading messages on the message board

Using library recourses

Purchasing from bookshop

Teacher

Registration

Communication with the students and the administrator

Preparing examination tests

Assessing the students and writing the assessments in the data base (DB)

Organizing and leading discussion forums

Requiring reports from administrator

Sending and reading messages on the message board

Using library recourses

Author

Registration

Communication with administrator

Downloading the templates of learning materials

Filling in the templates of learning materials

Publishing learning materials

Republishing learning materials

Reading own learning materials

Using library recourses

Administrator

Registration of the DE subjects

Communication with students, authors and teachers

Support of the DB for all DE subjects

Support of the DB for all DE objects

Inserting information and advertisement about offering programs and courses

Preparing different DB report

Sending the reports to the teacher and the student

Organizing the students in a group

Determining the teacher of a given group

Inserting a new recourses in the library and the bookshop

Table 1. Activities of the DE subjects

Architecture of the VU

The elements of the virtual environment are divided in the following two groups:

Ø Subjects – student, teacher, author, administrator, visitor;

Ø Objects – common information recourses, learning program, learning course, learning material, learning test, library recourse, goods from bookstore, message from message board, message from forum, e-mail, group.

To design and develop the system of type virtual university, is necessary to analyze subjects and objects, and the relationship between them. Figure 1 illustrates the relationship between subjects in the virtual environment.

Figure 1. Relationship between subjects

Figure 2 shows the architecture of the VU together with the possible access of different subjects to the elements of the environment.

Considered environment gives to its users five subsystems: information, test, communicational, author and administrative.

Information Subsystem

For each category of subjects, the information subsystem gives common information for the VU (diplomas, staff, students, etc.); DE (the substance, the main means and methods for its holding); offered programs and courses; supporting means and tools for students.

The offered distance programs are the same as in conventional education – for the degrees specialist, bachelor, master, doctor, and for specialization and qualification. The necessary distance courses in the programs are compulsory, compulsory-chosen and free chosen. Each of them is presented with brief abstract. This courses in contrast to the conventional ones are much more flexible in means of place, time, resources and pace. The search of programs and courses in VU is automated by some criteria: name, themes, educational degree, price, etc.

To access the other information learning recourses and tools in VU, the user has to be necessarily registered by inputting certain personal information (name, address, tel., e-mail, etc.) and obtaining the user name and password from the administrator.

Two main kinds of learning information resources are used in the environment: learning material and test.

The learning materials are developed according new methodology, using a lot of medias (printed, online, audio and video materials, radio and television programs), giving students the opportunity to learn alone with them. After registration, students obtain the access to the course(s) learning materials, where they are enrolled. The materials can be examined online in the environment; or downloaded in Word doc format or html format. Searching for learning material is automated by key word, title or author. For every learning material is presented an opportunity for choice – to see all material or only its contents. For student’s facilitation, there is a glossary – for searching the information by given letter or concept and obtaining the definition of searched concept.

Mainly, for assessing the knowledge of distance students test system is used. Tests give a good basis for assessment and selfassessment of student knowledge from the teacher and from the students themselves by using the large variety of kinds of tests.

As additional helpful materials, distance students can use conventional and online library recources. Online library offers faster access to the library resources with opportunities of different kinds of searching (by kind of resource, author, title, year, ISBN, themes, language, for certain subject, location). Resources in the library are divided and accessed only for a particular group of users: student, teacher or author. Some of the materials can be written online, or downloaded and saved on personal computer. Online library gives the information about resources located in conventional libraries and links to the online resources located on other sites. The user can send an order for reservation of materials, which is processed from the administrator-librarian.

Figure 2. Architecture of the VU

The bookshop offers the students to buy goods about learning process on special prices with a discount. The search in the bookshop is designed through some different indexes: kind of goods and price.

A statistics for the users of VU is offered, it is about the offered programs and courses, the degree of usage of different methods and means in the education, etc.

Useful information for orientation in the Web-site of VU is the map of the site, which presents location of the main pages and links between them.

Like a helping tool, in the environment is offered a calendar, which except traditional information gives a notion about the most important events in the VU.

Test Subsystem

The examination in DE is carried out as face-to-face exam, by test or by developing TMAs. For achieving better results in the process of learning, as a part of this virtual environment is offered a test subsystem. The subsystem serves to the needs of the students and teachers, and maintains a large variety of test questions and tasks.

Teachers can automatically prepare examination tests and assess test results.

Students have the opportunity to fill in the tests and send them to the teacher for assessment or to selfassess by using the system, which send them back the mark and right answers with explanation what to write in order to correct their omissions from the learning material.

Communication Subsystem

Communication between different users is a key element in such environments. For example, a particularly important part of education is communication between students, who share ideas, discuss questions and reach by themselves the knowledge. The communication subsystem of the VU offers different ways of contact: asynchrony (e-mail, message board, traditional post, fax) or synchrony (phone call, text chat, audio conference, video conference, face-to-face meeting).

The talk in the forum (chat or conference) may tend exchanging opinions between students or can be lead by the teacher on a specific theme. Forums are designed to be online or offline. VU offers also a history (record) of carried out forums. The kinds of forums depend on the used media: chat (through text), audio conference (through exchanging voice messages), video conference (through using video image of participants).

The message board is the place in the environment, where every registered user can put a message, accessible for all users. The board serves for putting an announcement, time schedules of forums and face-to-face meetings, etc. Every message is shown with the name of the sender and the date of putting.

For traditional communication, the environment offers the necessary information: post address, tel., fax, etc.

Author Subsystem

Author Subsystem offers templates to authors of distance learning materials, which assists writing materials. Using templates, the author does not need to take care of the structure and format of the material. The environment offers templates for printed and online materials. Author has to write besides the main learning material, but also recommended recourses, discussion themes for students, TMAs, questions for selfassessment, exercises, reflection points, exemplary examination test, list with frequently asked questions, list with frequent errors, glossary with basic concepts in the learning material, etc.

Another facilitation for the authors is the opportunity to publish and republish learning materials from distance, from own computer through Internet in the DB of the Web environment. The learning materials in the DB are ensured with double protection: only authors of materials can correct them and this opportunity is given only for specified period of time.

Administrative Subsystem

Administration subsystem serves the needs of administrators. Registration of the VU users is realizated by giving the user names and passwords. The DB for each subject and object in the environment is maintained.

Another important activity is organizing the students in a group and determining their teacher. Administrators also prepare reports about students, teachers, programs, courses, etc. from DB information in the learning environment. The advertisement and marketing of offered programs and courses are also a duty of administrators.

Users of the VU

Representatives of typical target groups, which will use the developed Web-based environment of type VU, are: providers of DE (institutions, universities, companies, etc.) – for management and organization of distance process; distance students – for easier use of opportunities of intelligent educational systems, support and communication, also for navigation in available distance recourses; teachers – for creation of distance programs and teaching distantly using intelligent educational systems; developers of courses – for easier creation and edit of distance materials in different formats and medias; tutors – for each student’s participation in the training; consultants – for support of students (through e-mail, forums, etc.); evaluators – for carrying out assessment and testing distance students, etc.

References

Hoyer H., Virtual University: Challenge and Chance, Proceedings of the 1998 EDEN Conference, Volume 2, 329-333 p.

Jones D., A. Pritchard, The Virtual University: The Real Thing, Proceedings of the 1998 EDEN Conference, Volume 2, 351-354 p.

Malmi S., Finnish Virtual Open University, Proceedings of the 1998 EDEN Conference, Volume 2, 338-342 p.

Wagner E., Creating a Virtual University in a Traditional Environment, Proceedings of the 1998 EDEN Conference, Volume 2, 333-338 p.