Microsoft Academic Days

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Microsoft Academic Days Segrate 22-14 November
2004
Speaker Pierluigi RitrovatoResearch and
Technology Director
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Agenda

• The motivation
• Analysis of current learning practices and
  e-learning solutions
• Our vision of the Learning
• The innovation in IWT
• The Architecture
• The personalisation of the learning experience
• The adaptability of the platform for learning in
  a specific domain
• IWT Grid aware

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Analysis of Current Learning practices

• Based on the information transfer paradigm with
  focus on the content and the teacher
• Find the best way for presenting contents in
  order to transmit information to learners
• Contents are passive books, pictures, audio,
  etc.
• Passive role of the learner

• No individual support of the students learning
  process
• Everything is predetermined
• No possibility to change the process for
  accommodating specific needs

listen read imitate memorise rehearse recall
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Analysis of Current e-Learning practices

• Technology driven approach
• e-Learning becomes an activity in which teachers
  produce, and students consume, multimedia books
  on the Web
• Missing specific didactical models
• Not any support of pedagogical aspects
• Suppose that the cognitive transfer occurs
  without evaluating the effectiveness

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Analysis of Current e-Learning practices

• Inappropriate use of technology
• Available solutions supports actively the
  contents management only
• Finds its perfect technical mirror in the Web
  page oriented approach
• Personalisation and individualisation of the
  learning path is a myth
• Solutions are closed and difficult to integrate

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How we conceive the Learning
There is a common thread in the development of
our understanding of learning

• The learner as active agent in the learning
  process
• Knowledge construction through conversations,
  collaborations and direct experience in a social
  context

• Learners need to be
• engaged in goal-oriented tasks
• practising skills
• exploring and experimenting
• using feedback to adapt what they do
• discussing what they do
• reflecting on what happens
• articulating what happens

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How we conceive the Learning

• We are moving our attention from a strictly
  concept oriented teaching to user centred
  learning
• the past the focus was on finding better ways
  for presenting concepts to learners
• The present recognised the learner role and they
  active participation in the process
• The future more emphasis on learning as a
  potential side effect of interactions and
  conversations, experiences and social reflections
  on them, also in Virtual Communities

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How we conceive the Learning

• the focus will be on a constructivist learning
  theory, with a socio-cultural and situational
  approach
• Confuciuss dictum Tell me and I will forget.
  Show me, and I may remember. Involve me and I
  will understand!
• It is important to define a model that considers
  in a unified way the characteristics of the
  learning (i.e. active, situated, collaborative)
• "Situations Theory of Brousseau 1986 for
  Virtual Scientific Experiments for e-learning

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The technical solution?
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IWT overview

• Intelligent Web Teacher is an extensible
  application framework for building learning
  solutions
• software and technologies building blocks
• It doesnt exist a product that fit all need!
• It has been designed for supporting the emerging
  learning scenarios for knowledge constructions
• personalised learning path
• knowledge representation models
• any time, any place and any pace access to
  learning services
• Learning Objects reuse

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Whats Really New in IWT?

• The Architecture Extensibility and
  Customisability
• At a Portal Level
• At a Content Level

• At a Services level
• At a Device level

• Building Blocks for personalising the Learning
  Experience
• Indexing Content Management through Explicit
  Knowledge Modeling and Metadata
• Student model management
• Automatic Student Evaluation
• Automatic customisability of the Didactic
  Experience on real Students Needs and Learning
  Preferences

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IWT The Open Architecture

• Interoperable with domain specific external
  solutions
• New technologies based

• Extensible with new learning object and content
  types
• Extensible with new functionalities

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IWT Architecture details

• Document Drivers manage IWT resources as Passive
  Learning Object, Multiple Choice Test, Didactical
  Courses, etc
• Plug-In Drivers manage IWT services as CBR, ITS,
  Collaboration Services, etc
• We add resource types to IWT coding and
  integrating document drivers
• We add services to IWT coding and integrating
  plug-in and plug-in drivers

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IWT Architecture and technologies
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Document Driver life cycle
Requests a Driver for Resource X
Retrieves information about type of Resource X
Instantiates a suitable driver for Resource X
Builds Web GUI for delivery of Resource X
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Plug-in Driver life cycle
Retrieves information about engine X
Requests for service Y provided by engine X
Rendering
Instantiates plug-in driver for engine X
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Student Modeling

• Cognitive State
• Maintains students knowledge in relation to
  domain Concepts
• It is updated after each test activity
• Preferences
• Maintains students preferences in relation to
  significant pedagogical parameters like media,
  didactic approach, interactivity level, semantic
  density, difficulty etc.
• It is updated after each sequence of testing
  activities

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Knowledge Modelling A Sample Ontology
Third Level
MT1
MT2
MT3
MT4
MT5
MT6
Second Level
LO1
LO2
LO3
LO4
LO5
LO6
First Level
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Personalised Learning path creation

• The teacher fixes target concepts
• IWT creates learning path (the sequence of
  concepts) removing what the student knows
• IWT creates the course (the sequence of
  resources) respecting their learning preferences

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Whats Really New in IWT?

• IWT Domain Platforms
• They offer resources and services to facilitate
  e-learning in a specific domain
• Available Domain Platforms
• Domain Platform for Simulation and Virtual
  Scientific Experiments integrates simulation
  environments and 2D and 3D rendering engines
• Domain Platform for Mathematics and Science
  integrates numeric and symbolic computation
  engines

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IWT Domain Platforms
Mathematical Analysis Exercise
Examples of usage of IWT Domain Platforms
Simulation Viewer
Simulation models
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IWT Resources and Services MS ConferenceXP
integration

• Live material is stored and assembled in a
  learning object REUSABLE in synchronous events

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ConferenceXP integration in IWT the idea
To integrate into a Learning Object(CXPLesson)
resources created by ConferenceXP during a live
lesson
This Learning Object could be included together
with other resources within a course delivered by
the platform
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ConferenceXP Integration in IWTLesson delivery
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IWT Device Independence
Extensibiliy and Customisability
Examples of access through different devices
Smart Phones
Handhelds
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IWT Grid-Aware

• What it is?
• It is an extensible, open, distributed and
  service oriented framework for building learning
  solutions
• It is compliant with the Open Grid Service
  Architecture (OGSA) and based upon the Web
  Services Resource Framework (WSRF) infrastructure
• Why IWT Grid-Aware?
• It could be a fundamental component for the
  implementation of a learning paradigm shift where
• learning is a social activity consumed in
  communications and collaborations based dynamic
  Virtual Communities
• learners, through direct experiences, create and
  share their knowledge in a contextualised and
  personalised way
• Services and resources can be selected and
  provided on the basis of their characteristics
  and taking into account quality aspects
• Openness and standards of the OGSA model allow an
  easy integration of services and contents (no
  need for plug-in mechanism)
• Improvement of scalability, computational power,
  storage capabilities,

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IWT Grid-Aware - Architecture
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IWT Grid-Aware Key aspects of refactoring of
each layer 1/3

• Data layer
• two OGSA Data Services (DS) to virtualize the two
  storage mechanisms of IWT
• DataBase DS to virtualize the IWT DB
• Repository DS to virtualize the Object Repository
• Based on recommendations of the OGSA-DAIS WG
• Infrastructure layer
• composed by two sets of services
• IWT Base services providing the functionalities
  of IWT
• Content management, accounting and group,
  resource and permission, user profile,
• Core OGSA Services providing functionalities to
  manage a VO
• Service and resource location, dynamic
  instantiation, service compositions,
• Both the sets rely upon WS-Standards (WSDL, SOAP,
  WS-Addressing) and interfaces and behaviors
  specified by WSRF

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IWT Grid-Aware Key aspects of refactoring of
each layer 2/3

• Learning Services layer
• provides some services specific for the learning
  domain (e.g. LIA and CBR) that rely upon the
  functionalities of Infrastructure and Data layers
• provides services to completely manage a
  particular type of resources more or less complex
  such as learning object (LO), courses, etc..
  These services are named Drivers
• main features of a Driver
• transient and stateful ? implementing the
  interfaces and behaviors of WSRF
• able to generate events ? implementing the
  interfaces and behaviors of WS-Notification
• able to produce GUI ? implementing the behaviors
  of Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP)
• two kinds of Driver
• Simple Driver to manage simple resources (e.g.
  passive LO)
• Composed Drivers to manage aggregated resources
  (e.g. a course, that is aggregation of passive
  LOs)
• obtained by orchestration of Simple Drivers
  acting on the atomic resources

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IWT Grid-Aware Key aspects of refactoring of
each layer 3/3

• Application layer
• No substantial changes
• redesign of the IWT Portal to allow aggregation
  of the GUIs produced by the Drivers ?
  implementing the behaviors of WSRP Consumer
• Security
• managed in all the architectures layers
• Single Sign On (SSO)
• secure communication among the services based on
  VO policies
• adoption of WS-Security

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Contacts and Further Info
Info About this Talk ritrovato_at_crmpa.unisa.it
Info about IWTwww.momanet.it/iwt miranda_at_momane
t.it
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How we conceive the Learning

• We dont reject the traditional information
  transfer approach
• Passive activities
• It Needs to be complemented with active
  activities facilitating knowledge construction
• Decide on actions needed to achieve a given goal
• Reflect on the feedback on their actions
• Adapt their actions on the basis of reflection
• Experiment to achieve a goal
• Discuss what they are doing
• Articulate their understanding of what is
  happening

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Resources and services in IWT

• IWT Resource
• Abstraction for content (atomic) or experience
  (workflow)
• Managed by document drivers
• Examples doc, audio file, course, etc.
• IWT Service
• Abstraction for Infrastructure/Additional/Applicat
  ion services
• Managed by base services, plug-in and plug-in
  drivers
• Examples messaging, math-engine, chat, forum,
  videoconference etc.