Automatic generation of pedagogical website structures by using IMS LD netUniversit

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Automatic generation of pedagogical website
structures by using IMS LDnetUniversité web
portalCEPIAH Project

• Ecaterina Pacurar Giacomini, PhilippeTrigano
• UMR CNRS 6599 Heudiasyc research laboratory,
• University of Technology of Compiègne, FRANCE

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Plan

• The CEPIAH project Context and Problem statement

• netUniversité Conception Framework

• netUniversité Presentation of the Prototype

• Conclusions and Perspectives

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Context and Problem statement (1)

• Origin of our work the CEPIAH project

• Our research concerns the development of a web
  portal designed to provide support in the
  creation of educational web sites based on
  pedagogical scenarios represented in IMS LD

• Our application is a tool that helps staff with
  no skills in web development to design their
  educational web sites

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Context and Problem statement(2)

• The origin of the CEPIAH project

• This research has its roots in the CEPIAH project
  (Design and Evaluation of Interactive Documents
  for Human Learning) developed within our research
  team.

• In this project we developed an interactive guide
  accessible on the web, composed of three modules
  Design help, Evaluation help and Predefined web
  sites models

• The main role of these three modules is to guide
  the users (teachers, pedagogical designer) who
  have web development skills Trigano Giacomini,
  2004.

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Context and Problem statement(3)

• Interviews with people involved in teaching
  within the UTC

• After a first validation of CEPIAH guide, we had
  a some discussions with teachers of various
  disciplines at the UTC. These helped us to
  understand their teaching practices their
  opinions regarding the software tools used in web
  development.

• Observations

• We observed that a majority of the teachers
  expressed a reserve in using these tools. This
  attitude was due, either to a lack of time
  necessary to develop online courses or a lack of
  technical skill (from a teaching and technical
  point of view).

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Context and Problem statement(4)

• New research line

• All these aspects led to the development of our
  interactive guide CEPIAH, an environment that
  assists the design of educational web sites
  (online courses) in order to support teachers who
  do not have web development skills

• netUniversité The new functionalities are
  integrated into a web portal, called
  netUniversité, as found in the CEPIAH guide.

• Environment for online courses assisted
  conception

• Based on the dynamic generation of course
  structures

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Plan

• Context and problematic

• netUniversité conception framework

• Dynamic generation

• netUniversité presentation of prototype

• Conclusions and perspectives

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netUniversité conception framework
Online course generator
Course basis
Edit Administrate
Navigator

• Use of IMS LD for the representation of
  pedagogical contents

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Plan

• Context and problematic

• Research goals

• netUniversity general background

• Dynamic generation

• Questionnaires design steps

• Knowledge based modelling

• netUniversity presentation of the prototype

• Conclusions and perspectives

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Questionnaires design steps Dynamic generation

• Pedagogical questionnaire (1)
• Our pedagogical questionnaire makes it possible
  for the user to dynamically choose the
  pedagogical elements that will be integrated in
  his or her educational Web site. This
  questionnaire is structured on three levels of
  granularity a question itself, its reformulation
  as well as an elaboration of this question.

• Analysis of 175 teaching websites from the point
  of view of the  course content (University of
  Technology of Compiègne)

• Bibliographic study related to the Instructional
  Theory Ch. Reigheluth, 1987, 1999.

• Interviews with people involved in teaching at
  UTC

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Questionnaires design steps Dynamic generation

• Pedagogical questionnaire (2)

• Specific type of pedagogical scenarios ?

• Classic scenario with a presentation of the
  theoretical concepts and solutions to exercises

• Problem solving scenario integrating an
  individual or collaborative work, with progression

• Project based learning   type of scenario,
  based on collaborative and/or an individual work

• This helped us to draw up the items in the
  pedagogical questionnaire related to the
  generation of structures

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Pedagogical questionnaire

• Example of question pedagogical questionnaire

• At the elaboration phase of the questionnaire, we
  present a short synthesis of the theoretical
  concepts of teaching and training, connected to
  this question. We also explain the results of a
  particular answer on the final course structure.

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Questionnaires design steps Dynamic generation

• Questionnaire regarding the graphic interface

• The analysis of 175 pedagogical websites from the
   graphical interface point of view enabled us
  to determine various types of possible
  interfaces. Several criteria are taken into
  account navigation starting from the menus, the
  shapes of the buttons of navigation within the
  various pages of the web site, the colors of the
  menus, the buttons, etc.

composition
choice
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Graphical interface questionnaire

• Starting from this typology we designed a
  questionnaire, called web site interface
  questionnaire, that facilitates the choice of the
  final web site GUI attributes.
• Example of question - questionnaire regarding the
  graphical issues

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Plan

• Context and problematic

• Research goals

• netUniversity general background

• Dynamic generation

• Questionnaires design steps

• Knowledge base modelling

• netUniversité presentation of the prototype

• Conclusions and perspectives

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Knowledge base modelling Dynamic generation

• Knowledge Base

• The problem of the complexity of the conditions
  used for the
• automatic generation lead us to a
  knowledge-based system.
• The number of entries (represented by the
  possibilities of
• response to the questionnaires) and the great
  number of pedagogical
• course structures obtained resulted in the
  development of a rules-
• based system.

• Content Rules, Facts, Responses to
  questionnaires

• Course Structure Generation

• use of  pedagogical bricks  represented in
  XML-IMS LD

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Knowledge base modelling Dynamic generation

• How are these structures created?

• Starting from the generated links (JESS facts)
  which are situated between the initial
  pedagogical models, the Course Builder loads
  these initial models and connects them thus
  obtaining the desired course structure.

• The rules are used in order to generate the
  connections between the
  pedagogical models of the course.

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Knowledge base modelling Dynamic generation

• A  link  fact associates a  child  element to
  a  parent element

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Plan

• Context and problematic

• Research goals

• netUniversity general background

• Dynamic generation

• Questionnaires design steps

• Knowledge base modelling

• netUniversité presentation of the prototype

• Conclusions and perspectives

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netUniversité (1)

• Web portal the administration, conception and
  display of the online course

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netUniversité (2)

• Course Content Editor using IMS LD level A, B and
  C

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netUniversité (3)

• Without going into the details, we specify that
  our web portal netUniversité, also integrates a
  QTI editor for interactive exercises. The QTI
  editor can be accessed from the interface of the
  course content IMS LD editor.

The link towards the QTI editor
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netUniversité (4)

• Currently, the types of exercises, which we
  propose, are for example fill in the gap, open
  answer, true/false, multiples choices query, etc.

The option to choose many types of exercises
To edit the true response
To edit the false response
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netUniversité QTI (1)

• In our tool we implemented a "lite" version of
  this standard that allows the representation of
  the six types of exercises
• text based exercises, multiple choice,
  true/false, matrices for "single choice", open
  answer (large text area), etc.
• All the tests represented in this personalized
  version of QTI are also valid for the complete
  version.

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netUniversité QTI (2)

• In the "lite" QTI version implemented in our
  tool, a test corresponds to a QTI structure
  "assessment". The test is composed from one or
  more sections of exercises/questions (items).
• The QTI player
• The QTI player is implemented as a XSL
  style-sheet. The goal is to display the test
  content in an HTML format conforming to the QTI
  specification

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netUniversité-QTI (5)

• Integrating the QTI player in the netUniversité
  navigator (IMS LD player)
• The IMS LD player considers the QTI XML files
  defining the evaluation tests as simple
  resources.
• Thus, these files are referenced in the
  resources section of the unit of learning like
  all the resource documents.
• The IMS LD player differentiates these types of
  resources by using attribute type (in our case
  qti) which specifies where the resource is
  declared.

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netUniversité (5)

• Graphic Editor module for modifying the course
  structures
• Once the teacher generates his course, he cannot
  modify its structure. We would like to give the
  possibility to change the order of the
  activities, to add or delete them.

• As the project is aimed at teachers who do not
  have experience in using the computer, we have
  decided to set up a graphic editor, which should
  help them to modify the IMS LD course structure.

• This kind of presentation makes their work much
  easier as it provides, at the same time, an
  overview of the course.

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netUniversité (6)

• The user interface within the Graphic Editor (1)

. In the upper part we have a toolbar, providing
support for all operations. The buttons from
left to right are moves selected node one
position to the left moves selected node one
position to the right

• Adds a new node
• Marks the selected node for deleting
• Renames the selected node
• Save the current configuration
• Undelete the selected node
• Undelete the selected node and all its sub-trees.

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Plan

• Context and problematic

• Research goals

• netUniversity conception framework

• Dynamic generation

• Questionnaires design steps

• Knowledge base modelling

• netUniversity presentation of the prototype

• Conclusions and perspectives

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Conclusions and Perspectives

• Realisation

• The first version of netUniversité

• The integration of levels A, B and C in IMS LD

• Ongoing work

• Test and make corrections to the first version of
  netUniversité

• Test of QTI editor (version lite)

• Test of a graphic editor in order to be able
• to interactively modify the course structures

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Conclusions and Perspectives

• Integration of the communication tools (email,
  chat, forum)

• Ongoing work

• First results obtained

• Experimenting with the teachers

• University of Technology of Compiègne, France

• Polytehnica University of Timisoara, in
  Romania
• Aurel Vlaicu University of Arad, in Romania

• Institut of High Management Studies (IHEC)
• from Carthage, Tunis

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Conclusions and Perspectives
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netUniversite-QTI (3)

• Particularly, in the implemented QTI version we
  have two types of evaluation evaluation by
  question and evaluation by response.
• In the case of evaluation by question we consider
  a total score attributed when all the answers are
  correct. This situation is represented from the
  QTI point of view by only one condition (section
  reprocessing) that sets a certain value to the
  variable score (if the answers are correct).
• In the other case (evaluation by answer) for each
  answer we add a partial score to the final score.
  From the QTI point of view we define a condition
  each answer to be evaluated. Thus, if an answer
  is correct we add a certain value to the final
  score of the question.

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netUniversite-QTI (4)

• After the user includes the desired element into
  the exercise, he can edit the content and specify
  the correct responses.
• In the case of evaluation by response, he will
  also add the scores for each of the correct
  answers.
• In order to specify the score the teacher must
  click on the small orange icon associated with
  the correct answer.
• A gray zone will be displayed, which includes
  an option to define the type of answer (bad or
  correct) and an option to edit the score (in the
  case of correct answer).

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netUniversité-QTI (6)

• Integrating the QTI player in the netUniversité
  navigator (IMS LD player)
• Therefore, the navigator knows (using the
  resource type) that in the central page of the
  course it must display the test represented in
  QTI file, and uses the XSL style-sheet in order
  to transform XML content into HTML.
• After the user answers all the questions, the
  result of the test is obtained from its answers
  and from the information of score computing for
  each question specified in QTI file.
• The "Test Processing" module which implements
  this calculation process checks firstly if the
  user has not already complete the test. This
  situation is indicated by the value of the score
  stored in the database.

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netUniversité (7)

• The user interface within the Graphic Editor (2)
• In the lower part there are three views

• To the left is the main view, here the whole tree
  is represented. For each role we have a tree. We
  shall explain what the tree represents in the
  next paragraph.

• In the upper right part is the empty tree view.
  The difference compared with the previous one is
  that all nodes are empty and we display only one
  tree.

• In the lower right part is a view with only a
  node and his child. When we select one in any of
  the previous views it will appear here as a root
  and all his children will be shown.

• These trees represent a course structure. The
  root has a generic name its the activity for
  that role.

• To understand how a student will go through the
  course we read the tree from left to right. The
  second level in the tree is made by plays. They
  are a way to organize the course presentation.