A DYNAMIC ENVIRONMENT FOR DISTANCE LEARNING

Stamatia Chatzisavva, Georgios Tsoulouhas, Anastasia Georgiadou and Alexandros Karakos

Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Democritus University of Thrace, GR 67 100, Xanthi, Greece

Keywords: Learning Management Systems, Wikis, Moodle, Asynchronous Distance Learning.

Abstract: Research was conducted concerning Learning Management Systems (LMS) resulting in ‘Moodle’ being an

efficient tool in dynamic distance learning environment. The fact that Moodle is an open source program

allows the programmer to modify and extend it thus provide the possibility to develop a chat module that

allows online communication in real time. Chat is in ‘question - answer’ form. The characteristic of this

module is a virtual user. This user will be used in future development, in relation with data mining

technology, in order to answer to students’ questions. In addition, wikis was embedded into the system due

to their wide range of implementations in education. Both types of wikis, closed and open, were included

into the system. ‘MediaWiki’ was used in order to create the open wiki. Additional tools involved in the

environment enable users to upload files, create quizzes, forums, calendar, questionnaires and more, aiming

to the creation of a dynamic environment of distance learning. Regarding the dynamic environment

developed, the program was tested in a high school as a tool, in terms of asynchronous learning

environment, in order to ensure that is functional and easy to use.

1 INTRODUCTION

The kind of education, which incorporates various

means of communication like mail, e-mail, video,

computers and many others, is called “distance

learning”. This form of education does not require

the physical presence of the students in a specific

space in order to conduct the lesson. Instead, in

distance learning the communication between the

teacher and the student is very brief and in many

cases there is none.

In our days, in order distance learning to work,

the personal computer and the use of the internet is

essential, that is why some times the term “distance

learning” is mixed with terms such as “e-learning”,

“computer assisted learning”, “online learning”,

“online education” and “web based education”.

There are two types of distance learning, the

synchronous and the asynchronous (Gregory, 2003).

In the first type, the education process is in real time.

The student watches the lesson at the same time but

at a different place. Characteristic examples are:

video conferencing, telephone, chat, web

conferencing and web based VoIP

In the second method, the lesson takes place both

at a different time and place. The student can watch

the lesson in a totally different time with that of the

presentation via mail, email, printed material, CD-

ROM, DVD and other.

In many cases these two forms of distance

learning can be combined. This way, the opportunity

is given to the student follow his own pace of

learning and at the same time with the synchronous

distance learning a chance is given for interpersonal

and communicational skills between the teacher and

the student to be created.

In several occasions, education management

systems are used in order to electronically record

files, reports and others, as well as for registration of

teachers and students in classes. They are also used

by many other educational institutions, as an extra

tool of enhancing their lesson procedure. Most

education management systems, in order to make the

access to educational material and its management

easier, are internet based. Nevertheless, there is a

differentiation of the platform on which the lessons

deploy, depending on the system. There systems

such as Moodle and Atutor that have been activated

with PHP and MySQL while others have been

activated with ASP.NET and MSSQL Server.

Similarly, there are systems that are open coded and

others that are not.

Some of the most known Learning Management

Systems and their websites are:

 Atutor (http://www.atutor.ca)

 Moodle (http://moodle.org/)

 Claroline (http://www.claroline.net/)

 Dokeos (http://www.dokeos.com/)

398

Chatzisavva S., Tsoulouhas G., Georgiadou A. and Karakos A. (2010).

A DYNAMIC ENVIRONMENT FOR DISTANCE LEARNING.

In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Computer Supported Education, pages 398-401

DOI: 10.5220/0002776803980401

 SciTePress

 ILIAS (http://www.ilias.de/)

 JoomlaLMS (http://www.joomlalms.com/)

 Desire2Learn (http://www.desire2learn.com/)

The term wikis concerns wiki websites or software

used to create this type of websites. Wiki websites

are a collection of interconnected documents and

files (McKiernan, 2005), to which a person has free

access and can process them with the simple help of

a browser. This means that the readers of a wiki

webpage have the ability to process and modify

existing wiki web pages and also to create new ones.

Wiki software is the tool that gives its users the

ability to create their own webpage through the

internet.

Wikis are divided in three categories, public,

private and hybrid (Klobas, 2006). In the first

category, access is free for everyone and they can all

read and process these wiki web pages. In the

second category, access is limited to specific groups

of people.

2 TOOLS

Moodle (Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic

Learning Environment) constitutes a free software

(open source) of education management system. It

was created by Martin Dougiamas who in the past

was the manager of WebCT. It was designed with

the purpose to manage the education activities and it

is mostly used for the needs of asynchronous

distance learning.

Moodle can be installed in Unix, Linux,

Windows, Mac OS X, NetWare environment and in

any other operational system that supports PHP. The

data are stored in a SQL database. It is better

combined with MySQL or PostgreSQL but can also

be used with Oracle, IBM DB2, Microsoft SQL

Server. 1.9.4+ Moodle edition was installed in

‘D.A.Lab. server’ of Democritus University of

Thrace at: http://dalab.ee.duth.gr/~schatzi/moodle/

Moodle provides a useful environment which

gives teachers the ability to create a website for their

lessons. Moodle has been chosen basically because

of its open source nature, which supports

modification and expansion of the system according

to the user needs. Thus, in relation with Moodle,

users are distinguished to admin, teacher, student

and guest depending on the roles, the provided tools

are differentiated. All the enrolled users can have

access to this site. In order for this lesson to be

functional and more dynamic Moodle provides a

variety of tools. According to Uzunboylu et. al.,

(2006), some basic characteristics of the system are:

Discussion Forums: The messages may enclose

attachments of pictures or web addresses. For the

creation of the messages a text writer is used with

tools similar with those of Microsoft word. The

students can receive the synopsis of the discussion

messages via web mail, on a daily basis.

File Sharing: Students can submit their assignments

electronically.

E-Mail: Students must have an external email

address.

Chat: It provides a discussion tool, which supports

the images. It creates history files for the teachers,

which can be shared with the students. Students are

able to see who else, from their department, is

online. Teachers can manage the discussion by using

the department calendar as well.

Help: Context sensitive help where users can have

access.

Group work: Teachers can create groups.

Student Community Building: Moodle, on the main

page has a large community of users.

Eschool was implemented with Moodle, since the

latter was primarily developed for distance learning

needs exclusively for schools.

Other than moodle in ‘D.A.Lab. server’ an edition of

‘MediaWiki 1.14.0’ program was installed.

The name is ‘Eschool wiki’ its relevant website is:

http://dalab.ee.duth.gr/~schatzi/mediawiki/.

The open code software MediaWiki which is written

in PHP, is a software used to create wiki pages.

Wikipedia is an example of such application.

3 IMPLEMENTATION

The distance learning environment that was created

is called Eschool. It is created as a tool for

asynchronous distance learning with the purpose to

enhance the learning ability of the students.

The main page of the implementation (figure1),

displays the list of the lessons in its central part. To

the right a calendar is displayed right below the

search tool of the E-school wiki library. At the

bottom of the page links are provided addressing to

other web sites as well as links providing

information and contact details relevant to Eschool.

The environment of Eschool is multilingual so the

user has the choice between English or Greek

Figure 1: Eschool main page.

A DYNAMIC ENVIRONMENT FOR DISTANCE LEARNING

399

language, the environment can be easily subjected to

modifications with the potential to add more

languages. The user can also choose the “login” link

in order to enter the system after typing his

username and password. After entering the system,

the menu of the web page appears which depending

on the user’s rights it differentiates. Specifically,

there are four types of users: administrator, teacher,

student and guest. At first the lesson “Computing

applications” was created as well as accounts for

students and teachers. This particular lesson is

taught in the fourth year of all the high schools in

Greece. Twelve thematic units have been created

that match the chapters of lesson’s book. The teacher

can add material to the lesson such as text files,

presentations, questionnaires, wiki pages, exercises,

assignments, voting, forums, chats and others.

Specifically, text files are added to the lesson as

well as presentation files, relevant to the material of

the book chapters. Questions were created and used

in an exercise, the types of which were multiple

choices and can vary. “Exercise 1” is displayed as an

activity in the lesson. Student has the ability to

project and solve the exercise. The teacher can check

which students worked on the exercise and at

what point did they find the answers. Furthermore an

assignment was put together for file uploading

which was displayed in the first chapter of the lesson

as well as in the list of assignments. Students can

read the subject of the assignment and can send their

file electronically after its completion. Grades can be

displayed for each assignment.

Beside the assignments and exercises the teacher

has the ability to display news and announcements

to the lesson and also add facts to the calendar. The

students can also take part in electronic voting and

watch the results at the end. The teachers can create

a forum by entering a discussion topic. The user can

create wiki pages that can be displayed in a list and

also individually. For every thematic unit of the

lesson there is also chat tool. The tool displays

which users are connected through a list from which

a user can choose someone for conversation, a

virtual user seems to be constantly connected in

order to be used for further studies in the future.

At the same time, the Eschool wiki was created,

which is a public wiki where articles and material

concerning lessons of high school education can be

published. At the main page of the application some

categories are created for a possible future

attachments of articles related to them.

The main page of the environment involves the

navigation menu, the search tool and the tool menu

that are projected at the left. At the center of the

page, the index of the article/page is projected and at

the upper section, the option of “Discussion”, “Edit”

and “History” are given, which concern the current

article of the page. To the upper right, the choice

“Create Account/Login” transfers the user to the

choosing “Create an account” and typing his

personal data on the appearing page can register

him.

4 TESTING AND RESULTS

The Eschool distance learning program was applied

in real conditions, in order to gain information

regarding its efficiency and functionality.

Specifically, the application took place at a high

school of Greece (Lyceum of Iasmos). The dynamic

environment of distance learning was implemented

during the lesson in terms of asynchronous distance

learning in order to enhance the teaching process,

students were gradually familiarised with the

application so that in the future this application will

be incorporated in their school.

In this application two questionnaires were

created, in order to be answered by students. The

application was complete in three stages. In the first

stage, a visit took place at the computer laboratory

of the school, and lasted for two hours. During the

first hour, there was a briefing about the program

and the students experimented with the application

so that they would be familiarized with it. After that,

they worked on some of the tools this program has

to offer, such as: reading wiki articles from the

incorporated Eschool wiki library, reading lesson

material, participation in voting and finally

completing a questionnaire concerning the Eschool

environment. During the second hour, the students

used the chat tool of the application. The chat had

the form of question-answer. Every student had the

ability to exchange knowledge with one or many

students. The purpose of this chat was to record data

to the database, which will be used for future

studies. At the end of the school hour, filled a

questionnaire regarding the subject of the chat.

During the second and third stage, there were

two more visits to the school in different time of

period. The students that took part, were asked to

use, exclusively, the conversation tool, because the

purpose was the enrichment of the database. It

should be pointed out, that the students that were

chosen for this part were the students from the

previous session, since they were already

familiarized with the application.

The students used all the tools of the application

with success and without facing any difficulties. The

chat tool draws their attention and expressed their

enthusiasm during its use.

CSEDU 2010 - 2nd International Conference on Computer Supported Education

400

5 FUTURE DEVELOPMENT

As Vygotsky (1978) pointed out, “in a collaborative

scenario, students interchange their ideas for

coordinating when they working for reaching

common goals. When dilemmas arise, the discussion

process involves them in learning”. According to

Juan et. al., (2009), when the learners work in

groups they reflect upon their ideas (and those of

their colleagues’), explain their opinions, consider

and discuss those of others, and as a result, learn. In

this way, each learner acquires individual knowledge

from the collaborative interaction. As the importance

of collaborative learning is widely accepted in

learning theorists, implementation of collaborative

learning in Learning Management Systems (LMSs)

arises as of crucial interest. The three basic factors in

collaborative learning are: the tutor, the learner and

his/her co learner. The role of the late is crucial.

Many students emerge from basic science courses

with inabilities to apply the scientific concepts or

principles that they ostensibly learned, with

significant misconceptions, and with poor problem

solving abilities. They need to, and they use to

address questions and so they expect to get answers.

Tutors respond to their questions with accuracy and

their responses are also characterized for their

educational value. This is not the case when the

learner addresses questions to his co learner. A co

learner responds inaccurately and in many cases

gives fault answers. Even so, the presence of a co

learner is meaningful. Aim in future studies is to

expand chat module in order to transform virtual

user, using data mining algorithms, into a virtual co

learner. The goal of building a computerized

Simulated Student (VanLehn et al. 1994) is to

facilitate the learner’s own efforts at learning by

employing cooperative learning techniques.

6 CONCLUSIONS

As mentioned before, Moodle is an efficient tool in

dynamic distance learning environment. Its main

characteristic is its open source nature which gives

the opportunity to the programmer to expand,

modify and adjust it to a particular case in order to

cope successfully with the user needs analysis. The

extra chat module that has been developed -

allowing online communication in real time - is a

robust example of system’s flexibility. In future

studies, chat tool can be enhanced, so as a virtual

user to become a virtual co learner, being able to

answer automatically to student’s questions.

In addition, the system could easily connect with

an external page such as Eschool wiki. This can be

done either by following a simple link or through a

search engine that has been placed in the main page

of Eschool. Both types of wikis, closed and open,

were included into the system.

Moodle is an application which is easy to install

and use, providing unlimited capabilities to its users.

Eschool proved to be a useful tool in asynchronous

distance learning for enhancing students learning

abilities. The program was tested in a high school as

a tool, in terms of asynchronous learning

environment, in order to ensure that is functional and

easy to use. Students faced some difficulties in

adding wiki pages but could easily find and read the

ones already created. Nevertheless, they found the

whole idea of eschool charming and they felt

enthusiastic in terms of future incorporation to their

school teaching program.

REFERENCES

Gregory, V.L. (2003). Student perceptions of the

effectiveness of Web-based distance education. New

Library World, 104(1193), 426-431.

Juan, A.A., Daradoumis, T., Xhafa, F., Caballe, S., (2009).

Monitoring and Assessment in Online Collaborative

Environments: Emergent Computational Technologies

for E-Learning Support. Georgiou, D., Botsios, S.,

Tsoulouhas, G., Chapter III: Virtual co Learner: An

Approach Against Learner’s Isolation in

Asynchronous E-Learning (pp. 41-54). IGI Global

Klobas, J. (2006). Wikis: Tools for Information Work and

Collaboration. Oxford: Chandos Publishing Limited

Lewis, B.A., MacEntee, V.M., DeLaCruz, S., Englander,

C., Jeffrey, T., Takach, E., Wilson, S., Woodall, J.

(2005). Learning Management System Comparison.

Proceedings of the 2005 Informing Science and IT

Education Joint Conference. Flagstaff, Arizona, USA

– June, 16-19.

McKiernan, G. (2005). WikimediaWorlds. Library Hi

Tech News,(8),46-54.

DOI 10.1108/07419050510633961

Uzunboylu, H., Özdamli, F., Özçınar, Z. (2006). An

Evaluation of Open Source Learning Management

Systems According to Learners Tool. FORMATEX.

Vanlehn, K., Ohlsson, S., Nason, R. (1994). Applications

of simulated students: An exploration. Journal of

Artificial Intelligence in Education, 5(2), 135-175.

Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind in society: The development

of higher psychological processes. Cambridge MA:

Harvard University Press.

A DYNAMIC ENVIRONMENT FOR DISTANCE LEARNING

401