KOI SCHOOL
Towards the Next Level of Communication, Organization and Integration
in Education
Jonas Schulte, Reinhard Keil, Dominik Klaholt and Jannis Sauer
Heinz-Nixdorf-Institute, University of Paderborn, Fuerstenallee 11, 33102 Paderborn, Germany
Keywords:
CSCW, Education, Integration, Knowledge, Organization, School, SOA.
Abstract:
Information technology plays a central role in early school education of pupils, since the information society is
continuously changing and developing. Facebook, Twitter, iPhone, Flickr, blogs, YouTube, and Google Earth
are just some of the new technologies that bombard us from all directions since the genesis of the Web 2.0.
Although there is a broad offer of educational software, yet an integrated solution for continuous support does
not exist. In this paper, we present KOI, a collaborative school management system, that combines typical
administration tasks with document management and social networking features. In our opinion, modern
school software has to comprise both, educational software and those new technologies that are particularly
popular among pupils. Thereby, private interests (e.g. social networking or instant messaging) and those
functions supporting the schooling can be combined.
1 INTRODUCTION
An increasingly cross-linked digital world changed
the society and especially the young generation that
grew up with smartphones, the Web 2.0, and a mass
of interactive media in everyday life. The MacArthur
Foundation launched a five-year, $50 million digital
media and learning initiative in 2006 to help deter-
mine how digital technologies are changing the way
young people learn, play, socialize, and participate in
civic life. Especially the increasing participation of
young people in online worlds (Kafai et al., 2007),
and the read/write culture of Web 2.0 is the subject
of ongoing discussion and debate in educational cir-
cles (Ito et al., 2008; Jenkins, 2008). The willingness
of young people to participate as prolific consumers
and producers of digital content is high as never be-
fore. For example, the Pew Internet & American
Life project identified in a study from 2005 that more
than one-half of all teens have created media content,
and about one-third of all teens who use the Internet
have shared content they produced (Lenhart, 2005), as
videos on YouTube or pictures via Flickr. Young peo-
ple change more and more to participatory cultures
where media, and in particular visual and social me-
dia, play an increasingly important role. Moreover, a
shift in their relationship to the media can be recogni-
zed; from being an audience and users to becoming
participants and creators as well (Svoen, 2007).
For this participatory cultures video and music
mashups and remixes of existing content are the way
of profiling and personalizing the new digital world.
However, beside the desire to emphasize themselves,
young people act more collaboratively and coopera-
tively than before. The fast growing number of blogs,
forums, and newsgroups points up these changes.
Furthermore, most Web 2.0 platforms require a so-
called critical mass to become successful. In our
opinion today’s education has to include bit by bit
the range and variety of internet-based tools, plat-
forms, and practices adopted by young learners. Mod-
ern school software must not be an isolated appli-
cation for administration, but an open infrastructure
allowing the integration and adaption of those tools
and platforms the pupils use to support technology-
mediated learning in schools. The success of Apple’s
iTunes U project, with more than 600 participating
universities and more than 250,000 lectures, presen-
tations, videos, readings, and podcasts from all over
the world, make clear that an easy online access to
teaching materials is desirable (Rugg, 2009).
Nevertheless, fancy Web 2.0 tools did not find
the way in everyday school life, even though these
technologies have the potential to facilitate teachers
43
Schulte J., Keil R., Klaholt D. and Sauer J..
KOI SCHOOL - Towards the Next Level of Communication, Organization and Integration in Education.
DOI: 10.5220/0003469800430052
In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS-2011), pages 43-52
ISBN: 978-989-8425-56-0
Copyright
c
2011 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)
in performing their daily work. There are numerous
possibilities for the teacher to interact with the pupils
and a systematic and efficient storage and retrieval of
their students’ class materials using web-based school
management tools and Web 2.0 technologies. Cur-
rent school IT-infrastructures mainly focus on educa-
tional software to support solely the training of pupils.
Moreover, there are cumbersome administrative task
a teacher is often faced to especially when he or she
wants to differ from the original plan. An example
is an unheralded room reservation for audio-visual
display. First, the teacher has to check which room
is equipped with the necessary hardware. Second, a
reservation has to be done and finally the pupils has
to be informed about the room change.
In this paper we work out the requirements on a
modern IT platform for early school education. Es-
pecially, the social changes and technical evolutions,
mentioned above, have to be considered when plan-
ning a new system to support processes in education.
The focus is on setting up a platform that supports
teachers in doing administrative tasks and in addi-
tion allows pupils to interact and discuss in their usual
manner. We present KOI school, a web-based appli-
cation supporting communication, organization, and
integration tasks in everyday school life. The imple-
mentation of KOI bases on WasabiBeans, a frame-
work for setting up collaborative learning and work-
ing environments. Another strength of WasabiBeans
is to act as an integration platform. Thanks to the
microkernel architecture and flexible interfaces it is
quite easy to couple different applications with the
framework working as an integration layer.
This paper is structured as follows. We start with
a research about typical e-learning systems in sec-
tion Related Work and follow up with a requirements
analysis in section Knowledge Management in Every-
day School Life. Based on the requirement analysis
we present our results and particularly the KOI school
application. We close the paper with a discussion
about our results and possible points of contact for
future work.
2 RELATED WORK
On the one hand there are a few open source soft-
ware solutions for cooperative working and data ex-
change like wiki systems (MediaWiki, Foswiki, etc.),
e-learning platforms like Moodle, and also concepts
where groupware goes to school by adapting BSCW
to the classroom. Wikis are one of many Web 2.0
components that can be used to enhance the learn-
ing process (Stahl, 2004; Ebersbach et al., 2008). A
wiki is a web communication and collaboration tool
that can be used to engage students in learning with
others within a collaborative environment (Parker and
Chao, 2007). Wikis are fully editable websites with
options to read or add content (Augar et al., 2004).
Moodle is a free and open-source e-learning software
platform, extendable with serveral modules for text
editing, for document management, wikis, and com-
munication. All these systems support a multi user
environment with cooperative data collection or coop-
erative data exchange in terms of documents, images,
papers, links etc. and a few simple features to com-
municate and interact together like message boards or
email systems (Dougiamas and Taylor, 2003).
On the other hand there are indeed no open source,
but plenty of commercial software solutions to man-
age the everyday school life. This means these soft-
ware solutions manage room planning, appointments
e.g. for exams, class schedules or pupils and their ad-
dress data or marks. However, a solution to fill the
gap between those applications for supporting coop-
eration among pupils and teachers and those for per-
forming administrative tasks is missing. For example
a global system, which supports the teacher to book
or to change a classroom, marks this classroom as oc-
cupied for other users and informs the pupils about
the classroom change. Specialized and isolated ap-
plications are suitable for single task, yet an execu-
tion of continuous workflows as required for a mod-
ern school IT infrastructure is not possible.
3 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
IN EVERYDAY SCHOOL LIFE
In several countries pupils are grouped as classes in
primary school and high school. The concept be-
hind doing so is the Knowledge Building Community
(KBC), broadly defined as an environment that en-
courages pupils into knowledge creating culture in ad-
dition to their competencies in certain subjects (Bere-
iter and Scardamalia, 2003). Usually these classes
have their own classroom. Only lessons, like physics
or sports that require special equipment take place
in different rooms. Beside compulsory subjects the
pupils may choose between optional subjects. Ac-
cordingly, those pupils who attend a certain optional
subject may not belong to the same class. Thus, new
groups for optional subjects are formed. Due to this
fact the flexible composition of participants to groups
is an important requirement on school software.
ICEIS 2011 - 13th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems
44
3.1 Virtualization of Classrooms
The establishment of a digital reproduction of the
real school environment helps pupils to orient them-
selves. Hence, our demand is to combine the idea of a
room-based virtual world with basic document man-
agement and social networking functionalities to sup-
port processes in everyday school life. Rooms func-
tion not only as social meeting places and centers of
virtual learning community, but also as a collective
external memory, providing media functions as a ba-
sis for cooperative learning (Hampel and Keil, 2001).
Particularly with regard to cooperative work environ-
ments, virtual knowledge spaces facilitate users to
aware each other as well as to structure documents
freely and follow up changes via a notification mech-
anism based on events.
The basic concept of virtual knowledge spaces
includes room, container, and document objects to
structure data. In addition every of these so-called
data objects can be annotated with attribute objects.
Attributes are supposed to be real objects rather than
simple strings. Managing awareness in virtual knowl-
edge spaces is of particular importance for the user in-
teraction, teamwork, as well as computer-aided learn-
ing and collaboration (Prinz, 2001; Prinz et al., 2008).
Therefore, every room contains a list of users that
are present in the current room. Finally rooms can
contain ”exits”, links to other rooms, but they may
also contain rooms themselves, so that it is possible
to create hierarchical structures of virtual knowledge
spaces.
The idea is to create a digital world that allows
users to meet, interact, and learn with each other.
Thereby, a school represents a network of various vir-
tual knowledge spaces that makes it possible to appre-
ciate the actions of cooperative partners. Such an en-
vironment that allows users to be aware of the actions
of cooperative partners is the prerequisite for unam-
biguous interaction and collaboration. For example
the cognition of modifications on certain documents,
attendees within the same virtual space, and the par-
ticipants of a chat discussion are important events to
support the cooperative working process.
3.2 WasabiBeans – A Service-oriented
Framework
WasabiBeans is a service-oriented framework that
supports the assembling of cooperative work and
learning environments (Schulte et al., 2008). The ba-
sic concept is a micro kernel architecture with differ-
ent layers and so-called modules to implement new
functions. Figure 1 gives an overview of the frame-
work’s architecture. The core model (internal core)
implements the concept of virtual knowledge spaces
as introduced above in section Virtualization of Class-
rooms. The persistency layer bases on the JPA
1
and Hibernate for Object-relational mapping (ORM).
Thereby, the mapping of the data model to a rela-
tional database system is realized, beyond an easy re-
placement of the concrete database system is possi-
ble. WasabiBeans offers different interfaces for inter-
Mail-Module
Event-Module
Seam-API
Modules
JAAS
JCR
JPA / Hibernate
Internal Core
Internal Services
Persistence and
Directory Layer
Service-Consumer
Local Services
Remote Services
LDAP / User Directory
Content / Backend / CMS
Webservices / RMI
WasabiBeans
Figure 1: Architecture Overview of the WasabiBeans
Framework.
action. Firstly, local services, these services are only
accessible from modules and those applications that
are deployed on the same JBoss Application Server
(JBoss AS) and run within the same Java Virtual Ma-
chine (JVM) as the WasabiBeans framework itself.
Secondly, remote services, these services are accessi-
ble via web services and Remote Method Invocation
(RMI) as shown in figure 1.
In particular cooperative work and learning envi-
ronments are characterized by high user interaction.
Users may hold the membership in different groups
and exchange documents among each other intensely.
The high interaction and the complex allocation to
groups requires a flexible and highly adjustable right
management. WasabiBeans offers a right manage-
ment with a variety of features that support these re-
quirements. As an example WasabiBeans implements
the concept of right inheritance to define permissions
rapidly. For a detailed explanation of WasabiBeans’
right management we refer to (Schulte et al., 2009).
1
Java Persistence API, online available:
http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/J2EE/jpa/
KOI SCHOOL - Towards the Next Level of Communication, Organization and Integration in Education
45
4 RESULTS
The previous sections motivated our goal to create
a school-management system, that combines typical
administration tasks with document management and
social networking features. Further we suggested
that the concept of virtual knowledge spaces is well-
suited to help reach that goal. As a consequence
the WasabiBeans-Framework being an implementa-
tion of the concept of virtual knowledge spaces is
used as the base of our intended school manage-
ment system. In this section we will present the
KOI school-management systems that combines typ-
ical administration tasks with document management
and social networking features. Further we suggested
that the concept of virtual knowledge spaces is well-
suited to help reach that goal. As a consequence the
WasabiBeans framework being an implementation of
the concept of virtual knowledge spaces is used as the
base of our intended school-management system. In
this section we will present the current state of our
progress to create the intended school-management
system as a web application named KOI using state
of the art technology like the Seam framework. First
we will give information about the Seam API that en-
ables a comfortable use of the WasabiBeans frame-
work within a Seam framework based web applica-
tion. Then we will present KOI and its main fea-
tures itself and point out how these features are based
upon the WasabiBeans framework. The last para-
graph of this section deals with performance issues
of the multi-user web application KOI.
4.1 The Seam API – Rapid Seam-based
Development
The KOI school management system, described in
the next section in detail, is a web-based Seam ap-
plication. JBoss Seam is also known as the Seam
framework or simply Seam. Seam is a web appli-
cation framework and was invented by Gavin King,
a lead developer of JBoss. It simplifies the interac-
tion between view and business logic. The view is
represented by JavaServer Faces (JSF) an in terms of
the KOI system with Facelets, an alternative view-
handler technology for the JSF framework replac-
ing the JavaServer Pages (JSP). The business logic
is represented by Enterprise JavaBeans 3.0 (EJB3).
The framework also expands the concept of contexts.
Each Seam component exist within a context. To af-
ford more flexibility with respect to life cycle defi-
nition of web applications, Seam extends the stateful
SessionBeans of EJB3 by providing seven different
scope types. These scope types enable the developer
to control the runtime of a SessionBean from a sim-
ple request via a conversation or a session through to
complete runtime of application. This offers an ef-
ficient way to store data for more then one request.
For example the default Seam context, a conversation,
can span multiple pages and usually spans the whole
business flow, from start to finish. Another exam-
ple is the session context, which captures all actions
of a user until he logs out or gets a session timeout
(e.g. when closing the browser); even though using
the back-button of the browser. Beside the possibil-
ity to configure Seam components using annotations,
as known from EJB3, Seam introduces the concept
of bijection. A concept, taken from Spring’s depen-
dency injection feature where objects can be in-jected
from or out-jected to assigned variables using the @In
respectively the @Out annotation. This is a simple so-
lution to share data between Seam components (Yuan
et al., 2009).
On the one hand the data storage and exchange
within the Seam framework is realized, as it based
on EJB3, in an usual object-oriented manner. On
the other hand WasabiBeans is consistently designed
as a service-oriented architecture (SOA), hence these
two different approaches of the frameworks do not
match to each other. More precisely, the design
of WasabiBeans does not offer objects to overlying
applications, instead it offers services whose output
and input data are Data Transfer Objects (DTOs).
To support an efficient way of data exchange be-
tween Seam and WasabiBeans, it was necessary to
develop a solution that provides the WasabiBeans’ ob-
jects in an object-oriented way for further process-
ing within the Seam framework. The implementation
of such an application programming interface (API)
can be realized either within the application itself (in
this case the KOI system) or as a component of the
WasabiBeans framework. For a better reutilization of
the API it was integrated into the WasabiBeans frame-
work, since other applications based on JBoss Seam
can be implemented in the object-oriented manner
too. Figure 1 shows the classification of the developed
application programming interface called Seam API
between JBoss Seam and the WasabiBeans frame-
work.
Another relevant aspect for the development of
an API between JBoss Seam and the WasabiBeans
framework is resulting from the functionality of KOI.
The WasabiBeans framework offers a set of structures
like documents, attributes, links etc. To project a mes-
sage or an appointment in KOI by the given struc-
tures of the WasabiBeans framework, a relation of this
structures is necessary. A message for example is rep-
resented by a document, its properties like subject or
ICEIS 2011 - 13th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems
46
sender are represented by attributes, which are con-
nected with the document. The distribution of mes-
sages is realized by links. To project these complex
structures, Seam API was extended with these struc-
tures. With it Seam API is not only an object-oriented
mapping of WasabiBeans framework, but also an ex-
tension of the structures of the WasabiBeans frame-
work.
4.2 KOI – School Management System
KOI is a web application for schools that offers ad-
ministrative, organizational, and social networking
functions for the students, the teachers, and the gen-
eral staff. Though it still has to be considered as a
prototype, it already meets many of the requirements
presented in section Knowledge Management in Ev-
eryday School Life. As stated in the previous section
KOI is implemented with JBoss Seam and uses the
WasabiBeans framework via our Seam API. In this
section we will present concrete functions KOI pro-
vides and we will show how KOI makes explicit use
of the concept of virtual knowledge spaces.
4.2.1 Entering the User’s Room
As described in section The Seam API - Rapid Seam-
based Development, the view-handler, which is an in-
terface to the user of the web application, consists of
xhtml-files which can be rendered as web-pages and
thus can be displayed in a user’s browser. Each vir-
tual knowledge space of KOI is associated with one
or more of these xhtml-files. The idea is that when a
user browses through the web application he moves
through virtual knowledge spaces. Upon entering a
virtual knowledge space one of the associated xhtml-
files is rendered and displayed to the user. A user can
see a virtual knowledge space from different perspec-
tives, so more than one xhtml-file can be associated
with a virtual knowledge space. For instance in KOI
each user has his own room that represents the user’s
personal area where he can store his data like personal
information, documents or appointments. Now when
a user enters his own room he might have a look at
his documents or at the list of his friends - his docu-
ments on the one hand and the list of his friends on
the other hand are two different perspectives on his
room. When a user enters another user’s room, then
that user’s profile page is displayed - yet again another
perspective of a user’s room. Of course a user is able
to specify what other users are allowed to see when
they enter his room.
4.2.2 Breadcrumb-trail and Multiple Tabs
To help the user orient himself within the application
KOI provides a breadcrumb-trail. The breadcrumb-
trail reflects that the user moves through virtual
knowledge spaces, that he can have different perspec-
tives on one place, and that he always resides in one
place. Furthermore KOI supports independent multi-
tabbed browsing. So, in contrast to a classical web ap-
plication, a user can browse through KOI within mul-
tiple tabs independently at the same time (and may
reside in a different virtual knowledge space in each
tab). As long as no persistent data is changed, the tabs
do not influence each other (e.g. each tab has its own
breadcrumb-trail).
4.2.3 Virtual and Real Spaces
Virtual spaces like the rooms of users must not be con-
fused with real spaces like the classrooms of a school
that are also represented within KOI. KOI enables
administrative users to manage information about a
real classroom, e.g. the name, the floor, and espe-
cially the equipment of the classroom. This informa-
tion is stored within a virtual room that represents the
real classroom within KOI. The information stored
about a real classroom can also include appointments
at which the classroom is occupied by a class or a
learning group.
4.2.4 Documents and Appointments
Each user can manage personal documents and ap-
pointments in his room. Personal documents are
stored within a container (the document-container)
which is located in the user’s room. A user can cre-
ate, edit, rename, delete, download and upload docu-
ments in the document-container. Furthermore a user
is able to structure his documents by creating arbitrary
many levels of sub-containers within the document-
container - analogous to folders within a file-system.
Personal appointments are also stored within a con-
tainer (the appointment-container) which is located in
the user’s room. KOI allows to create, edit and delete
two kinds of appointments: Appointments that take
place exactly once (e.g. a doctor’s appointment) and
appointments that take place repeatedly (e.g. weekly
classes or annual feasts). Internally an appointment
is represented by a document that is extended with
special attributes by the Seam API. An important fea-
ture of appointments within KOI is that they can be
connected to documents and classrooms. So docu-
ments that are of importance for a specific appoint-
ment are perceived when looking up the appointment.
Classrooms can be booked as meeting points for an
KOI SCHOOL - Towards the Next Level of Communication, Organization and Integration in Education
47
appointment if the user creating the appointment is
appropriately authorized.
4.2.5 Groups
Users of KOI can be organized in groups, which
are created and administered by authorized users like
teachers (group-administrators). Each group has its
own room, which represents the area exclusive to the
group (analogous to a user’s room). Within the area
of a group, its members, documents, appointments,
and sub-groups can be managed. Documents and Ap-
pointments are stored analogously to the way they are
stored within a user’s room. However, managing doc-
uments and appointments of a group has an additional
level of complexity: multiple members of the group
who access the documents and appointments. There-
fore group-administrators can assign certain rights to
each member of the group. Figure 2 shows the web
page on which a group-administrator can manage the
members of the group and can assign certain rights
to these members by use of toggle-icons behind each
user’s name. So one member can be allowed to cre-
ate appointments whereas another member can only
read them. Corresponding general rights can be as-
signed concerning the documents of the group. More-
over there are even more fine grained rights possible
for the documents (which can be set on the web-page
for managing the documents of the group): For each
document an administrative user can specify which
member of the group may read or edit the document.
The authorization mechanisms used by KOI are based
upon the authorization mechanisms provided by the
WasabiBeans framework (see (Schulte et al., 2009)).
Another capability of a goup-administrator (who, of
course, can also promote other members of the group
to be a group-administrator) is to manage the sub-
groups of the group. Sub-groups again have their own
room and their exclusive area provides the same func-
tions as the exclusive area of the parent-group. So
arbitrary many levels of subgroups can be created.
4.2.6 Asynchronous Communication
Users of KOI can be members of numerous groups
and they can keep a list of friends. To further fos-
ter communities KOI supports both asynchronous
and synchronous communication. The asynchronous
communication is accomplished by a message service
that provides each user with the components he knows
from his regular email client: an inbox, a folder for
sent messages, a trash basket, and an address book.
Each of these components is represented by a con-
tainer that is located in the user’s room. The ad-
dress book-container contains documents in which
the information about contacts is stored. The inbox-
, sent-messages-, and the trash-basket-container con-
tain links to messages. A message is internally repre-
sented by a document that is extended with special
attributes by the Seam API. Messages can be sent,
replied to, forwarded, or deleted. An important detail
of the concept behind the message service is based
upon the above mentioned links to messages. In con-
trast to a classical email-system in which numerous
copies of one message are created the KOI message
service stores each message only once. Therefore
messages are not directly stored within the inbox-
, sent-messages, or trash-basket-containers. Instead
there exists a special container for each user that con-
tains all the messages the user creates (due to sending,
replying or forwarding) and that is located outside the
user’s room. So the inbox-, sent-messages, and trash-
basket-containers contain links that point to the mes-
sages in the special containers.
4.2.7 Synchronous Communication
The synchronous communication within KOI is ac-
complished by a chat. The chat allows a user to di-
rectly communicate with a friend or with the mem-
bers of a group he belongs to. When two friends are
chatting, they are able to invite other friends. So new
contacts who are invited by others can be met and
each conversation can be turned into having multi-
ple participants. Moreover a user can participate in
multiple conversations at the same time. Each con-
versation is shown in a separate tab. Furthermore,
KOI allows you to start the conversation even though
the desired conversation partner(s) is (are) still offline.
Once they appear online, they will be able to recog-
nize that someone is waiting for them to participate in
a conversation. Another important feature of the chat
is that already ended conversations can be resumed
at a later time, so that references to an earlier discus-
sion are simplified. As a consequence each conver-
sation must be persisted by KOI. To achieve this the
virtual knowledge space representing the overall chat-
room contains a dialogue-container for each combi-
nation of users and for each group. These dialogue-
containers contain a session-container for each con-
versation the combination of users or the group asso-
ciated with the dialogue-container ever had. Finally
the session-containers contain the exchanged chat-
messages, which are internally represented by docu-
ments.
4.3 Performance Optimization
With the progress of the implementation of KOI, its
performance was decreasing significantly. The cause
ICEIS 2011 - 13th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems
48
Figure 2: Group Management in KOI School.
of the decrease can be illustrated in particular by the
example of users profile page. The users profile page
at KOI provides information about a registered user
in KOI like his name, address, hobbies, profile im-
age etc.. If the users profile page is requested, the
following happens: The users profile page facelet is
requesting information in dependence of the request-
ing user at the corresponding Seam component called
BackingBean. The Seam component is requesting at
Seam API and Seam API calls each single service
at WasabiBeans framework. For each information
or property a service must be called at WasabiBeans
framework. The complete workflow of getting infor-
mation by a facelet from WasabiBeans framework is
illustrated in Figure 3.
Furthermore it is possible while passing JSF
lifecycle, that the facelet is rendering multiple
times (Ed Burns, 2010). As a result of that previ-
ously invoked services of WasabiBeans framework
are invoked once more. Hence it is possible that
a simple facelet generates several hundred database
requests by WasabiBeans framework. For example
the users profile page generates over 200 object and
method invocations. If users profile page is called
more than 1000 database request are generated, be-
cause WasabiBeans framework does not only request
information, but also checks weather authorization for
requested information exist. Due to this it is possible
that more than 10 seconds elapse, before the page is
visible in the browser. This is definitively a exclusion
criterion for a respectable web application that wants
to be taken seriously.
To solve this problem, it is possible to use Seams
concept of contexts with its seven scope types by stor-
ing data over more than one request. This can happen
either directly by the BackingBeans for each facelet
according to requirements or uniformly and central-
ized at one place. The decision was made on a uni-
formly and centralized approach which extends the
Seam API by integrating a cache called Seam Cache.
DatabaseWasabiBeans Core
Facelet
Backing Bean
Seam API
WasabiBeans
Framework
KOI
get / send
object-oriented
data
invoke services
access to
database
Figure 3: Workflow of getting information by a facelet from
WasabiBeans Framework.
KOI SCHOOL - Towards the Next Level of Communication, Organization and Integration in Education
49
Requests by facelets over the BackingBeans do not
longer invoke methods at Seam API in a direct way.
The Seam Cache whether checks for each request the
requested data are stored in the cache. If requested
data are stored, the cache supplies the data. Thereby
no access to a service of WasabiBeans framework
takes place. Because of this there is no access to
the database as well. The cache is realized by a Java
HashMap with a key-value store. A key consists of
following parameters:
Username of requestor
Name of the requested service
Name of the invoked method of the service
Commited parameters of the method
Depending on the invoked method, for instance a
write operation, an invalidation of the corresponding
cache entry occurs. Figure 4 shows the new data han-
dling with Seam Cache by cache miss and cache hit.
At point 1 in the Figure 4 KOI tries to request data for
instance a document from the Seam API and at point 2
the Seam API checks if requested data exists in to the
Seam Cache. At point 3 the Seam Cache answers the
Seam API, that he requested data does not exist in to
the Seam Cache at this time (cache miss). Therefore
at point 4 the Seam API starts to request the data from
the WasabiBeans Core and consequently from the un-
derlying database. At point 5 the WasabiBeans Core
replies the requested data back to the Seam API. Next
at the same time the Seam API stores the data at point
6 in to the Seam Cache and sends data to KOI at point
7. If KOI requests the same data again the Seam API
requests to Seam Cache, but don’t have to request data
from WasabiBeans Core and consequently from the
underlying database, because the Seam Cache sup-
plies the requested data to Seam API and Seam API
to KOI (cache hit).
The Seam Cache solves especially the problem of
multiple facelet rendering. For the example of the
user profile page it means that the first invocation by
WasabiBeans
WasabiBeans Core
Seam Module
Seam API
Seam Cache
2 3 6
5 4
1
7
KOI School Management
System
Figure 4: Workflow of the new data handling with Seam
Cache (scenario cache miss).
facelet via BackingBean to Seam API and services of
WasabiBeans framework stores all necessary data in
the cache. In case of repeated rendering of the facelet,
all data is loaded by cache and not again by invoca-
tion of services of the WasabiBeans framework. If a
modification of the users profile page data occurs, for
instance the address, only this cache entry becomes
invalid. If for instance address is requested again,
Seam API loads only this value into the cache again.
On the basis of Seam Cache the performance of KOI
could increase distinctly, so that no page of KOI loads
longer than 2 seconds on an average.
4.4 Usage Scenarios in School
KOI’s connection and interaction between several
workflows simplifies everyday school life. In the fol-
lowing some exemplary usage scenarios in school,
demonstrate the range of functions in KOI.
4.4.1 Classroom Planning
A teacher wants to show a movie at his lesson next
day. He needs a classroom with some technical en-
vironment to show the movie. KOI enables him to
search free and suitable classrooms with a beamer or
a television and a minimum number of seats. After se-
lection of a classroom he books it. But now it is nec-
essary to inform his pupils about the changed class-
room. No Problem, because the teacher has the possi-
bility to inform his pupils by KOI’s message system.
He writes a message to his class, represented in KOI
by a group, and every member of the group receives a
message which informs about the changed classroom.
Additionally it is possible to connect an appointment
with classroom planning and backwards. That means
the teacher has the possibility to create a group ap-
pointment and each member of this group, commonly
the pupils in the class, gets an own appointment in his
schedule.
4.4.2 Submit an Essay
If a teacher wants to enable online submissions of
documents, essays or home work until a specific date,
KOI supports him with its upload function and pow-
erful right management given by WasabiBeans frame-
work. It is possible to create a specific folder for
online submissions at groups document management
system and set an allowance to upload documents at
this folder. If submission date expired the teacher
removes the allowance to upload documents at this
folder. An easier way to remove the allowance to up-
load documents at a specific date are time rights. The
time rights with a start date and end date are able to
ICEIS 2011 - 13th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems
50
set an allowance between this interval, consequently
the allowance does not exist after end date and no ad-
ditional user interaction is necessary.
4.4.3 Scheduling
Scheduling especially the connection between group
appointments is a helpful organization option in KOI.
Appointments of a group are represented as individ-
ual appointments of a user. But if a group appoint-
ment is changed, the individual appointment of a user
is changed too. Commonly a user is in several classes
or courses represented in KOI by a group. Each class
or course has a teacher which is able to set group
appointments. If a teacher changes the appointment
of an examination the individual user appointment of
this examination is changed too. But the user has the
option to modify his individual examination appoint-
ment in terms of a copy.
5 DISCUSSION
The WasabiBeans framework implemented as a
service-oriented architecture supports the integration
of external services, yet KOI school does not exceed-
ingly benefit from this background. Future enhance-
ments of KOI will make use of the underlying archi-
tecture. We are currently working on a Facebook con-
nection that allows pupils to import their Facebook
profile, rather than specifying and updating their user
profile within KOI school application itself. The inte-
gration or establishing a connection to recent Web 2.0
services like MySpace or Flickr are imaginable and
may be raise the popularity among young teenagers.
In particular, turning KOI into a central access point
that accomplishes various popular services meets ex-
actly the idea of KOI to be a combination of popu-
lar Web features with educational software features.
Thus, the acceptance of the system among all partici-
pants (teachers and pupils) may be increased.
The KOI system already stores information about
real classrooms within the system. However, this con-
nection between the virtual and the real world could
be extended. For instance, the equipment of class-
rooms could be tagged with RFID chips to enable an
automatic recognition of all relevant devices within
a classroom. So the information stored within the
virtual classrooms in KOI could automatically be up-
dated, especially in the case when a device (e.g. a
television) is moved from one room to another.
Staying with the idea of automatic recognition of
the real world environment, the detection of physi-
cal devices makes different approaches possible. As
presented in (Paulos and Goodman, 2004), each pupil
may equipped with a Jabberwocky to detect the loca-
tion of pupils with similar interests, lectures, etc. Fur-
thermore, more and more pupils have a mobile device,
that is equipped with bluetooth or WiFi interfaces al-
lowing locate the current position of a pupil within the
school. By recognizing the current location of a pupil,
the devices may exchange automatically information
about hobbies and interests in case the pupils are will-
ing to participate and adjust the settings of their de-
vices accordingly.
6 CONCLUSIONS
In this paper we presented KOI, a web-based applica-
tion to support collaboration and administrative tasks
in schooling at the same time. Our main contribution
is that our approach allows an integration of mani-
fold applications or services to build up a complex IT
infrastructure without media disruption between the
single systems. As a result a continuous assistance
in schooling can be realized. Moreover, we identified
the Web 2.0 developments to be a challenge for state
of the art developments in schooling. The possibility
to integrate these services and fancy applications is
absolutely necessary to address the pupils wishes and
their understanding of modern communication.
We started our research with the intent to offer a
digital representation of a real school to support the
end-users to get along with the digital system. For
that reason we used the concept of virtual knowl-
edge spaces and mapped actual classrooms or rather
the physical structure of a school onto a digital data
model. An important task was to enable the par-
ticipants to be aware of each other, since awareness
is the prerequisite for smooth collaboration and re-
duce misunderstandings. Therefore, the KOI school-
management system offers numerous features to sup-
port the interaction among participants. An example
is the chat component with its conversation history
or the flexible message system of KOI. For our im-
plementation we used the WasabiBeans framework,
since its microkernel architecture allows an easy ad-
justment and the implementation of extensions to ful-
fill changing needs. First, we implemented a Seam
API for WasabiBeans to allow straight forward im-
plementations of Seam-based applications that build
on the framework. A second result of our research
is the KOI school management system that combines
administrative tasks in schooling, as well as functions
to support the communication among participants and
the structuring of teaching materials. The practical
usage of KOI revealed some performance problems
KOI SCHOOL - Towards the Next Level of Communication, Organization and Integration in Education
51
with the Seam API, thus we implemented a Seam
cache to meet this disadvantage.
A unique feature of KOI school is the flexible
group management. This allows not only administra-
tors to create and organize groups, but also end-users,
like pupils, to create and manage their private learn-
ing groups. In addition, users can be member of dif-
ferent groups and groups may contain other groups.
Thereby a sub-group relation can be realized and self-
administration as well as self-organization can be fos-
tered.
To sum up, KOI school is an application for col-
laboration and offers numerous features that are nec-
essary in everyday school life, like room booking,
calendar management, and document management.
At the same time it is very flexible and adjustable
to suffice future requirements. The open architec-
ture, strengthened by using the WasabiBeans frame-
work, enables the integration of various Web 2.0 fea-
tures and thus complies with the demand of the young
learning generation.
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