AN ELEARNING EXPERIENCE USING THE SAKAI

ENVIRONMENT

A Case-Study for Online Courses in Operating Systems

Félix Buendía García

Depto. de Informática de Sistemas y Computadores, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Spain

Antonio Hervás Jorge

Dpto.de Matemática Aplicada, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Spain

Keywords: Online learning, e-learning platforms, online courses, evaluation surveys.

Abstract: In the context of the Bologna process, e-learning experiences are being promoted in many European

universities. Recently, the Universidad Politécnica of Valencia (UPV) has implemented the Poliformat

platform that is based on the Sakai environment. Last year, a pilot experience was developed to test this

environment for undergraduate courses in a Computer Engineering degree. The current work describes an e-

learning application of the Poliformat platform in an Operating Systems online course. The experience has

been evaluated using survey techniques that analyse online learning issues and also technical aspects related

to the Poliformat platform. Globally, the experience was rather positive although some problems were

detected in the evaluation process that revealed that e-learning methods and tools have to be improved.

1 INTRODUCTION

E-learning platforms are “shaping” the future of

higher education in the context of the Bologna

process. Many European universities have promoted

in the last years several actions to introduce these

platforms in their academic activities through virtual

campuses and online courses. Recently, the

Universidad Politécnica of Valencia (UPV) has

implemented the Poliformat platform that is based

on the Sakai environment (Mengod, 2006).

During the 2005-2006 academic year, a pilot

experience was developed to test the Poliformat

platform for undergraduate courses in a Computer

Engineering degree. The current work describes

such experience and the e-learning application of the

Poliformat platform in an Operating Systems online

course. The experience shows interesting aspects of

online learning and some problems that occur when

e-learning courses are delivered through the

Poliformat platform.

The rest of the paper is structured as follows.

Section 2 describes the Sakai environment used to

implement the Poliformat platform. Section 3

illustrates the current e-learning experience under

the Poliformat platform and section 4 reports the

evaluation of this experience. Finally, Section 5

gives some concluding remarks.

2 SAKAI DESCRIPTION

Sakai is a consortium of universities, colleges and

commercial affiliates working in open partnership

with standards organizations and other open-source

initiatives to develop “community-source enterprise-

scale software applications to enhance collaboration,

research and teaching within higher education”

(White, 2005). The core members include MIT,

University of Michigan, Stanford, Indiana

University, and uPortal.

352

Buendía García F. and Hervás Jorge A. (2007).

AN ELEARNING EXPERIENCE USING THE SAKAI ENVIRONMENT - A Case-Study for Online Courses in Operating Systems.

In Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies - Society, e-Business and e-Government /

e-Learning, pages 352-357

DOI: 10.5220/0001285603520357

 SciTePress

Figure 1: Poliformat main screen.

The Sakai environment is based on an extensible

service-oriented architecture for building and

deploying enterprise-scale collaboration, teaching

and research tools and services. Sakai uses Java-

based technologies that enable teaching tools such as

a complete course management system, support for

collaborative activities and a services-based portal.

The UPV became a Sakai partner in 2005 and

adapted its environment to produce the Poliformat

platform. Some of the Poliformat contributions are

the integration within the corporate systems and

applications, the customization of appearance and

the internationalization, including the translation to

Spanish language.

Figure 1 shows an example of Poliformat

screenshot that displays the main window in the

Operating Systems course. The Poliformat window

is structured into several areas:

 The head area displays the available course

sites (e.g. Operating Systems).

 The left area shows the main subject options

such as Syllabus or Schedule.

 The central area displays the subject

information.

 The right area displays other site sections such

as announcements, forums or chat messages.

3 E-LEARNING EXPERIENCE

3.1 Teaching Context

“Operating Systems” is present in most of the

computing curricula of both undergraduate and

Master’s programs. At the Computer Engineering

Department of the UPV more than twenty instructors

teach Operating Systems courses to about a thousand

students. Table 1 shows the organization of the

Operating Systems courses.

Table 1: Operating System courses.

Course name Type #Students

Operating Systems I

(SO1)

Introductory 567

Operating Systems II

(SO2)

Intermediate 650

System Administration

(ADS)

Advanced 187

Operating System

Study (ESO)

Advanced 84

Each course involves both a theoretical and a

practical part. The percentage of the practical part

varies depending on the learning goals of each

course. Introductory courses such as SO1 require

students to acquire a solid theoretical foundation,

thus the teaching methodology favors the theoretical

part. Intermediate and advances courses (i.e., SO2,

AN ELEARNING EXPERIENCE USING THE SAKAI ENVIRONMENT - A Case-Study for Online Courses in Operating

Systems

353

ADS, or ESO), try to balance this percentage by

covering new conceptual topics and performing

some practical activities. This methodology allows

students to learn how operating systems are designed

and how to use their services.

Unfortunately, this teaching methodology

becomes inefficient in mass courses because when

the student/teacher ratio increases, the traditional

relationship between the students and the instructor

becomes affected so that it is more difficult to

provide right feedback and to monitor students’

progress.

In order to alleviate the problem of mass courses

and to study the requirements and benefits of

distance learning, the Computer School at the UPV

started in 2002 an innovative experience providing

students with distance learning for some Operating

Systems courses, including SO1 and SO2.

Web repositories and e-mail tools were used to

provide remote assistance and automatic assessment.

These courses were aimed at students who were not

able to attend traditional courses for any reason

whatsoever. During the 2005-2006 academic year,

the Poliformat platform was used to support a SO2

course that was taught to 48 students (about 650 in

classroom-based courses). The students joined

voluntary the course and they knew the general

conditions (e.g. the assessment system was the same

for all students either in classroom-based or in

online courses)

3.2 Online Learning Method

The current e-learning experience is based on an

online learning method to organize the course items

and control its delivery (Anderson and Elloumi,

2003). This method must be independent from the e-

learning platform that supports the specific course.

In this case, the proposed method combines several

techniques from self-paced autonomous learning for

theoretical issues to programmed instruction used in

practical activities. Figure 2 shows a flow chart that

displays the main steps in the course organization.

In the current approach, a preliminary evaluation

step is required to test the students’ goals and to

check if they are able to meet the course conditions.

If the stated conditions are accepted then the student

is enabled to join the online course (a kind of

“learning contract”) but if students do not “sign” the

contract they are recommended to join the

alternative class-room based course.

The next step consists of scheduling the course

items using agenda services and assigning a calendar

of recommended tasks and activities by weeks. From

this step, online learning issues are planned

according to two different “parallel paths”:

 The acquisition of theoretical knowledge

(concepts, facts…) is based on a self-paced

learning in which the student decides what

concepts are interested in and the way and

time to get them. A collection of resources and

material about the target subject are available

in the Resource repository.

 The practical skills are obtained by performing

activities that involve the working with real

systems or simulations (Buendia and Cano,

2006) in the case of technical subjects (e.g.

Operating Systems). These activities also

require some theoretical fundamentals but

they have to be acquired under the student

responsibility. Nevertheless, the achievement

of practical activities is based on a paradigm

of programmed instruction. Students receive

assignment information about the proposed

activities and they have to deliver results in a

tightly scheduled way.

After theoretical concepts have been acquired

and practical activities performed, a formative

assessment is performed in order to evaluate the

student’s knowledge and skills. This evaluation is

only informative and it has not a grading purpose.

Once learning activities have been finished, the

next step is a post-course evaluation that queries

students their point of view about the course

delivery. Finally, all students either in online or

classroom-based courses perform the final

examination for getting their grades.

Figure 2: OS Course flow chart.

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354

Figure 3: Example of Poliformat repository.

3.3 Implementation Details

The previous online learning method has been

applied to the course of Operating Systems using the

Poliformat platform. After the student accesses the

platform, he or she views the course site as displays.

The course site provides information about the

course items although a specific learning path is not

forced to the student.

From this point, the student can select the

different items that compose the course. The

Poliformat platform provides a Schedule service that

allows instructors or site organizers to post items in

a calendar format. The calendar has day, week,

month, year, and flat list views.

The information about events, notifications or

programmed activities is organized by means of the

Announcement service that is used to inform site

participants about current items of interest. Other

kinds of information related to the course subject are

provided by the Resources service. Different types

of resources include documents (e.g., word

processing documents, spreadsheets, slide

presentations, plain text), links to websites, and

simple text documents. Figure 3 shows a screenshot

that displays a repository of resources related to the

Operating Systems course.

There are other services mainly addressed to

provide communication facilities such as

Discussion, Email, Chat or News, or to manage

learning information such as Modules, Quizzes,

Assigments or Gradebooks. In the context of the

current experience, the next services are of particular

interest:

 The Assignment service that implements the

practical activities provided in the course. This

service allows instructors to create, distribute,

collect, and grade online assignments.

Assignments are private; student submissions

are not visible to other users of the site. Figure

4 shows a screenshot that displays some

settings about a practical activity in the course

example

 The Tests & Quizzes section that allows the

instructor to create online assessments for

delivery via a web interface to the course

students. They are used in the formative

assessment of the course (see Figure 2).

Figure 4: Example of assignment features.

AN ELEARNING EXPERIENCE USING THE SAKAI ENVIRONMENT - A Case-Study for Online Courses in Operating

Systems

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4 EXPERIENCE EVALUATION

This section describes how the current e-learning

experience has been evaluated in the context of the

Poliformat platform. This evaluation is based on

subjective methods such as surveys and checklists.

In this experience, two different evaluation

processes were performed as Figure 2 shows.

A pre-course evaluation reviewed the students’

profiles (e.g. how the student was reported about the

online course or if he/she joined the course

voluntarily) and asked them if they are able to carry

out the proposed course activities. The Survey tool

was not available in the Poliformat platform at the

beginning of the course and a (quiz) questionnaire

was proposed to the students. The evaluation

questionnaire was based on “true/false” questions

and most of the student answers agreed with the

course conditions.

A more detailed evaluation was performed at the

end of the course and the Survey tool developed at

the UPV was used to elaborate the proposed

questionnaire. The evaluation questionnaire was

based on “Likert-scale” questions (from strongly

disagree-0 valued to strongly agree-10 value). Table

2 shows a set or questions related to general issues

of the course evaluation (independent from the e-

learning platform) that were submitted to the

students.

Table 2: Post-course general issues.

Issue Question

Prerequisites Do you think that the online course

would need some prerequisite to join

it?

Expectations Does the course address your

expectations?

Scheduling Has the course scheduling been met?

Goals Are the course goals adequately

stated?

Resources Are the available resources adequate

for the course?

Expected

activities

Do you think that programmed

activities are the expected one?

Timing Is the time assigned to activities

enough?

Academic

level

Is the academic level of activities

adequate?

Assessment Is the assessment system adequate to

the course activities?

Methodology Do you think that the course

methodology is adequate?

Assistance Is the teacher assistance adequate?

Satisfaction Do you think that the course

experience has been satisfactory?

Post-course evaluation (I)

01 23 45 67 89

Prereq uisit es

Exp ect at io ns

Sched uling

Goals

Resources

Exp ect ed act ivit ies

Timing

A cademic level

Assessment

Methodology

Assistance

Satisfaction

Figure 5: Evaluation of general issues.

The obtained results are displayed on Figure 5

that provides a view of the weak aspects detected by

students. The evaluation shows that prerequisites

were not mainly considered by students as a crucial

aspect and some complaints were stated about the

online e-learning methodology and the academic

level of practical activities. Globally, the degree of

satisfaction with the course was acceptable.

Table 3: Post-course technical issues.

Issue Question

Handiness

Is it easy to interact with the

platform?

Interface

Is the user interface of the platform

friendly?

Help

Are help options in the platform

useful?

Operation

Does the platform operate as

expected?

Reliability

Are serious platform errors

happened?

Communication

effectiveness

Are communication tools

effective?

Additional

tools

Do you think that the platform

would need other tools?

Activity

support

Is the platform support enough for

practical activities?

Assessment

support

Is the platform support enough for

assessment?

Table 3 shows some technical aspects about the

Poliformat platform that were asked to students. The

proposed questionnaire was also based on “Likert-

scale” questions that checked the effect of the e-

learning platform in the course example.

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Post-course evaluation (II)

0123456789

Handi ness

Interf ace

Hel p

Op erat io n

Reliability

Co mmuni cat ion ef f ect iveness

Additional tools

Act ivit y support

Assessment support

Figure 6: Evaluation of technical issues.

The results about the evaluation of technical

aspects are displayed on Figure 6. Students were

particularly critical with operation and reliability

issues. In the first year of the Poliformat application,

there were several system crashes and login failures

that were noticed by students. Another complaint

was focused on the handiness to interact with the

platform. A common student point of view was the

demand of additional tools for communication

purposes.

5 CONCLUSIONS

The current work has described an e-learning

experience under the Poliformat platform that is

based on the Sakai environment. The experience has

been focused on a technical subject (Operating

Systems) that is part of a Computer Engineering

degree. An online learning method has been used to

drive the e-learning experience and some

implementation details about the role of the

Poliformat platform in the experience have been

reported.

Finally, the experience has been evaluated using

a two phase approach (before and after the learning

activities) and considering, on the one hand, the

general issues about the online learning method and,

on the other hand, the technical issues introduced by

the Poliformat platform. The obtained results reveal

that methodology aspects have to be improved in the

course delivery, mainly, the lack of support for

teaching theoretical issues, and special attention

must be given to system maintenance, avoiding the

platform failures and improving the user interaction.

Further works are addressed to take advantage of

the evaluation results in the management and

delivery of future courses. Another aspect to

improve is the systematization of evaluation

procedures that will help the generation of survey

questionnaires. In this context, the use of learning

standards such as IMS Learning Design will

contribute to facilitate the evaluation of online

courses in e-learning platforms.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work has been partially supported by the

Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia, Spain, under

Grant TIN2005-08788-C04-02.

REFERENCES

Anderson, Terry D., Elloumi, Fathi (Eds.), 2003. Theory

and Practice of Online Learning Athabasca: Athabasca

University.

Buendía F., Cano J.-C. WebgeneOS: A Generative and

Web-Based Learning Architecture to Teach Operating

Systems in Undergraduate Courses. IEEE

Transactions on Education, Vol. 49, Issue 4, pp. 464-

473, Nov. 2006.

Mengod, R. PoliformaT, the Sakai-based on-line campus

for UPV - history of a success, 5th Sakai Conference,

Vancouver, BC, Canada 30 May - 2 June 2006

(Community Source Week).

White, A. Introducing the Sakai Community. 4th Sakai

Conference, Austin, TX, USA, 2005.

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