Learning Environment for Problem-based Learning in Teaching

Software Components and Service-oriented Architecture

Muthu Ramachandran and Rezan Sedeeq

School of Computing and Creative Technologies, and Engineering, Faculty of Arts, Environment and Technology,

Leeds Beckett University, Headingly Campus, Leeds, U.K.

Keywords: Problem based Learning (PBL), Neural Pathway based Learning (NPL), Learning Environment for CBSE

(LECBSE), Learning Environment for SOA (LESOA), SOA, Cloud Computing, e-Learning.

Abstract: CBSE (Component Based Software Engineering) has been with us nearly two decades since the popularity

of object-oriented programming in some form or other. The concept of component abstraction is to increase

the abstraction level to provide large chunk of software solution (building blocks), therefore, it results in

increased productivity. Sadly, CBSE has been taught in the way we have been teaching programming with

smaller abstraction known as functions and procedures. Similarly, OO programming languages have also

been taught in a similar manner. Therefore, we have adopted a combination of Problem-Based Learning

(PBL) and Neural Pathway Based Learning (NPL) techniques to teach high level CBSE modelling and

concepts, large-scale design, and design for reuse with UML components. One of our main objectives of

this paper is to develop a learning technique based on PBL and NPL. The research methodology is based

delivery of the developed learning content into existing VLE and to study how well the learning has

improved on these two modules delivered on the MSc Software Engineering course. The evaluation by

students shows high satisfaction for this semester batch of post-graduate students. This paper presents the

learning environment for PBL based learning on our VLE which provides an excellent learning experience

for students to learn advanced topics such as software components and service computing.

1 INTRODUCTION

CBSE (Component Based Software Engineering)

has been with us nearly two decades since the

popularity of object-oriented programming in some

form or other. The concept of component abstraction

is to increase the abstraction level to provide large

chunk of software solution (building blocks),

therefore, it results in increased productivity. Sadly,

CBSE has been taught in the way we have been

teaching programming with smaller abstraction

known as functions and procedures. Similarly, OO

programming languages have also been taught in a

similar manner. In addition, CBSE has also been

proposed as a container of classes in the UML

paradigm (a de-facto standard): composing

objects/packages into components in the deployment

view. Components do support OO design concepts;

however, our ultimate aim is to decompose

requirements into components: no doubt we will use

OO models as a kind of one of modelling view to

capture requirements. In addition, there is a shortage

of skilled software engineers who are trained in

component-based software development, secure

software development, cloud service development

(service computing) and domain specific languages.

Therefore, we have developed a taught MSc Course

in Software Engineering focussing on these skills

and delivering individual modules.

To teach these subjects at the Post Graduate Level,

we needed a unique pedagogical research, one of

which is problem-based learning and the other is

neural pathway learning. The definition of a

Problem-Based learning (PBL) is learning by

solving a large, real-world problem (Barg, M et al.

2000). Fee and Holland-Minkley (2010) states that

Problem-Based Learning (PBL) is a pedagogy that

centres student learning around open-ended, student

driven problems facilitated by an instructor in order

to achieve the learning outcomes of a course. Our

definition of PBL has been tailored for computing

courses and defined as “Mapping real-world

conceptual models (a set of software solution to a

real-world problem) directly to high level

component abstraction”. PBL is suitable for all

levels and courses as it helps to develop

Ramachandran, M. and Sedeeq, R.

Learning Environment for Problem-based Learning in Teaching Software Components and Service-oriented Architecture.

DOI: 10.5220/0006257702490255

In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU 2017) - Volume 1, pages 249-255

ISBN: 978-989-758-239-4

249

understanding and critical thinking. PBL (2016 a &

b) provides a more detailed bibliography on PBL

practices.

A neural pathway, neural tract, or neural face,

connects one part of the nervous system to another

via a bundle of axons, the long fibbers of neurons. A

neural pathway connects a part of the nervous

system to another using bundles of axons. The optic

nerve is an example of a neural pathway because it

connects the eye back to the brain (Wikipedia 2016).

Neural Pathway Based Learning (NPL) is a

pedagogical technique to use a combination of

teaching strategies to create deep understanding,

knowledge, and critical evaluation by using

techniques such as a multiple choice quiz (MCQ,

Synap 2016), animations, games and puzzle based

learning, and repeated learning, etc.

Component based SE is now a standard large-scale

design strategy in most of industrial systems,

including Agents-oriented SE and in Aspects-

Oriented SE. Therefore, the author wrote a book on

CBSE (Ramachandran 2008) to tackle this drawback

in education. Since 2009, we have been successfully

teaching CBSE concepts, large-scale design, and

design for reuse with use case models (UML)

components using Problem-Based Learning (PBL)

pedagogical approach and Neural Pathway Based

Learning (NPL) techniques. Our approach to

teaching CBSE takes you from requirements to

component abstraction with specific techniques on

how to arrive this step. Each week after an hour

lesion, they were provided with practical and hand-

on problem based learning lab sessions which

consist of practical problem and they are asked to

find our multiple solutions often solutions for

software problems are multiple and therefore you

will see a variety of solutions discovered by students

and this has been closely discussed with them to

identify what is right and could be wrong. This is

also followed by an NPL based activity using MCQs

and Puzzles which are available online and they can

complete in their own time. The instructor can

monitor their success and number of attempts, etc.

on blackboard. The feedback and marks are

provided instantly to students.

Therefore, students have been enjoying the course

with full power of designing CBSE based system

development lifecycle, as they are given the

“freedom” to develop their own knowledge in their

own way with the guidance of a tutor. Our CBSE

teaching methods also demonstrated how to use best

practice guidelines on component design.

With our unique approach to teaching Software

Engineering students include directly mapping UML

and conceptual models into component models helps

students to critically think putting learning into the

context of real-world experience. In addition, most

of hands-on exercises made them to think about

careful design of component interfaces with design

rational discussion in the class amongst their peers,

have improved their learning on designing large-

scale abstraction and its benefits. This has made a

tremendous impact and enthusiasms in students’

learning and have been able to publish research

papers (Ramachandran and Jamnal 2014) while on

this module. Carefully designed labs coupled with

implementation labs that are spread equally during a

semester have improved students’ understanding of

software components and productivity with the

concept of reuse and system integration. They also

learned how useful to have interfaces for system

integration as part of their learning in the lab

sessions. During implementation, keep it strictly to

implement their component design as exactly as

possible to UML component model that they

learned. In addition, our teaching method includes

component-based design for a range of problems.

This includes both small and large-scale

applications, to encourage critical thinking and

critical evaluation of the solutions found. PBL

experience has been great from students’ feedback

as they have chosen as the best module of the year

from 2014-16.

With a strong focus on CBSE learning in Semester 1

students then moved on to learning service

computing, where they implement component-based

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). In essence, it

is time for us to re-visit our wealth of knowledge

and experiences in requirements engineering,

modelling, design, metrics, and testing strategies that

can support components more explicitly. For

example, how we can use the idea of system

decomposition into subsystems as components and

they can be mapped onto fine grain reusable

components.

2 PROBLEM BASED LEARNING

FRAMEWORK

Problem-based learning (PBL) is one of the key

pedagogical approaches to teaching practices based

on providing several different types of problems.

However, there is a lack of dedicated e-learning

environments to support the subject of component-

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250

based design which is a foundation to other modules

in our MSc computing cohorts. In addition, existing

PBL approaches lack dedicated and directed

learning strategies with real-world problems that are

commonly used and popular real-world applications

ranging from small to large. We have written a

dedicated book on the subject knowledge, now we

need a web-enabled learning environment

supporting our PBL based teaching strategies.

Therefore, this project aims to fill that gap and

develop such a learning system, which would orient

students’ toward meaning-making over fact-

collecting” (Rhem, 1998). This would have huge

potential for enterprise in both academia and

industry. We aim to achieve this by providing

technology and subject content with different

problem scenarios, with different difficulty levels of

the problem scenarios and a number of solutions to

choose. Visual instructions and exercise will be

provided to challenge learners and act as a facilitator

(giving guidance) is also part of this project’s aim.

This project aims to use the existing e-learning

environment (blackboard to launch our web-based

PBL) for emphasising foundation and practice which

is easy and enjoyable. We aim to develop a learning

environment which will provide a rich set of visual,

games, multi-media, digital artefacts and use of

cloud technologies.

This project has currently been funded as part of

Leeds Beckett Curriculum Innovation and Digital

Learning Projects 2016-17. One of our main

objectives of this project is to develop different

types of problem-based learning patterns with

populated design assets, code assets, examples, and

real-world case studies for our students. This will

give opportunity to explore current existing E-

Learning environment already provided by the

university in areas of exploring Problem Based

Learning (PBL) for assessment. One of the main

outcomes of this project is an intuitive prototype

knowledge based learning environment for software

components based design and implementation

techniques.

Software component based development is the

natural foundation for developing web services,

software as a service in a cloud computing, etc. The

associated technologies in practice grow rapidly.

Therefore, it is hard to offer new courses without

having a sound foundation for learning these new

concepts and technologies that students can

appreciate while learning in the e-learning

environments.

Figure 1: Problem-Based Learning Framework.

We have now witnessed the rapid change in

technologies from product based to service based

with the emergence of SOA and Cloud computing

technologies. Teaching these evolving software

concepts and technologies poses many challenges in

the HE sector (Mircea 2012 and Ramachandran et. al

2014). Therefore, this project aims to make e-

learning intuitive and fun, and allow students to take

ownership of their own learning through facing real

problem solving experience. For further background

our teaching practices in this subject area, please

also refer to, The Missing Principles in CBSE

Education and in Practice (Ramachandran 2015).

We believe having this project, which will place us

at the forefront of virtual and interactive learning our

modules on Software components and architecture,

service-oriented computing, cloud computing, Big

Data and Business Intelligence with Analytics.

According to Kolb (2016) and Marzano, Pickering,

and Pollock (2001) research has demonstrated that

increases can be achieved if factors such as note

taking; similarities and differences in students; NPL

approach and assigning homework etc. have in the

past improved learning. Therefore, our NPL based

approaches enhances learning and are designed

quizzes, puzzles by taking this into perspective by

reflecting.

Software components (Ramachandran 2008;

Ramachandran 2012) and software as a service are

part of the emerging service computing paradigm.

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and service

computing is a newly emerging concept for all our

software intensive and web-enabled systems.

Software component based development is the

natural foundation for developing web services,

software as a service in a cloud computing, etc.

Learning Environment for Problem-based Learning in Teaching Software Components and Service-oriented Architecture

251

Furthermore, the associated technologies are

growing rapidly. Therefore, it is hard to offer new

courses without having a sound foundation for

learning these new concepts and technologies that

students can experience and appreciate while

learning. This project aims to develop a learning

environment for emphasising foundation and

practice which is practical and enjoyable. This

environment will include interactive materials,

animations, games-based approach to learning, etc.

using a web based learning environment. The

outcome of this project will include a learning

environment and associated materials for digital

learning. This project has also had a world leading

industrial partnership with SOA School

(www.soaschool.com). Developing a virtual learning

environment on SOA and cloud computing will also

enhance our e-learning portfolio as well as changing

our own IT system in education to help reduce our

costs. There are no existing learning environments

for this subject expertise as far as we know and this

will be integrated with our blackboard environment.

PBL is a learning environment in which the problem

drives the learning (UBC, 2015). Problem-based

learning is one of the key pedagogical approaches to

teach practices based on providing several different

types of problems. We aim to achieve this by

providing technology and subject content with

different problem scenarios and a number of

solutions to choose. Visual instructions and exercise

will be provided to challenge learners. Different

types of problem-based learning patterns will be

developed with populated design assets, code assets,

examples, and real-world case studies. This type of

experience for MSc students will also improve

overall student experience in learning, giving them

flexibility in problem solving and learning.

Our course is one of the few in the country that

teaches large scale software development and what

is more it is very popular with the students in terms

of subject interest and offered at Franchise College

and their feedback (Ramachandran and Jamnal 2014

and Ramachandran SFHEA Presentation 2015).

However, there is a lack of dedicated e-learning

environments to support this subject. This project

aims to fill that gap and develop such a system. This

would have huge potential for enterprise in both

academia and industry. There are two major benefits

to students namely enhanced student learning and

enhanced recruitment to our courses. This will be a

unique technology for promoting learning and

teaching for a technology based courses. Students

will benefit from the content and achieve learning

through some of the interactive content prepared for

this project. We believe this will also make us one of

the first Learning Environment for Component-

Based Software Engineering (LECBSE) provider in

the world.

How to introduce this approach in your class room?

Spend first few weeks of introduction to basic

design concepts as a refresher course as some of

them coming from industry with lots of

programming skills. Simultaneously, spend a week

or two with labs session on use case modelling.

Then introduce CBSE with clear understanding of

object-oriented design concepts. At least spend three

weeks of lab session on mapping those use cases to

components and interface design. We have been

using one single case study on banking and ATM

components as they are easy to understand as an

application. Finally, at least three to four weeks on

implementing components as exactly to the UML

component standard in Java or C#. We use our

approach to blended learning with two learning

strategies: Problem-Based Learning (PBL) and

Neural-Pathway Based Learning (NPL). The PBL

emphasis on problem solving strategies by providing

a number of software design challenges to find an

ideal solution using CBSE principles and design

notations which is checked instantly and provided

feedback during the lab sessions. This further

refined to analyse their understanding using NPL

strategies by providing them with MCQ, Puzzle, and

Repeated Interactions. Each topic on CBSE learning

has been enhanced with two major learning

strategies.

3 LEARNING ENVIRONMENT

FOR CBSE (LECBSE)

Technology enhanced learning is based on specific

learning strategies which should be combined with

current developments in emerging technologies as it

is the current for today’s learners. For example, the

popular use of social media and cloud based

technologies. Therefore, we have identified a pillars

of technology enhanced learning in the context of

emerging technologies such as social media, cloud,

and virtual reality. Figure 2 shows the pillars of

learning technologies.

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252

Figure 2 Pillars of Technology Enhanced Learning

Framework & the Future of E-Learning.

3.1 SOA based Design of LBCSE

We are currently working on the CLT Leeds Beckett

funded project on developing a cloud based virtual

learning environment to teach Component Based

Software Engineering (CBSE) and Service-Oriented

Architecture (SOA) and the SOA Based design of

LBCSE is shown in Figure 3. Service computing has

flexibility to exchange and make changes quickly. In

addition, integrating various systems. Chang and

Hisao (2011) has proposed SOA based e-learning

systems that is characterised as a reusable and

interchangeable resources and can reduce the cost of

educational services. However, we have proposed an

integrated cloud based e-learning environment in

Figure 3 (a high level architectural design using the

SOA paradigm) and a more detailed architectural

design with e-learning services that are integrated

with machine learning and data analytics techniques

that system can ubiquitously learn about the

learners.

Figure 3 The High Level SOA Architecture Paradigm for

E-Learning System

SOA based implementation provides flexibility to

change and plugin to emerging web and cloud based

technologies. The SOA paradigm is based on a three

dimensional view: service provider, service

requester and a directory. We have customised the

paradigm for E-Learning as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 4 shows our interface design for PBL based

learning in our VLE. Students can access their

learning content from anywhere and on any device.

Figure 4 Problem Based Learning (PBL) Techniques.

We have categorised PBL into following problems

and solutions categories:

1. Design problems requiring outline solutions

(solutions could be more than one type)

ContinuousLearning&SkillAudit:SOA

BasedLearningActivitiesServiceBus



E‐earners

E‐LearningWebServicesInterface



ExternalCloudBased

E‐LearningProviders

(GoogleCloud

Amazon,Azure,HE

Clouds

In‐HouseE‐Learnin

Services

Learning Environment for Problem-based Learning in Teaching Software Components and Service-oriented Architecture

253

2. Given the design solutions requiring

relevant code skeleton which conforms to

component standard taught in the lectures

3. Given the Code requiring to draw relevant

design solutions (it could be more than one)

4 EVALUATION, RESULTS AND

ANALYSIS

E-learning has become one of major aspect of our

University portfolio in line with emerging

technologies worldwide in higher education. In our

university this has been shown through the

implementation of Centre For Learning And

Teaching (CLT) and adoption of UKPSF and

Teaching Excellency Framework (TEF)

(Ramachandran 2008;2014;2015, TEL 2016). All

these they underpin the teaching pedagogies

required for our subject area.

4.1 Evaluation of the LCBSE

The research project supports in getting a vision on

various principles and different reflections

additionally, associates to comprehend how

individuals think in unexpected ways and

differently. The qualitative process method has

chosen for this research project, as it supports to

come with deeper concepts of E-Learning, in this

project dissertation by using qualitative methods,

several questions are prepared in term of usability,

Course Content and Activities, Assessments and

designing the quizzes. Two types of qualitative

methods have used:

 Likert scale.

 Open-ended question.

Likert Scales “is a psychometric response scale

primarily used in questionnaires to obtain

participant’s preferences or degree of agreement

with a statement or set of statements. Likert scales

are a non‐comparative scaling technique and are

one-dimensional (only measure a single trait) in

nature. Respondents are asked to indicate their level

of agreement with a given statement by way of an

ordinal scale” (Bertram, 2007). The Open-end

question is the unstructured question that the

potential answer not suggested by the project

researcher and the response of the respondents’ not

expected, it is her/ his own words and provides the

participants a scope to grant the information that

respondents think to be suitable for the questions

(Tran et al, 2016).

 13 participants have been involved for the

questionnaires.

 17 questions have been asked based on 7

different aspects.

 Likert scale and one open question have

used for evaluation project.

 Participants have been asked to test full

system.

Figure 5: Overall Results of the Project Evaluation by

Questionnaire and interviews.

As shown in Figure 5 PBL based learning

environment was evaluated by a group learners who

has expressed more than 95% satisfactory of their

learning experiences.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to thank CLT (Centre for learning

and Technology) at Leeds Beckett University for

funding this project.

5 CONCLUSION

It is difficult for leaners in advanced computing

courses to catch with deeper understanding of the

high level concepts underpins current and emerging

technologies. We have developed two advanced

modules to teach the foundations of high level

concepts of components based development and

service computing. However, it also requires

different teaching and learning strategies. We have

employed successfully a problem based learning in

these tow advanced courses. Therefore, we have

adopted a combination of Problem-Based Learning

(PBL) and Neural Pathway Based Learning (NPL)

techniques to teach high level CBSE modelling and

concepts, large-scale design, and design for reuse

CSEDU 2017 - 9th International Conference on Computer Supported Education

254

with UML components. This paper presented the

learning environment for PBL based learning on our

VLE which provides excellent learning experience

for students to learn advanced topics such as

software components and service computing.

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