The Virtual Global University

The Realization of a fully Virtual University – Concept and Experiences

 

 

Hannes Lischka, Judit Bajnai, Dimitris Karagiannis, Giannis Chalaris

 

University of Vienna, Institute for Computer Science and Business Informatics, Department of Knowledge Engineering and TEI Athens, Department of Computer Science

 

 

Key words: Virtual University, Case Study, Learning Management System, process-based E-Learning

 

Abstract:

 

Corporate and academic institutions have realized the importance of distributing their knowledge and learning units with the help of E-Learning, leveraging the institution’s potential through better educated and trained users.

The “Virtual Global University (VGU)” is an academic E-Learning solution bringing together the experiences and knowledge of renowned German, Swiss and Austrian universities, resulting in a post-graduate degree called “Master of Business Informatics (MBI)”. Unlike ICT-supported on-campus studies, the VGU is a fully virtual university providing all administrative, educational and communicational means via an online portal.

The paper features two topics: the first topic is concerned with experiences after the first year of VGU, focusing on the courses provided by the “University of Vienna”. Second, the concept for a flexible realization of unit-based E-Learning courses with the help of process-oriented modeling tool ADVISOR® is presented. ADVISOR® aims to transform the modeled E-Learning units into E-Learning platforms, like WebCT, automatically.


Index

 

1      General information and definitions. 2

1.1       Description of existing courses. 2

1.2       Technical realization at VGU.. 3

2      VGU experiences. 4

2.1       WebCT experiences. 5

2.1.1        Administrators and course designers. 5

2.1.2        Students. 5

2.2       From experiences to requirements. 6

2.2.1        Administrators and course designers. 6

2.2.2        Students. 8

3      ADVISOR®. 9

3.1       General description. 10

3.2       Model types. 11

3.3       Integration of Learning Objects with ADVISOR®. 13

4      Future outlook. 13

 

 

1         General information and definitions

 

Corporate and academic institutions have realized the importance of distributing their knowledge and learning units with the help of E-Learning, leveraging the institution’s potential through better educated and trained users.

 

The “Virtual Global University (VGU)” is an academic E-Learning solution bringing together the experiences and knowledge of renowned German, Swiss and Austrian universities, resulting in a post-graduate degree called “Master of Business Informatics (MBI)”. Unlike ICT-supported on-campus studies, the VGU is a fully virtual university providing all administrative, educational and communicational means via an online portal. The VGU and its MBI are developed under the grant of the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research within the program "New media in education" [1].

 

Participating universities are [2]

 

 

and many more.

 

1.1        Description of existing courses

 

In order to achieve the academic degree at the VGU, a series of courses, a thesis and practical experiences have to be completed by the students according to a curriculum.

 

Within the VGU, the University of Vienna provides two courses:

 

 

The course “Business Intelligence” comprises an introduction to Intelligent Information Processing and Knowledge Processing. Furthermore, selected aspects of Business Intelligence, E-Business Intelligence and relevant parts of Knowledge Management are taught. Both general Business Intelligence technologies and technologies related to Business Intelligence, like Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) or Data Mining, are introduced. Each topic is discussed theoretically first and is then deepened by practical examples using Business Intelligence tools.

 

The course “Process Modelling” deals with the effectiveness of business processes, which is of major interest in today’s business world. This trend is fuelled by the emergence of E-Business as a new means to reach all external and internal partners of an enterprise. Business processes have to be engineered, or re-engineered, to realize the potentials of internet technologies. The “Process Modelling” course recognizes this situation and introduces different methods for capturing, modeling and analyzing business processes of an enterprise in a systematic way. Furthermore, students get to know procedures and project management methods, that support their practical analyzing skills in complex enterprise situations. The course also investigates many current practical application areas of business process modeling, like Workflow Management, E-Business and Supply Chain Management. By providing access to a terminal server at the University of Vienna, students have the chance to use the process modeling tool ADONIS® [7]. The use of this tool reinforces the theory through practical examples.

 

1.2        Technical realization at VGU

 

VGU has chosen a “Learning Management System (LMS)” to reach its E-Goals.

 

There are several definitions for an LMS, summarized in the following enumeration:

 

 

The following figure shows, how an LMS-architecture has to look like in order to fulfill the required services in a virtual university:

 

figure 1: LMS-architecture

 

The arrows connecting tools and web portals in figure 1 show interfaces between several participating entities in the VGU. For these purposes, WebCT [12] (version 3.6) was chosen to serve as an LMS. According to the LMS-definitions cited above, WebCT provides the following functions and tools:

 

 

In the following chapter, the use of WebCT as administration and course building tool within the VGU (chapter “VGU experiences”) is looked at in more detail. Chapter “ADVISOR®” deals with the process-based tool ADVISOR®, that serves as a course modeling engine. Chapter “Future outlook” concludes with a possible interrelation between VGU using WebCT and ADVISOR® as added value.

 

2         VGU experiences

 

During the first year of virtual study at the VGU, students, course designers and administrators had to face different situations and challenges by using WebCT, that yield into general requirements for an LMS.

 

In the following, these experiences are listed, grouped by type of user, because access, management and usage of WebCT has specific functions for each of these groups.

 

2.1        WebCT experiences

 

Generally speaking, WebCT meets the basic requirements of an LMS. Courses, students and additional content can be managed, and the goal of providing and teaching content virtually to students is achieved.

 

Despite its wide-spread use in Anglo-Saxon regions, WebCT still is in an early stage of development, considering especially group work support and sophisticated communication methods.

 

2.1.1       Administrators and course designers

 

The experiences the administrators and course designers made with WebCT are two edged. On the one hand, WebCT is a very stable tool, that can be easily overlooked, on the other hand the content provision and management are very laborious.

 

 

2.1.2       Students

 

Students were mostly missing communication and administrative possibilities. Communication, although chat is provided, lacks an awareness function, so it is impossible to set up chats spontaneously. Furthermore, even if a central point of access with course independent functions exists, it also has to be improved. It misses an external or a central mail account for all the student’s courses and a central, course independent site, where official notes regarding the whole study can be announced and a “public cafeteria” for informal discussions among all students can be established.

 

The administrative functions of WebCT are also insufficient, because students were missing an obvious tracking of their courses, i.e. which parts have already been visited, which parts are still to come, what is the exact current situation of their grades and how will the final grading be done.

 

 

2.2        From experiences to requirements

 

Based on the experiences made during one year of deployment[1] of WebCT at VGU, requirements, that an LMS has to fulfill, can be derived. According to the structure suggested in chapter “WebCT experiences”, there are also two main categories of requirements:

 

 

Each of these two categories is further divided into the following sub-categories:

 

 

2.2.1       Administrators and course designers

 

These requirements lead us to the point of view of administrators and course designers regarding an LMS in general.

 

2.2.1.1     Usability requirements

 

The usability requirements from the administrators’ or course designers’ point of view focus on administration and easy handling and provision of material, the so-called authoring. They are:

 

 

2.2.1.2     Technical and technological requirements

 

The main technical requirement for an LMS is the platform independence. Furthermore it should be allowed to transfer any kind of client content format (PDF, MS Word, Real Networks, Macromedia, etc.) into the LMS from external sources. Besides, server side technologies (PHP, ASP, etc.) have to be made accessible.

 

An important technological requirement is openness towards E-Learning standards (LOM, IMS, SCORM, etc.) for easy integration of existing resources.

 

Furthermore, quiz and exam authoring has to support content import and authoring for creation and scoring of quizzes/exams (including multiple choice questions, true/false questions, matching questions, short answer questions and essay questions). This is the first step to automated grading.

 

A supported testing stage for evaluation and debugging of course content before making it available to students is also necessary, in order to provide high quality courses. For quality assurance, the LMS should allow viewing the course (conditional release of content, etc.) and quizzes as a student without logging out as designer.

 

In brief, technical and technological requirements are:

 

·        Standards compliance

 

2.2.1.3     Administrative requirements

 

Administrative requirements deal with the management of participating human and technical resources.

 

 

2.2.1.4     Communication requirements

 

Communication requirements focus on exchanging messages throughout the LMS, connecting administrators, course designers and students. Functioning communication is the foundation of E-Learning courses and therefore needs to be simple but powerful. Requirements are:

 

 

2.2.2       Students

 

Whereas administrators and course designers primarily need to manage resources and students, students’ requirements deal with the use of the LMS and its content and especially with fast and effective communication.

 

2.2.2.1     Usability requirements

 

The usability requirements from the students’ point of view focus on easy handling of courses, tests and exams.

 

These requirements mainly focus on information providing:

 

 

2.2.2.2     Technical and technological requirements

 

The technical and technological requirements on the students’ side have not got the same relevance as for administrators and course designers, because students have limited writing access.

 

The requirements are:

 

 

2.2.2.3     Administrative requirements

 

The administrative requirements from the students’ point of view mainly focus on success control during the courses:

 

 

2.2.2.4     Communication requirements

 

Communication requirements for students differ only slightly from the ones for administrators and course designers. The experiences of the first year of VGU show, that implementing these requirements in a meaningful way will improve course quality noticeably.

 

 

3         ADVISOR®

 

ADVISOR® is a technology, based on the meta-modeling tool ADONIS® [7] and is a set of model-types to describe E-Learning courses. The tool ADVISOR® together with the ADVISOR® methodology, based on the Business Process Management Systems (BPMS) methodology [8], form a holistic approach towards E-Learning.

 

The underlying idea of ADVISOR® is the use of modular units, called Learning Objects. Depending on the origin, several definitions and names for these modular units exist:

 

 

Learning Objects in ADVISOR® can be combined and linked via model-type-referencing. Implicitly, this modular structure has several advantages:

 

 

3.1        General description