The paper describes a project currently being developped at the Department of Computer Science of the University "Dunarea de Jos" Galati - Romania. The main project target is to build a frame that is to generate Computer Based Training Systems for various engineering graduate and postgraduate courses. The frame will contain all the necessary tools to load already existing teaching material as well as to include specific student evaluation methods and simulation packages.
Training systems generated by the frame will use Internet-style WWW services to provide access to the teaching information maintained with a Relational Database Managed System.
Keywords: CBTS, WWW, Relational Database Managed System, Engineering Education, NetDynamics application server, simulation software.
For the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, to which the Department of Computer Science and Engineering belongs, one of the major objectives after 1990 was to find new methods of teaching in order to improve the technical expertise of graduating engineers. The Faculty of Electrical Engineering is also organising postgraduate training courses for the continuing education of engineers and technologists working at various local companies. As a result, there is an urgent need to provide distance learning and to make technical education available on the Intranet/Internet [3].
Since 1995, members of Department of Computer Science and Engineering have been jointly working on developing and implementing a Computer Based Training System (CBTS) using both modern communication technologies and teaching methods.
The authors of this paperwork have designed and implemented the computer-based training system named SINBAD-1 [2].
The SINBAD-1 system employed Oracle database tables to manage the teaching information and disseminates the material using Intranet WWW. The system also maintained student evaluation data that teachers can use to perform assessments.
Existing courses in domains like software engineering and electronics engineering have been converted from document-file format into database information managed by a database server and included into the training system.
Combining the strengths of a database server with the flexibility of the WWW services[4] we developed a modern, highly accessible CBTS.
Furthermore, we aimed at finding a unitary method to automatically create training systems for the various disciplines taught at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering. Therefore, a research activity on this matter was started to obtain the CBTSs generating methods and the corresponding software tools. This research activity currently integrated in a project named GENESYS (GENEration of SYStems).
Emergence of new information technologies makes it possible to build new educational tools, intended to be used by people from geographically scattered locations. Use of performant information structuring and retrieval systems can make the tool react rapidly. Adding hypermedia techniques makes the teaching material at least as attractive as printed material and by far more interactive.
Including these technologies into educational tools makes it possible to aim at generating high- performance, high-reliability Computer-Based Training Systems.
As of this writing, there is no tool available to automatically generate CBTSs that can be used for assisted learning in engineering education.
We focused on developing and implementing a general frame that will provide a methodology and the specific software tools to produce Computer Based Training Systems that will integrate courseware material, tests and simulation packages. This general frame will be the original product of our research team. If successful, the system could become a new standard for writing course material on-line.
The general frame will allow to any instructor without software expertise to easily generate Computer Based Training Systems for his currently taught disciplines.
By means of the general frame the instructor will be enabled to include testing sections and corresponding evaluation criteria in the training system's lessons.
Engineering disciplines are focused on applications, therefore the necessity to use specific simulation software in computer assisted learning may occur. The frame we are developing will provide means to include applicative lessons in the newly built CBT system (e.g. simulating the behaviour of a device or installation).
The GENESYS project will consist in the software development of a unitary frame having the following main features:
generating on-line courses and exploiting them through the Web;
inserting specially designed application lessons, also handled through the Web;
integrating in the "educational server" of an application server, a database server and a Web server.
Due to these features, the frame has to provide methods and tools to perform several actions to create a new CBTS:
1. Loading/modifying the teaching material of the discipline, subject of the CBTS; adding a new set of lessons from a related discipline;
2. Creating/editing a keyword dictionary for the discipline involved in training;
3. Loading the testing sections of the lessons and the evaluation criteria;
4. Loading the final test module for the discipline;
5. Loading the special-designed applicative or experimental lessons requested by the teacher;
6. Integrating all components above in a training system that will provide on-line educational material via WWW.
Loading the set of lessons consists of the following steps:
The teacher will provide the basic information to be included in the system's lessons in text format. The frame will enable the teacher to use an interactive software tool, named GENLES, to structure the basic information. This way, the initial text will become a structure of tagged items (according to an inside convention), each of them with their own meaning: title, headings; text; image; list of items (ordered or not).
The conversion , by means of CONVLES software, of the tagged items into data to be loaded in the database files. The converter will report the format errors occurred.
Upgrading the lesson contents will be achieved the same way: basic text, tagged items, conversion. Adding a new set of lessons for a related discipline has to follow the same procedure. As the CBTS is finally generated, the training options are updated accordingly.
Creating/upgrading the keyword dictionary of the training system is an effect of the previous action, as keywords are a sort of tagged items in a lesson. They will be linked later to the lessons where they are explained, as they are loaded be the converter CONVLES in a special database file.
Loading the test section of lesson (questions and explanations for the case of wrong answer) will be done as follows:
The teacher will provide an interactive software module - GENQUEST - with information structured like: the lesson that can include the question, the question's text, the list of answers to choose from, the scores for any combination of chosen answers. When a student gives an incorrect answer, he can be replied with an explanation text.
A conversion software - CONVQUEST - will transform the information produced by GENQUEST into data to be stored in the database files, and will also generate database files involved in student evaluation, and student training history.
Editing/upgrading the test elements will be achievable the same way.
Questions in the test section of a lesson will be randomly selected from the set belonging to the lesson.
The newly built training system could contain a special module with questions to answer, to perform a summative evaluation of the learning outcomes.
Loading the questions for this module consists of:
The teacher will provide an interactive software module - GENTEST - with information structured like : the question's text, the list of answers to be choose from, scores for any combination of chosen answers. When a student gives an incorrect answer, he can be sent to the lessons that explain the mistakes he made.
The CONVTEST module will process the information produced by GENTEST, storing the outgoig data in the database files.
Any further modification has to be submitted to the same processing. The questions in the summative evaluation test will be randomly selected, any time the test is requested.
Training in engineering is supposed to emphasise the practical, experimental aspects not only the theoretical ones (e.g. monitoring a device or an installation through a simulation system).
The frame will allow integrating tools for computer-aided simulation/ experiment. This facility has to be as general as possible due to the specificity of the tools involved.
The means for integration are as follows:
splitting the simulation into two distinct components: the data processing and the user interface;
data processing will occur as an effect of running certain procedures launched by the training system on the application server;
the user interface will be strongly customised and will be specially designed for every simulation lesson (as apletts and dedicated Java programs [1]).
Loading these simulating lessons via WWW will be a major facility of the system; since they will have to match the description above they will be the result of the co-operation between the teacher and the research team involved in this project.
Assembling all the components into a whole will be realised with an integrating application server, like NetDynamics [5]. The NetDynamics environment is an instrument for developing and running data- driven application. Applications are available to the client through the Web, and data is stored in a database.
The NetDynamics application will be designed using the NetDynamics Studio developing tool, and will be run by the NetDynamics Application Server.
CBTSs will consist of NetDynamics applications that process/present certain teaching material and evaluation information stored and maintained as tables managed by an Oracle, Informix or any other ANSI SQL-compliant database server. The same application can be used for several databases, for different disciplines, or domains.
Several CBTSs, having the same behaviour but different teaching material or evaluation criteria may be generated. The simulation lessons will also be different, being designed for each and every CBTS upon request.
The frame generates new CBTSs that provide campus-wide access to the teaching material. Postgraduate students involved in education programs could also be able to access the training system directly from their offices.
The Computer Based Training System produced by means of the general frame is a collection of related lessons having a theoretical part and an application part.
Each lesson can be accessed by the user through the training system. Lessons are presented to the user as a sequence of WWW pages. The WWW pages forming lessons can include text, examples, images/animated images, diagrams, links to related information. The teaching information presented in the WWW pages is maintained in database tables format by a Relational database Server, thus insuring data consistency and protection.
Pages belonging to a lesson are dynamically generated upon WWW browser's request. This way we avoided creating and updating hundreds of files.
The pages are hierarchically organised. The top pages are presenting the list of disciplines being included in the CBTS (if the CBTS contains lessons belonging to many related disciplines), and/or the summary of discipline.
Teachers can periodically perform assessments using the information stored in the special evaluation- and history tables. Thus, teachers can more accurately estimate the performance and learning progress for any user.
When used in the learning process, the training system will behave as follows:
any discipline in the top list can be chosen for interactive learning; the user can visit the lessons of the chosen discipline in predefined sequence or in arbitrary order;
every lesson contains keywords as links to the lessons that present subjects related to their meaning;
every lesson has an application part with questions to answer; results obtained in answering questions could be immediately communicated to the students in order to perform a formative evaluation; results can also be stored in special database tables for later student's cumulative evaluation; steps taken in answering the questions (the history) are also stored in the special evaluation tables;
the CBTS has a special module for summative evaluation that includes questions regarding the entire material; a student submitting himself to the test will have his answers stored in order to obtain a summative evaluation of his knowledge;
both testing methods will be provided with explanations for the students that fail to answer correctly; these explanations will be displayed whenever wrong answers are detected;
the training system also contains links to some special pages dedicated searches based on various criteria (e.g. by keyword, fragment of word, phrase); this section can be chosen to perform various searches in the teaching material presented by the lessons included in system;
the CBTS can include special lessons concerning the practical aspects of Engineering training, like monitoring devices or installations; they will consist of screens with graphical representation of the phenomenon to be studied, allowing the student to issue commands and to view the results of the simulation.
As opposed to a traditional WWW course approach, generated CBTSs offer a better data structuring and feedback capabilities. Generated CBTSs also offer internationalisation in all respects of language and culture traditions.
Ever more powerful processing of teaching information is currently needed. The databases are a strong tool for such a need. Communication technology is now changing the education process and the WWW services offer considerable potential for the dissemination of information and powerful user- friendly interfaces for presentation.
Our purpose was to join them in modern, efficient computer based training systems that can enhance the learning process for students and engineers.
A unitary method to generate such kind of high-performance training systems, also including customised lessons, is the main objective of the GENESYS project .
The unitary frame system developed in the GENESYS project will be used to on-line deliver courses for any engineering discipline, using the World Wide Web. The frame is supposed to become a new standard for course delivery in Internet.
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3. Krol, E., The whole Internet. O'Reilly&Associates, USA (1992).
4. Stinga, O., Pecheanu, E., Dumitriu, L., Using WWW services to on-line access DBMS-managed information. Proc. The 3-rd Romanian International Conference for Open Systems. Bucharest, Romania, (1995).
5. *** NetDynamics On-line Docs. NetDynamics Inc., USA (1997)
Luminita DUMITRIU, Emilia PECHEANU, Octavian STINGA, Severin BUMBARU Department of Computer Science, University of Galati Str Domneasca 47, Galati 6200 - Romania tel: ++40 36 460106, fax: ++40 36 461353 e-mail: lumi@alpha.ugal.ro, emipec@elia.eu.com , soctav@alpha.ugal.ro, sbumbaru@alpha.ugal.ro, tcornelia@alpha.ugal.ro