Transcript The Virtual University

Education as a Web
(Grid) Service
National GEC Network Meeting
Bethseda Maryland
August 22 2001
Geoffrey Fox
PTLIU Laboratory for Community Grids
Computer Science, Informatics, Physics
Indiana University
Bloomington IN 47404
[email protected]
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Personal Background
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http://aspen.csit.fsu.edu/collabtools
“From Computational Science to Internetics: Integration of Science
with Computer Science”
http://www.new-npac.org/users/fox/documents/internetics2
I wandered through various twists and turns
– Caltech -- Professor and Executive Officer Physics, Dean
Educational Computing
– Syracuse – Physics/Computer Science; Developed web-based
tools for Telemedicine and Distance Education
– Indiana – Physics, Computer Science, Informatics; Director of
Grid Laboratory
– Co-founder of companies WebWisdom and Anabas in areas of
education technology
A mix of technology and
itsDemonstrating
use – today I will
focus onTelemedicine
1994
Web-based
technology as that is my expertise (although you are probably
more interested in using it)
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Some Technology Trends
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Increasing performance of Internet backbone and last
mile (access)
Hand-held devices and wireless  Pervasive Access
Peer to peer technologies enable new ways of
collaborating and blurs distinction between clients and
servers
Client-Server  Multi-tier Architectures
XML Schema and tools  All data defined as objects
Separation of client, system and persistent storage
models for information
Development of (application)
service
modelimply
to capture
New
Technologies
common (maybe centralized)
capabilities
New
Opportunities requiring
Business Web”
models
Semantic Web, Grid or …typically
“Next New
Generation
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For
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Education and Training
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What is a Grid Service?
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The Grid is distributed system allowing communities to access
seamlessly heterogeneous resources from heterogeneous clients
– Resources are web-pages, instruments, Object repositories,
Simulation codes running on supercomputers ….
A Service is a generic application or capability respecting
standards (general web and application specific) allowing
multiple providers to compete on a given service
Middle Tier
Portal is
Back end
Broker
customizable
Capabability
User interface
The Grid is essentially is the future Web
Resource
IBM just announced they were investing around
$1 Billion in Grid
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Some General Grid Services
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Business is developing “web service” concept to
support areas like e-commerce where one composes
atomic services like
–
–
–
–
Security
Payment
Catalog
Goods supply
Each of these services could allow
Multiple choices of provider
In a given session
Payment
Credit Card
Security
WSDL is new standard
for web services
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Catalog
Warehouse
shipping
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Architecture of Grid: CommodityScience
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Commerce, Entertainment, Healthcare, Science,
Computing, Education …. will be Grid Services
C
o
n
v
e
n
i
e
n
c
e
Next Generation
Consumer Web
Twenty-First Century University
and laboratory
Community Portals
Science Portals & Workbenches
Commerce
Grid
Education
Grid
Research
Grid
Computational
Grid
Business Services
Education
Services
Research Services &
Technology
Computational
Services
Grid Services (resource independent)
Grid Fabric (resource dependent)
P
e
r
f
o
r
m
a
n
c
e
Networking, Devices and Systems
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Features to be Supported
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Curriculum or “Learning Objects”
– Web Pages becoming more sophisticated (Flash)
Audio-Video Conferencing, Chat rooms, white boards
to support student, teacher, mentor interactions
Shared Documents for synchronous collaboration
Learning Management Systems
– Student registration, Quizzes, Grading, Security
– Database Storage (persistent Learning Objects)
IMS and ADL standards for interoperability
Asynchronous self paced access
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Some Education Grid Services
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Registration
Performance (grading)
Authoring of Curriculum
Online laboratories for real and virtual instruments
Homework submission
Quizzes of various types (multiple choice, random
parameters)
Assessment data access and analysis
Synchronous Delivery of Curricula
Scheduling of courses and mentoring sessions
Asynchronous access, data-mining and knowledge
discovery
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ADL Learning Management Model
“Learning
Management
System”
LMS
Content
Server(s)
External systems:
HR, E-Commerce, ERP...
Learning
Server
Migration
Adapter
Course
Interchange:
Course
Structure
Format (CSF),
Metadata
Services or Adapter
Learning Server
Server
Adapter
Server Side
Common Grid
Services &
Objects
Runtime
Good but …
Environment:
Launch, API,
Client-Server
not Multi-tier
Data Model
Not built in terms of services
Client Side
Client
Browser
API
Adapter
Application
HTML+
www.adlnet.org
ADL
is Advanced Distributed
Learning – DoD Initiative
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3-Tier Architecture for Education Portal
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Everything is an Object: Curriculum, Users, grades, computers
– all are defined in XML
XML very important in online education as objects quite small,
are naturally decentralized and have
rich important metadata
Object
There are several important Object
Repository
Models: COM, CORBA, Java, Excel
Web, flat file, Oracle Database ……
But model doesn’t matter!!
XML
Request
Or
Export/Import
Information
Middle Tier
“Business Logic”
dissociates User and Back End
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File System
(Web Site)
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Database
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Portals in Education and Training
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We are discussing Web-based education
or portals to a virtual university or
virtual corporate training center
Merrill Lynch predicts that Enterprise
Information portal market will be $15B
by 2002
So assume that we are building education
portals in terms of “Distributed
Educational Objects” -- this is not really
an assumption but a statement as to
“language used”
Portals are built as a Collaborative
customizable set of XML components (
e.g. Display a thumbnail of the next webpage in lecture, give in-class quiz or run
a Particular Multi-media clip )
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Why use Distance Education and Training?
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New and rapidly changing Curriculum suggest the use of
distance education as it will allow a few experts to deliver
instruction to more students and this addresses both
– The shortage of trained faculty
– Offering classes with small enrollments at one university
– cost of developing new curriculum QUICKLY requires many students
(say around 5-10 times traditional class) to amortize cost
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Distance Education is technically sound based on web curricula- both synchronously and asynchronously -- today with very
robust clear implementations available over next few years
Both delivery mechanism and identification of knowledge
nuggets that are smaller than or different in content from a
traditional degree suggests different approaches to certification
– Courses are given, graded etc. by multiple organizations -- University
integrate degrees?
Similar arguments for distance training with relative importance of
synchronous and asynchronous learning differing by customer group
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The Virtual University
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Motivated either by decreased cost or increased quality
of learning environment
Will succeed due to market pressures (it will offer the
best product)
Assume that as with text books, only a few
pedagogically excellent teachers will produce lectures;
only a few charismatic souls deliver them
“Centers of Excellence” (“Hermits Cave Virtual
University”) are natural entities to produce and deliver
classes supported by good technology and wonderful
graphics
University acts as an integrator putting together a set
of classes where it may only teach some 20% but acts
as a mentor to all
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Courses at Jackson State
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Taught using Tango since fall 97 over Internet and defense high
performance network DREN twice a week from Syracuse
– Course material based on Syracuse Senior Undergraduate class CPS406(Web
Technologies) and graduate classes CPS615/616/640(Base Computational
science/Internetics)
– Curricula, Homework, Grading, Facilities done by Syracuse
– Students get JSU NOT Syracuse Credit
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Jackson State major HBC University with many computer science
graduates
Do not compete with base courses but offer addon courses with
“leading edge” material (Web Technology, modern scientific
computing) which give JSU (under)graduates skills that are important
in their career
Fall 99 Semester CPS640 offered to 40 students in 5 distant places and
separately 40 at Syracuse
Fall 2001 restart with “latest technology” (Access Grid, HearMe,
Garnet)
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Architecture of Tango Distance Education
JSU Web
(Proxy)Server
Student’s View of
Curriculum Page
HTTP
Java Tango
Server
Share URL’s
Audio Video
Conferencing
Chat Rooms
White Boards etc.
NPAC Web
Server
Address at JSU of
Curriculum Page
Teacher’s View of
Curriculum Page
……. Java Sockets
Java
……. Control Clients
Teacher/Lecturer at NPAC
Participants at JSU
All Curricula placed on the Web
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What is Web-based Collaboration?
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Collaboration means sharing objects (Web Page very important
object)
Web-based Collaboration implies use of Web to share
distributed objects accessible through the Web
– Shared Web Pages; Resources accessed through Web Servers or
Brokers; Client-side applications with programmatic interfaces
such as Java Physics Simulations
Web Site
Shared Page
Specify Page
Web
Page
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Receive Identical Page
Web
Page
Web
Page
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Shared
Pointer
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> Two Shared Physics
Simulations – SHO and
Vector cross product
> Chat Room
> Audio video conferencing
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What did this lead to?
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Jackson State students got access to curricula that was not
otherwise available to them
Developed quite good Information Technology and
computational science curricula
Jackson State faculty acted as mentors in course and now
teach some of material in their own courses and to other
HBCU colleges
– Make rapidly changing and important curricula
available to an HBCU network -- could dramatically
improve curricula opportunities for HBCU students
– JSU has institutional commitment to area
Used in High School Java, DoD wide training and Winter
00 semester as part of ERDC Graduate Institute
Supports migrant teachers -- I have delivered course spring
00 semester from Syracuse, FSU and ERDC, Vicksburg
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Saturday Java Academy
http://old-npac.csit.fsu.edu/projects/k12javaspring99/
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Hierarchical Delivery Model
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One could teach to 1000 different students – each at a
separate workstation but …
No real opportunity for questions so better to use
broadcast technology – not conferencing
Further could better deliver to 40 classrooms – each
with an average of 25 students
Each classroom has central high quality A/V
conferencing, displays and
– A Mentor monitoring and helping students
– Each student could have wireless laptop or PDA
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So synchronous systems must support simultaneously
disparate clients – high end display to PC to PDA
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Authoring of Curriculum
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Market pressures push to high end authoring
Authoring approaches for the Web can include
– Basic HTML
– Macromedia/Adobe/etc. packages like Fireworks, Dreamweaver,
Illustrator
– PowerPoint and Word exported
Also can include RealNetworks or Microsoft or .. Format
Multimedia
– Note Streaming multimedia formats have larger buffers than A/V
conferencing formats
Certainly use XML to specify content and render this into
attractive portal
SVG and SMIL are important 2D vector graphics and
multimedia standards
– HTML does not give reproducible pages
– Flash can be thought of as “proprietary SVG”
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Current Status and Futures
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Commercial Systems such as Centra, WebEx, Anabas and
Placeware offer similar functionality to our old system Tango for
synchronous collaboration
– Shared applications, chatroom, whiteboard, A/V conferencing
Blackboard, WebCT, Lotus offer learning management systems
– Can they switch to IMS, ADL standards; high-end authoring
and XML based object technology (not databases or files)
Access Grid (community e.g. classroom) and HearMe (desktop)
are new internet audio-video systems which are be used with
shared object systems
I develop research system Garnet for education portals
– Features hand-held and desktop clients, integrated collaboration
and some “technical advances” – major use of XML, shared SVG
Peer to Peer Grids suggest decentralized architecture
(http://www.jxta.org)
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Commercial
Collaboration
Systems
Groove Networks
interesting
Centra has
PlaceWare
Peer-to-peer collaboration system
WebEx
Anabas is integrating synchronous
collaboration with learning
management
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Batik Viewer on PC
PowerPoint can be converted to SVG
via Illustrator or Web export
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SVG Sharing PC to PDA
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Access Grid (Argonne, NCSA) and HearMe
Access Grid: Community
HearMe: desktop integrates phones
and Internet Audio
Presenter
camera
Presenter
mic
Ambient mic
(tabletop)
Audience camera
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