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1. Intelligent Web Teacher Microsoft Academic Days Segrate 22-14 November 2004 Speaker: Pierluigi RitrovatoResearch and Technology Director

2. Agenda • The motivation • Analysis of current learning practices and e-learning solutions • Our vision of the Learning • The innovation in IWT • The Architecture • The personalisation of the learning experience • The adaptability of the platform for learning in a specific domain • IWT Grid aware

3. Analysis of Current Learning practices • Based on the information transfer paradigm with focus on the content and the “teacher” • Find the best way for presenting contents in order to transmit information to learners • Contents are passive: books, pictures, audio, etc. • Passive role of the learner • No individual support of the students’ learning process • Everything is predetermined • No possibility to change the process for accommodating specific needs listen read imitate memorise rehearse recall

4. Analysis of Current e-Learning practices • Technology driven approach • e-Learning becomes an activity in which teachers produce, and students consume, multimedia books on the Web • Missing specific didactical models • Not any support of pedagogical aspects • Suppose that the cognitive transfer occurs without evaluating the effectiveness

5. Analysis of Current e-Learning practices • Inappropriate use of technology • Available solutions supports actively the contents management only • Finds its perfect technical mirror in the Web “page oriented approach” • Personalisation and individualisation of the learning path is a myth • Solutions are closed and difficult to integrate

6. Inquiry-based education Constructivism Mediated learning Discovery learning Learning as problematization Learning as conversation Problem-based learning Reflective practice Metacognition Experiential learning Learner-oriented approach Social constructivism Situated learning How we conceive the Learning There is a common thread in the development of our understanding of learning • The learner as active agentin the learning process • Knowledge construction through conversations, collaborations and direct experience in a social context • Learners need to be • engaged in goal-oriented tasks • practising skills • exploring and experimenting • using feedback to adapt what they do • discussing what they do • reflecting on what happens • articulating what happens

7. How we conceive the Learning • We are moving our attention from a strictly concept oriented “teaching” to user centred “learning” • the past: the focus was on finding better ways for presenting concepts to learners • The present: recognised the learner role and they active participation in the process • The future: more emphasis on learning as a potential side effect of interactions and conversations, experiences and social reflections on them, also in Virtual Communities

8. How we conceive the Learning • the focus will be on a constructivist learning theory, with a socio-cultural and situational approach • Confucius’s dictum: Tell me and I will forget. Show me, and I may remember. Involve me and I will understand! • It is important to define a model that considers in a unified way the characteristics of the learning (i.e. active, situated, collaborative) • "Situations Theory” of Brousseau – 1986 for Virtual Scientific Experiments for e-learning

9. The technical solution?

10. IWT overview • Intelligent Web Teacher is an extensible application framework for building learning solutions • software and technologies building blocks • It doesn’t exist a product that fit all need! • It has been designed for supporting the emerging learning scenarios for knowledge constructions • personalised learning path • knowledge representation models • any time, any place and any pace access to learning services • Learning Objects reuse

11. What’s Really New in IWT? The Architecture: Extensibility and Customisability • At a Portal Level • At a Content Level • At a Services level • At a Device level Building Blocks for personalising the Learning Experience • Indexing Content Management through Explicit Knowledge Modeling and Metadata • Student model management • Automatic Student Evaluation • Automatic customisability of the Didactic Experience on real Students Needs and Learning Preferences

12. IWT: The Open Architecture • Extensible with new learning object and content types • Extensible with new functionalities • Interoperable with domain specific external solutions • New technologies based

13. IWT Architecture details • Document Drivers manage IWT resources as Passive Learning Object, Multiple Choice Test, Didactical Courses, etc… • Plug-In Drivers manage IWT services as CBR, ITS, Collaboration Services, etc… • We add resource types to IWT coding and integrating document drivers • We add services to IWT coding and integrating plug-in and plug-in drivers

14. ASP.NET ASP.NET C# Components C# Components ADO.NET SQL Stored Procedure XML IWT Architecture and technologies

15. Requests the delivery of Resource X Document Driver life cycle Requests a Driver for Resource X Retrieves information about type of Resource X Instantiates a suitable driver for Resource X Builds Web GUI for delivery of Resource X

16. Knowledge base Plug-in Driver #1 Plug-in Driver #3 Driver #3 Driver #1 Driver #2 Plug-in Driver #2 Data Requests for service Y Plug-in Driver life cycle Retrieves information about engine X Requests for service Y provided by engine X Rendering … Instantiates plug-in driver for engine X

17. Student Modeling • Cognitive State • Maintains students knowledge in relation to domain Concepts • It is updated after each test activity • Preferences • Maintains students preferences in relation to significant pedagogical parameters like: media, didactic approach, interactivity level, semantic density, difficulty etc. • It is updated after each sequence of testing activities

18. Analysis B B Limits Series R B B SO R R Derivatives Integrals Knowledge Modelling: A Sample Ontology Third Level MT1 MT2 MT3 MT4 MT5 MT6 Second Level LO1 LO2 LO3 LO4 LO5 LO6 First Level

19. Analysis Limits Series S S R R R Derivates Integrals S S OS Limits Derivates Integrals Theorem ------ ----- --------- Explaining ------ ----- --------- Test ---- x ---- o ---- x Personalised Learning path creation • The teacher fixes target concepts • IWT creates learning path (the sequence of concepts) removing what the student knows • IWT creates the course (the sequence of resources) respecting their learning preferences

20. What’s Really New in IWT? IWT Domain Platforms • They offer resources and services to facilitate e-learning in a specific domain Available Domain Platforms: • Domain Platform for Simulation and Virtual Scientific Experiments: integrates simulation environments and 2D and 3D rendering engines • Domain Platform for Mathematics and Science: integrates numeric and symbolic computation engines

21. IWT Domain Platforms Mathematical Analysis Exercise Examples of usage of IWT Domain Platforms Simulation Viewer Simulation models

22. Video Slide Feedback Audio IWT Resources and Services: MS ConferenceXP integration • “Live” material is stored and assembled in a learning object REUSABLE in synchronous events

23. Video Audio Slide Feedback ConferenceXP integration in IWT the idea • To integrate into a Learning Object(CXPLesson) resources created by ConferenceXP during a live lesson • This Learning Object could be included together with other resources within a course delivered by the platform

24. ConferenceXP: Integration in IWTLesson delivery

25. Extensibiliy and Customisability IWT Device Independence Examples of access through different devices Smart Phones Handhelds

26. IWT Grid-Aware • What it is? • It is an extensible, open, distributed and service oriented framework for building learning solutions • It is compliant with the Open Grid Service Architecture (OGSA) and based upon the Web Services Resource Framework (WSRF) infrastructure • Why IWT Grid-Aware? • It could be a fundamental component for the implementation of a learning paradigm shift where • learning is a social activity consumed in communications and collaborations based dynamic Virtual Communities • learners, through direct experiences, create and share their knowledge in a contextualised and personalised way • Services and resources can be selected and provided on the basis of their characteristics and taking into account quality aspects • Openness and standards of the OGSA model allow an easy integration of services and contents (no need for plug-in mechanism) • Improvement of scalability, computational power, storage capabilities, …

27. IWT Grid-Aware - Architecture

28. IWT Grid-Aware – Key aspects of refactoring of each layer 1/3 • Data layer • two OGSA Data Services (DS) to virtualize the two storage mechanisms of IWT: • DataBase DS to virtualize the IWT DB • Repository DS to virtualize the Object Repository • Based on recommendations of the OGSA-DAIS WG • Infrastructure layer • composed by two sets of services: • IWT Base services providing the functionalities of IWT • Content management, accounting and group, resource and permission, user profile, … • Core OGSA Services providing functionalities to manage a VO • Service and resource location, dynamic instantiation, service compositions, … • Both the sets rely upon WS-Standards (WSDL, SOAP, WS-Addressing) and interfaces and behaviors specified by WSRF

29. IWT Grid-Aware – Key aspects of refactoring of each layer 2/3 • Learning Services layer • provides some services specific for the learning domain (e.g. LIA and CBR) that rely upon the functionalities of Infrastructure and Data layers • provides services to completely manage a particular type of resources more or less complex such as learning object (LO), courses, etc.. These services are named Drivers • main features of a Driver: • transient and stateful  implementing the interfaces and behaviors of WSRF • able to generate events  implementing the interfaces and behaviors of WS-Notification • able to produce GUI  implementing the behaviors of Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP) • two kinds of Driver: • Simple Driver to manage simple resources (e.g. passive LO) • Composed Drivers to manage aggregated resources (e.g. a course, that is aggregation of passive LOs) • obtained by orchestration of Simple Drivers acting on the atomic resources

30. IWT Grid-Aware – Key aspects of refactoring of each layer 3/3 • Application layer • No substantial changes • redesign of the IWT Portal to allow aggregation of the GUIs produced by the Drivers  implementing the behaviors of WSRP Consumer • Security • managed in all the architecture’s layers • Single Sign On (SSO) • secure communication among the services based on VO policies • adoption of WS-Security

31. Contacts and Further Info Info About this Talk ritrovato@crmpa.unisa.it Info about IWTwww.momanet.it/iwt miranda@momanet.it

32. How we conceive the Learning • We don’t reject the traditional “information transfer” approach • Passive activities • It Needs to be complemented with active activities facilitating knowledge construction • Decide on actions needed to achieve a given goal • Reflect on the feedback on their actions • Adapt their actions on the basis of reflection • Experiment to achieve a goal • Discuss what they are doing • Articulate their understanding of what is happening

33. Resources and services in IWT • IWT Resource • Abstraction for content (atomic) or experience (workflow) • Managed by document drivers • Examples: doc, audio file, course, etc. • IWT Service • Abstraction for Infrastructure/Additional/Application services • Managed by base services, plug-in and plug-in drivers • Examples: messaging, math-engine, chat, forum, videoconference etc.