Towards a Generic Platform for Developing CSCL Applications Using Grid Infrastructure

1. 1st International Workshop on Collaborative Learning Applications of Grid Technology Towards a Generic Platform for Developing CSCL Applications Using Grid Infrastructure by Santi Caballé Open University of CataloniaBarcelona, Spain with F. Xhafa, A. Daradoumis and J.M. Marquès Open University of CataloniaBarcelona, Spain

2. Index • Introduction: the merging of CSCL, Generic Programming and Grid. • Collaborative Learning Purpose Library: a CSCL generic platform. • A study into general requirements. • CLPL on the Grid. • A CLPL application: a structured discussion forum. • Conclusions and future work.

3. Introduction (I)CSCL and Generic Programming • The need for a CSCL generic platform • reusable, robust, efficient, integrated and innovative. • A paradigm to improve the generic software construction process • in terms of quality, productivity and cost. • resulting software applicable to a wide range of situations. • Generic Programming as a technique to achieve these aims • by identifying an interrelated high-level abstraction family from a common requirement set. • making software as general as possible without losing efficiency.

4. Introduction (II)CSCL and the Grid • Construction of true collaborative learning environments. • Participant scalability and resource availability. • Hard and soft resource transparency • in terms of location, management and access. • Final client simplicity and variety • highly powerful and with huge virtual data repositories. • Reality scenarios: • Complex graphic user interface. • High-throughput practical student activities.

5. Introduction (III)Merging CSCL, GP and Grid • A GP-based library using the Grid for CSCL applications • exploiting the Grid high-throughput and data-intensive computing, distributed memory and network bandwidth. • to satisfy a high user interaction, a complete resource management, a permanent user awareness and so on. • to improve the system in terms of security, system monitoring and administration. • How to incorporate Grid into the CSCL generic platform • taking advantage of its generic entities and processes (such as statistics, authentication, user session, etc.). • by the disk manager abstraction making it possible to particularize the data structure in different models.

6. CLPL: a CSCL generic platform (I)The General Purpose Library • The GPL creates the skeleton for the construction of complex systems • requiring the management of system users and optimisation of system resources. • Conceptualisation of generic entities • generic user as the representation of a person, group, device, etc. • user session, authentication, privilege, etc., in order to manage both control and security of the system. • log, statistics, etc., to maintain user interaction data, enabling to export/extract in different formats for later analysis. • GPL is found at http://cv.uoc.edu/~scaballe/gpl/api

7. CLPL: a CSCL generic platform (II)A GPL particularisation • CSCL system domain forms part of the GPL’s : • CSCL applications have a strong need to manage both users and resources. • Security and monitoring issues are very important in this context. • Need to obtain knowledge about what is happening in the system so as to keep user awareness high. • Collaborative Learning Purpose Library: a library as a GPL particularisation for the construction of specific CSCL environments. • CLPL is found at http://cv.uoc.edu/~scaballe/clpl/api

8. CLPL: a CSCL generic platform (III)Objectives • Creation of a GP-based CLPL to make it possible to be widely reused for the construction of specific CSCL applications. • Quality and efficiency will also be guaranteed. • Robustness is offered by a full error treatment. • A complete hierarchy of event treatment will be provided to obtain full knowledge of the system with which • users are kept aware of what is going on in the system. • Information can be exported/extracted in different formats for later analysis. • Implementation with Java as this has great predisposition for reusability and portability.

9. A study into general requirements (I)Component representation The CLPL is made up of 5 components: Package diagram corresponding to the main components and their dependency.

10. A study into general requirements (II)Component description • CSCL User Management. This is made up of: • CSCL User Basic. Carries out the management of the users (i.e. students and learning groups) in the system. • CSCL User Profile. Manages information that specifies how a CSCL user is interacting with the system (e.g. alias, user state, user language, group subject matter, etc.). • CSCL Knowledge Management. This is made up of: • CSCL Activity Management.Manages the log files made up of all the events ocurring in the system as the source of information for the creation of statistics. • CSCL Knowledge Processing.Carries out the statistical studies enabling the export and extraction of the log information in different formats for later analysis. The aim is to obtain knowledge facilitating the collaboration process.

11. A study into general requirements (III)Component description • CSCL Functionality. This will define the 3 essential parts involved in any groupware application as well as the management of the events generated by them: • Coordination. Carries out the group organization and monitoring to accomplish certain objectives. • Communication. Manages the communication support, basically by messages between users in both synchron and asynchron modes. • Collaboration. Lets members share any kind of resources also in both synchron and asynchron modes. • Userawareness. Communicates to the users all the events generated basically by both communication and collaboration subsystems after these events have been handled by the CSCL knowledge component.

12. A study into general requirements (IV)Component description • CSCL Security. Basically manages authentication and authorization issues: • Authentication and user session. Validates the CSCL system users and manages user sessions. • Security policy.Contains all the rules to protect the system resources from unauthorized users. • Privilege assignment. Controls user access to system resources. • CSCL Administration. The administrator/tutor of the system/group carries out the following basic tasks: • Resourcemanagement. Manages either the system’s general resources or the resources within a group. • System control.Includes the specific tasks to improve the system/group performance and maintenance from the information provided by the CSCLknowledge component.

13. CLPL on the Grid (I)Exploiting the Grid for event management • Need of data intensive computing to structure and classify a huge amount of system events mainly generated by group member interaction. • Formatting the obtained data into most popular statistical file formats requires high-throughput computing. • Data access performance is essential to reduce response times providing students with crucial fast feedback about what is happening during the synchronic activities. • Transparent and dynamic distribution is necessary to keep multiple and heterogeneous users aware of the new events ocurring in their workspaces.

14. CLPL on the Grid (II)A real experience • A study in a distance learning undergraduate course involving 12 groups was carried out: • The events generated in a large collaboration involving hundreds of groups with full event management need another processing context. • Grid is the solution.

15. CLPL on the Grid (III)Incorporating Grid into the CLPL • Grid distributed memory and processing capacity need a new data structures. • A solution: Scalable Distributed Data Structure (SDDS). • CLPL makes the logic of the application independent from its data and so supports any data structures such as SDDS. • CLPL is well-suited to support OGSA’s grid services • e.g. notification service is an effective way for CLPL particularisations to notify users of new events occurring in their workspaces. • CLPL generic security systems can be implemented by any specific cryptographic system • such as X.509 certificates which is the current mechanism of the Globus consortium.

16. A CLPL applicationA structured discussion forum • The important social task of the discussion process in CSCL environments. • A complete discussion process is proposed based on the 3 types of contribution: • Specification as the statement of the problem. • Elaboration in which a solution arises. • Consensus to approve the solution found. • CLPL Knowledge and User components are essential • to keep participants aware of other’s constribution. • to provide outcomes of group analysis. • to add discussion group participant features. • Grid greatly improves the discussion process features • such as user awareness by processing log files in real time.

17. Conclusions and future work • We have shown how CSCL applications can take advantage of the Grid benefits and have proposed a generic platform called CLPL to develop robust, reusable and efficient CSCL applications. • An application that validates the use of CLPL was described and we plan to use this application in a real environment to gain experience with it. • Further work will focus on studying the possibility of adding P2P architecture to Grid infrastructure to improve even more Grid potential for CSCL applications in terms of robustness and scalability.

18. Thank you ! Questions?