A Web-Based Tutor for Java? Evidence of Meaningful Learning

Students in a graduate class and an undergraduate class in Information Systems completed a Web-based programmed instruction tutor that taught a simple Java applet as the first technical training exercise in a computer programming course. The tutor is a competency-based instructional system for individualized distance learning. When a student completes the tutor, the student has achieved a targeted level of understanding the code and has written the code correctly from memory. Before and after using the tutor in the present study, students completed a software self-efficacy questionnaire and a test of the application of general Java principles (far transfer of learning). After completing the tutor, students in both classes showed increases in software self-efficacy and in correct answers on the test of general principles. These findings contribute to the stream of formative evaluations of the tutoring system. They show the capacity of the Web-based tutor to generate meaningful learning (i.e., understanding of concepts) at the level of the individual student.

Online Synchronous Versus Asynchronous Software Training via Behavioral Modeling Approach

The continued and increasing use of online training raises the question of whether the most effective training methods applied in live instruction will carry over to different online environments in the long run. Behavior modeling (BM) approach—teaching through demonstration—has been proven as the most effective approach in a face-to-face (F2F) environment. A quasi-experiment was conducted with 96 undergraduate students who were taking a Microsoft SQL Server 2000 course in a university in Taiwan. The BM approach was employed in three learning environments: F2F, online synchronous and online asynchronous classes. The results were compared to see which produced the best performance, as measured by knowledge near-transfer and knowledge far-transfer effectiveness. Overall satisfaction with training was also measured. The results of the experiment indicate that during a long duration of training no significant difference in learning outcomes could be detected across the three learning environments.

A Virtual Laboratory for Digital Signal Processing

This work designs and implements a virtual digital signal processing laboratory (VDSPL). VDSPL consists of four parts: mobile agent execution environments, mobile agents, DSP development software, and DSP experimental platforms. The network capability of VDSPL is created by using mobile agent and wrapper techniques without modifying the source code of the original programs. VDSPL provides human-human and human-computer interaction for students and teachers, and it also can lighten the teacher’s load, increase the learning result of students, and improve the usage of network bandwidth. A prototype of VDSPL has been implemented by using the IBM Aglet system and Java Native Interface for DSP experimental platforms. Also, experimental results demonstrate that our system has received many positive feedbacks from both students and teachers.

Algorithm Education Using Structured Hypermedia

Understanding of algorithms is one of the most challenging aspects of the study of computer science. Over two decades of research has been devoted to improving techniques to learn and teach algorithms. In this work, we present a new approach for explaining algorithms that aims to overcome various pedagogical limitations of the current visualization systems. The main idea is that, at any given time, a learner is able to focus on a single problem. This problem can be explained, studied, understood, and tested before the learner moves on to study another problem. The structured hypermedia algorithm explanation (SHALEX) system is the system we designed and implemented to explain algorithms at various levels of abstraction. In this system, each abstraction is focused on a single operation from the algorithm using various media, including text and an associated visualization. The explanations are designed to help the user to understand basic properties of the operation represented by this abstraction, for example its invariants. SHALEX allows the user to traverse the graph-based algorithm model, using a top-down (from primitive operations to general operations) approach, a bottom-up approach, or a mix of these two approaches. Since the system is implemented using a client-server architecture, it can be used both through distance education and in the classroom setting. To aid and monitor the leaner, we also developed an agent in SHALEX that provides help and monitors the completion rate.

Distance Learning in the Business Aviation Industry

The objective of this chapter is to understand the expectations and behaviors of business aviation pilots towards online learning. The authors believe that the company that is able to offer an integrated, individualized, and useful online training experience will gain a significant competitive advantage. To that end, the authors have researched and synthesized studies that are currently available and relate to this important future product. In addition, an exploratory survey of business aviation pilots and interviews with key aviation industry players are used to determine current attitudes and expectations towards online learning. The scope of this chapter will be limited to exploring the niche market of business aviation pilots using the aviation training company CAE SimuFlite and their new SimfinityTM .technology. However, the authors consider the concepts discussed to be applicable to all business aviation pilots.

Federated Agent-Based Architecture for Collaborative Education Model

This chapter presents the development of a conceptual, operational, and software architecture of a collaborative education model. The purpose of the model is to provide efficient communication services and an open scalable architecture for the uniform publication, management, and dissemination of distributed educational material developed by geographically dispersed educational providers, while maintaining the autonomy of the participating providers. Promotion of educational expertise, especially through expansion of specialisation, is of increasing importance. Within the educational arena, big providers tend to dominate the market, at the expense of smaller ones. For small providers, specialization within disciplines, coupled with collaboration among other providers might be the key to their survival. Intradiscipline specialization would promote development of quality services, and inter-provider collaboration would enable wide offering of these services. The proposed paradigm would require the development of a suitable model to support it. The model proposed in this chapter is a federation of independent providers that are loosely coupled to facilitate collaboration, and sharing and exchanging of information. The federated model, supported by agent-based communication over the Internet, can operate across geographical, cultural and organisational boundaries while promoting integration within those boundaries. Because of its potential ability to cross the various boundaries, the proposed model seems particularly applicable to distance education environments.

SEAMAN

One of the crucial activities in the development of e-learning courses concerns the design phase. In this phase, instructional designers define the e-learning processes by specifying the activities students should carry out (knowledge objects, assessment, practice, etc.) and their temporal sequence. This phase is usually performed using an iterative process, with step-by-step refinements. Thus, it can greatly benefit of the availability of tools that assist instruction designers to carry out their work. In particular, a rapid prototyping approach could be effectively supported if the tool is also able to automatically generate the courses starting from the supplied specification. Moreover, such a tool should also provide support for reuse. To fulfil these requirements, in this chapter we present a tool based on a suite of visual languages, which has been specifically conceived to support instructional designers in the definition and creation of learning processes. The use of visual languages is motivated by the success they have achieved in other contexts (e.g., software engineering) for the construction of suitable models that allows to focus only on the features of interest and to provide more effective descriptions and reasoning. The proposed suite of visual languages includes the learning activity diagram, which extends UML activity diagrams to make them suitable for modelling e-learning processes, the Self-Consistent Learning Object language used to define knowledge contents, and the Test Maker Language for specifying assessment and self-assessment tests. The visual languages have been then implemented in SEAMAN (System for E-Learning Activity MANagement), a system prototype conceived to support instructional designers in the design, the generation, and the deployment of e-learning processes.

An Agent-Based Framework for Personalized Learning in Continuous Professional Development

In order to stay competent and update in the fast changing landscape of technological advances, professionals nowadays are expected to continuously upgrade themselves of professional knowledge and expertise in their respective fields. Many professional organizations stipulate that their members should take part in a minimum number of hours or training units of continuous professional development (CPD) activities in order to stay qualified for their membership. The requirements of CPD for modern day professionals who are very much mobile and work within tight schedules point to the need of an asynchronous learning environment that provides a learner-centered approach and offers learners greater flexibility and choices. In this chapter we argue that “personalization learning” (PL) that exploits the abundance of information and e-learning materials on the Web can be harnessed effectively to serve the diversity of CPD training needs. Moreover, we specialize in the concept of PL to Personalized CPD Learning and highlight the emerging technologies that are relevant to the development of personalized learning for CPD. We further proposed an agent-based architectural and conceptual framework for a personalized CPD learning portal (Personalized-CPD) which integrates these technologies to provide supportive functions for professionals to conduct CPD activities in a personalized manner.

Challenges in Delivering Case-Based Teaching in the Online Asynchronous Learning Environment

Case method teaching is prominent in its efficacy at improving the cognitive learning process in faceto- face classes. However, the efficacy of conducting this teaching method in an online asynchronous environment, where learners and instructor do not have real-time interactions, could be problematic. This study assesses and compares the efficacy of case method teaching in face-to-face and online asynchronous learning (OAL) environments. We proposed four hypotheses on the correlation between these two delivery modes of case method teaching and the learning performance of students. This study reports additional findings on the usage behavior of students in an online asynchronous environment. These findings are a useful aggregated surrogate to measure the effect of case teaching method in the online asynchronous environment. The overall findings of this study indicate that an online asynchronous environment can promote students’ participation in certain cases. As most antagonists for the adoption of online asynchronous case method surmised, cognitive learning gains via this learning method do not seem to be as high as in the face-to-face environment. The findings provide ample room for a further exploration of creative online asynchronous methods to continuously improve cognitive gains of learners.

Implementation and Performance Evaluation of WWW Conference System for Supporting Remote Mental Health Care Education

Information technology (IT) has changed our lives and many applications are based on IT. IT can be helpful for remote mental health care education. Because there are very few mental health care specialists, it is very important to decrease their moving time. But it is not easy to use the conventional TV conference systems for ordinary people, mental health care specialists, and their students because they are not computer specialists. For this reason, we have developed a WWW conference system. Our system can communicate between the mental health care specialists and their students by using the live video on WWW browser. In this paper, we show the implementation and the evaluation of proposed system. The experimental results over the Internet show that our system can be used for real time communication between Fukuoka, Ishikawa, and Iwate prefectures.