Seminar and Project in e Learning Zoran Budimac

Seminar and Project in e. Learning Zoran Budimac, Zoran Putnik DAAD Project “Joint Course on Software Engineering” Humboldt University Berlin, University of Novi Sad, University of Plovdiv, University of Skopje, University of Belgrade, University of Niš, University of Kragujevac Version: June 12, 2006

Introduction 4 In a summer semester of a school-year 2005/06, an “Elective seminar – e. Learning” was held for the second time. 4 Last year, when the course was held for the first time, we had 7 students enrolled. Some of their achievements (Živana Komlenov, Filip Prentović) You were able to see last year, during the workshop in Baile Herculane. 4 This year (because we were good? ) we had 25 students enrolled. DAAD project „Joint Course on Software Engineering“ © 2

Introduction 4 e. Learning seminar is, naturally, supported through e. Learning software system Moodle. 4 As You can all check, a home page for this and other courses held at DMI is: perun. im. ns. ac. yu/courses DAAD project „Joint Course on Software Engineering“ © 3

Web support: 4 Being one of the regular courses, “e. Learning” course is listed with other “Regular courses”, and all of the enrolled students can access it using this web-page and their enrollment key. 4 Enrollment key is a security measure existing as a part of Moodle software system. 4 We chose to use it for all of our courses: learning resources are protected this way, and so are data about students DAAD project „Joint Course on Software Engineering“ © 4

Web support: 4 Compared to our other courses, web support for this one contains relatively small number of resources. 4 Web-page contains only 4 resources (in Serbian): 4 Introductory lecture about e. Learning, 4 Introduction to Moodle system, 4 Quality criteria for e. Lessons, and 4 An example of e. Lesson DAAD project „Joint Course on Software Engineering“ © 5

Web support: 4 Resources are PDF files, created from presentations given at classes. 4 Resource used for creation of this criteria was – among others – a presentation given by Joachim Sam last year in Baile Herculane on this subject. DAAD project „Joint Course on Software Engineering“ © 6

Last year: 4 We approached this course differently this year than we did the last year: • Last year, students were expected to read the original lecture (PPT presentation), and transfer it to Moodle. • Yet, Moodle was mostly used as a page-turner! • (Plus – students were requested to answer the question after each page – just as a proof that (s)he read it! • Some of those solutions were presented at Baile Herculane, and received suggestions and criticisms. • This year, students were obliged to transfer topics into e -Lessons and use Moodle in a more creative manner. DAAD project „Joint Course on Software Engineering“ © 7

This year: 4 We approached this course differently this year than we did the last year: • Students were asked to identify Learning objects and create Graphical representation of their relationship • Wherever possible, we requested different paths between LO’s • Choice of a learning path should be implicit, i. e. based on her answers (to a posed question) • Scheme should resemble – as much as possible – known algorithmic patterns: cycles, (multiple) choices, input/outputs … • No more than 2 paragraphs without picture/ paging rather than scrolling … DAAD project „Joint Course on Software Engineering“ © 8

Web support: 4 As mentioned, one of the resources was an example of e. Lesson. 4 This e. Lesson was mostly created by Živana Komlenov, and will be (or was) explained in more details during this workshop. 4 It represents a Topic 23 “Software Metrics” of JCSE, transferred into an e. Lesson. DAAD project „Joint Course on Software Engineering“ © 9

Implementation: 4 Reason for small number of resources is a fact that most of the classes – after a few introductory lessons – are performed interactively. 4 Students are given their assignments, and they have approximately 2 months to create an electronic lesson. 4 They are also given a Moodle system (including all of the necessary additions) to be able to do their assignments at home. 4 So – after some work at home, they usually come to DMI, restore their lesson, and ask for help, opinions, or decisions … DAAD project „Joint Course on Software Engineering“ © 10

Implementation: 4 After “agreeing” on the contents and appearance of e. Lesson, students usually go home for a second iteration. 4 A week or two later, they are back with improved e. Lesson and more questions and discussions to fight. 4… 4 Anyway – after several iterations, we have a finished e. Lesson, they have their mark. 4 … 10 (excellent) usually. 4 We simply “torture” them until their e. Lesson is not good enough for 10. They don’t complain too much. DAAD project „Joint Course on Software Engineering“ © 11

Course schedule: 4 For the assignments, additional category of “Courses” inside Moodle is defined – category “e. Learning 2006” 4 At the beginning, it contains empty courses, named after students who enrolled to the seminar. 4 Later – as they finish their e. Lesson, it changes name to something more meaningful. DAAD project „Joint Course on Software Engineering“ © 12

Course schedule: 4 Since this elective seminar is available for students of both 3 rd and 4 th year, we decided to give them different assignments: • 3 rd year students had to create e. Lesson for a selected part of a course “Operating systems” • 4 th year students had to create e. Lesson for a selected part of a course “Software Engineering” • The idea behind this is: After they create parts of a course, we will combine these e. Lessons, and create complete e. Courses. DAAD project „Joint Course on Software Engineering“ © 13

Course schedule 4 For the 3 rd year students, we had no problems – there was plenty of students, so we managed to cover the whole course, some topics even twice! 4 Topics included for example: • • • Introduction Synchronization Classic problems of operating systems Communication of heavy processes Dispatcher Memory management Virtual memory File system Reliability – optimization algorithms Deadlock Security and protection DAAD project „Joint Course on Software Engineering“ © 14

Course schedule 4 For the 4 th year students, we had several problems: • there was not enough students, • some students were allowed to create their lessons before we decided to ask for e-Lessons – their lessons are static! • some students took their topic, started their work, and then drop out from the course, • some students took their topics, but haven’t finished it yet – they finished with “attendance” part of studying, we expect them anytime now. 4 So, topics that are worth mentioning from SE course are: • • Object-oriented analysis – still not finished Object-oriented design – still not finished State-oriented view – finished and useful Scenario-based view – finished and useful Functional view – finished and useful Structured analysis – finished and useful Cost estimation (old version) – finished and very useful DAAD project „Joint Course on Software Engineering“ © 15

Example of graphical representation of LO’s and their relationships: OSNOVNI POJMOVI, KONCEPTI OS-a. Sadržaj 4 As a part of the seminar paper that is an accompaniment of an e. Lesson, we insisted on scheme representing their lesson. Prelasci između različitih stanja Suspendovani procesi ? žžžž* ? Process Control Block ? Operacije sa procesima Odnos procesa Procesi Podela OS-a u odnosu na procese ? Korišćenje memorije 4 Here is an example of such a scheme. Podela procesa na teške i lake ? ? Konkurentno programiranje ? Fajl sistem 4 The author of this scheme and an e. Lesson that goes with it, is 3 rd grade student, Radana Bratić. DAAD project „Joint Course on Software Engineering“ © Sistemski pozivi ? Komandni interpreter Prekidi. Uvod Jezgro OS-a Poling Prekidi ? ? 16

Example of another e. Lesson: 4 Naturally, we do expect have problems with this, we are aware that there will be a lot of work until all of the e. Course parts are equalized and perfected, but we have a start! 4 Of course, in the future, some parts of courses can be reworked, either by students, or by lecturers. 4 Let us take a look at one of e. Lessons created by a 3 rd year student (Jaroslava Valah). 4 Note: All e. Lessons are in Serbian, for obvious reasons. DAAD project „Joint Course on Software Engineering“ © 17

Example of e. Lesson: 4 Miss Valah had to create an e. Lesson for a course “Operating systems”. Her part was “Swamping of processes”. 4 All of the students were required to produce the same three parts of e. Lesson: 4 Lecture itself, with all of the needed explanations 4 Quiz that will be used for knowledge testing 4 Glossary of new and important terms. DAAD project „Joint Course on Software Engineering“ © 18

Example of e. Lesson: 4 As can be noticed, student followed the suggested criteria: not too much text, each page fitting a screen, some graphics, … DAAD project „Joint Course on Software Engineering“ © 19

Example of e. Lesson: 4 One of the more important suggestions/demands was to include questions into their e. Lessons. 4 Questions are relatively simple, strongly connected to a given material. 4 Given answer determines a flow of e. Lesson. Incorrect answer takes student back to a previously explained material. DAAD project „Joint Course on Software Engineering“ © 20

Example of e. Lesson: 4 At the end of an e. Lesson – there is a more complex quiz. 4 Here we can see only the first 4 questions. 4 Students were required to create a question data-base of about 25 -30 questions. 4 Moodle system is then employed to randomly chose 10 questions for a quiz. DAAD project „Joint Course on Software Engineering“ © 21

Example of e. Lesson: 4 As a help for a more successful knowledge acquiring, there is also a glossary of new and unknown terms. 4 Again, here we can see only the first 4 terms. 4 Students were required to create a glossary of as much (meaningful) terms as possible. 4 That demand usually resulted in about 10 terms. DAAD project „Joint Course on Software Engineering“ © 22

Project 4 Considering that we are using Moodle system for a web-support at the DMI, we decided to apply for some funding! 4 WUS-Austria was offering a support for e. Learning projects. 4 Since we decided to use it anyway – we just collected necessary administrative material and sent it to WUS-Austria. DAAD project „Joint Course on Software Engineering“ © 23

Project 4 Our Moodle web-site – in its part dedicated to regular courses – supports courses “Software engineering” and “Operating systems” 4 Naturally, professors and assistants involved in those two courses were candidates for a project: • • • Budimac, Ivanović, Putnik, Komlenov, and Pribela. 4 Professor Bothe was also interested in a project, and send us a “letter of support” from Humboldt University. DAAD project „Joint Course on Software Engineering“ © 24

Project objectives 4 To create course supporting and e-learning system for at least two undergraduate and one graduate course in the field of informatics. The system will be web-based and accessible through Internet. 4 The system would consists of: • • • repository of teaching materials, quizzes and testing facilities, live chats between students and teachers, specialized forums for students to exchange ideas, additional sources of information and ways to solve assignments, statistics on earned points and progress reports for teachers and students, • e-lessons (specialized electronic lessons for independent study and checking the progress), • facilities to submit solutions to assignments with prevention of cheating, • automatic checks of certain aspects of solutions to assignments (when solutions are computer programs). DAAD project „Joint Course on Software Engineering“ © 25

Project objectives 4 The objectives will be fulfilled using one of the existing coursesupporting and e-learning platforms and extending it with specialized services needed. 4 The system would be illustrated and used on: • The undergraduate and graduate courses of software engineering compatible with several other courses in the region and with the similar course at the Humboldt University in Berlin. Thus the systems will be used in international environment to exchange ideas and knowledge, esp. via live chats and student forums • The undergraduate course in Operating Systems, where prevention from cheating and automatic checks will be used. 4 The collected experience, principles and rules will be published in a form of two documents: • how to use the system (manual for students) and • how to create lessons using the system (manual for teachers). DAAD project „Joint Course on Software Engineering“ © 26

Back to the course 4 As usual, we gave students a questionnaire to find out about their satisfaction with the course. It contained three types of questions: • “quantitative” – attendance and number of hours needed to master the material, and • “qualitative” – quality of lectures + exercises 4 Attendance was very high: • out of 14 students – 13 said that they missed only one lecture, and less than 3 exercises. • all of them said that they used consultations and advices a lot • additional work: on the average, they said that 2. 93 hrs per week is needed, and that they spend 2. 86 hrs, • Yet: two of them said “it’s 7 (5) hrs needed, I spent 4 (3)” • other two are on the totally other end: “it’s 3 (2) hrs needed, yet I spent 6 (4)” DAAD project „Joint Course on Software Engineering“ © 27

Lecture organization 4 On a scale from 1 – 5, we received a few excellent marks: • organization of lectures good • continual assessment motivating • lectures and exercises coordinated 4. 83 4. 82 4. 46 4 … few slightly lower: • type and difficulty of tasks motivating • quantity of lectures appropriate 4. 15 4. 21 4 … and the worst mark of the whole questionnaire: • course resources appropriate 3. 85 4 The similar thing happened with SE and SPM courses – it seems that our students would prefer to have textbooks! 4 Finally, our overall marks were excellent: • course useful • overall quality good DAAD project „Joint Course on Software Engineering“ © 4. 57 28

Lecturer vs. Exerciser 4 “Personal” marks • preparation of lectures • explanation style • “What have You learned through lectures and exercises • willing to answer questions • difficulty of assignments Lecturer Exerciser 4. 77 4. 38 4. 71 4. 86 4. 00 4. 69 4. 86 4. 93 4 On a scale 1 – too slow through 5 – too fast: • Speed was a bit too high 4. 08 4. 36 4 Finally, students were overall satisfied with their • Lecturer • but much more with their practitioner DAAD project „Joint Course on Software Engineering“ © 4. 54 4. 86 29

General comment 4 With or without the questionnaire, there are some things that we might conclude as a certainty: • learning just by using slides is not welcomed by students • additional texts do help, but are not enough • students who attended lectures and exercises regularly, and were also given a chance for additional consultations, were a bit more satisfied, yet … • they definitely want a textbook, • if possible an exercise book. DAAD project „Joint Course on Software Engineering“ © 30

Are we happy with our seminar? 4 Yes, we are, and for several reasons: • we have a repository that holds all the material needed for successful learning, self-testing, and statistics • we have a regular live chat between students and professor, offering help when needed • forums are used to clear all misunderstandings, obscurities, or problems. Students help each other, but also professor, assistants, and distinguished guests (Kay Schützler, Martin Douguamis …) participated. • e. Lessons are created in such a way that solitary work is enabled, provoked, and approved • cheating is greatly minimized – firstly because of a software solution, secondly because of fear DAAD project „Joint Course on Software Engineering“ © 31

Are we happy with our seminar? 4 What else is there to be done? • our manuals for students and teachers are almost done, they will ease the work • “live chats” are not used as much as they can be: technical difficulties for students, uncommon method of professor/student cooperation … • transformation of the courses from “material repository” into “e. Lessons” will improve this seminar significantly. • involvement of other “guest experts” from around the globe (for example, from inside this room? !? ) in forums would promote the seminar, courses covered with it, and our project. DAAD project „Joint Course on Software Engineering“ © 32