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Ijcsrt Ijcsrt: Virtual Learnig System For Nigerian Universities
Ijcsrt Ijcsrt: Virtual Learnig System For Nigerian Universities
ISSN: 2321-8827
Vol. 1 Issue 5, October - 2013
Abstract
The design of virtual learning system (VLS) that integrates virtual classroom (VC) and virtual
laboratory (VL) which can be applied to Nigerian Universities is presented. Virtual classroom
represents an interface between students and a virtual professor and provides personalized learning
materials to the users. The virtual laboratory offers a possibility to the students to share different
resources at once as if they were at the same place where the real resources are. In the system
design, agents are used as entities that work on different tasks in the system. A set of agents of the
same type is responsible for handling different users and their requests. The cooperation among
agents is established through the act of exchanging messages.
Virtual learning system is implemented in Windows 9x/NT environment, using Java for the agents’
implementation suitable for Distance Learning Technologies
Keywords: Web system, object-oriented-design, distance education system, agents, Java, DCOM,
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1. INTRODUCTION
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This paper presents a Virtual Learning System (VLS) that integrates Virtual Classroom (VC) and
the Virtual Laboratory (VL) services for application in Nigerian Universities. The Virtual
Classroom represents an interface between students and a virtual professor (who could be a
Nigerian Diaspora Expert located abroad or a home based professor) and provides personalized
learning materials to the users. Personalized learning materials can be created only if the system
adapts to students needs shown in the student’s interaction process. Such a process is supported
with the help of several mobile agents with different specialities, such as an agent responsible for
student classification and a set of agents responsible for supporting learning activities such as
finding the learning materials relevant to student’s needs. The VC is considered only as a part of
Virtual University. Thus, a distributed architecture that can be reused is developed for any course
that can be activated in the Virtual University.
The Virtual Laboratory (VL) offers a possibility to the students to share different resources at once
as if they were at the same place where the real resources are. One scenario is to employ the
coVASE tool kit developed by Jensen et al [1] for educational visualization and simulation
environments by Clients (students, researchers and teachers). In this case Clients run software that
receives data over a network, displays graphics, and manages input. A client sends input back partly
to the data generator via the server, and partly to other clients to support collaboration between
synchronous peers. Jensen et al. [2; 3] specify details about the implementation of multi-user
scenarios.
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International Journal of Computer Science Research & Technology (IJCSRT)
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Vol. 1 Issue 5, October - 2013
expose any mobility behaviour. As stated earlier, the cooperation among agents is established
through the act of exchanging messages. In the case of VL service, several protocols are designed
for socket communications between the agents of different levels and different hosts in the system.
All protocol definitions are represented using extended mark-up language (XML). This choice
provides a great deal of flexibility, which is very important for the service, since it brings very
many resources into one standard interface.
Web-based Classroom was suggested by [4,13] and was used to develop the 21st century models.
ICT adoption into education has been widespread and often been premised on the potential of the
new technology tools to revolutionize an outmoded educational system, better prepare students for
the information age, and/or accelerate national development efforts. It is predicted [5] that the
effectiveness of the use of the ICT in education may be an important factor in determining which
countries will succeed in the future. The use of modern educational information and
communications technology (ICT) in the construction of educational paradigm has irrevocably
changed the way in which teaching and learning will be done in the 21st century [6]. According to
[7], personalized learning materials can be created only if the system adapts to students needs
shown in the student’s interaction process. Hadengue [8] describes online learning, as an
educational concept, which implies using local, extended networks, or the Internet to spread
information, to communicate, and to support any other kind of educational interaction between
students and teachers. The Virtual Colombo Plan [9] was launched by AusAID and the World
Bank in 2001 with its goal: “To use the opportunities presented by Information and Communication
Technologies (ICTs) to improve education and access to knowledge in developing countries”
(World Bank & AusAID 2001, p. 21). Jenkins [10] posits that the students' learning activities
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requires the expert judgement of each individual teacher in their own specific setting, based on their
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personal experiences.
The VC services and the VL services have been designed for VLS implementation in Nigerian
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The main idea in the VC design is that users can log on from anywhere and that on the users end the
only support necessary is the web browser. The whole system is web based and uses Java applets
for its implementation. Figure 1 represents the activity diagram for the VC. A user logs on to the
system through the supporting applet interface. If the user uses the system for the first time, he/she
should register by filling in a registration form. Depending on the role in the system, - a student or a
professor, the user is provided with two different registration forms. The differentiation between the
student’s and the professor’s form is provided by two different login interfaces. After the
registration the corresponding student’s or the professor’s profile database is updated.
Student’s registration is done through the student registration applet. Once the student logs on, the
system opens the Student Main Panel. This panel allows the student to choose between several
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International Journal of Computer Science Research & Technology (IJCSRT)
ISSN: 2321-8827
Vol. 1 Issue 5, October - 2013
options. The professors are following the other branch of the diagram that is supported with other
modules of the system. These modules can be used for updating, posting new courses or preventing
information about students attending a particular course. The system contains three groups of
classes: agents, applets, and query classes. For instance, two of the most representative classes from
the agents group are presented in Fig. 2. They are the Virtual Professor and Content Provider
classes. The virtual professor class is an interface between applets and agents. It keeps data for the
current logged in user and other useful data for the system. The virtual professor enables the
communication among applets and agents
Professor’s Professor’s
Module Database
Student’s Interface
New Registered
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Register
Update Student
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Profile database
Main
Add Update Add Profile Check Register
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Current Finished
Courses Courses
Read
Temporary Current courses Read Courses
Read
Temporary
Courses Text
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ISSN: 2321-8827
Vol. 1 Issue 5, October - 2013
The Content Provider is the class parent for the rest of agent classes. It defines agent’s behaviour.
The Content Provider inherits its mobility characteristics from the ancestor classes, Aglets and
Mobility Listener which are part of IBM Aglet supporting platform [4].
Virtual Professor
Student ID
Professor ID
String
Course ID SQL Exchange
Course Type
фExecute SQL ( )
Fig.2. Class Diagram of a virtual professor, Content provider, and Class selector agent class
The logical architecture for the VL system is given in Fig.3. Every user can work in the system by
using a web-based interface. The Container Agent enables the different resources with different
implementations of their graphical views to be placed on the web-based interface. In this way every
specific resource can be presented with a graphical interface representing the nature of the resource
and can communicate with the users in a manner that is close to the Classical.
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View Agent is the key player in the client side (the web browser which the user is using to View the
VL System). The system can hold many definitions of different View Agents since every different
resource or group of resources should present an interface of its own to the user. All of the system
communication is done through two agents that run on the VL server: the Server agent and the
Resource Selector Agent. Every View Agent in the System communicates with the Server Agent
when the connection with the VL server is required in order to communicate with a particular
resource. The Server Agent handles different connection requests and runs a Resource Selector
Agent as a thread that handles the specific requests and passes back the resource responses to the
View Agent. The Resources Selector Agent’s task is to get the request from the View Agent, find
the appropriate Communication Agent to communicate with specific Simulation Agent and the real
resource, and then passes back and forth the requests responses between the View Agent and the
Communication Agent (with possible message translation).
Real Real
Resources Resources
Simulation Simulation
Agent Agent
Image process utility
New Resources
Share Resources
Communic
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Communic
ation Agent ation Agent
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Database
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Image Processing
Utility
View View
Agent Agent
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International Journal of Computer Science Research & Technology (IJCSRT)
ISSN: 2321-8827
Vol. 1 Issue 5, October - 2013
The Communication Agent’s [12] task is to enable the message translation and communication in
general with the Simulation Agent and the real resources. All of the Agents mentioned above are
stationery agents and implemented as pure Java classes but the set of Simulation Agents
implementation is based on DCOM (Distributed Component Object Model). This enables a
distributed computing of the resource requests. The Simulation Agent’s task is to rap around a
physical resource in a software entity working in the VL system. The communication between
components is accomplished by XML defined protocols that give a flexible way for agents to
exchange common message.
Web Brouser Server
Temporary DB
Applet Library Aglet server imaging
Resource Read/Write
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Database
Resource DB
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Virtual Learning System is implemented in Windows 9x/NT environment but can also be
implemented in Unix/Linux environment that allows open source configuration. All agents are
developed in Java, except the set of Simulation Agents in the VL service which are based on
DCOM technology. The VC service agents use the mobile agent support platform, IBM aglets. It is
available free from http://www.tri.ibm.jp.co/aglets . Aglets are objects that can perform their work
on many different hosts (servers). During the transfer from one host to another they carry their code
and internal state.
The component of VC service is shown on Fig.4. Being of stationery type, no mobility support
platform is required in VL service agents. Fig.5 shows the component layout in the VL service
which uses similar host architecture as the VC service. In this case the chosen resource is a mobile
robot. The VL panel provides six control commands for the robots movements and the
corresponding trajectory monitored by the web camera attached on the robot. Implementing Virtual
Learning System is modular. Adding new features to the system can be achieved by defining new
classes. Inheritance provides a way for derived classes to reuse all functionality of the ancestor
classes with special functionality additionally applied to the derived classes.
A similar system designed recently by [4] has been successfully tested. According to the
experiences of many companies, much can be gained from the interaction between the end users
(students/professors) and the developers [11]. For example in [12], usability testing is replaced with
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user dialogue. But in [4], the students formulate their own user scenarios, rather than dictating
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specific test scenarios. From interactive point of view, they described the system as a convenient
tool for professor-student communications. When the client workstations are connected over
intranet, headset and audio/video-conferencing facilities are provided, the users could:
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navigate by the use of the avatar, point at models, and press control panels,
chat via text panels, voice, and video communication, and watch slides on a virtual
projector.
The virtual lab provides access to expert tools which are demonstrably effective to support the work
of professionals. The test results pointed out that the system is most suitable for students of
Engineering and Sciences including Computer Science departments. These results were expected
because, in that case, the users were more familiar with the working environment. However with the
introduction of the audio conferencing tool in the system, students of other background found the
system suitable for learning. In general the opinion about the interactivity and usability of the
system is positive.
Another approach to VLS realization for a Virtual University is the application of Globus Tool kit
[7,15]. The Globus was born as a multi-institutional research effort that enabled the construction of
computational grids providing pervasive, dependable, and consistent access to high-performance
computational resources, despite geographical distribution of both resources and users.
Computational grids was designed to support a wide variety of applications and programming
models.
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An established architectural model in such situations, as exemplified by the Internet Protocol suite
[7, 13], is to adopt a layered architecture with an “hourglass" shape (Figure 6.). A simple, well-
defined interface, - the neck of the hourglass provides uniform access to diverse implementations of
local services. Higher-level global services are then defined in terms of this interface. To participate
in a grid, a local site need provide only the services defined at the neck, and new global services can
be added without local changes.
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Fig.6. The Hourglass Model as applied to: i. the Internet Protocol Suite, ii. Globus Resource
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It is rarely feasible for programmers to rely on standard or default configurations when building
applications. Rather, applications must discover characteristics of their execution environment
dynamically and then either configure aspects of system and application behaviour for efficient,
robust execution or adapt behaviour during program execution. The dynamic nature of grid
environments means that toolkit components, programming tools, and applications must be able to
adapt their behaviour in response to changes in system structure and state. The Globus Meta-
computing Directory Service (MDS) [7] is designed to support this type of adaptation by providing
an information-rich environment in which information about system components is always
available. MDS stores and makes accessible such information as the architecture type, operating
system version and amount of memory on a computer, network bandwidth and latency, available
communication protocols, and the mapping between IP addresses and network technology.
An advantage of the Globus bag of services architecture is that an application need not be entirely
rewritten before it can operate in a grid environment: services can be introduced into an application
incrementally, with functionality increasing at each step.
The Globus Toolkit is an open source software used for building Grid systems and applications
such as VLS for Virtual Universities. It is an open source toolkit freely available in source code
form, developed by the Globus Alliance and many others all over the world. A growing number of
projects, institutions and companies are using the Globus Toolkit to unlock the potentials of grids
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for their purposes. We can understand the Globus Toolkit by considering the world wide web -
Much as the World Wide Web brought Internet computing onto the average user's desktop, the
Globus Toolkit is helping to bridge the gap for commercial and scientific applications of Grid
computing. Globus Toolkit version 4 (GT4), released on April 30 2005, represents a significant
advance over earlier GT versions in terms of software quality, functionality, and standards
conformance. The Globus Toolkit architecture is shown in fig 7. GT4 provides probably the most
full-featured implementation of Web services security available anywhere; a full-featured GridFTP
implementation; and support for the WS Resource Framework and WS-Notification specifications
in C, Java, and Python containers. The Globus Grid lets people share computing power, databases,
instruments, and other on-line tools securely across corporate, institutional, and geographic
boundaries without sacrificing local autonomy.
The open source Globus Toolkit is a fundamental enabling technology for the computational Grids’
potential for seamless aggregation, integration and interactions. The toolkit includes software
services and libraries for resource monitoring, discovery, and management, plus security and file
management. The Web Services Resource Framework (WSRF) components of the Globus Toolkit
include the GT4-Java (Java W S Core), GT4-C (C WS Core), pyGridWare or GT4-Python (Python
WS Core).
In addition to being a central part of science and engineering projects that total nearly a half-billion
dollars internationally, the Globus Toolkit is a substrate on which leading IT companies are
building significant commercial Grid products. The toolkit includes software tools for security
(GSI), information infrastructure (MDS), resource management (GRAM), data management (MPI),
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communication (Nexus), fault detection, and portability. It is packaged as a set of components that
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Globus Toolkit was conceived to remove such obstacles that prevent seamless collaboration. Its
core services, interfaces and protocols allow users to access remote resources as if they were located
within their own machine room while simultaneously preserving local control over who can use
resources and when. Virtual Learning System is an example of Globus application.
Functionally [14], the Virtual University is organized around the presence of various buildings
where each building serves a specific function. The buildings provide office space, course subject
space, and common library or resource space. The course subject space is organized semantically,
according to the specifics of the subjects taught. The staff and student spaces are personalized
information spaces provided as modifiable prototypes consistent with the style of the University.
One method of implementation is the so-called “loose integration” where the learning environment
is composed of different stand alone environments, integrated with bridging data interfaces under a
normal human-computer interaction. The current implementation structure of the Virtual Campus is
shown in Figure 8. It is based on two separate servers: place server and course server. The place
server is based on a lambda-MOO server with the Bio-Gate interface between the MOO database
and the web server. In the MOO server every participant is represented by a character. The course
server, where the course materials reside, is based on a WebCT server.
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this is reflected as an additional icon on the toolbar. Thus, to access the course materials
corresponding to a room in the learning space of the Virtual University, a student selects the "book"
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Current configuration of the Virtual Campus has been used for seminar style classes and virtual
design studios. Figure 10 shows an example from a lecture in a subject room using the slide
projection screen.
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Figure 10. Example of Lecture accompanied by slide presentation in the Virtual University
4. CONCLUSIONS
In this study, the design of Virtual Learning System that integrates the Virtual Classroom and the
Virtual Laboratory services was presented. An important extension of the system is the addition of a
module for knowledge level estimation of the students.
Hardware and Voice-over-IP-lines support high quality audio-visual conferencing with little
contingency. The virtual lab displays the video images (via a grabber card) on a virtual wall to
avoid the use of multiple physical screens.
The voice control has been integrated by using a commercial speech recognition package to support
freehand demonstrations, mainly for the support of presenters in lecture halls, and integrate an Open
Source library to support spatial sound to attach voices to the avatars to localize them.
With the usage of software agents a certain transparency of physical allocation of the hosts in our
system, needed for different types of data manipulation and resource sharing was provided. The
usability testing results proved the system useful, intuitive and easy to use.
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Vol. 1 Issue 5, October - 2013
An alternative method of realising the VLS with an open source Globus Tool kit was presented.
This has the characteristic for sophisticated and high level implementation of VLS in higher
institutions.
The results of VLS application revealed that the system is very useful not only for distance
education but also for classroom implementation and capacity building. When fully implemented,
the system will introduce a paradigm shift in Nigerian University education.
5. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I am grateful to Computer World International of Rome, Italy for useful assistance with software
used in this work.
REFERENCES
4. Vladimir Trajkovic, Danco Davcev, Koran Kimovski, Zaneta Petanceska,( 2000), “Web-
Based Virtual Classroom”. In Proc. Of Tools 34 Santa Barbara, California USA, July 30 –
August 4, 2000.
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