Web-based Educational Applications Research Articles

Adaptive E-Learning System

One area of particular interest in adaptive educational systems is hypermedia. By incorporating techniques for intelligent tutoring in traditional hypermedia, learning systems are able to identify individual users’ needs and consequently to adapt the learning curriculum. Such systems are also able to adapt content and presentation to each user and to provide dynamic support for navigation through hypermedia material. The ability for adaptation to the needs of the individual user can significantly improve the teaching process, as it has been shown that the best method of teaching is individualized tutoring. An important research goal is the development of web-based educational applications that can offer adaptivity and intelligence. E-school is a web application, which includes adaptive features of WEB-based application, so the user is able to adapt some features of the system, to follow the lessons published by the professor and monitor its progress, he/she has the opportunity to test themself, to perform set of exercises, to give a solution of assigned projects. The system is designed by courses and lessons, improved with option for style of learning. There is complete language adaptation in Macedonian, offered for distribution as free software. The system has proved as very useful in lack of textbooks as the only source of literature, professional way of communication other than social networks, and all comparisons of the achieved success (explained in the text) are in favor of the adaptive system. Also, teachers have benefit from the system, since they are going to be externally assessed, so the goal is the grade obtained by the system to have minimum deviations from those grades obtained externally. There is possibility to discover talented students, because students can improve in their initiative. Besides educational, there is pedagogical contributions to the users, such as monitoring of time spent on-line, improving personal characteristics: accuracy, objectivity, dutifulness, organization.

E-simulation: preregistration nursing students' evaluation of an online patient deterioration program.

This study explores preregistration nursing students' views of a Web-based simulation program: FIRST ACTWeb (Feedback Incorporating Review and Simulation Techniques to Act on Clinical Trends-Web). The multimedia program incorporating three videoed scenarios portrayed by a standardized patient (human actor) aims to improve students' recognition and management of hospital patient deterioration. Participants were 367 final-year nursing students from three universities who completed an online evaluation survey and 19 students from two universities who attended one of five focus groups. Two researchers conducted a thematic analysis of the transcribed narratives. Three core themes identified were as follows: "ease of program use," "experience of e-Simulation," and "satisfaction with the learning experience." The Web-based clinical learning environment was endorsed as functional, feasible, and easy to use and was reported to have high fidelity and realism. Feedback in both focus groups and surveys showed high satisfaction with the learning experience. Overall, evaluation suggested that the Web-based simulation program successfully integrated elements essential for blended learning. Although Web-based educational applications are resource intensive to develop, positive appraisal of program quality, plus program accessibility and repeatability, appears to provide important educational benefits. Further research is needed to determine the transferability of these learning experiences into real-world practice.

Evaluation of Students' Views about the Use of SCORM (Sharable Content Object Reference Model)-Compatible Materials in Physics Teaching.

In the present study, a web site including instructional materials such as Whiteboard Movies (WBM), simulations and animations and testing materials such as true-false, fill-in-the-blanks, puzzles, open- ended questions and multiple-choice questions was designed. The study was carried out with 76 students attending Dicle College (DC), Diyarbakir Anatolian High School (DAHS) and Cumhuriyet Science High School (CSHS) located in the central town of the city Diyarbakir in southeast of Turkey and equipped with computer laboratories and Internet connection in the academic year of 2008 to 2009. Before the application, the data base records were taken regarding the participation of the students in the web activities. At the end of the application, 10 open-ended questions were directed to 19 volunteering students to evaluate the participating students’ views about the learning approach used and about the web site designed. The analyses of the responses given to the open-ended questions revealed that the students were generally satisfied with the testing and instructional materials found on the web site developed and that the students still experienced such problems as slowly-opening WBMs, an inadequate number of test forms including multiple-choice questions and insufficient duration of application. Considering the findings as a whole obtained in the study, it was thought that it would be beneficial to use web-based educational applications in teaching physics in schools with better Internet infrastructure and opportunities. Key words: Web based education, modular object-oriented dynamic learning environment (MOODLE), students’ views.

An Ontology of Construction Education for E-learning via the Semantic Web

Recent developments in technologies make the World Wide Web more intelligent and provide higher-level services to its users through the Semantic Web. The Semantic Web is an extension of the current World Wide Web, promoting information that is intended not only for human readers, but also can be processed by machines, enabling intelligent information services and semantically empowered search engines. This has a number of important implications for Web-based education, since Web-based education has become an important branch of educational technology. Although this technology is relatively new with limited use within various educational domains, its potential has not yet been explored within the construction education domain. The integration of the Semantic Web will provide platform independence and intelligence in Web-based educational applications for construction education and a solution to e-learning tools that have become redundant as a result of the fast developments in technologies. This paper gives an overview of the development of e-learning in construction, highlighting the key pedagogical and technical concepts and enablers to Semantic Web technology. The paper also describes an approach adopted for the development of ‘ontology’ within the construction domain and its integration to define the educational content, both semantically and pedagogically to enable a platform-independent architecture for both learners and educators.

A Framework for the Initialization of Student Models in Web-based Intelligent Tutoring Systems

Initializing a student model for individualized tutoring in educational applications is a difficult task, since very little is known about a new student. On the other hand, fast and efficient initialization of the student model is necessary. Otherwise the tutoring system may lose its credibility in the first interactions with the student. In this paper we describe a framework for the initialization of student models in Web-based educational applications. The framework is called ISM. The basic idea of ISM is to set initial values for all aspects of student models using an innovative combination of stereotypes and the distance weighted k-nearest neighbor algorithm. In particular, a student is first assigned to a stereotype category concerning her/his knowledge level of the domain being taught. Then, the model of the new student is initialized by applying the distance weighted k-nearest neighbor algorithm among the students that belong to the same stereotype category with the new student. ISM has been applied in a language learning system, which has been used as a test-bed. The quality of the student models created using ISM has been evaluated in an experiment involving classroom students and their teachers. The results from this experiment showed that the initialization of student models was improved using the ISM framework.

An approach for managing the evolution of web-based educational applications

The management of the infrastructure and content of the World Wide Web is a growing problem for the development of web-based educational applications (WbEA) and is hidden beneath the tremendous benefits of the web. Moreover, such systems undergo more frequent and quite extensive changes in their development and operational period because the client's perception (either the learner, the teacher or institutional organisation) of the complete end product is a moving target. So, there is a need for a disciplined approach to managing the evolution of web-based educational applications. Such a disciplined approach as applied throughout the software engineering process is called software configuration management (SCM). This paper begins a discussion of how the development of web-based educational applications could benefit from SCM techniques and tools and proposes a model for the management of the evolution of such systems. The model couples the development and evolution process of WbEA configurations into one framework, which seems promising for the implementation of a configuration management process. Also, the model focuses on the development of the web-based educational content, defining the configurations of the items involved in the underlying process. Finally, an example is given to demonstrate the benefits of the use of this approach.

Key issues in next-generation web-based education

This paper analyzes and categorizes limitations and weaknesses of current Web-based educational technology, suggests the steps to overcome them, and presents a framework for developing next-generation Web-based educational systems. It suggests developing Web-based educational applications with more theory- and content-oriented intelligence, more semantic interoperation between two or more educational applications, and realistic technological support to achieve such kinds of flexibility.

Next-generation web-based education

Web-based education has become a very important branch of educational technology. For learners, it provides access to information and knowledge sources that are practically unlimited, enabling a number of opportunities for personalised learning, telelearning, distance-learning and collaboration, with clear advantages of classroom independence and platform independence. Also, web-based courses and teleteaching offer numerous possibilities for teachers and authors of educational material, through the availability of authoring tools for developing web-based courseware and cheap and efficient storage and distribution of course materials, hyperlinks to suggested readings, digital libraries and other sources of references relevant for the course. However, there are several problems with web-based education faced by both teachers and learners. Educational material on the web is still highly unstructured, heterogeneous and distributed with other information throughout the web; current learning and authoring tools offer limited support in accessing and processing such material. The main burden of organising and linking the learning contents on the web, as well as extracting and interpreting them, is on the user. What are, then, common prerequisites for creating intelligent web-based educational systems and applications? What kind of intelligent services should they support and how? How can a search engine from the sea of educational web pages select automatically those of most value to the authors, teachers and learners in pursuing their educational goals? These are the questions that this paper tries to answer.

Web-based education for all: a tool for development adaptive courseware

Many Web-based educational applications are expected to be used by very different groups of users without the assistance of a human teacher. Accordingly there is a need for systems which can adapt to users with very different backgrounds, prior knowledge of the subject and learning goals. An electronic textbook is one of the most prominent varieties of Web-based educational systems. In this paper we describe an approach for developing adaptive textbooks and present InterBook—an authoring tool based on this approach which simplifies the development of adaptive electronic textbooks on the Web.