Colin Allison

The Web in education

The Web has spurred our imagination as to how education could be radically transformed and enhanced through the adoption of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). While there have been many significant innovations and successes over the last decade there have also been many unrealised aims. Beliefs in technology-driven change for education have been countered by shortcomings in technological understanding by educationalists and in turn by shortcomings in the understanding of educational theories and learning concepts by technologists. The use of the Web in education has revealed issues such as the distinction between formal and informal learning; the packaging and formatting of learning materials for online distribution and use; the management of learning materials and processes in virtual and managed learning environments; solutions offered by the semantic Web; and how the quality of experience in interactive learning environments relates to the quality of the Internet infrastructure. A comparison between the performance of early and current Web technologies from a user perspective is given for an interactive learning environment which has been in use for over a decade. Client, server, network and protocol components which contribute to the quality of experience for the end user are presented and analysed. In summary, this paper examines the use of the Web in education to date and looks forward to new challenges and aspirations such as MOOCs (massively online open coursewares) and the immersive 3D Web as the basis for the next generation of learning environments.

Games Methodologies and Immersive Environments for Virtual Fieldwork

The construction and consolidation of knowledge through the practical application of concepts and processes can be difficult to support for subjects where practice is an integral component of competence and expertise in that domain. For example, participation in an archaeological excavation is not readily available to students, although a detailed understanding of what processes this involves is deemed to be core to the subject. The Laconia Acropolis Virtual Archaeology (LAVA) project has created a cooperative exploratory learning environment that addresses the need for students to engage with the complex practice of excavation. By leveraging the progressive nature of games methodologies and the immersive engagement provided by 3D multiuser virtual environments, LAVA facilitates the adoption of exploratory learning for excavation scenarios which have previously been inaccessible due to barriers of travel, time, and cost. A virtual environment based on real world data has been developed where groups of users are faced with a series of dynamic challenges with which they engage until such time that a certain level of competence is shown. Once a series of domain-specific objectives has been met, users are able to progress forward to the next level of the simulation. The excavation simulator enhances the student learning experience by providing opportunities for students to engage with the process in a customizable, virtual environment. Not only does this provide students with an opportunity to put the theories they are familiar with into practice, but it also allows students to gain experience in applying their skills in a bid to manage an excavation process, thereby making it possible for a greater emphasis to be placed on the practical application of knowledge that the excavation process necessitates. The potential of this approach has been confirmed by a positive user evaluation. LAVA contributes toward the progress of technology-enhanced learning by illustrating the instantiation of a framework which demonstrates how to integrate games methods with learning management systems and virtual worlds in order to support higher order learning behaviors such as applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating.

SERVICES, SEMANTICS, AND STANDARDS: ELEMENTS OF A LEARNING GRID INFRASTRUCTURE

There has been considerable political pressure and much hope invested in the use of communication and information technologies to provide wider access to education, while improving quality and reducing costs. Unfortunately, many of the responses to the challenge of these aspirations have consisted of simple Web technology-driven products, which have failed to progress effective learning. In this paper we outline the characteristics and pedagogical goals of a learning paradigm that is used to drive the technical requirements, rather than being constrained by what is easily achieved in XHTML. We identify and explain the key roles played by services, semantics, and standards in meeting pedagogical goals of novel learning situations, and illustrate with some scenarios that build bridges between traditional learning contexts and future possibilities. Crucially, we explain why we have adopted Grid technologies in the European Learning Grid Infrastructure (ELeGI) research program.

A comparison of TCP behaviour at high speeds using ns-2 and Linux

There is a growing interest in the use of variants of the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) in high-speed networks. ns-2 has implementations of many of these high-speed TCP variants, as does Linux. ns-2, through an extension, permits the incorporation of Linux TCP code within ns-2 simulations. As these TCP variants become more widely used, users are concerned about how these different variants of TCP might interact in a real network environment -- how fair are these protocol variants to each other (in their use of the available capacity) when sharing the same network. Typically, the answer to this question might be sought through simulation and/or by use of an experimental testbed. So, we compare with TCP NewReno the fairness of the congestion control algorithms for 5 high-speed TCP variants -- BIC, Cubic, Scalable, High-Speed and Hamilton -- on both ns-2 and on an experimental testbed running Linux. In both cases, we use the same TCP code from Linux. We observe some differences between the behaviour of these TCP variants when comparing the testbed results to the results from ns-2, but also note that there is generally good agreement.

Educationally enhanced virtual worlds

Virtual worlds continue to attract considerable interest as an innovative means of engaging students through the use of immersive, 3D, collaborative environments. They allow for the dynamic creation of content and for that content to be programmed. Second Life is the dominant virtual world technology in use, and whilst attractive in that it is a ready-made — albeit commercial — service, it was not designed for educational use and has significant social and technical drawbacks when used for that purpose. As such, we have been researching the serious use of OpenSim as an alternative virtual world for Computer Science education. OpenSim is a free, open source software development project which supports self-hosting and maintenance of virtual worlds. This paper explains our rationale for using OpenSim and reports on our experiences to date. It includes a feature comparison between OpenSim and Second Life as an aid for those wishing to exploit virtual worlds in the Computer Science curriculum.

Virtual worlds, real traffic: interaction and adaptation

Metaverses such as Second Life (SL) are a relatively new type of Internet application. Their functionality is similar to online 3D games but differs in that users are able to construct the environment their avatars inhabit and are not constrained by predefined goals. From the network perspective metaverses are similar to games in that timeliness is important but differ in that their traffic is much less regular and requires more bandwidth This paper contributes to our understanding of metaverse traffic by validating previous studies and offering new insights. In particular we analyse the relationships between application functionality, SLs traffic control system and the wider network environment. Two sets of studies have been carried out: one of the traffic generated by a hands-on workshop which used SL; and a follow up set of controlled experiments to clarify some of the findings from the first study. The interplay between network latency, SLs traffic throttle settings, avatar density, and the errors in the clients estimation of avatar positions are demonstrated. These insights are of particular interest to those designing traffic management schemes for metaverses and help explain some of the oddities in the current user experience.

Towards successful 3D virtual learning - a case study on teaching human computer interaction

This paper presents a case study illustrating successful involvement of a shared online 3D virtual world, for teaching Human Computer Interaction (HCI) as a final year course in an undergraduate curriculum. While there is considerable interest throughout academia in using such multi-user virtual environments (MUVE) for education, academics are experiencing many challenges in exploring various possible use-cases. This study was conducted to identify some of the critical issues such as student perception, privacy, ownership, access to practical work for assessment purposes, maintaining an association between institutional and virtual world identities, and the achievement of learning outcomes through the MUVE approach of teaching.

802.11 wireless experiments in a virtual world

This paper describes the design and implementation of an 802.11 wireless laboratory within a Multi-User Virtual Environment (MUVE). The laboratory allows students and lecturers to create their own 802.11 scenarios by: i) selecting and placing components such as base stations and laptops within the immersive 3D landscape; ii) defining how traffic flows between these different network components; and iii) where appropriate specifying the movements of nodes. This information is sent outside of the MUVE and translated into a set of commands for the ns2 simulator, which then generates the simulation. The results of the simulation are sent back to the MUVE, where a 3D animation of the wireless communication is presented to learners interacting with the system. Learners are therefore able to set up and observe wireless phenomena such as the hidden and exposed node problems and to experiment by changing parameters such as packet loss and RTS/CTS threshold. The enabling framework behind the laboratory takes advantage of language independent, distributed resource management and stateful interaction through the use of web services.

Exploring canons & cathedrals with Open Virtual Worlds: The recreation of St Andrews Cathedral, St Andrews day, 1318

St Andrews Cathedral is located on the East Coast of Scotland. Construction started in 1160 and spanned Romanesque and Gothic architectural styles. It was consecrated in 1318, four years after the battle of Bannockburn in the presence of King Robert I. For several hundred years, the Cathedral was one of the most important religious buildings in Europe and the centre of religious life in Scotland. During the Reformation, John Knox himself lead reformers in divesting the Cathedral of all its finery. Thereafter it fell into disuse and decline. Today the remains hint at its former glory. Here the use of Open Virtual Worlds (OVW) to support new modes of engagement with cultural heritage is presented through the example of St Andrews Cathedral. Open Virtual Worlds offer an extensible collaborative environment for developing historical scenes against which background material and intangible aspects of cultural heritage associated with a site may be explored. They offer the potential to reconstruct within a 3D computer environment both the physical structures of the past and important aspects of the lighting, sounds and lifestyles that once existed within those structures. Bringing together architecture, sculpture, illumination, stained-glass, music, procession and lighting into a scene, which can be explored from multiple spatial perspectives enables holistic appreciations to be developed.

Modelling the evolution of legacy systems to web-based systems

To advance operational legacy systems, with their out-of-date software, distributed data and entrenched business processes, to systems that can take advantage of current Web technologies to give consistent, customized and secure access to existing information bases and legacy systems is a complex and daunting task. The Institutionally Secure Integrated Data Environment (INSIDE) is a collaborative project between the Universities of St Andrews and Durham that is addressing the issues surrounding the development and delivery of integrated systems for large institutions, constrained by the requirement of working with the existing information bases and legacy systems. The work has included an exploration of the incremental evolution of existing systems by building Web-based value-added services upon foundations derived from analysing and modelling the existing legacy systems. Progressing from initial informal models to more formal domain and requirements models in a systematic way, following a meta-process incorporating good practice from domain analysis and requirements engineering has allowed the project to lay the foundation for its development of Web-based services.