RUCHI SARAN 97283 CO MP UT E R S CI E NCE AND E NG I NE E RI NG D E P ART ME NT I ND I AN I NST I T UT E O F T E CHNO LO G Y K ANPUR

B T E CH PROJ E CT RE PORT
NE T E DUCATION: TE CHNOLOGIE S AND MODE LS

SUPERVISOR: PROF. JALOTE

Acknowledgements
Firstly I would like to thank my guide Dr. Pankaj Jalote for his able guidance throughout the building of this report. For a lot of work concerning this report, I have made several trips to Dr. N. Guptas lab at the Educational Testing Services at ACES, IIT Kanpur where I have always been made to feel welcome in spite of taking so much time. Thank you, Manisha and Jasmine, for all the help and support you gave so sincerely and Dr. Gupta, for your advice and cooperation.

Introduction
While the concept of distance learning has been around for some time now in the form of correspondence sources, the Internet boom has facilitated a new medium of instruction. Recent reports are that more than 1600 US schools and universities are offering 23.000 courses online. As an increasing number of virtual universities are arriving on the scene, there are also more and more brick and mortar universities that are offering online courses. A few reasons for the popularity of online courses include the increased student accessibility, overcoming of geographical constraints of both teachers and students, low infrastructural costs as compared to setting up of university branches and the lack of time restrictions imposed on the distance learner. In fact, according to studies, the majority of online learners are adults who take online courses to add to their qualifications without taking a job break. This report studies the models and technologies available for online education today. It aims to be a technical guide to a prospective virtual university or existing university that is considering or developing the delivery of online courses, or a professor at an otherwise brick and mortar university who want to put courses online. We will be studying a number of key processes involved in the development and delivery of online courses like streaming, compression and multicasting. Apart from the administrative and delivery work, there is a need for providing access to remote student interaction the lack of which has been shown to have a direct impact on student dropout rate. With this is mind, we will be looking at MUDs and MOOs, which are used for remote participant discussions. Buying a course management software is an option for universities which are providing a large number of courses and do not want to build the blocks for a course manager on their own. Some such software also serve individual professors. We will be looking at the most competitive Course Management Software available today. The study, evaluation and comparison of the software will conclude in a proposal for a complete package that can be used by a prospective e institution. It is expected that the e educator has finished the stages of choosing faculty and web hosting service etc. Next it must be decided what courses will be taught. While we will not delve in the subject of course design in this study, it must be noted that precisely the same course model cannot be used for all taught subjects. In addition to course content, a course model includes the number of contact hours required, the mode of lecture dissemination (live/streaming/textual), the number of assignments and exams, the need for a discussion amongst the class, etc. The model must be suited to the type of subject (arts/sciences etc.), number of students in the course etc. The spectrum of course models has two ends Directed Study (Synchronous Self Study) and Instructor led events (live or real time learning). The directed study is a learner driven model in which there is minimal student teacher interaction. The learner more or less fixes her timetable so the course material is with the student well before the time she begins to study it. These may include streaming lectures, CDROM based tutorials, paper based

correspondence, click to learn web based systems etc. Such a model does not completely exploit the utility of the Internet. However, some synchronous features like online courses, chat with the tutor/classmates and threaded message boards can also be added to increase the real time feel of the course. Most of these do not have any technical limitations with respect to bandwidth and are easily implemented in most scenarios. In the instructor led events, we essentially simulate a virtual classroom. The lectures are held online by techniques similar to video conferencing; the lecture is disseminated to the students in real time. Instructors and learners can view learning content like live documents simultaneously through white boarding technologies. The obvious advantage of such a system is that the student gets the chance to interact with each other and also interrupt the instructor if there is something they have not understood. Note that there is a significant difference in the technologies required to facilitate one to many and many to one conference (needed for students to communicate with only the instructor) compared to a many to many conference (which would allow students to interact with each other) Again, as in the previous model, there is a possible inclusion of other features like threaded discussions, tutor chats etc. As mentioned, these models simply provide the two ends of the spectrum in which one can fit a course model by fixing different levels of student student and teacher student interactions and mode of lecture delivery. Both these models have their limitations. Directed Study requires a lot of student motivation and also increases the susceptibility of the student feeling lonely and thus disinterested in the course, entailing a greater probability of him dropping out. The real time learning model has some restraints as well. The real time process enforces a time constraint on the students they must be free at the time of the lecture to attend it. This is not a desirable feature in courses taken by for example, adult students who are working and need to be able to fix their own study time. A technical constraint is that the bandwidth available to the students may not always be able to support high quality videoconferencing. However, with the advent of multicasting and the MBone (which we will discuss later in the course of this study) this problem is expected to decrease. The next step after the fixing of the course model is to decide on whether to use management software or use a number of tools for the different tasks. There are a number of existing systems available today. Software tools used in web based learning can be classified according to the general and administrative functions they address.

Educational Delivery System is a software product suite that facilitates the delivery
of content or interaction by the web, but does not necessarily measure student performance or handle other administrative tasks. Centras conference product is an educational delivery system.

Course Management System (CMS) is a software product that generally incorporates an educational delivery system for a course and provides integrated tools for measuring outcomes and reporting progress for individual or groups of students. CMS systems are currently most popular for educational institutions that use online support for traditional courses and also offer online courses. The facilities offered by such a system encompass three aspects of an online course. Course Development is the building and customization of a course. Course Delivery includes the communication tools like chat, white boarding and assessment tools like quizzes etc. Course Management is the overall administration of a course. We will be examining, as part of this report four of the worlds major e learning software and evaluating and comparing the features of each. Learning Management System (LMS)
A software product that provides learner an integrated view of all their active coursework and assignments in an academic program that spans multiple courses. These are usually found in large corporate training departments and corporate universities. We will exclude this topic from our study, as this does not address the functionality we seek.

Chapter 1 Lecture Delivery with Streaming

A streaming file format is one of that has been especially encoded so that it can be played while it downloads, instead of having to wait for the whole file to download. The fact that streaming does not need or allow a complete file download has two advantages in the distance learning perspective. Firstly, the student does not have to spend time or hardware resources to download an entire file containing a lecture. Also the e0educator has more control over the distribution of the file because users cannot circulate the file. The following steps are taken in the process of making streaming audio/video content.

Pre production
This stage includes deciding the content of each lecture. In addition, a number of factors like the bandwidth the streaming will take place over must be decided upon and used to determine the feasibility of having a streaming video as opposed to having slides with streaming audio etc. The thumb rule is that a connection less than 28.8 Kbps cannot support a video streaming very well. Also, the level of user control over the media must be decided at this stage. The author might want to let the user skip over sections or repeat certain sections. In such a case, a suitable delivery platform must be chosen.

Audio/ Video Capture

Depending on the resolution possible the movement in the video should be controlled with minimum movement being allowed for software. Lectures can be taped on digital video cameras or normal ones. In case of the latter, the highest resolution possible is needed so that after compression and encoding, the loss of quality is minimal. In most cases, the compression is done along with the capture. (We will discuss some compression techniques a little later this chapter). The audio narrative can either be recorded along with the video (in which case the environmental sounds must be tightly controlled in order to minimize audio disturbance) or can be recorded separately and added on. In most pedagogical lectures, the former method is applied. The audio, if recorded in analog can be converted to digital by connecting the output of the analog device to the computer sound card.

Audio/ Video Editing

The process of leaving out unneeded portions of the taped and captured video is usually done in 2 stages. In offline editing, a rough version of the finished video is prepared by simply sequencing different parts of the whole video in the right order. The next stage of online editing goes into finer cuts and also details like transitions and filters. A transition is a switchover between two successive sequences and a filter is an effect (like blurring, color fading etc) applied to an entire video. An audio editor, which has functions like cut, copy, paste etc. (similar to a word processor) is most effectively used for audio editing.

Post production
This process includes and final tweaking of the finished video before the process of streaming is applied.

Streaming Pre processing

This process is aimed at making the audio/videos quality and file size optimal for streaming. For the video, contrasts are set so that there is maximum clarity, median blur is modified best compression etc. The audio is normalized to maximize the volume without causing distortion. Also, watermarking a company logo on the video is also done at this stage.

Addition of metadata
Metadata includes information about the author/institute etc that is to be displayed on the audio/video. Also, the insertion of metadata can allow user navigation along the streaming video and facilitates the launch of applications like browsers etc. Inserting markers in the file, which associate the metadata in the file with specific times in the streaming content, creates Metadata. The functions used for this depend on the encoder used. This finishes the process of creating the audio/video content and now the file can be published to the server to be made available to the students.

Compression of Media File Formats

Media File Formats like .bmp and .avi are uncompressed. In an uncompressed image file, the description of every pixel in every frame is stored. In an uncompressed video file, for every pixel, details like color, brightness, video information and possibly audio information is stored. The uncompressed formats store a lot of redundant data, the removal of which can make the file lighter and faster to upload and download. This redundant data is basically the parts of the image that are not changing frame to frame. So, in a compressed version, per frame, we store only the data that is changing frame to frame. For this reason, a piece of compressed video which contains a lot of motion such as a fast paced action scene, will typically have a larger data size than a video containing a still shot with little or no movement. A codec is a compression decompression algorithm is typically an algorithm which analyses the video data in terms of spatial, temporal and frequency content to determine which data is not required and can be left out. It thus compresses the file

Video compression is used in many applications where video data needs to be

transmitted over networks such as video conferencing and video on demand. Earlier, video compression standards were designed for video storage and shortening download times. However, as streaming video technologies are being developed, they are now used in live Internet transmission. The new generation of compression codecs requires greater resilience to network losses (caused by missing packets of data), as well as scalability. Scalability is the ability for the compression codec to increase or decrease the amount of compression or download data rate at the price of image or sound quality in order to maintain a video stream 7

on any type or speed of network. So, if the amount of bandwidth on a network becomes low, the video quality will become less to preserve the stream. This process is known as scaling or stream thinning. Lossless compression, as it suggests, retains all the fidelity of the original source and becomes the same as the original file when decompressed. Lossy compression methods discard some of the original data during compression. For example, if the pixels making up a sky actually contain 76 shades of blue, a lossy codec set for less than best quality may record 60 shades of blue. How much picture quality is to be traded to lower the data rate and file size can be specified. As part of the streaming format, as mentioned above, there is usually some form of compression included. It is possible to stream some standard media file formats. It is possible to stream some standard media file formats, however it is usually more efficient to encode them into a special format that was designed for streaming.

Audio Compression can be lossless or lossy, like image and video compression.
Lossless compression, as it suggests, retains all the fidelity of the original source and becomes the same as the original file when decompressed. Lossy compression does not retain some of the original signal to reduce the file size further. It does this by discarding data that is calculated to be inaudible to the human ear. There are a few methods of lossless compression, but many different algorithms for encoding lossy files. Mp2, mp3 and ATRAC (Sony) are lossless compression codecs.

Chapter 2 Multicasting and the MBone

While the model of the virtual classroom, as mentioned, imposes time constraints on the distant learners, it is a desirable model because it effectively simulates an actual classroom where students and teachers can interact with each other in real time. However, because of the high bandwidth required for video conferencing, this model has not been used very much because of the high bandwidth is required in the case of the previously used technologies of unicasting and broadcasting. Unicasting sends a separate copy of the data from the source to each client that requests it. So in a virtual classroom, where there may be as many as 30 35 participants, this method leads to a heavy clogging of the network. When data is broadcast, a single copy of the data is sent to all clients on the network. This method wastes network bandwidth when the data has to be sent only to a portion of the network. The primary difference between a multicast packet and a unicast (or broadcast) packet is that in a multicast, the destination IP address refers to a group of hosts rather than to a specific host or network, which is the case in a unicast packet. In the IP world, multicast group addresses are known as "Class D" addresses and include all IP addresses in the range of 224.0.0.0 through 239.255.255.255. A few of these addresses refer to specific, well known applications. If a system wants to send data to a group of hosts, it only has to send the packets to the Class D address associated with that particular group. Any hosts listening for traffic destined for that IP address would then pick up the packets and process the contents, while other hosts would simply ignore the packets (if they actually saw them). Multicasting can be implemented by using the Internet Multicast Backbone or MBone. Multicast enabled networks are called multicast islands. The MBone is a virtual network consisting of multicast islands. Multicasts that must travel across areas of the Internet that are not yet multi cast enabled are sent as unicasts until they reach the next multicast enabled island. This process is referred to as tunneling. The tunnel endpoints are typically work station class machines having operating system support for IP multicast. A user instructs his computers network card to listen to a particular IP address for the multicast. The computer originating the multicast does not need to know who has decided to receive it. The bulk of the work that needs to be done to enable multicasting is performed b the networks routers and the protocols they run. There are several multicast routing protocols (based on varying algorithms) in use today. Their task is to create efficient multicast delivery paths through the network. An efficient delivery path implies that multicast data travels to only those clients who want to receive it and takes the shortest path to those clients. If data travels elsewhere through the network, bandwidth is effectively wasted. If the network is a tree structure, the source of the multicast sends data down the correct branches to other routers and the to the sub networks where members of a group are waiting for data. A router should also not send the data down to a branch where there is no user waiting for it.

When a new regional network wants to join in, it makes a request on an MBone list, and then the participants at close nodes cooperate in setting up the ends of the appropriate tunnels. To keep fan out down, sometimes an existing tunnel may be broken to insert a new node, so it is possible that three sites work together to set up the tunnels. To know which nodes are close will require knowledge of both the MBone logical map and the underlying physical network topology. To join the MBone, a network provider participant provides one or more IP multicast routers to connect with tunnels to other participants and to customers. The multicast routers are typically separate from a networks production routers since most production routers do not yet support IP multicast.

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Chapter 3 Student Interaction

The interaction of a student with colleagues and tutors/instructors from her course is an important part of making the student comfortable with the online course. Not only does this help in personalizing the course for the student, but the interaction can also be moderated by an instructor into a discussion amongst the students. While this kind of discussion is offered as a service by most course management software, such a multi user interaction can be implemented in the form of a multi user dungeon or MUD if a course is not part of a CMS. A MUD is a program originally started as a multi player game, which is increasingly being used as a course chat room in independent online courses. A MUD is a program running on a computer to which the participant telnets or connects through a client program. It is better to use a client program as telnet causes the smudging of the text inputted by different participants simultaneously into one text body. To allow users to participate, the course manager or instructor can give the students of the course a port number to which they can connect at a pre decided time. When connecting to a MUD for the first time, a user must set a character for him. This he can do himself or ask the wizard (the creator of the MUD) to do, depending on the how the wizard has specified for the MUD to work. MUDs have a number of commands to become familiar with. Once this initial work is done, it becomes quite comfortable to chat on a MUD. A MOO is MUD Object Oriented. It provides a user the facility and option of creating an object in the MOO. This essentially allows the users to set up chat rooms between which they can move to and fro. This would allow the same MOO to host discussions for a number of courses. A MOO Source code can be downloaded from anonymous FTP sites and configured to host course discussions on a specific machine. MOO has been compiled and run successfully on several different operating systems including AIX, BSD UNIX, and SunOS 4.x, Linux.

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Chapter 4 Course Management Systems: A Review

We now examine four major course management systems and the facilities they offer to the instructor and student.

Web Course Tools: WebCT

WebCT is a leading Course Management System that provides software for teaching and learning tools for course development, course delivery, and course management. It is used in more than 2,200 institutions in 77 countries around the world. It offers two versions of CMS the campus edition is a complete, institution wide e learning solution and the standard edition is a stand alone teaching and learning environment, appropriate for limited deployment. (We will study the campus edition.)
To use WebCT, an institution must order a license at either a local reseller or apply to WebCT directly at the website (www.webct.com). After sending the order form and proof of payment, the institution gets a license key (a code made up of numbers and letters). The administrator can then go to a password protected server to download the software and documentation over the Internet. The installation follows and the software becomes fully functional. We now study WebCT 3.1. There are 3 kinds of accounts apart from the System Administrator. All three are created by the Administrator:

Designer
This account is used by course designer/s (WebCT allows more than one designer per course). He can add/delete course content, access communication tools, student grades etc.

Teaching Assistant
With this account, one can manage student records, view course content (but not add/delete it) change student grades, grade assignments and quizzes etc.

Student
Accounts for students allow access to student tools and course content viewing etc. These accounts can be created by uploading a text file into the system from a roster (provided that the text file be in the specified format). After getting an account, the designer can start building his course and students can access courses that they are registered for. The administrator manages the addition of students and teaching assistant to a course. While the designer can add some students to his course using tools in his area, the administrator must validate such an addition before the student actually starts accessing the course area. A weakness of the system is that when students are added by the instructor, the administrator must be manually sent a list of their student IDs or similar 12

detail, instead of the tool automatically sending him a list of all the students that an instructor is requesting. The administrator has the maximum power among users. He can take backups of the entire course system at regular intervals. He must validate every user account before it becomes functional and give him a WebCT ID. The default page presented to a student/teacher assistant/designer as she logs on contains a unified view of all the courses she is registered for or is teaching, and the current announcements for each of them. She can enter any of these courses by clicking on it. The tools available to a person in her area depend on whether she is a student or designer or teaching assistant. These tools can be accessed using the Navigation Bar (on the left of the screen) or the Icons in different areas displayed on the main screen (and are explained next). There is also an organization bar on the top of the screen, which allows the user to view the course content and course map.

DESIGNER TOOLS
Course Building is done using the tools in the Course Content area, which contains link to the following tools/areas. The Syllabus area contains information about the course guidelines, expectations, and designer information. The Content Module contains the course content and can be organized into folders in a tree fashion by the designer. The Calendar contains important reminders from the designer and is visible to the students of a course. A Glossary tool enables the designer to upload a glossary text file into the course Glossary (provided the text file is in the specified format). The glossary can also be inputted word by word as and when required using the interface provided by the tool. A Question Bank can be prepared. There are sophisticated tools to handle multiple choice, subjective etc. questions separately. Other material including course content can be placed on the Course Content Area (i.e. outside the content module). There are a number of icons that one can choose from. Icons can also be uploaded onto the course area.

Assessment Tools
The designer can design self tests for the students to take on their own and evaluate themselves. These are automatically checked by the software on submission and the The designer can make quizzes available to students for a particular period of time. The questions can be made directly or drawn from an existing question bank. A marking scheme can also be set to enable automated checking and grading of the student responses.

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The Designer to post assignments for which the student can post solutions by simply uploading the relevant files and then submitting them. (These are 2 discrete steps.) This file transfer is done using the DropBox tool.

Communication tools
Mails can be sent between users of the course. Chat rooms: There are 6 rooms in which chatting can take place. Some rooms are specific to the course and can be used only by the students of a particular course, but one of these is also open to all students of all courses under a WebCT system. There are also rooms in which all interactions are recorded and can later be viewed by the designer. Whiteboarding is a means for students to clear doubts while interacting with each other or the designer. It allows 2 distant people to communicate through figures and words on a whiteboard (or simulated blackboard). At a pre fixed time, 2 parties can log on to the whiteboard. The whiteboard in WebCT has very good features for sophisticated and quick figures. Threaded Discussion allows an interaction and discussion through messages posted between course users. These boards allow attachments to be posted as well.

File Management
WebCT boasts of a very good file management system that allows the designer to upload and organize a file and folder system online. The operations allowed on them include moving, copying, deleting, downloading and also zipping and unzipping.

Course Back up
There exists a tool that allows the designer to save a back up of the course in a specified area. This includes student data, course material etc. In case of a server crash, the entire course can be restored in a matter of minutes automatically.

Manage Students
This tool allows the designer to view the records of students in the course. Here, she can import student data into the course database from an external database and alternatively create the database entry manually for each student. To do the former, she must have the WebCT ID of every student. A sophisticated search tool allows the designer to view parts of the class based on their User ID, names, grades in different assignments/quizzes etc. While the above break up into tools and areas is the default provided by WebCT, the designer has the freedom to re organize the course tools and content into different areas than the ones specified according to her needs. We now look at the features available to students of a course.

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STUDENT TOOLS
The tools immediately viewable to a student when he logs on to a course on WebCT include the Course Content, Communication Tools, Study Tools, Evaluation Tools and any other material placed by the designer on the course HomePage

Course Content has the following organization.

Syllabus contains information about the Designer and the course guidelines, goals and other details. The Calendar contains entries set by the designer (which are visible to all students of the course). In addition, the student can make personal entries in the calendar in her area (these are viewed by only that student). The Content Module holds the Course Content. This area provides a Notes tool, which allows the student to notes that are stored (in this area) and can be looked up again later. (These are, again, viewable only by individual students.) There is a Search Engine tool, which can search for a given term in different parts of the course like discussions, content module etc. The Glossary made by the designer is available here. This cannot be added to or modified by the student. Any other material put by the designer in the Course Content is also viewable. This includes links to relevant web pages and course material in the form of files.

Communication Tools allow students to communicate with anyone associated with the
course (administrator/designer/teaching assistant/fellow students) or other WebCT users (in other courses) of the university. Mails can be sent between anyone associated with the course. These can be stored in the user area and there is a good interface for them to be stored in folders. Discussions are threaded and are viewable to all course users. Chat, as mentioned before has 6 rooms where students can interact with each other. Whiteboard allows students to clear doubts about the course with an designer or teaching assistant.

Evaluation Tools
Assignments can be submitted through the site. The designer can design self tests (the results of which are not stored) The designer can post quizzes that are accessible for the student for a particular time period. The results of these quizzes are stored and the class average and highest can be calculated automatically and be made open for all students who would like to view such statistics. The My Progress or My Grades tool allows the student to view the distribution of visits to the different pages (Content, Tools, Questions, Notes etc.) These are also viewable for the designer.

Files
The files that the designer uploads must be downloaded by the student and then viewed. 15

TEACHING ASSISTANT TOOLS

Like a student, the teaching assistant the same view when she logs on and can progress to a course by clicking on it. A teaching assistant can view the course and submitted assignments etc. He can handle student records using the Manage Students tool. As we can see, the WebCT course management software provides a range of facilities covering a substantial portion of course building, delivery and management. Besides the resources placed by the designer on the course site, WebCT itself provides a meeting place for all students and teachers at the www.webct.com website. At the page containing a list of the courses the user is involved with, there is a list of links to WebCT academic resources where the user can study material put up by other WebCT users. There is also a career center with resources for job seeking students. We now look at Blackboard 5, another course management system.

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Course Management System: Blackboard 5

Blackboard offers a complete suite of enterprise software products and services that power a total e Education Infrastructure for schools, colleges, universities, and other education providers. Today, 1400 institutions in more than 130 countries deliver e Education services through Blackboard's suite of enterprise systems.
Blackboard.comSM is a free course web site creation service that enables instructors to add an online component to traditional classes, or teach an entire course on the Web without engaging in the hassles of encoding content in HTML. One can quickly and easily create ones own course Web site to bring learning materials, class discussions and tests online. The service is free, with an enhanced service available for a per course fee. Blackboard.com also features an extensive course catalog, from which learners can access a course their instructor has set up or browse for distance learning courses created by instructors and institutions using Blackboards software. Blackboard 5TM is available in four license options. Whether locally installed or centrally hosted, an organization can either immediately set up a fully integrated online environment with Blackboard 5 Level Three, or start at Blackboard 5 Level One for online course management and incrementally upgrade. Blackboard runs on both Windows NT Server and Unix (Red Hat, Solaris) platforms. After getting a license, the system administrator can download and install the software on the server machines. There are 3 main kinds of accounts apart from the system administrator. The Instructor There can be multiple instructors for a course. The instructor of a course has complete access to the course Control Panel and can, among other things, create and delete courses, access student grades etc. The Grader A grader can access assessment tools (discussed later) and gradebooks, but not the dropbox where students submit assignments. The Student Student accounts are automatically created when a course is created. All the student records containing information like first and last name, email id, student id etc. can be put into a roster (in the specified format) and be uploaded into the database. (We will not discuss guest accounts briefly however, a guest can view course content but not access communication and student tools) For course creation, the System Administrator must validate the course, after which the course becomes available and the instructor can begin to add content to the empty course shell.

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Upon logging in, the user is taken to her personalized Blackboard homepage, called My Institution. The main screen on log on has contains calendar events and announcements etc. The immediately visible options are the tabs that can take the user to Courses, Community, Services, Academic Web Resources and a search engine for the Web. To be taken to the site of a course, the user must click on the course name in the Courses area.

from http://www.edtech.neu.edu/blackboard/Bb5/

TOOLS
The interface and tools available to students and instructors are not very different, so we describe the We describe the tools relevant to Course Management available on Courses. Announcements can be made by the instructor, which will be made visible to students when they log on. Announcements about new quizzes or surveys appear automatically on student logons. Staff Information: Staff information is conveniently located in its own area. Students can e mail an instructor directly from this page, or use the e mail tool within the Communications area. Instructor photos are optional. Instructors who have a personal homepage elsewhere on the Web (on the ATS server, for example) can place a link to this homepage on the Staff Information page. The Course Documents area contains the bulk of the online resources. Readings, lecture notes and handouts, online presentations, and even quizzes are typically put in this area. Besides text files, multimedia like mpeg videos and other audios can be uploaded by the instructor onto the course site from where the student can directly view the content (provided he have the appropriate plug ins like media player etc.) Assignments area contains projects, surveys, quizzes etc. Communication: Within the Communication area, the instructor and students can send e mail to other class participants, exchange ideas in the live chat room (Virtual Classroom) and find class members' names and contact information on the Roster. 18

In addition, instructors can divide a large class into groups, each of which will have its own discussion, chat and file exchange area. Discussion Board is threaded. Groups: As mentioned, the class can be divided into groups and interact with each other in this area using chat etc. Only the group members and in the instructor have access to this area. External Links: contains links to relevant online content. Tools: o Digital Drop Box is used for exchange of files, essays etc. between students and the instructor o The Edit Your Homepage can be used by the student to create personal homepages o Personal Information can be stored about the students. o The Calendar tool in Blackboard (is a bigger tool than WebCT and) allows the user to view days, weeks, months and year. The viewer can also choose to view selected events like quizzes or only extra classes etc. Entries in the calendar can be made by the instructor as well as the student (the students entries are visible only to her.) o Check Grade allows a student to view his current grades o The Instructor can set Tasks. These appear on the students tasks list along with a priority set by the Instructor for completing it, the due date etc. o Electric Blackboard allows students to take notes online o Address Book allows students to add new members to their email contact list. The Course Map and Resources are also available to everyone.

from http://www.edtech.neu.edu/blackboard/Bb5/

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The instructor builds the online course using the Control Panel button at the end of the page when he logs in. The Control Panel is divided into 6 sections: Content Areas, Course Tools, Course Options, User Management, Assessment, and Assistance. The links under Content Areas allow the instructor to add content to different areas of the course site like Announcements, assignments etc. Course Tools controls the communication options, including the Course Calendar, Discussion Board, and DropBox (for file exchange). Course Options allows the customization of the appearance of the course site and selection of the features of a Blackboard course to be used. Within User Management course enrollment is controlled and groups for team assignments can be created. The Assessment area enables the creation of online quizzes and surveys, management of the course Gradebook, and review of students' usage of the site. Assistance contains the online instructor manual and other Blackboard resources for instructors. (There are additional resources available to instructors by clicking on the Help button at the top of any course page.) Instructions on using the different tools of the Control Panel are available in the online Instructor Manual (linked under "Assistance" on the Control Panel, and from the Help button on the top of any page).

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Course Management System: Prometheus

Prometheus is a community based, open architecture software platform developed at The George Washington University to meet the online infrastructure needs of educational institutions. Since March 2000, GWU has licensed Prometheus to 35 universities, which have become its partner institutions.
After getting a license, the system administrator can download and install the software on server machines. We study Prometheus 4.0 The administrator can create for users the following kinds of accounts.

Instructor: There can be multiple instructors for a course. Each has complete access to changing grades, adding/deleting course content etc. Teaching Assistants access is controlled by the Instructor in areas like syllabus editing,
testing, chat, messages etc.

Students can access but not modify course content. They can use student tools, depending on the controls set by the Instructor. Their accounts can be created by uploading a roster in the same way that has been described in the cases of WebCT and Blackboard.
A Shadow Guest account allows a person to view course content, discussions etc without participating in any activity. The account is visible only to the instructor (who can, like the System Administrator, create such an account). This has uses for people who want to observe the course but the administrator/instructor does not want to grant any participatory access. The account accesses are very flexible in Prometheus because of the instructors freedom to modify access controls for individual teaching assistants and students. On logging on, the user sees the portal and a list of the courses she is registered for. By clicking on a course, she can enter it. We now explain the tools available on the

Navigation Bar. Syllabus contains general course and instructor information. Instructors can also
include special items such as pictures of themselves, teaching assistant information, and audio/video greetings, and they have the option to use HTML to alter this page to fit their needs. Outline contains sessions. Each session contains a text file (which can contain images. These are displayed on dates that they are scheduled to be viewed by students.

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o Outline displays the sessions in order of the dates that the instructor assigns
them. (While each sessions default date is the date of creation, the instructor can modify the date if he wants to insert the session in between two pre existing ones.) A session can be edited by clicking on it and can contain any file type. If a file is to be made available in a session, to insert it into the session, one must upload it onto the course through the File Manager. o Assignments: lists the contents of the sessions. This is not a very good feature as it is not necessary that the contents of each session be an assignment. o Calendar contains entries only for (every) sessions. No other kinds of entries can be made. o Create Session o Delete Session o Order Session allows the reordering of sessions by changing the dates associated with a session. Testing lists the tests that have been made so far o Create Test this has some advanced features for tailoring the test into a survey or quiz, random test questions from a question pool, adding equations (for which there is no facility yet in blackboard 5 or webCT) o Edit Test is used to edit or delete a previously made test o Grading can be done by a student or automatically o Results shows the performance of the class, the number of students who took the exam, individual scores and graphs representing score distribution. Grade Book is a sophisticated tool that contains the scores of the class. It can be configured so that, according to the instructors choice, students can either not see the grade book, see only their own grades, or can see everyones grades. Projects contains projects associated with the course, created by the students. The creation of a project can be done online or it can be uploaded from the hard disk. Lectures are created online or can be uploaded from the hard disk. These are not associated with any date and are separate from sessions. Files can be uploaded and organized into folders. From the file manager, there can be transfers into different parts of the course e.g. outline. o General Files Board All members of a course can post to and download from the general files board. Only an instructor can delete files posted to this board. o Personal Files Board Files listed on this board are private posted specifically to the user. Once a file has been posted to another user's personal files board, the sender no longer sees the file but can track it through the file log. o Group Files Board Group boards are automatically created for each group set up using the Groups utility. Instructors can post files to specific group boards. Files on each group board are visible only to the members of that group. Student group members can edit and delete files that have been posted to their own group or personal files boards only.

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o Through the files collection page, users can also distribute content via CD
ROM by simply creating links to CD files from within any Prometheus course. Messages can be mailed to any course participant using the e mail addresses in their personal information. Discussions tool is a very advanced tool that offers the instructor options like whether to allow students to create discussion topics in different areas. It also allows discussion board for a group in the class. File attachments are also supported. Discussion depth can also be controlled. Chat is available for student student and student teacher interaction Utilities controls the enabling of all the options of the Navigation Bar that have been discussed, so that if there is not to be any feature (for example a shared file section) the option does not show up on a students course area. Courses, as mentioned before can be created once an instructor has an account. Here courses can be created and user interfaces and information edited etc. The instructor can archive discussions from classes.

Icons There is a sophisticated search engine that searches for phrases in the course area and can be restricted to discussion boards, lectures etc. Also, text files, .doc files, .xls files and web pages in the file manager can be searched as well. A dictionary can be called by highlighting the word to be queried and clicking on the dictionary icon. There is also a suggestion box whose contents can be read by the instructor.

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Chapter 5 Comparison of Course Management Software

Now that we know the basic working of the three software products, we are in a position to compare them at the nitty gritty level. While most of the features offered by them are similar, there is a difference in the depth of services offered. We now examine at depth the differences, advantages and disadvantages of the software, based on the functions provided by each.

Site Administration
In all three software, a user logs on to the system using a username and password. WebCT differs from Blackboard and Prometheus in that there is no logout functionality and a user must exit the browser to effectively log out. As already mentioned, in all 3 software, all user accounts are created by the administrator. Also, these accounts are not specific to the course that a student is currently registered in. The account, once created, persists and can be added to another course during and after the user participates in the course for which the account was first created. Also, in all 3 software, the same account cannot be used for different roles in the same course for example, a student for a course cannot also be a teaching assistant for the same course, though different roles can be assumed in different courses.

Site Organization
Blackboard has a simple interface for tools to be used by instructor and students. The course controls are in a separate panel, making them easy to use. Similarly, Prometheuss administration tools are centralized and logically easy to follow. On the other hand, WebCTs high degree of configurability costs it a logical layout it is not easy to use and there is a degree of disorganization with the tools being in the Navigation Bar as well in the content area. It is at least a hurdle to come to terms with the configurability and site organization takes some time.

Site Navigation
In Blackboard and Prometheus, at every page in the course area, there is a link telling the user where exactly he is. For example Home>Messages>Edit is a link and one can directly go to Home from the present location by clicking on Home. Even though one would expect WebCT, because of its slightly confusing site layout to have have such a feature, this is not so.

Course Content and Building

All 3 software have facilities for putting up content on the course area in the form of files that have been uploaded from hard disk. In fact, all 3 have advanced file storage systems that allow folder management of files and copying, deleting, moving etc. of files. It is also possible in all 3 software to upload a number of files at the same time. This is done by using the zipping the files on hard disk and then uploading the zipped file. The unzip tool in the courseware is then used to unzip the files and they are then accommodated into their right positions. 24

All 3 software allow editing an uploaded text files. Content Release is a good feature of WebCT. We can change the Course Menu settings (in the Designer Map) so that content is released only if students have finished reading some material regarded as a pre requisite to viewing the new content. This can be done for the whole class and also for a certain student id. Content can also be released based on a students quiz performance. In fact, the criteria for releasing content can be customized to the student access, name etc., so much is the configurability that customization can be done for students on an individual basis. The closest that Blackboard and Prometheus come to this is that there is a tool to allow content release to a specified group of users. This is possible in WebCT as well. Other features exclusive to WebCT with respect to content include o An automated tool for glossary building o An automated tool for building an image database that can allow searches o Including review questions to content pages for the students to test their retention and understanding after perusing content. o Reference Creation In all 3 software, there is no size limit of a course to be respected by the course designer/instructor

Interface and Customizability

In all 3 software, the interface is by default, graphic only Prometheus allows the user to choose a textual interface, which is advantageous for networks where bandwidth is weak. All 3 provide the user with a unified view of all the courses participated in. In a WebCT site, every page contains by default a top header and navigation bar on the side panel. Instructors select icons to construct additional navigation options. In a Blackboard site, every page contains by default all appropriate navigation, headers, and footers. The frames and buttons use a lot of screen real estate. In Prometheus, every page contains by default all appropriate navigation, headers, and footers. Students can set the colors and display options, rather than using options set by the instructor. WebCT and Blackboard (and not Prometheus) provide the designer/instructor with different icon and button styles to choose from. WebCT even allows her to substitute buttons and icons of her own design, and to use a customized background color or graphic. WebCT and Blackboard (and not Prometheus) allow the designer/instructor to change the page design for the entire course area and also customize a course banner. WebCT and Prometheus allow searches on the course area. WebCT and Blackboard allow the viewing of a site map for easier navigation Prometheus does not have such a facility, but its simple site structure does not call for one, unlike the slightly haphazard WebCT interface.

Student Tracking
WebCT and Prometheus allow the designer/instructor to view the number of hits per page (of content area) and a graphic breakdown of the time spent by students on different course

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pages. Both can display how many bulletin board articles each student has read and posted. WebCTs tools are so sophisticated that the designer can specify a number of conditions like number of hours spent and number of quizzes taken and view all the students who satisfy those conditions. In all 3 software, the history of the each students time spent online in the entire course is recorded, and chat room interactions can be recorded for the designer/instructor.

Assessment
WebCT and Blackboard allow the creation of questions in a database, and also the uploading of questions into the database from a text file. Similarly, both allow the downloading of questions into a text file. These questions can be organized into categories. In these 2 courseware, a quiz can be structured by asking the tool to randomly include questions from the database. While all 3 allow embedding of HTML and images within quiz questions, only Prometheus can allow equations in quiz questions. On the other hand, it is only WebCT and Blackboard that allow multiple choice questions with more than one correct answer. While all 3 allow students to take quizzes more than once, only WebCT stores grades for each attempt. On WebCT and Blackboard, the designer/instructor can time quizzes. Also, quizzes can contain feedback that is displayed to the student while taking the quiz. Blackboard announces scheduled quizzes automatically. The student can view his grades and compare with the rest of the class on WebCT and Prometheus (if the tool is enabled by the instructor)

Student Tools
While all 3 software allow note making by the students in internal notepads, only WebCT allows students to make notes in the course area WebCT also allows the compiling of material like e mail messages. Both WebCT and BlackBoard allow a student to compile a selection of discussion board postings. Also, only these 2 allow the student to create her own personal homepage. Self tests are supported by all 3. The Calendar tool is offered to the student by all 3 courseware. Prometheus allows files as calendar entries. (This is because in Prometheus, anything that is listed as session is a calendar entry, and a session can contain any kind of file.) Blackboard does not allow students to make calendar entries or the instructor to post links as calendar entries. However, it is the only courseware to display events from all courses in the same calendar.

Student Group Management

All 3 software allow instructors to create groups manually, but unlike Blackboard, WebCT and Prometheus offers the instructor the feature of having a program create groups of members. Group members can also e mail each other, share files; have private chat areas and bulletin boards and have Web content presentation areas. Blackboard and Prometheus do not have automated Web content presentation areas; however, their file sharing components allow groups to upload Web pages and view them within the course site.

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We now tabulate these features to make the data simpler to see.

SITE ADMINISTRATION

Courseware Features WebCT Blackboard

User logs on to the system with a username and password Logout functionality All (main) accounts are created by the Administrator Account Persistence Interface Configurability Navigation Link Yes No Yes Yes Average High No Yes Yes Yes Yes Good, Easy to use Average Yes

Prometheus
Yes Yes Yes Yes Good, Easy to use Average Yes

COURSE CONTENT MANAGEMENT

Courseware Features
Files can be uploaded into the content area File System allows moving, copying, zipping, unzipping etc. Uploaded text files can be edited Content release based on reading pre requisite content Content Release to a specified group of users Content Release based on Student ID Content Release based on customized conditions. Automated Glossary Tool Automated Image Database Building Review Questions can be added to Course Area Reference Creation No size limit to Course size

WebCT Blackboard Prometheus

Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes No No No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes No No No No No No Yes

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INTERFACE CUSTOMIZABILITY

Courseware Features
Default graphic interface Textual Interface Available User is shown unified view of all courses Designer/Instructor can change page design for entire course area Designer/Instructor can choose icon/button Designer/Instructor can customize colors Designer/Instructor can design and use own button/icon Course can be searched for phrases Course Map available Course Banner can be made

WebCT
Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Blackboard Prometheus
Yes No Yes Yes Yes No No No Yes No Yes Yes Yes No No No No Yes No No

STUDENT GROUP MANAGEMENT

Courseware Features
Student groups are made manually Program can make random groups Group members can e mail each other Group members can have private chat Group members have private bulletin boards Group has web content presentation area

WebCT Blackboard Prometheus

Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

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STUDENT TOOLS TRACKING AND ASSESSMENT

Courseware Features
Designer/Instructor can view hits per page Graphic breakdown of student access available Number of bulletin board accesses per student available to instructor/designer Conditions can be customized History of student online time recorded Chatroom interactions recorded Question database can be made Text file can be uploaded into question database Questions can be downloaded from database into text file HTML and images can be embedded into quiz questions More than one answer to multiple choice questions allowed Student can retake quizzes Retake quiz results are separately recorded Designer/Instructor can time quizzes Feedback during quiz Automatic announcement of scheduled quizzes Student can review grades Note making in internal notepad Note making in course area Self test Calendar Student can make personal calendar entries Instructor/Designer can enter files into calendar Calendar contains events from all participated courses

WebCT Blackboard Prometheus

Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes No Yes No Yes Yes No No Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes No Yes No Yes No Yes No No No No Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes No

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Conclusion
We have, in the course of this report, studied the different features available in each of the studied courseware. From the tables shown last, we find that WebCT has the most sophisticated tools for Course Content Management, Interface Customizability, Student Tracking and Assessment. In fact, Blackboard and Prometheus inch over it in some features that are not basic to a course as such, but are useful accessories like a unified calendar for all courses or textual interface. WebCT has other advantages like language plug ins which makes the interface usable in languages other than English (however these plug ins are specific to particular versions of the courseware and not freely usable on all versions). While the point remains that WebCTs interface and tools are sometimes messy and not as good as those of Prometheus (or for that matter even Blackboard) because of the high extent of their configurability, at the end of the day, it is a very efficient and customizable system which can support large systems (the largest system it supports had more than 32,000 students registered Blackboard comes next with around 18,000). As the source code is available, minor changes can be made in the interface by a programmer. For all these reasons, it is justified that we propose that a university seriously consider WebCT as its first choice while contemplating an online course presence.

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