WORK IN PROGRESS
Poly-X
An intelligent system
for e-Learning and
Teaching
Dr. James Liu N. K.
June, 2010
Department of Computing,
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
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WORK IN PROGRESS
AGENDA
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PROJECT DESCRIPTION
PROJECT OBJECTIVES
PROJECT DELIVERABLE/S
TEACHING & LEARNING BENEFITS
SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT IN PROGRESS
PRELIMINARY EVALUATION
DEMO
FURTHER WORK
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9.
SYSTEM LIMITATION
DIFFICULTIES TO ADDRESS
CHALLENGING WORK TO DO NEXT
Q&A
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1. PROJECT DESCRIPTION
Nowadays, with the advance of technology, E-Learning is a hot topic in
society. E-Learning becomes a new trend of learning model. It
combines the conductive learning model and independent learning
model together. The primary purpose of this study is to develop an
intelligent system for E-learning and tutoring that can provide a
platform for teachers and students to teach and learn effectively and
efficiently. This study presents an intelligent approach for
implementing the web-based E-Learning and tutoring system. The
system is integrated with different modules. One of them is the
intelligent quiz module which is used for the assessment of students.
The module can automate the quiz generation process by obtaining
questions from database. The video conferencing module is also one
of the modules in the e-Learning system which provides an interactive
communication channel for teachers and students, group project
discussion and presentation.
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2. PROJECT OBJECTIVES
• One of the stated goals for Poly-X is to facilitate common
share of the learning materials created in the system.
Students may not often need to come to school for class,
instead to study through e-learning by just login to the
Poly-X website. Every authorized user can use this system
without much geographical and time limitation through
Internet.
• On the other hand, teachers can have access to information
collected by the system about their students’ studying
behavior , e.g. how often they login in the system, which
subject they are more interested in, how long they study
each time, etc. So that teachers may modulate the teaching
according to the statistical data collected from students.
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2. PROJECT OBJECTIVES
Con’t
• After the student has completed the quiz, the system will
use some algorithm to classify and update the standard
level of student during the course of learning. The level will
be used to customize the learning contents for the student
due to one’s capacity. With this method, online courses,
which seem more interesting and easier for students to get
access to, will attract students much more than the
traditional courses.
• Furthermore, in order to attract student, students’ learning
mode now not only comprises of learning through content
reading, but also via multimedia elements and features.
Poly X uses a video conference environment to emulate
face-to-face communication and open document sharing.
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3. PROJECT DELIVERABLE/S
An integrated system including:
– an interface with build-in features and assessment matrices for
outcomes
– e-Learning modules including
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personalization and preference features
interactive communication and presentation
adaptive learning control
demos
case studies
hands-on simulation and exercises
– system documentation & user guide
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4. TEACHING & LEARNING BENEFITS
• Purpose
– Use computer for generating question and calculating marks,
which is fair and accurate
• Efficient
– Update of learning materials on web is fast
• Effective
– Quiz result can be released immediately after the students have
finished the quiz
• Interactive
– Student/teacher interaction by using video conference and
presentation system
• Independent
– Students learn independently and have their own learning
profile
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5. SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT IN
PROGRESS
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5.1 HOW WE DO - USER ROLES
Administrator
Teacher
Teaching Assistant
Student
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5.2 HOW WE DO - FUNCTIONS
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Login and Logoff functions
Upload and organize materials
Set system permission
Add faculty, department and subject
Quiz generation
Quiz result analysis
Quiz statistics
BBS
Discussion platform
E-mail function
Visual conference
Set the study rule/quiz rule/level rule
Record learning behavior
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5.3 HOW WE DO - SYSTEM MODULES
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User Management Module
Subject Management Module
Resource Management Module
Learning Behavior Module
Rules Module
Statistical & Analysis Module
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5.4 PHYSICAL ARCHITECTURE
The Physical Architecture of Poly-X is shown in Figure 1 and there
are different kinds of servers for different purposes. When the
users use the system, they will be connected to the server
through the Internet.
Server Type
Usage
Server Installed
Web Server
For deploying web
service and web
application
FTP Server
For user to upload
file
For storage of data
Database
Server
Figure 1: Physical architecture of Poly-X
Sun GlassFish
Enterprise Server
v2.1
XAMPP 1.7.3
FileZilla…
MySQL
Community
Server 5.1
Video
Streaming server for Adobe Flash
Conferencing the video
Media Server 3.5
Server
conference system
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5.5 WHAT DOES POLY-X FOCUS ON?
For the present study, we will focus on the Interactive Content, the
Intelligent Quiz system, the Video Conference system and the Instant
Chatting tool that is embedded into the Video Conference system.
Poly-X is divided into different parts (see Figure 2):
• Subject Content – for studying
• Intelligent Quiz System
• Presentation System – for teaching,
sharing and presentation
• Video Conferencing System – for
teaching, sharing and presentation
• Discussion System
Figure 2: Overview of E-learning System
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5.5.1 INTERACTIVE CONTENT
In order to engage students and enhance the
learning process, interactive course contents are
presented for students. The content will not be
the same as typical physical book that normally
contains too much text. Instead, the content will
be represented by concepts, short notes, videos,
demos, sources, animations, graphics and case
studies. These will be easy to read and increase
the interest of students.
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5.5.2 INTELLIGENT QUIZ
Once a student needs to take quiz, the system will compile the
questions from the test bank. Therefore the questions are tailored to
suit different students with different standards. For every quiz, the
standard level of student will be used as reference. For every question,
a level of difficulty has been set. For chapter quiz, the system will
select a part of the questions in the beginning according to the given
quiz level. Then the system will collect the answers from the students
and select another part of questions according to the result of the first
part. This method allows the adjustment of the level of questions to be
selected for students with different capabilities. The result of the quiz
forms part of the criteria for assessing the knowledge level of the
student, thereby for the system to make corresponding guidance
through the learning process.
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5.5.2 INTELLIGENT QUIZ
Con’t
The intelligent quiz system is used to access the standard
level of student. In the beginning, students can attempt
the quiz to determine their level. In each chapter, there
are quizzes in between which used as check points to
help student to understand the concepts in the chapters.
After each chapter, there is a quiz to assess the students’
understanding to the chapter. The result will affect the
level update of students. The quiz is a form of assessment
in which the student will be presented with Multiple
Choice Questions (MCQ). Each question will have a
number of different responses and mostly it has only one
correct answer. The other choices are wrong and set as
distracters to students.
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5.5.2 INTELLIGENT QUIZ
Con’t
In the system, there will be a quiz database which stores all
the details of MCQs including the questions, options, correct
answers, difficulties, keywords and tips. The difficulties of
MCQs are divided into 3 different levels (1-easy, 2-normal and
3-difficult). The difficulties and keywords are determined by
domain experts. There are also other details which will be
used for further statistical analysis. The MCQs which stored in
the database will be used to generate quizzes. One of the
major methods is to obtain questions throughout the quiz
according to the result of the students during the quiz. It will
make use of students’ profiles. Figure 3 shows the flow of how
the system works when a student triggers the system to
generate a quiz.
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5.5.2 INTELLIGENT QUIZ
Con’t
Figure 3 Flow graph of the quiz generation process
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5.5.3 VIDEO CONFERENCE
In order to provide a channel for the
communication between teachers and students,
Poly-X has a built-in function to provide the real
time video conference for them. The user only
needs to use the web cam and thus can have a
meeting or even a small tutorial lesson in their
own places.
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5.5.3 VIDEO CONFERENCE
Con’t
• Usage
– Small Class tutorial
– Project/Assignment Presentation
– Group Discussion
• Functions
– Presentation file format
• PPTx, PPT, Docx, Doc, txt, PDF
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White Board
Admin control
Instant chatting
Face-to-face meeting
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5.5.3 VIDEO CONFERENCE
Con’t
Figure 4 shows the client-server architecture with Adobe Flash Media Server.
The web server delivers the client’s request over HTTP connection, and then
the clients will create a socket connection to Adobe Flash Media Server over
RTMP connection. This connection allows streaming of data between the
server and client in real time.
Figure 4: The client-server architecture with Flash Media Server
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5.5.3 VIDEO CONFERENCE
Con’t
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6. PRELIMINARY EVALUATION
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7. DEMO
Link: http://158.132.8.153
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8. FURTHER WORK
• Delivery subject contents by
domain ontology
– Web-based and/or blended subject
delivery
– Intelligent Learning Path generation
• Course calendar in a TODO list style
– Planning tools to identify gaps of study
in students
• Improve data analysis functions
– Generate reports
• Assessment before and after quiz
• Improve management functions
– Users, roles, notifications
• Facilitate system integration with
the new eLearning platform.
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8.1 SYSTEM LIMITATION
• Limitation for Intelligent Quiz system
– The multiple choice questions in the intelligent quiz system
need to be prepared before entering to the database. For
example, we need to convert the symbol and image to
html code. We also need domain expert to tag the
question keywords and levels. It takes a long time for
collection, analysis and preparation.
• Limitation of Video Conferencing system
– Subject to the limitation of bandwidth and space of a web
page, it can only support the video conferencing in each
room with up to 6 participants.
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8.2 DIFFICULTIES TO ADDRESS
• Course contents
– Need to collect a large number of contents in “fun”,
“interactive”, “visualization”, “portable”, etc.
– Construct the relationship between them and quantify
with the correlation measure.
– Need to determine how to rationalise the existing
contents and / or re-purpose or re-use these for
delivery to the students.
• Quiz collection / construct
– Need to collect a large number of quiz questions in
different areas of a subject and organize them.
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8.3 CHALLENGING WORK TO DO NEXT
• The potential system integration with the
future eLearning platform (i.e. Moodle)
• The integration with other popular tools for
collaboration and communication
– Wiki, Twitter, Answers, ZOTERO, Evernote,
Del.icio.us, RSS (Blogs) , etc
• The resources need to get software engineer
to implement the remaining tasks, etc
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8.3 CHALLENGING WORK TO DO NEXT
Con’t
• In Poly-X, we aim to simplify all the designs, work flows, functions
and actions, to make the system more user-friendly.
• However, the project development is more complicated than we
initially thought.
• In general, we often face the situation of information overkill
and/or usability reduction. Therefore, we do need to consider some
tradeoff and find the right balance to create usable, elegant and
clean system modules with simple layouts. We should keep
everything simple, add function one by one when we really want to
use it or must have it.
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9. Q&A
With the Poly-X, we expect students can
experience a different form of learning and
teachers can experience a different form of
teaching. In today’s world, information is rich.
Complimenting with the use of the e-Learning
system, we hope students can achieve selfdirect learning and start adopts the new
learning style for life-long learning.
Q&A
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Poly-X
http://158.132.8.153
endeavors to give you new
ways to express ideas in
teaching & learning process
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