Web-based Learning Systems From HTML To MOODLE A Case Study

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1 Web-based Learning Systems From HTML To MOODLE A Case Study Mahmoud M. El-Khoul 1 and Samir A. El-Seoud 2 1 Faculty of Science, Helwan University, EGYPT. 2 Princess Sumaya University for Technology (PSUT), JORDAN Key words: e-learning, Moodle, HTML, Web-based Abstract: Web-based learning tools provide integrated environments of various technologies to support diverse educators and learners needs via the Internet. The goal of these tools is to enhance face-to-face instruction and to deliver distance-learning courses. In early web-based learning systems, HTML had been used to generate static home pages for required courses, and then Active Server Pages (ASP) had been used to keep the learner status dynamic and available on-line. However, after release many of learning management systems (LMS), many developers turned to one of the free LMS available, e.g. Moodle. In this paper, we describe the differences in building webbased courses in both ways. 1 Introduction Web-based learning tools provide integrated environments of various technologies to support diverse educators and learners needs via the Internet. The goal of these tools is to enhance face-to-face instruction and to deliver distance-learning courses. There have been several studies and frameworks developed for analyzing these tools from pedagogical and institutional perspectives [2] and [14]. Frameworks such as these provide guidance on what factors to consider and how they may be applied when educators and administrators are considering deploying web-based learning tools. However, they provide no information about how easy or difficult the tools are to use. Very few case studies have been conducted to identify potential usability issues with these tools. Even though several formal and informal case studies have been conducted, none of them have paid attention on both the usability of the tools and the impact on the potential users: students, instructors and course administrators. Software usability is not a new concept. It is usually referred to as the degree to which computer software assists a user in completing a task [11].The concept of usability encompasses such attributes as learnability, efficiency, memorability, handling of user errors, and user satisfaction [12]. Various methods can be employed to examine the usability of computer software, such as observation, interviews, questionnaires and expert reviews [16]. The results of usability studies are typically incorporated into several stages of the software life cycle, from early analysis and design through final testing and follow-up studies. For software engineers perspective, usability concerns center on the user interface and the degree to which it meets various usability heuristics [13]. A user interface designed on sound principles will exhibit natural dialogue between system and user that is clearly expressed in nontechnical terms [16]. In addition, features of the interface will be consistent, and the memory load on the user will be minimized 1(8)

2 [13]. User errors are prevented by good design, but when they occur, error messages follow the guidelines for dialogue mentioned previously. And finally, the system keeps users informed about what is happening through appropriate feedback. When the software is designed for educational use, additional principles become important, such as the design of learning activities and the learner's ability to control sequence, pacing, presentation medium, and level of difficulty [8]. Although the emphasis on software usability has grown in the past twenty years since software designers and developers attempted to incorporate principles of human-computer interaction into their work, some designers have suggested that concerns for usability are not truly integrated into the design and development of educational software [11] and [15]. To better understand educational software, more usability studies are needed In our study we tried to let the developer of courses understand the usability principles and use it in their projects. The rest of this paper presents building on-line courses using HTML, and then the difference when we turned to MOODEL. 1.1 Background The population of Egypt is 73 million, which supposed to have around 73 universities, however, only twenty governmental universities and other eight private universities are exists. Students with average grades in high-school find a lot of difficulties to join the governmental universities, and they have only two choices, either to join private universities with a very high tuition fees or to study abroad. One of the alternative solutions is to allow the governmental universities to accept extra students through e-learning programs. However, we should answer the following questions first: 1. Do we have the required infrastructure? 2. Do we have the required hardware and software? 3. Do we have on-going staff development? And just-in-time technical assistance? Unfortunately, most faculties and colleges facing the following problems: insufficient power to change degrees will be created limited financial resources lack centralized designers, technologists limited marketing, recruiting resources on-line courses limited to single collage/dept. Therefore, we decided to depend on faculty professors to build their on-line courses, however creating and maintaining the site roughly doubles the work involved in teaching a course. Even with the availability of commercial tools. Most of them replied that it is time consuming or it is difficult to maintaining it keeping its content and links current and updating the site when the course is revised. Only a few agreed to provide their courses and do the job!! However, the problem is that professors are overloaded, and we don t have a power to enforce them to build on-line courses. Fortunately, we have two groups of students which can be depend upon them to build on-line courses, (a) fourth year students who have to submit a one year graduation projects to be graduated. Therefore we can depend on them to build the on-line courses using HTML. HTML has been already taught during the first year. 2(8)

3 (b) the post-graduate students who have first to pass a one year of study prior to be registered as M.Sc. students. We can depend upon to build the on-line courses using Moodle. 2 Plan for undergraduate students Four lectures have been presented to them to: 1) describe the important of e-learning for the future of educational process in Egypt, 2) the techniques used to build on-line courses, 3) review on their skills in HTML, JAVA-SCRIPT, 4) Q/A in reusability and to make target clear: e.g. a. Web content short web pages of content with frequent required activities short topical videos graphics (quick loading, only as really needed) discussion bulletin boards sound-enhanced slides memorization drills animations and simulations with student input group work with group and individual postings on-line quizzes b. Instruction techniques frequent instructions (students/student, student/mentor) referrals to other sites method for synchronous and asynchronous meetings overview of each section logical progression and allow for learner chosen path inductive and deductive approaches applications to show connections among material assignments due often frequent testing some non-web assignments For reusability they fixed the user interface and made it consists of two frames. The left frame reflects the course contents and the right frame reflects the materials corresponding to the options posted in the left frame (see figure 1). ASP has been used to store the correct answers for questions raised to the learner in the database (see figure 2) and also to keep the current achievements of the learner and his scores [6] and [9]. 3 Plan for graduate students Eight lectures had been presented to this group to: 1) describe the LMS features, 2) present the moodle s power, 3) review on their skills in ASP.net, 4) assign different task for each one. 3.1 Background for LMS People are more likely to teach as they were taught and this principle may be extended to people design educational environments based upon their experiences (and perceptions) of teaching and learning. Student teachers (STs) are more likely to adopt the paradigms that reflect their prior knowledge and experience, the manner in which they were taught, and the implicit (or explicit) models of teaching and learning they experienced in their own educational undertakings when they begin to design and develop their own educational environments [1]. There is a need for student teachers (STs) to learn the potential of available 3(8)

4 technology tools for the design of learning environments which can support students to engage actively with content-based learning materials, tasks and peer learners. Clearly, any learning design framework should focus on the affordances offered by a learning management system (LMS) and not just using technology without a specific (appropriate) pedagogical strategy. Figure 3 (see [10]) shows the major elements of a typical LMS divided into three components, communication tools, student tools and course tools. Some of the elements can be in two categories, depending upon how they are intended to be used by the teacher (e.g. the Wiki page). Figure (1): User interface using HTML Figure (2): Sample result stored in the database 4(8)

5 4 Moodle: An open-source learning management system The LMS called Moodle ( is open source software, and can be configured to run on most operating systems (Macintosh OS X, Windows XP and Linux). Moodle was developed from a social constructivist perspective by Martin Dougiamas at Curtin University in Western Australia [3]. Moodle has features not found elsewhere, including the ability to embed resources, communication and/or activities centered on a topic of study. The instructor may also specify a variety of modes of operation (from weekly formats, topic-based to social formats). The acceptance and adoption of Moodle has been extraordinarily successful. At the time of writing, there were more than 100,000 registered users in Moodle site, speaking 70 languages in over 150 countries. Figure (3): Major elements in LMS 4.1 Some of Moodle's Features are "Suitable for 100% online classes as well as supplementing face-to-face learning" "Emphasis on strong security throughout. Forms are all checked, data validated, cookies encrypted etc." "Multi-language interface " "Choice of course formats such as by week or by topic" "Flexible array of course activities - Forums, Journals, Quizzes, Resources, Choices, Surveys, Assignments" "Advanced reporting features" "Full user logging and tracking - activity reports for each student are available with graphs and details about each module (last access, number of times read) as well as a detailed "story" of each student involvement" "Mail integration - copies of forum posts and teacher feedback can be mailed" "Assignment Module with due date and grade requirements" "Students can upload their assignments (any file format) to the server - they are datestamped. Late assignments are allowed, but the amount of lateness is shown clearly to the teacher" "For each particular assignment, the whole class can be assessed (grade and comment) on one page in one form" "Advanced Quiz Module with multiple answer formats and report options" 5(8)

6 4.2 Customization MOODLE deals with all courses with the same priority, there is no pre-request preventation. Instead, you can allocate a specific date to publish the course on the site and a specific date to hide it. The second group tried to use Moodle to teach a web-based graduate diploma in computer science, in which there is three tracks, a) web systems, b) database systems and c) information systems. Each track has different courses than other tracks. They failed to customize Moodle to do so, they used Java Script code to make the first home-page (see figure 5) before the user can login to the normal Moodle user interface (see figure 5). 5 Discussion Throughout this study we were interested in addressing usability in building on-line courses using HTML and MOODLE. We found that customizing MOODLE is not easy task especially in user interface part. If we are going to edit Moodle s user interface, we need to master PHP code. However, in HTML we can even make a frame system to insert any on-line course on it. Using ASP for dynamic tests and students performance is a hard task for developer to do, as well as communication parts, e.g. chatting. MOODLE provides us with all these communications and give a standard way for learners to deal with many sites in the same way, since it has the same user interface. ASP.net is also needed to connect forms to database. Figure (4): User interface as a cover to MOODLE 6(8)

7 Figure (5): Normal MOODLE user interface 6 Conclusion The rapid expansion of the Internet and increasing software capabilities are influencing the dynamics of teaching and learning on many different levels. Web-based learning tools are constantly being re-designed by the developers to improve their effectiveness. MOODLE is a very well LMS, however, it needs to allow video streaming to help teachers/students chatting. References: [1] Bain, J., & McNaught, C. (1996). Academics educational conceptions and the design and impact of computer software in higher education. In C. McBeath & R. Atkinson (Eds.), The learning superhighway: New world? New worries? Proceedings of the Third International Interactive Multimedia Symposium, Perth, Western Australia. [2] Britain, S., & Liber, O. (1998). A Framework for Pedagogical Evaluation of Virtual Learning Environments, [3] Dougiamas, M., & Taylor, P. C. (2003). Moodle: Using learning communities to create an open source course management system. In D. Lassner & C. McNaught (Eds.), ED-MEDIA2003: Proceedings of the 15th world conference on educational multimedia and hypermedia & world conference on educational telecommunications (pp ). Norfolk, VA: Association for the Advancement of Computers in Education (AACE). [4] El-Khouly, M.El-Khouly & Abou. El-Seoud, M. Samir (2005), On Line Student Model, 1 st International Conference on E-Business and E-Learning, PSUT, Amman, JORDAN, May [5] El-Khouly, Mahmoud M. & Abou El-Seoud, M. Samir & Rashad, A. M. & El-Hossany, Nahla M. (2005), A TUTORING COURSE ON RADITION PHYSICS, 4 th International Internet Education Conference (ICT-Learn 2005) Towards Information Society, WSIS II September 6-8, Cairo, Egypt [6] El-Khouly, Mahmoud M. (2004), Web-Based Assessment of a Programming Class, ICTTA, Damascus, Syria. [7] El-Khouly, Mahmoud M. (2005), "E-learning Model Using ASP", Journal of Institute of Mathematics & Computer Sciences, Vol. 16, No. 2. [8] Hannafin, M. J. (1989). Interaction strategies and emerging instructional technologies: Psychological perspectives. Canadian Journal of Educational Communication, 18 (3), (8)

8 [9] Kandel A. & El-Khouly Mahmoud M. & AbdEl-Hakeem M. (2004), Tutoring system for Teaching HTML Through WWW, ICTTA, Damascus, Syria. [10] Kennedy, David M. (2005), Challenges in evaluating Hong Kong students. perceptions of Moodle, ASCILITE proceeding, pp [11] Levi, M. D., & Conrad, F. G. (2000). Usability testing of World Wide Web. 1998, [12] Nielsen, J. (1993). Usability engineering, Boston :Academic Press. [13] Norman, D. A., & Draper, S. W. (1986). User centered system design, Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. [14] Pantel, C. (1997). A Framework for Comparing Web-Based Learning Environments. Master s thesis, School of Computing Science, Simon Fraser University, Canada. [15] Pavlik, P. (2000). Collaboration, Sharing and Society Teaching, Learning and Technical Considerations from An Analysis of WebCT, BSCW, and Blackboard, [16] Shneiderman, B. (1998). Designing the User Interface: Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interactions, 3rd edition, Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Author(s): Dr. Mahmoud M. El-Khouly, Faculty of Science, Helwan University, Egypt melkhouly@yahoo.com Professor Dr. Samir A. El-Seoud, Princess Sumaya University for Technology, Jordon selseoud@yahoo.com 8(8)