This project was funded through the ARPA ITO (information technology office) from May 1993 through July 1997.
Principal Investigators.
Objective. Developing and testing Internet-based training and education technologies in support of DoD distributed training initiatives was the overall focus of the contract. The project began as part of the HPC Infrastructure program and was later transferred into the CAETI program. We have tested the technologies in DoD training situations and made the results available for other DoD training efforts, college and university curricula, and K-12 schools. The experience from all parties involved was positive.
Modules and Workbenches. Early in the project, we developed an approach to on-line tutorial modules that organizes a large collection of text and multimedia objects behind a subway-map navigator. The topics covered by these modules were selected from computer science and engineering and were built in cooperation with other faculty from the School of Information Technology and Engineering (see also the discussion of the NSF grant below).
Until the Java language and run-time interpreters were available in 1995, we had difficulty realizing our ambition of incorporating live workbenches into the modules; Java solved this by giving a universal platform and a means to execute the workbenches locally on the user's machine. A small library of workbenches is included with the library of modules.
The modules-workbenches site, at http://cne.gmu.edu/modules, receives 4,000 or more "hits" per week. The site received an (unsolicted) 3-star rating from the Magellan rating service.
Math and Stat Refresher Modules. Working closely with Defense Acquisition University (DAU), we designed two CNE tutorial modules for refreshers in high-school mathematics and college introductory statistics. DAU uses them to deliver, to the desktop of those who are signed up for DAU cost-accounting courses, refresher information on the basic math and statistics about which they may have become rusty. Each module contains clear statements of the educational objectives of each segment. Although many examples are taken from cost-accounting, the modules are of general interest to anyone wishing to verify his recollections of important high-school material. The modules are part of the library on our modules page. They contain self-assessment tests at many points, including the end.
Module Authoring Systems. One of the objectives is to make the modules technology available to course instructors. The central concept for navigating a module is the subway map; the map organizes all the files in which module segments are stored. We developed a subway map editor that allows an instructor to (a) draw a map representing the conceptual structure of the domain, (b) create sensitized icons representing subway stations that are linked to files for the corresponding module segments, (c) arrange the lines, stations, and colors for a pleasing and usable appearance, and (d) perform a consistency check on the links connecting the entire set of files constituting the module. We have not released this editor because the current version does not produce module interfaces that meet all the standards exhibited by the hand-crafted library of modules.
Testing and Assessment. Beginning September 1996, we concentrated our attention on technologies for testing and assessment in engineering and science domains (which are characterized by problem-solving using well defined algorithms leading to precisely known answers). We built the Hyperlearing Meter, a web-based assessment and certification system. The design is based on a distributed client-server architecture that enables scaling the system to hundred of thousands of users. The system makes heavy use of Java technology to ensure cross-platform operation. A demo is available. The Hyperlearning Meter consists of the following components:
Hyperlearning Meter in Practice. The HLM system has been tested in three practical contexts.
We seek other industry and government-agency partners who would like to develop new hyperlearning modules and testing systems for use in their own organizations.
CNELink. We completed the CNELink portion of the project in May 1996. CNELink was a set of 14 regional K-12 schools connected by ISDN with GMU as the hub to Internet. The schools used Internet facilities in their classrooms at an affordable $40/month ISDN rental fee, after the initial $1000 hookup. This task was performed in cooperation with the Community Learning and Information Network (CLIN). Once the schools were trained in the use of Internet in their classrooms, we assisted them to transition to commercial ISP's, which by then had become mainline businesses offering connections at reasonable prices.
Principal Investigators.
Objective. Create hyperlearning modules that can be used in class to help engineering students learn about the design of complex systems or subsystems, and test the effectiveness of the modules.
Status. A library of eight CNE modules on various computer science topics has been created at http://cne.gmu.edu. The modules contain text, graphics, demos, and workbenches. The library of workbenches is also available stand-alone at http://cne.gmu.edu. The modules on virtual memory, interprocess communication, system performance modeling, and networking are used in classes. The workbenches on process synchronization, mutual exclusion, and producer-consumer relationships are used similarly. They have allowed the instructor to spend less class time on the topic of the module but give more sophisiticated homework problems over the material; students find the information and workbenches they need in the module.
Current Work. In summer 1996, a group of students started to develop a set of workbenches as Java applets. The workbenches, which illustrate various aspects of distributed operating systems, were used as teaching aids in several CS courses during Fall 1996. Constructing workbenches as Java applets is a major improvement; the previous approach was to run the workbench as a separate application in a separate window, possibly on a separate server.
In Fall 1996, some of the students worked the testing and assessment software, since we found that self-assessment tests are a powerful way to help students using modules assess how much they have learned and whether they are prepared for a formal test over the materials.
Overall Conclusion. The original purposes of the project were met by the termination date at the end of December 1996. We demonstrated that we can teach students concepts and principles from complex systems using on-line hyperlearning environments. We found that instructors can use the modules to augment class discussions, decreasing the amount of class time required on those topics and increasing the students' capacity to solve complex homework problems. We found that the self-assessment tests are a powerful aid to student learning and incorporated them as a standard part of every new module.
The workflow module continues to receive positive comments. Most of the comments come from industry people who are trying to learn more about workflow technologies. We are in the process of installing the new Action Technologies Metro system and for use in our offices and possibly our classes. One of our master's students, Sudhanvshu Pethe, completed a master's project in which he tested the Action Workflow Metro system (which provides workflow management from web pages) as a means to permit students of the CS department to register for graduation on-line.
The Sense 21 course was modified and approved as a general engineering course for seniors, ENGR 490, "Human practices of engineering design". As part of this course, students define projects that would produce innovations in their selected domains. Students work closely with a customer in that domain and design a software tool to support the proposed innovation. The purpose of the project is to demonstrate that innovations can be purposefully designed using methodologies discussed in the course. The student group Sense 21 consisting of the alumni of this course in the past have been active in e-mail conversations about topics of interest to them and in reading provocative new works about design.