Multimedia Integration for Language E-Learning - Research Paper Example

Multimedia Integration for Language E-Learning 1 About the Project The project is based on the E- learning object fundamentals. Learning object is an interactive representation tool for E-learning. A tool kit (learning objects) will be presented in form of graphical objects which discuss the programming concepts. As this project is according to my course outcomes, this will help to enhance my programming skills along with the object learning concept. The research will help to find the different studies and adoptions going on currently on the learning object. 1.1 The Importance of the project This project will help students to analyze the basic programming concepts with an object model. A complete E learning application with interactive content navigation on flash will provide an enthusiastic learning experience for the students. Students will be facilitated to learn the basics of Visual Basic programming in a new innovative way. 1.2 Aspirations and objective of the project The aim of the project is to provide an online learning experience to the student of Visual basic programming (beginner’s level). The project will cover: 1.2.1 E-learning E learning is concept and tool used to deliver the information in a simple way. The aim is to evaluate the learning object and its uses which simplify the learning methodologies. Exploring different methods on E learning in different ways, bundles with rich experience and 24 hours availability of the learning resources makes it great learning tools. The visual technology with rich animated graphics helps the learners to understand better. Teachers and students can discuss the lectures and suggestions on forums making a virtual learning environment. Students can participate online by uploading their suggestions on a particular topic and at the same time sharing the videos and suggestions with the peers. Evaluation of the students is also conducted by E learning, which is an added feature which is beneficial for the instructors. 1.2.2 Learning objects coding and design Visual basic is the most widely used programming language and also included in our course. By providing the basics of visual basic with the help of interactive flash contents, student will easily understand the basics in an innovative way. Visual basic is selected because it is more powerful as it supports many features which assist the developers in certain ways. For online web application infrastructure, XML is used to call the processes on any platform by using common Internet protocols. Flash is selected because it is widely used for creating interactive content, Almost free to use, Vast community of flash developers in the market, used in almost every interactive media, for example websites, games, banners, online presentations, software, screen savers, It is relatively easy to work on flash. 2 E-Learning It is a term that means many dissimilar things to as many different people. E-learning can be divided in to four learning techniques. Distance learning Flexible learning Blended learning Online learning E-Learning is not only accessed via the Internet or World Wide Web, it is setting off on a global platform. Quality is always demanded when implementing applications on the web. Innovative technology today offers astonishing options in generating capacity, mostly in terms of copies and distribution, but unless quantity is attached with quality there is no resolution. 2.1 Distance learning ‘Distance learning’ is the process to commence learning from a computing interface rather than face-to-face. The reason is the distance between the learner and the educator. It is the only possible way the learner has access to education. This approach existed long before the Internet in the form of correspondence courses and/or via television. The current technology has expanded its horizons, increased speed and efficiency. It also enabled many potential learners to access the distance education programs. 2.2 Flexible learning ‘Flexible learning’ is the learner’s preference of learning either in a traditional face-to-face approach or via another medium, TV, CD-ROM or distance learning all with equal standing in terms of course conclusion and gratitude. Before the advent of the web, this approach was available but technology has made it possible to manage and deliver these choices more efficiently to provide broad range of learners. This technology also facilitates to learners who do not have access to the campuses and cannot attend classes. 2.3 Blended learning ‘Blended learning’ is the process of learning by compound and mandated modes of deliverance. Mandated is the key element and is not optional. This means that a component of a learning application need to be commence in digital forms other than face-to-face, i.e., World Wide Web, Compact Disc , remoteness, etc. Blended learning is often related to flexible deliverance of the presentation. In fact, they are quite diverse; there is no option in the blended model. The Blended model can contain a flexible module. There is a lot of research conducted in the past and present. A recent research was conducted in 2010. The objective was the access of pharmacy student’s attitude in the direction of a blended learning pharmacokinetics course. The design of the research includes narrated visual presentations and animations. They represented kinetic processes and guided students with the provision of software which was used for calculations. Assessment was conducted by a pre course questionnaire to access student’s enthusiasm towards blended learning. The assessment also includes the concerns which are faced by the student at the beginning of the learning program. The initial concerns of the student, regarding the blended learning experience were focused on their ability to communicate with the educator. The communication was about the online components but modified to time management skills at the end of the course. The face-to-face interaction with the educator and the peers were more highly rated than the online blended learning in this research (Edginton et al. 2010). One more research was conducted on blended learning model for teaching a practice course. The basic intend was to enhance communication and discussions of the teaching practices. It was suggested that the course be supposed to provide more prospects for the pre service teachers to analyze plenty of lesson plans and practice teaching performances. For achieving this objective, an implementation of a platform is required, where instructors and peers can provide online and asynchronous feedbacks on a discussion forum. On the other hand, the same methodology will apply between the students and instructors. The student can discuss regarding the lectures and teachings with instructors on the discussion forum. This will help to create a collaborative learning environment (CANER 2010). To facilitate blended learning, utilization of virtual learning environment was deployed. The deployment was conducted in Manchester Metropolitan University. The first year under graduated student were facilitated by adopting a blended learning approach to learn information and communication technology skills. This methodology portrayed new experience in learning and facilitated the students to become Independent learners, students can work from mostly off campus, Improved discipline, Socializing the educational discussions with peers, analysis of week students were identified early. The blended learning provides the dynamic update of the online information (Tucker et al. 2010). 2.4 Online learning ‘Online learning’ is almost certainly the most often used phrase when explaining ‘Online learning’. The core concept is the learning via World Wide Web. Online learning does not have a general definition other than access to learning via the Internet. Distance learning, while qualitatively impacting when looked at from an efficiency and access perspective, has not introduced ‘enhanced’ teaching and learning practices. Especially, with the advent of more and more affordable synchronous tools enabling to potentially bringing the distance learning experience remarkably close to a face-to-face model. In the perspective of flexible and blended learning, the stipulation of rich arrays of materials for all levels of students including weak, standard and well performing, increases the initial visual projection of preparation and design for the applications. There is some indication that as time passes by, these material banks build up the overhead is certain to be eliminated, but probably never fully recouped. These projects involve cost, time and current technology adaptation. Therefore, the rationale for developing material that needs to be delivered in all forms, generically ‘E Learning material’, face-to-face setting needs to be well planned and integrated into the learning process. This will require a change in learners, teachers and administrators alike; all component of the learning experience are impacted. E-learning, like computers, will not replace teachers. Faithful teachers will remain righteous, although not all classroom teachers will be suitable online teachers and vice-versa. This is especially true for synchronous online teaching where both instructors and students are in the same virtual space simultaneously, the online chat model. In the asynchronous model, on the contrary, there is no prerequisite for having a presence in the same virtual space at the same time. E Learning provides more features for learners. As more learners will get access to E learning, access will be a significant issue in the future. Eventually it will not be about technology, nomenclature or learning model, but the individual’s ability to respond, learn and accept these varied, fast paced and, for many of us, still quite new forms of access to learning. 3 Definition of Learning Objects The concept of the learning objects is based on both instructional technology and computer science. The instructional technology has been an aspect in the current dimension of instruction towards more students – oriented and problem based approach. On the other hand, computer science has been associated with the concept of object oriented programming and computing. The object oriented concept is the based on the creation of the digital components called as ‘Objects’. The objects can be re-used in a different context for different purposes. The processes from instructional technology meet the object oriented programming is a small chunk of instructional media. These chunks or objects are highly interoperable. They reuse modular building blocks for E learning contents based on extensively collective specifications (Clyde 2004). 4 Learning Object Organizations around the world are spending an enormous amount of money on proposals that ensure the development of learning objects, metadata and repositories to store data and objects. In simple words, learning objects are referred as the digital education resources. The metadata is referred as, the systematic explanation to assist the administration and searching. The repositories represent separable contents of the resources online. The usability and integration of learning objects in the primary education were implemented. The aim was to investigate the impact of learning objects on students in the primary classes. The focus was on how the learning objects facilitated the student in learning. The data was collected in order to discover student experiences and perception. After scrutiny, it was found that the learning objects are best achieved when contextually integrated with the class activities and programs (Cameron et al. 2010). Organizations implement learning objects to enhance their E learning systems. Like the software development and information systems, the user acceptance of learning objects has been a crucial issue. This includes high level of learner acceptance and satisfaction, which indicates that the user is more willing to use the system. The study was conducted including the extended version of the technology acceptance model (TAM) and two variables (learning object characteristics and individual difference). The study was conducted to investigate the underlying factors and informal associations for analyzing learner’s acceptance of learning objects. Learning object characteristics persuade supposed usefulness and ease of utilization; individual variation appears to have no influence upon the intent to use learning objects (Lau et al. 2009). The development of learning objects with an explicit learning design was conducted in the University of Southampton. The objective of the study were to show idea among the several other web based potentials and for the advance level of the 21st century education. The ‘pedagogically- designed learning objects’ can represent multipurpose resources focusing on sharing, blending, re use and re purposing. The pedagogically designed learning object features are; They are dynamically centered Aiming to engage student’s activity in reflection Actions consent to practice and production Actions are also tailored where they are achievable. Enhanced with significant feedback Learning objects provides diverse learning approaches (Watson 2010). (Thakar et al. 2010a) implemented an “Ontology Based Learning Content Management System”. Ontology is a process of proclaiming entity types existed in a domain along with type of relationships between them. It is a source of providing machine understandable language for entities and their relationships. Ontology can be defined as “the branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of being” (, definition of ontology from Oxford Dictionaries Online). In this system two ontology methods 1) classify the learning material and 2) store the information related to the learner’s profile has been designed and developed. The learner can search the most relevant user requirements by using these proposed ontology methodologies. The result of this research concludes that the context based search provides highly relevant learning objects for the learner. The results will include all data including multimedia based learning resources, which were not possible by the earlier searching methods. Multimodal discourse analysis to the user interface of the learning objects was conducted. This research was based on multimodal representation of knowledge and the pedagogic meanings of relationships with the students and the learning objects. Meanings are categorized in to 3 ways, Ideational, Textual, and Visual. (Vorvilas et al. 2010). Learning educational narrative approach (LOENA) was conducted by (Mustaro et al. 2007)using narratives for dynamic sequencing to build architecture over a theoretical base that uses a series of narrative-driven hypertext patterns to appropriately sequencing the structure of learning objects, providing an instant way for deploying learning paths in some teaching-learning context. A good visual appearance develops enthusiasm and interest in the learner’s ability to gain knowledge, a good example is the learning object named as “Wile loops”. This learning object attracts the learner by presenting good visualization experience. The subject in learning object is ‘repitition’ which is instanced by using replicated actions to move the object on the display. For the weak students, redundancy is integrated. The redundancy is bypassed by ‘Scaffolding’ almost at the end of the object. ‘Scaffolding’ helps the learner to develop a programming construct in a secure and sustainable environment. This creates the shape for developing the code from the available code fragments (, Learning Objects for Introductory Programming - Example objects). The review on the future of learning objects in E learning 3.0 was conducted to classify and identify essential elements related to the learning objects. To compete in the future, the learning objects must ensure that they are created in small portions. This enables the learners to build knowledge sequentially as shown in ‘Fig 1.2’ team learning design. E learning should adopt the design of team learning as shown in ‘Fig 1.2’ to cope up with the mobile learners in future. E learning should also adopt contextual based searching mechanism for making the search appropriate for the learner in future (Narasimhamurthy et al. 2010). Fig 1.2(, EBSCOhost ) 5 HCI And Multimedia in E learning E-learning is becoming globally ubiquitous. The value of interactive systems in E learning involves not in performing the processing assignment itself but in corresponding requirements and consequences between the system and learner. The paramount control of the application is consequently presented on the user interface, rather than the system hardware. Faster and more expedient means for users and computers to swap information is the prime objective. The interaction of human ability is limited for the technology and also by the nature of human communication organs and capability; on the technological side, the computer technology which is constrained by the limited input/output devices and methods that can be invented. The challenge is to design new devices that better fit and utilize the communication-relevant characteristics of humans (, eLearningAP.Com ) Human Computer Interaction (HCI) is the study of the interaction between humans and computers. “A discipline concerned with the study, design, construction and implementation of human-centric interactive computer systems” (, what is HCI? - A Word Definition from the Webopedia Computer Dictionary)  There are lots of researches conducted for improving the HCI in order to improve and enhance the interaction of the computing devices with the capability of the human capacity. A research on improving human interaction was conducted by Dr. Virendra Gawande, to introduce new styles of new input/output devices and interactive systems. Research may lead to two kinds of advantages. The first advantage is the progress of human communication in scientific terms. It can improve users understanding of new modes by which they can correspond with machines. The human interaction also lead to appreciative of the uniqueness of computing devices, interaction techniques, that permit them to exploit these approaches. The second advantage is the application. Applications can lead to faster and more natural communication with the systems which are interacting in an efficiency manner. The operation of such systems improves working conditions of their users by providing them with better-off and more natural carrier of communication. (, UVA Computer Science - UVA Computer Science) Usability evaluation method for E learning applications was developed. The evaluation method was different from the traditional one, it emphasizes on cognitive and affective considerations influencing E learning usability. The methodology enhances the established methodology in the HCI research relying upon a conceptual framework. The framework combines web and instructional design parameters to link them with outstanding and affective learning systems. Although the results were more efficient than the traditional methodology, more research needs to be done on the usability factor to enhance the interaction of humans with the computing technology and devices (Zaharias et al. 2009). (Fong et al. 2003) research on the effective E learning by using the HCI and interactivity on data modeling. The purpose of the research was to create an efficient software design to deal with the users. Designing a good user interface means high usability and user satisfaction of the E learning product or application. A multimedia E learning system provides opportunities for communication, information hunt, verbal communication tools and multimedia to assist students learn in a naturally in a collaborative approach. The learners can upload their scanned documents containing audio / visual files and at the same time provide access to the peers, both as a reflection and an evidence of their lifelong learning process. By using the ICTs, learners can pursue their learning process and show the achievements as an evidence of their language skills and abilities (Anon.2010). Grid service approach on ongoing research is carried out, to empower the E learning applications with multimedia technology and online streaming. The “service oriented” architecture for multimedia consent access and distribution of an E learning environment is the objective on of this ongoing research. The Grid Service approach is implemented for interoperability and scalability, reuse of a common infrastructure services, consistent navigational model for users, and support for heterogeneous devices (Amoretti et al. 2006). 6 Accessibility E learning is a comprehensive and dynamic online research tool. The E items may be useful but can build barriers for people with disabilities and learners using the slow Internet connection or older versions of Internet browsers. The accessibility of the E material should be universal. Some key points which should be taken under consideration by the developers are, There should be no more than three navigation before reaching the course content. Eliminate of the scrolling factor is required .Normal font size should be deployed. There should be a constant theme including page layout, design and navigational controls throughout the contents. An exploratory study is conducted on the accessibility issues of E learning environments. The study explored E learning accessibility issues reported by 223 students with disabilities, 58 campus disability service providers, 28 professors and 33 E learning professionals from Canadian colleges and Universities. Most of the issues were related to inaccessibility of websites and course management systems. Research also illustrates that problem familiarity differ among the four groups of stakeholder in the study. That being said, the most commonly cited response to solving E learning problems by all four groups was “unresolved.” This is a cause for concern given the prevalence of E learning use on campus. It is the charge to all post secondary stakeholder to ensure that E learning technologies continue to benefit rather than hamper students with all types of disabilities and that accessibility gains are maintained and built upon (Fichten et al. 2009). 7 Programming Language for E learning Development Programming language which is selected for making the project of “constructing a basic learning object” is Microsoft VB.net. Flash will be used as the visual interface of this E learning project. 7.1 Comparing Visual Basic.Net & Java Visual basic Java VB.NET provides managed code execution that runs below the Common Language Runtime (CLR), resulting in strong, stable and secure application development. Java does not support CLR features VB.NET is purely object oriented. Java is also object oriented The .NET framework comes with ADO.NET empowering the disjointed paradigm. Once the required data is fetched, the connection is terminated. Java does not support ADO.NET features VB.NET uses XML to transport data between them in the form of simple text strings. Java used dynamic binding to support this feature For error handling, Try-Catch-Finally is integrated to deal with the errors and exceptions as a team. Java uses exceptions to handle errors Security has become more enhanced in VB.NET with a new security model, Code Access security. Java is integrated with byte code verifier, class loader and security manager for providing security. The CLR is used for the garbage collection it discharge objects of they are not in use. Java does not support this feature. Visual basic is more powerful as it supports many features which assist the developers in certain ways. For online web application infrastructure, XML is used to call the processes on any platform by using common Internet protocols. For selecting the visual interface, flash is implemented. The reason for choosing Flash because it supports some great features which are as follows: It is widely used for creating interactive content Almost free to use Vast community of flash developers in the market Used in almost every interactive media, for example websites, games, banners, online presentations, software, screen savers. It is relatively easy to work on flash. References  2010. Multimedia Integration for Language e-Learning: Content, Context and the e-Dossier. US-China Education Review, 08, vol. 7, no. 8, pp. 1-10 ,definition of ontology from Oxford Dictionaries Online . Available: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/ontology?view=uk [11/19/2010, 2010]. ,EBSCOhost . 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