Distance Education at Secondary School. Creation and Management of E-Courses Using ATutor
Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, Akademijos 4
2600 Vilnius, Lithuania
lina.zajanckauskiene@ktl.mii.lt
Abstract. Nowadays secondary schools have good computer bases which could help to make learning process much more effective. Some problems have not been solved yet: Pupils haven’t got skills to work on their own, whereas those that have got good skills, are paid less attention than they need. Some schools are able to partially solve the problems with lessons when teachers are ill. Distance education and virtual learning environments are one of the methods to solve those problems. This paper presents a course “Creation and management of e-courses using ATutor” which is assigned for teachers of secondary schools and teaches how to create and manage courses.
Keywords: distant education, aTutor, virtual learning environment, learning
1 Introduction
Learning for lots of pupils seems to be not interesting and boring.. Everybody knows that it‘s important to have a motive for learning in order to learn something. Nowadays teachers must give lots of material for pupils and the number of lessons is less than it is possible to teach effectively. So every teacher must find out tools, and ways how to implement as much of the material as possible which is not boring to children. It‘s necessary to prove them that they must learn themselves (not to be taught) in order to live a productive worthy life and to become a real specialist. It‘s impossible to live only with lots of mental outfit, it‘s necessary to get the right skills.
Nowadays ICT has a big influence on learning and teaching methods. All schools must feel the use of ICT in their lessons. The strategy of ICT education [5] plans is to raise a number of lessons which are with ICT. Pupils must use ICT not only learning information technology but learning other subjects too.
The survey carried out in 2004–2005 [2] and 2003 [4] showed that schools have a good base of computers together with the following problems:
- Pupils haven’t got skills to work on their own;
- Gifted pupils lack special attention;
- There are no substitute teachers. The problem is not solved or partially solved;
- Teachers haven’t got skills to organize learning process in lessons and especially after lessons. Courses that show these possibilities are hardly reachable; they are too short to aquire the right skills and to work on their own;
- Distance education and virtual learning environments (VLE) are little known for teachers. They have got some skills to use the learning environments as students but only a few teachers have skills to create their own lessons and activities using Moodle, a bit – WebCT.
The purpose of this paper is to present the course “Creation and management of e-courses using ATutor”, assigned for teachers working at secondary schools. The main requirement to take the course is minimum working skills with ICT.
2 Course Contents
The centre of Information technology (ITC, Vilnius, Lithuania) has gained a VLE ATutor for secondary schools. At the moment it is being localized, the programmers have made some changes that are useful for users. There were no special courses for presenting all the possibilities, examples, methodic material of this VLE.
The original version of ATutor is based in http://courses.atutor.ca. The Lithuanian version is based in http://vma.emokykla.lt/atutor. The course “Creation and management of e-courses using ATutor” is based there too.
The main purpose of this course is to show the teachers all the possibilities of distance education at secondary schools, its methods and tools for organizing learning process, as well as best practice examples. While learning,teachers will get the right technical and organizational skills working with ATutor.
Before creating the course content and picking the right tools in ATutor, several courses were given to inform/train instructors and designers. One of them was about creating qualitative course content by distance learning [6, 3] and the other about marketing and management [1].
So, according to the requirements the course contains:
1. Introduction. The purposes and goals. This part introduces to the course shortly, informs about the preparation, gives some advice why to learn,includes pre-requisites of chosing this course.
2. Distance education. Some teachers have no knowledge what distance education is. So short introduction is given.
2.1. The specific features of distance education. Some specific features of distance studies are given as well as difference from traditional lessons. Teachers will find some requirements for them and their new roles too.
2.2. Distance education at secondary schools. Distance education at secondary schools is still not known so well so it is necessary to introduce the difference from distance education which is given at the University. The examples from foreign countries are given too.
2.3. The elements of distance education in Lithuania. A short introduction of documentation in reforms of distance education at secondary schools is given in this part of course. The present examples of distance education in Lithuanian secondary schools are given here too.
2.4. The necessity of distance education. New methods are applicable if they make an effect to learning process and help to solve some problems. This chapter shows points what use of distance education means.
3. Theoretic and educational aspects of creating e-courses. Not every e-course could be named as a very good and useful for teaching and learning at a secondary school. It is necessary to know some aspects while creating and managing courses.
3.1. What is the contents of a good course? This chapter introduces the parts of a good traditional lesson and is compared with distance lessons. The components of a well-based e-course are given.
3.2. Requirements for the learning material. There are strict requirements for learning material, its length and form of rendering. So it is necessary to present them for teachers who create learning material.
3.3. Tests. Types of questions, requirements for creating quizzes. Every teacher knows that a well made test is a good tool for collation of the aquired skills and knowledge. This unit introduces to requirements of a good testing.
4. Creating courses in the learning environment of ATutor. Teacher’s environment. All the material that is given in these unit is assigned to present the technical aspects creating e-courses.
4.1. Registration to the system. The unit shows how to make successful registration to ATutor. Some explanations in the differences between mailboxes that realize HTML and those that do not realize HTML. The successful finishing of registration using e-mail.
4.2. Signing in and starting work. The pictures and explanations show how teachers can sign in and start their own course creation after they successfully finished registration. Some explanations about the characteristics of a concrete course are given.
4.3. Course announcements. Important information for students. While giving courses communication with students is necessary. Sometimes it is necessary to pay their attention to some important changes in the schedule, in their course, etc. The unit shows how to create announcements and manage them.
4.4. Backups. Creating backups and storing them. While creating and managing courses it is necessary to make, store and backup in case of losing the data. Technical aspects of this process are given in this part of the course.
4.5. Chat (internet relay chat). Sometimes there are some special cases when it is necessary to make a real-time conversation. VLE ATutor has a special tool for making such lectures – “Chat”. As far as there are no special installation needs, the unit is useful for managing chat in common.
4.6. Email. For individual messages, personal problem solving ant etc. ATutor has a tool called “Email”. There are no special installation needs either, so only specific adivice is given right there.
4.7. Enrolling to the course. One of the most important component in distant education is students and teachers (tutors, assistants). The unit shows all the important actions in registering students, tutors, giving them their roles, making alumni and so on. Tutors and assistants have privileges, so there are some special facts for registering them.
4.8. Discussions. This unit is useful when teachers want to organize discussions in asynchronous time. Short tips how to create topics, manage them, some requirements for organizing forums are given here.
4.9. Glossary. A well based course must have a glossary which has all the explanations of difficult words, definitions. Knowing that managing of the ATutor glossary is rather difficult, this unit is full of pictures which describe all the creating process of glossary and making relationships with texts in topics.
4.10. Links. For any additional reference teachers can use internet links. This unit explains how to create links, their explanations, and descriptions. Students can also suggest links that they found. They are seen only after the teacher has approved them. All this process is described in this unit...
4.11. Polls. Learning the particular course sometimes it is necessary to find out the student’s opinion on some questions. The unit gives instructions how to manage polls and create qualitative questions.
4.12. Collaboration tools. When necessary, tutors can give them to make a project in groups. As far as it is one of the most difficult parts of ATutor, the unit is the longest and full of illustrations. This tool has a file manager, additional forums, chat, calendar, email, workshop tools. All the necessary instructions are given here.
4.13. Tests and surveys. The chapter explains, how to create and manage testing and survey tools for students.
4.14. Course content. One of the most important and most difficult tasks is in creating e-courses. Some advice how to create qualitative learning material, formatting it, making illustrations are included here.
5. Management. Communicating with students and working with them. A good course for giving distance education course is not fully functional. If it has a good tutor, it becomes more effective. So this unit has lots of advice how to manage a course, how to make it better, more qualitative, what additional tools could make his (her) course more useful and qualitative.
6. Additional remarks. Now and in the future this unit will be intended for teacher’s best practices experience. The examples of lessons in which VLE was used will be written there as well.
Every unit is rather short, full of illustrations for making the course more clear and useful. Every unit is related to each other, the difficult words are related to the glossary. Almost every unit has a task which learners must do for getting the right skills. For communicating with tutors and assistants Chat, conference, whiteboard are used. For monitoring the progress, the course has a “Progress” tool.
Courses “Creation and management of e-courses using ATutor” will be given in distant way only. There are 1–2 final tests, and assignment, a final course. The teacher will get the right skills if he (she) successfully passes the tests and his final assignment, a course paper is submitted successfully (that will be shown in his (her) lesson plan).
3 Using ATutor at Home or at School
Anybody anywhere who wants to learn and has got a computer, can take this course and ATutor even if there is no internet connection. The main requirements for the system:
- HTTP Web Server (the authors recommend Apache).
- PHP version 4.3.0+, or 5.0.2+ with Zlib and MySQL .
- MySQL 4.0.2 or higher, or 4.1.10 or higher. (http://www.atutor.ca).
All these requirements are released by EasyPHP, which anybody can download at http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/quickeasyphp/easyphp1-8_setup.exe?use_mirror=belnet. User should install ATutor (in folder C:\Program Files\EasyPHP1-8\www) and do everything that is necessary for making users, extracting course. It is possible to do a virtual server even on USB Flash disk.
4 Learning with a Course
It is recommended to read the learning material and do tasks that are recommended after some units. It is rather difficult to create qualitative learning material so teachers (course designers) should learn and make course material while they have holidays or some free time. Before supporting courses teachers should be given some advice and indications about organizing and planning learning process using VLE ATutor.
5 Final Remarks
The course has solved one of the problems in distant education in Lithuania: the lack of the material for using virtual learning environments, organizing the learning process, it made a possibility for teachers to learn not leaving their living and work places. It showed that distant education (or partial distant education) is possible and that it makes the learning process more effective, interactive. It gives more motivation for those who are not motivated. The children that have good skills and want to learn are not left without additional attention. Pupils who haven’t got the skills on working on their own will be demanded to work more and feel the responsibility of their learning progress. Teachers as well as pupils can learn not leaving their schools and they are free to plan their own learning process.
References
1. Creation and management of e-courses. KTU, Distance Education Centre (2004) http://distance.ktu.lt/dmv/kursas/index.html
2.
ICT in schools in Lithuania: the report of
survey. KTU (2005)
http://www.emokykla.lt/admin/file.php?id=425
3. Methodical recommendations for creating e-courses. KTU, VU (2004) http://www.liedm.lt/about/metodiniai_nurodymai/modulis2_index.html
4. Novikienë, R.: Learning of mathematics in technical universities: change assumptions and limitation in context of educational paradigm. Doctoral theses. Kaunas (2003) 208
5.
Strategy of ICT in education. Vilnius, ITC
(2005)
http://www.emokykla.lt/lt.php/konkursai/lietuvos_bendrojo_lavinimo_mokyklu_projekto_informaciniu_ir_komunikaciniu_technologiju_taikymo_7_8_uju_klasiu_ugdymo_procese_proverzis_konkursas/1119
6. The material of the course „Educational aspects of using ICT“. Vilnius (2005) http://distance.nsc.vu.lt