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College
instructors everywhere struggle to balance the needs of individual students
against the needs of the class as a whole. In the spirit of academic inquiry
they want students to ask questions about particular aspects of a course,
but to be fair to everyone they also must cover all the material on the
syllabus within a defined time limit. Stephen Phua, a senior lecturer
in law at the National University of Singapore, just may have found a
solution to the problem: the discussion forums available through his school's
innovative online-learning environment. Phua made
this discovery just two weeks after having deployed a forum for two of
his classes on the university's Integrated Virtual Learning Environment,
a solution implemented with the Microsoft BackOffice
family and other Microsoft products. Phua explains
by describing a common classroom situation. "Say, a student has a question
that's fascinating but not necessarily central to the subject of that
day's lecture," he says. "If the student raises the question in class,
I can't spend much time on it. Or, if the student raises the question
in an office visit, then others don't benefit from our discussion." But
what if the question is raised on an online forum? "Then, I can spend
all the time and thought that's needed on my answer, and everyone in the
class can participate in the discussion with follow-up questions and ideas
of their own-even those students who might be too shy to speak up in class,"
he adds. "Those are the times when you may discover a new legal genius." Introducing
IVLE Online
since late 1998, the Integrated Virtual Learning Environment (IVLE) is
a set of Web-based tools and resources that are used by Phua and other
faculty members to supplement the classroom experience. IVLE is part of
an ambitious campaign at the National University of Singapore, a campaign
also including a notebook-PC ownership program. As of mid-1998, the university
had distributed over 3,000 notebook machines, in addition to another 5000
desktop PCs, to students and faculty and "wired" all student centers and
common corridors to make them Internet-accessible. IVLE represents
a major enhancement to an earlier online-learning solution launched by
the university in 1996. That solution included Web pages for a few individual
instructors and links to other Web sites. However, it did not include
any publication or collaboration tools, and this was a major drawback.
In response, IT executives came up with a plan to vastly expand the capabilities
of the online solution. This plan included a migration from the prior;
UNIX-based environment to one based on Windows NT® Server and other components
of the Microsoft BackOffice family. Selecting
a BackOffice platform As IVLE
Manager Ravi Chandran explains, the university's IT executives selected
a Microsoft BackOffice platform partly because of the school's existing
installation of Microsoft Exchange Server. "One of our design goals was
to leverage against the existing user IDs and passwords that we had been
establishing on our campuswide network through Microsoft Exchange Server,"
he says. "That way, we could avoid the administration and security issues
arising from multiple passwords or accounts." The executives
also wanted close integration of the database with the operating system,
and this made Microsoft SQL Server™ a clear winner over another database
management system the school had used in the past. "We saw that Microsoft
SQL Server could provide us the ease of use, customization capabilities,
and cost-effectiveness we needed, especially in terms of training costs,"
Chandran says. "The fact that it included great tools like Index Server
and Site Server was a bonus." Scalability
was another issue. "With nearly 3,000 faculty and 24,000 students, we
had to feel confident we could grow our Web-based learning tools whenever
we needed to," Chandran adds. "From what we had learned about BackOffice,
we saw that it could provide us scalability in all the areas that mattered:
hardware, software, processing power, and cost." After
working for six months, IVLE Team System Engineer and Project Leader Chia
Song Chuan and three other developers released the online-learning environment
for use by the university's students, faculty, and staff. Today,
IVLE operates in an environment of four Windows NT 4.0 servers working
in a single primary domain using Internet Information Server and Microsoft
SQL Server as key components. Also part of the environment are Microsoft
Site Server, which maintains site-traffic information, and Microsoft Index
Server, which provides the site's search engine. A single, 36-gigabyte
Microsoft SQL Server database stores course information and student file
downloads. The primary messaging engine is Microsoft Exchange, and the
primary browser software is Microsoft Internet Explorer. A powerful
learning environment With IVLE
and its discussion forums, chat rooms, quiz management, assignment repositories,
subscription services, and e-mail distribution lists, the National University
of Singapore has a powerful environment for supplementing classroom learning. Nearly
a third of the university's 2,000 separate courses have a presence on
IVLE, ranging from simple outlines to sophisticated multimedia presentations.
These courses cover disciplines ranging from medicine to law, business
to linguistics, engineering to humanities, and more. Soon, all first-year
courses in medicine will appear on IVLE, boosting the total of courses
represented from 600 to nearly 1,000. One instructor
who has done considerable work with both IVLE and its predecessor environment
is Lim Chwee Teck, assistant professor in the department of mechanical
and production engineering. Lim has two courses on IVLE: an undergraduate
course on aircraft structures and a master's level course on plates and
shells. Each course includes lecture notes and a bulletin-board-style
chat room, and the aircraft-structures course also includes links to aircraft-related
Web sites. Lim, who
relies on Word as his primary publication tool to post lecture notes in
HTML and graphics in PDF, considers ease of use to be the No. 1 benefit
of IVLE. "Because of an interface designed to simplify publishing, IVLE
is much easier than our earlier online solution for someone wanting to
post class material," he says. "For simple postings I just create an HTML
or PDF file in Word, and for more elaborate postings I use FrontPage®
or Microsoft Publisher." Unlike
Lim, Stephen Phua did not use the prior online solution, but he, too,
is very enthusiastic about IVLE. For courses on revenue law and international
taxation, Phua has implemented discussion forums, hyperlinks to governmental
and other Web sites, an announcement board, due-date notices, and detailed
requirements for assignments and final exams. And he has done it all using
nothing more than the HTML capabilities of Word and the internal tools
provided as part of IVLE. "It's simple to set up," Phua reports. "I didn't
need to learn anything special, and in five minutes I had a course posted." Access
anywhere, any time From students'
point of view, the big motivator for using IVLE is easy access to up-to-date
content. "Since the campus provides access ports in classrooms, labs,
and common areas, students can get to IVLE from anywhere and at any time,"
Chandran
says. "This means they can work from home, which is very handy for the
part-time postgraduates and other students who are employed and, as a
result, tend to spend less time on campus." One such
student is Terence Lee, who is in his third year toward a degree in mechanical
and production engineering and who also is helping develop IVLE. So far,
Lee has used IVLE to study digital electronics, industrial information,
and computer-automated manufacturing. "It's fantastic having the whole
campus wired so I can plug in my PC and access course material from anywhere,"
he says. "Being able to get to IVLE from home, over the Internet, is also
great, because I get a lot of work done there." As Lim
explains, some students are employed in jobs that take them away from
Singapore, and for them IVLE is essential. "Graduate students here often
work at jobs that involve a lot of travel," he says. "With IVLE these
students can access almost all manner of course material from literally
anywhere in the world." Communicating
more efficiently and effectively Because
IVLE makes it so easy for students to get to course material and because
it is fully integrated with the school's Microsoft Exchange Server messaging
environment, it provides an excellent medium for enhancing communication.
As Phua points out, the communication benefits of IVLE are plentiful.
"Plainly, the 'virtual classroom' provided by IVLE helps me expand communications
with students," he reports. "For example, I can communicate one-on-one
with any student without having to arrange for a meeting that might be
limited by my formal office hours or the student's ability to get there
at that time." Moreover,
just as IVLE encourages more communications between Phua and his students,
it also encourages better communications, he adds. "I've always felt that
when a student puts a question into writing its clarity is enhanced,"
he says. "In turn, when it's time for me to provide the answer, I can
work a lot more efficiently by posting it in writing. It's available for
any and all students to see,
so I don't
need to answer the same question over and over." Conversely,
much as Phua values the discussion forum as a vehicle for encouraging
some forms of creative expression, he also finds it useful for discouraging
others. "Let's face it-not all student questions contribute to the academic
discourse," he says. "So, knowing their questions will be posted on the
forum for all to see, students tend to avoid wasting my time and theirs
with such classic queries as ''Will this be on the test?'" New
ways of thinking about teaching Phua and
Lim both see IVLE as a way of initiating new ways of teaching. For Phua,
it's the opportunity afforded by the discussion forums to discuss diverse
matters of law. For Lim, it's the ability to use elaborate graphical material
to better explain engineering principles. "More and more I'm seeing how
to leverage IVLE on its own terms as a teaching tool, instead just a way
to automate traditional approaches," he says. For example,
by including links to other Web sites Lim can broaden class content without
having to create new materials himself or ask students to do a lot of
legwork. "Before IVLE, students wanting to know more about a particular
kind of aircraft would have to look it up in the library or do their own
Web research," he explains. "But now I just include a link to a related
Web site and they can go there immediately without wasting any time." Saving
time for everyone IVLE is
a time-saver in many ways. By providing a quick and easy way to post lecture
notes, announcements, exam schedules, and other materials, IVLE saves
instructors and their assistants time that otherwise might be spent on
copying and distributing such materials. If instructors need to make a
last-minute modification to lecture notes or exam scheduling, they can
do so a single, easily accessible location, instead of having to e-mail
messages to everyone in the class. "This
means that students have comprehensive and up-to-date material ready for
downloading practically at the moment the instructor finishes writing
it," Chandran points out. "Students also have more time to use the material
in preparing for class." If there's
any concrete measure of how much IVLE has meant to students, faculty,
and staff, just try to sign up for a publishing class, Chandran adds.
"Each month we offer classes on FrontPage, PowerPoint®, and other IVLE
tools, and usually we fill them up," he says. "It's obvious that IVLE
is making everyone now more aware of the benefits of using Internet resources
for teaching and learning." Security
and simplicity Chandran
is quick to point out the many benefits of IVLE are available largely
because the site is based on the highly integrated Microsoft BackOffice
toolset. "The integration of the various tools with one another was a
key factor in helping us develop a successful site in a cost-effective
manner," he says. As Chia
explains, the integration capabilities of the Microsoft BackOffice platform
also helped in developing the kind of Web-security requirements required
in any large enterprise, but especially in an academic environment. "Had
we used our prior operating system as a basis for IVLE, we would have
had to create special accounts to restrict permissions by password, and
the volume of work just to do that would have been nearly impossible,"
he says. "But by developing IVLE in a BackOffice environment, we could
base Web security on the Windows NT Server security model and avoid all
that work." For starters,
this means a single ID and password for both Exchange-based messaging
and access into IVLE. It also means a simpler, although equally secure,
environment for publishing. Because Internet Information Server integrates
with Windows NT authentication tables, FrontPage can use those same tables
to confirm user names. The result is one-button publishing capabilities
for instructors and other content providers. Easier
installation and management Security
was just one aspect of IVLE that Chia and his colleagues found relatively
easy to implement. Installation was another. "Thanks to the setup and
management tools and friendly administration interface, we found it very
easy to install all the products in the BackOffice family," he says. For
example, it took just two days to migrate the database server and search
server. This included installation of Windows NT Server, Internet Information
Server, and Microsoft SQL Server on one machine and Windows NT Server,
Internet Information Server, and Index Server on another. As for
everyday administration, Chia considers the setup and management tools
in Microsoft SQL Server excellent for simplifying backups and similar
tasks-a major improvement over the prior, UNIX-based system. "On the first
day I ever used Microsoft SQL Server, I managed to create tables, views,
and stored procedures without even having to look at the manuals," he
reports. Building
powerful applications quickly Not long
after that, Chia began using two Microsoft technologies on every application
in IVLE: Microsoft Active Data Objects (ADO) and Active Server Pages (ASP).
"ADO is handy for connecting to the database and securing the SQL commands,
and ASP makes development faster and easier than if we had to use PERL
and CGI scripts," he says. "Moreover, because ASP is HTML-plus, we can
easily visualize what final reports will look like." In one case, by using
ADO and ASP, Chia managed to create a 10,000-line database application
in just three days. At the
desktop level, FrontPage is proving to be just as easy to learn for new
and non-technical users as Microsoft SQL Server was for Chia and his colleagues.
"FrontPage has quickly become the main Web-page authoring tool for content
providers at IVLE," Chandran says. "They like its site-management features
and the fact it enables them to create highly functional pages without
having to learn HTML." Chia says
that because instructors can use FrontPage to maintain links and updates
and check on the way their site looks at any given time, his job has become
a lot easier. "FrontPage helps instructors do almost anything they need
to do on their sites," he reports. "Consequently, they don't need my help
much at all." Looking
ahead As Chandran
points out, IVLE has so far served as strictly a supplement to classroom
learning, but that may change with enhancements now in progress that will
enable the solution to support full-fledged online learning. One pilot
project, for example, is using Microsoft Windows Media Technologies to
make lectures available synchronously, through a netcasting solution.
Other future enhancements include an FAQ generator; enhanced student-feedback
tracking based on Site Server push services and knowledge manager; a subscription
service that will automatically e-mail students of changes in course outlines
or schedules; multiple-authoring capabilities based on ASP; and the possible
use of NetMeeting for desktop videoconferencing. At the
site level, Lim is considering using specialized Java language applets
to create and post tests for his aircraft-structure course and may use
Windows Media Technologies to post a review lecture. Phua hasn't yet decided
which IVLE enhancements he will take advantage of, but he does know that
he will use IVLE on every future course he teaches. Still
other plans for IVLE involve an eventual upgrade to Windows 2000. According
to Chia, the product's Active Directory Services (ADS) feature will come
in handy for simplifying administration at the server level and for extracting
names of users as they log into IVLE. This is largely thanks to the compatibility
between ADS and the information store in Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5.
"We have a lot of user information stored in our Exchange server," he
points out. "So it will be a plus if we can extract it and present it
on IVLE." One-stop
shop Whatever
enhancements are ultimately made part of IVLE, Chandran says it's nice
to know the university can implement them without having to spend a lot
of money. For this, he credits the scalability and cost-effectiveness
of having IVLE on a BackOffice platform. Take hardware
capacity, for example. "It's encouraging to know that as we post more
and more courses on IVLE and include multimedia and other resource-hungry
features, we can usually increase our hardware capacity just by installing
additional RAM and hard drives," Chandran says. "When enhancements do
call for adding new servers, we can purchase high-end dual-Pentium machines
at a fraction of the cost we would have to pay were IVLE running in an
environment other than Windows." As Chandran
goes on to say, the software itself is also less costly, thanks to the
Microsoft Select program for educational institutions. "By being able
to take part in this program we've obtained excellent discounts on products
and training alike," he says. Of course, training costs are already minimal
because of the familiarity of the BackOffice and Windows environment to
students, faculty, and staff. "Since most of our IT staff already understand Windows-based
technologies, we can keep development and training costs low no matter
what we wind up doing with IVLE," he says. This is
especially encouraging, considering the ambitious vision Chandran and
his colleagues have for IVLE. As he puts it, "Our ultimate goal is a one-stop
site for all coursework, registration, and administration." |