CASE STUDY: VIRTUAL UNIVERSITY AT ULB1

CASE STUDY: VIRTUAL UNIVERSITY at ULB[1] TICE at the ulb
Since 1996, ULB implements various tools of ODL such as videoconference
internally (between two campus of the university) or externally (i.e., a
comparative analysis of US and EU integration processes - ULB & NY
University), videoconference on PC for disabled people with reduced
mobility, self training for workers who wanted to create their own virtual
SME, electronic forum for the students (mail, electronic discussion with
the teachers, ...), new collaborative learning structure in order to
promote ODL and to inform and train the teachers, development of a virtual
campus allowing the development, the diffusion and the follow-up of the
courses, the experimentation of pilot courses, and pedagogical advices to
the tutors and the courses creators. For all these reasons, ULB has decided to create in 1999, the CTE (Center
of Educational Technology).
The missions of the CTE are: 1. training the teachers at university
. information, training,
. virtual library
. prospective studies
. providing help for using, developing and evaluating ODL
. diffusion and dissemination of the expertise inside the
university
2. providing equipment
3. providing technical support (equipment, videoconference,
production, advices, ...). Following all these experiences and in order to coordinate all these
experiments, ULB decided in 1998 to create a virtual campus.
The Virtual university at ulb : obectives and limites
If we use the typology defined by the "Ecole de Technologie de
l'Information du Québec", we may identify four functions for a virtual
campus:
. Research,
. Administrative,
. Pedagogical,
. Technological.
The ULB has clearly decided to develop the third function, the
pedagogical support. The virtual university (VU) project at ULB has two main goals:
. offer the teachers and the students a coherent web-based
environment to traditional on-campus courses,
. provide an environment for the development of ODL programs. The objective was to offer an open access to support some pedagogical
services (forum, self evaluation systems, on line courses, multi-media
tutorial, ...) from computer on campus and from personal computer.
It is important to notice that the typical "customers" of the system
are the regular students. historic
Between the beginning of the project and the opening of the VU, six
months later, several phases have been realised. Specifications
All the previous experiences helped to define a VU's "cahier des
charges".
Three main types of pedagogical services were identified:
. information (forum, valves, lectures, results, corrected
exercises, ...),
. training (on-line evaluation, tutorials, ...),
. communication (mail, forum, ...).
Each particular service had been broken into functionalities (i.e.
for e-mail: read a message, join an attachment...) for three kinds
of users : the system administrator, the teachers/creators of the
course and the students. Development options
Generally speaking, there are two ways to set up computer tools and
specifically a virtual campus :
. develop the tool in-house, which is more flexible but more
expensive (developing a platform represents an investment of
10 man/years without the maintenance and the upgrading)
. alternatively, buy the needed software, which is cheaper and
more quickly available,
. free-ware.
It was decided to adopt the second solution, i.e. to buy a platform. The software's choice
There exists a lot of learning management systems (LMS) : a recent
report[2] presented an analysis of seven specific tools.
The current problem was then to find the software that could meet
our requirements.
The selection procedure was based on an analysis of the literature
(and among others on similar procedure followed by other
universities in the world) and on technical tests.
The selection criteria were :
. Set of functionalities
. flexibility
. standardisation
. tools available for the teachers
. pricing. The winner was WebCT, which offered:
. the greatest amount of functionalities
. the possibility to adapt the tools very easily, and to add
or to suppress functionalities for each course
. an open architecture : the pages incorporated to the WebCT
courses are HTML pages which allows the integration of
existing HTML material
. a possible development on a current web navigator ( for
most of the functionalities it is not necessary to master
the HTML language)
. a very attractive price : for one tenth of the price of
other equivalent tools
. a huge modularity, an easy way to parameterise the tool. This choice was confirmed later on by other analysis[3]. On
another way, two other Belgian universities (ULG and UCL) came
at the same conclusions. Pilot Courses
When the site was opened, two "virtual courses" were realised:
. " les exercices de grammaire normative" Prof. Englebert
(1st year in roman philology - 131 students). The on-
line course contained 20 quizzes of 20 questions each,
as well as student's essays.
. "Nouvelles politiques communes, y compris la politique
étrangère, de défense et de sécurité » Prof. Remacle
(DES en droit européen / politique européenne). This on-
line course comprises a lecture portfolio (readings for
the face-to-face courses and associated quizzes). During the second semester, students followed these courses. A
follow-up of this experience was organised: a satisfaction
analysis was performed, which was discussed with the responsible
teachers.
The main conclusion was the entire satisfaction of the users
about the platform: criticisms were given mainly on precise
contents.
After this pilot stage, university was ready for a larger
dissemination. And the CURRENT virtual university?
Today, ULB offers more than 70 virtual courses and the demand of
creating new courses is growing constantly. Functional description
The home page of the ULB explains the objectives of VU and allows
the access of the virtual course's list, classified by faculty.
Each access course asks a login and a password even if the teacher
can decide that visitor are able to create a guest login.
Each course of the VU (which corresponds generally to a part of the
university programme) is organised around a homepage, which gives
access to various functionalities. Among the standard tools
proposed by the WebCT environment, we can mention:
. content module, with associated tools such as glossary,
questions, table of content, index
. on-line tests
. an e-mail entirely integrated to the course
. bulletins allowing on-line debates
. a calendar, containing all the events connected with the
course, as the agenda and permanencies.
. links to relevant websites. Development methodology
The software does only represent a small part of the VU's
implementation.
A whole methodology has been set up in order to organise, structure
the exchanges between the students and teachers.
The life cycle of a course can be described in five main stages :
. information
. opening
. set up
. dissemination
. analysis. . The information phase consists in informing the teachers of the
existence of the VU. The process uses different internal
marketing channels and is concluded by an interview between the
teachers and the CTE in order to better understand the specific
needs of every teacher.
. The opening phase is the creation of an « empty » course ready
to receive new contents.
. The set up phase consists in putting the different resources of
the course on-line.
Based on the prior knowledge of the teacher, two possibilities
exist :
. the teacher develops himself the course,
. alternatively, he transmits to the CTE the materials for
his course in a standard format.
. The dissemination phase is the opening of the course to the
students.
. During the analysis phase, each student is allowed to provide
feedback on the course. These evaluations are summarised and
discussed with the teachers in order to improve the course.
Some examples
For this presentation, instead of an exhaustive enumeration of the
existing course, a small selection centred on a precise thematic
will be explained.
The time spent on the preparation of such support on Internet is
one of the main teacher's criticisms.
Us