Development of an intuitive e-Learning system to support

face-to-face instruction

Project Leader:
MENDORI Takahiko, Dr. Eng.
Assistant Professor, Information Systems Engineering

Faculty Members involved in this Project:

SHINOMORI Keizo, Dr. Eng.
Professor, Frontier Engineering Course, Information Systems Engineering

Paul Daniels, M.A.

Associate Professor, CORE Studies

Introduction
e-Learning activities designed to supplement classroom instruction have the potential to enrich
learning, but lack of faculty experience in developing and managing digital material often weakens
the promises of online learning. Selecting the appropriate content management system for faculty
can significantly improve user experience, but it is often a challenge to choose a system that has both
the robustness to accomplish complex tasks and the simplicity to satisfy novice users. Educational
institutions must also consider a system's ability to accommodate different learning environments,
teaching styles, and student needs.

Purpose
The purpose of this research project is twofold. First, a series of tests will be conducted on the user
interfaces of leading open source and commercial content management systems to determine which
aspects pose problems for both content developers and learners. Experiments will be conducted to
improve upon the user interface. Using these findings, the researchers will decide to either modify an
existing content management system or develop a new system that addresses instructors' and
students' needs.
Second, the researchers will form a development and training team aimed at creating study
content to support basic technical English, mathematics and computer skills. The team will also try
to establish efficient methods for training instructors to create, upload and edit course material.

Project Outline

1. Investigation of existing e-Learning systems and adoption or development of a campus

wide e-Learning system (Leaders: Asst. Prof. MENDORI Takahiko and Asst. Prof. Paul
Daniels)
The initial step will involve installing different content management systems and conducting
experiments on each system's user interface. The software distributions will consist of both
commercial and open source content management systems. Moodle, dotLRN, Sakai,
Blackboard, i-Collabo and Webclass are the most likely packages to be tested. The next step
will involve developing or adapting an existing content management system and implementing
the system campus wide.
 2. Content development (Leader: Asst. Prof. MENDORI Takahiko)
In addition to the content management system, a desktop GUI application will be developed to
assist instructors to create multimedia content using Flash, JavaScript, and HTML. This
content will be directly integrated into the e-Learning system.

3. Ubiquitous learning (Leader: Asst. Prof. Paul Daniels)

As computing becomes more ubiquitous, students want to be able to move around and interact
with information more naturally and casually. Therefore, the researchers plan to incorporate a
mobile learning portion as part of the campus wide e-Learning project. This module will
convert learning content to make it readable on mobile devices. Data will be collected to
compare whether students are more apt to access online content from traditional computers or
from mobile devices.

4. System evaluation and interface development (Leader: Prof. SHINOMORI Keizo)

Following the implementation of an e-Learning system, system performance will be evaluated
using both psychological experiments and performance checks in order to prescribe future
improvements in the user interface. In particular, improvements designed to accommodate
users with color vision deficiency or age-related vision changes will be investigated.

5. Teacher training (Leader: Prof. SHINOMORI Keizo)

Finally, the researchers will employ a system aimed at training instructors from each
department who are interested in developing and managing online content so as to support
their classroom instruction. The first step will involve training instructors from both CORE
Studies, the Department of Information Systems Engineering and the Frontier Engineering
Course. Training may later be expanded to other departments.

Special Scholarship Program (SSP) and this e-Learning project

The research period will be three years (2006-2008). One or two new SSP students will be accepted
for this project.

Required skills should include:

• Willingness to conduct basic qualitative user data collection
• Ability to communicate effectively in English
• Capable of collecting, analyzing and reporting for English research publications
• Programming experience in PHP, Java, ActionScript, XML, and SQL

All SSP students are expected to be able to write first-rate research papers for established English-
language journals, to pass a preliminary assessment for their doctoral dissertations at the end of the
second academic year and to pass a final doctoral defense of their dissertation at the end of the third
academic year. Since SSP status is only available for a three-year period, all of the above must be
completed in the three-year period of study.