=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=None
|storemode=property
|title=Cloud Services for Learning Scenarios: Widening the Perspective
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-945/paper7.pdf
|volume=Vol-945
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/ltec/JansenBBH12
}}
==Cloud Services for Learning Scenarios: Widening the Perspective==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-945/paper7.pdf
1st International Workshop on Cloud Education Environments (WCLOUD 2012)
Cloud Services for Learning Scenarios:
Widening the Perspective
Marc Jansen
Lars Bollen
Ruhr-West University of Applied Sciences,
University of Twente, Enschede (The Netherlands)
Bottrop (Germany)
e-mail: l.bollen@utwente.nl
e-mail: Marc.Jansen@hs-ruhrwest.de
Nelson Baloian H. Ulrich Hoppe
Universidad de Chile, Santiago (Chile) University of Duisburg-Essen, Duisburg (Germany)
e-mail: nbaloian@dcc.uchile.cl email: hoppe@inf.uni-duisburg.de
Abstract—The term “Cloud Computing” does not primarily provide applications directly to the end-user, again, in a
specify new types of core technologies but rather addresses flexible and highly automated way.
features to do with integration, inter-operability and In this paper, we discuss possible contributions of Cloud
accessibility. Although not new, virtualization and automation Services to new forms of technology-enhanced learning and
are core features that characterize Cloud Computing. In this teaching. The term Cloud Services itself will be explained
paper, we intend to explore the possibility of integrating cloud later on in more detail. Starting with an abstraction of the
services with educational scenarios without re-defining neither common understanding of Cloud Computing, transferring the
the technology nor the usage scenarios from scratch. Our abstracted features to other prominent internet services like,
suggestion is based on certain solutions that have already been
e.g., Twitter and Facebook (which we see as specific
implemented and tested for specific cases.
instances of Cloud Services in the context of this paper), we
Keywords-Cloud Computing, Cloud Services, Scenarios argue that in the context of learning scenarios a wider
definition of Cloud Services is need to encompass possibly
I. INTRODUCTION relevant new developments. Furthermore, this paper presents
an architecture that allows the flexible usage of services that
Currently, Cloud Computing scenarios are often used to
belong to the extended definition of Cloud Computing. We
overcome certain limitations of mobile devices, desktop
describe two examples of learning scenarios that build upon
computers or server systems, especially to improve
the presented architecture to demonstrate how these services
accessibility and interoperability. Hereby, Cloud Computing
facilitate innovative aspects of technology-enhanced learning
is usually subdivided into at least the three following parts
scenarios. Finally, an outlook for future development of this
[1]:
understanding of Cloud Services is presented.
1. IaaS - Infrastructure as a Service: Virtual provision II. AN ALTERNATIVE PERSPECTIVE ON CLOUD SERVICES
of computing power and/or memory. A prominent WITH RESPECT TO LEARNING SCENARIOS
example of an IaaS service is the Amazon WS
In abstraction, Cloud Computing increases the flexibility
service.
of modern applications while at the same time improving
2. PaaS – Platform as a Service: Provision of a
security aspects such as availability, data storage or
runtime environment, like application servers, communication. Furthermore, one major aspect in Cloud
databases etc. In this area, Googles App Engine is Computing scenarios is the accessibility of the provided
probably the most prominent example. services through a set of standardized services.
3. SaaS – Software as a Service: Provision of usually With respect to learning scenarios, a different perspective
browser based applications that can directly be to these abstracted features of Cloud Computing services
used. Here, Google Docs or the Customer (referred to in this paper as Cloud Services) offers a new
Relationship Management software of understanding of prominent services like Twitter or
salesforce.com serves as examples. Facebook. These Cloud Services can then be used as entry
points for value-adding functions both in formal and
One aspect that is common to these three levels is the informal learning settings, remote and co-located situations
high degree of automation that is pursued by these kinds of and in synchronous or asynchronous scenarios. On the one
Cloud Services. On the IaaS level, Cloud Computing can be hand using such services allows getting into contact with
understood as virtualization technology along with a high students on internet platforms where they spend a large
degree of automation, whereas PaaS provides a flexible way amount of their time [2], and on the other hand, to use off-
for the deployment of applications and SaaS is able to the-shelf software [3], which saves implementation efforts
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1st International Workshop on Cloud Education Environments (WCLOUD 2012)
and development time, but allows for using contributions services (in our context usually Web Services). The major
from the students via these different Cloud Services. idea of a SOA is to build new software based on a number of
already existing services. The overall task that a piece of
III. A SOFTWARE ENGINEERING PERSPECTIVE ON CLOUD software should fulfill is usually split up into different
SERVICES FOR LEARNING APPLICATIONS subtasks that are performed by a number of different, and
The reuse of software components is one of the building usually already existing, services. Later on, after completing
blocks of modern Software Engineering approaches. In [3] all the subtasks, the results of these subtasks are aggregated
the authors state that the term “re-use” can be interpreted into the solution of the overall task. The combination of the
somewhat differently with respect to Software Engineering different services that fulfill the subtasks and the
approaches for the field of Technology-Enhanced-Learning combination of the results if often referred to as
(TEL). On the one hand, there is the re-use of content, which “orchestration” and the produced code is often referred to as
seems to be fairly well accepted. On the other hand, there is “glue code”. Using a SOA based architecture nowadays
the re-use of both single software components as well as the changes completely the usual software development process
re-use of established and approved architectures. In contrast from writing yourself every piece of code (even with the help
to the re-use of content, these two more technical aspects of of already developed API’s) that is necessary in order to
re-use are not yet well accepted or used. fulfill the task at hand, to finding services that support the
Here, the usage of cloud services might help to either developer in solving the special task, the orchestration of
increase the re-use of single software components, e.g., these services and providing/implementing the glue code that
provided as Web Services, and the re-use of established and allows to solve the current task. In this sense, the Cloud
approved architectures. Computing paradigm itself provides already a new approach
Web Services, as one of the building blocks for modern for the architecture of learning scenarios.
Cloud Computing environments, provide in themselves the Cloud services may also lead to an enrichment on the
idea of providing re-usable software components. One view content level: The matching of user (learner) needs to
to Web Services is that the major idea of Web Services is to available materials may draw on existing learner profiles,
provide re-usable software components that are made e.g. in social or professional networks, in addition to content-
available through a set of standardized protocols. These related of resources, possibly using semantic web
protocols support consumers of these Web Services through technologies. The added value over conventional learning
the complete development cycle from finding a particular metadata approaches would be the open-ness and free
service (e.g., in a UDDI repository), accessing the connectivity of the environment.
description of the service interface (e.g., described in
WSDL) to consuming the service (e.g., by using protocols
like SOAP or REST). Therefore, the provisioning of Web
Services in itself already provides a big opportunity for re-
using single software components and by using the
mentioned standardized protocols, the re-use of these kinds
of software components is even possible beyond the borders
of a single organization, but the re-use of these services is,
from a technology point of view, also possible beyond the
borders of a single organization.
This is particularly interesting for learning scenarios,
since in this area we do usually not have that many
Fig. 1. Different degree of re-use with different software
commercially oriented organizations or research groups.
engineering approaches
Instead, the different players are willing to share their
content as well as their developed services among each other From a technological point of view, Cloud Computing
in order to foster collaboration among different learning could be seen as the next consequent development step from
communities. Of course, when it comes to content re-use, a SOA to an architecture that does not only allow the re-use
aside from the technological problems that are fairly easy to of content and services (in the terms of single steps in a
solve by using Web Services, other problems such as the process), but additionally as the re-use of computational
ownership of the resulting learning outcomes and questions resources. E.g. in an SaaS scenario a complete software stack
about the right to re-use these learning materials arise, as, would be re-used, which is pretty close to the idea of a SOA
e.g., discussed in [9]. where basically single services are the major goal of re-use.
From an architectural point of view, Web Services allow, On the next level, in a PaaS scenario, not single services are
due to their possibility of re-use, a completely new approach the target for re-use, but the infrastructure for running these
to the architectural development of the resulting software, services can be shared by different consumers. Last but not
and of course also for the resulting learning applications. least, IaaS scenarios allow for re-using infrastructure on the
Here, the development of new software can be performed lowest technical level, e.g., the re-use/sharing of
based on an architecture that is usually referred to as a computational resources (like virtual servers), network
Service-Oriented-Architecture (SOA). The building blocks resources and/or storage resources. Hence, Cloud Computing
of a new software developed based on this architecture are
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1st International Workshop on Cloud Education Environments (WCLOUD 2012)
allows to overcome the limitations that usually exist within moderation cards and flipcharts in individual and group
SOA’s, e.g., that the re-use is still limited to the content work. Contents can also be generated in class and used in a
and/or the services in terms of process steps, and allows to future session.
provide re-use for the complete stack from single software One particular strength of integrating this kind of cloud
services to the technical layer of the network and the storage. services is that in addition to supporting and enabling the
The idea of understanding Cloud Computing as the scenarios described here, it also supports seamless transitions
consequent next step of software engineering in order to between those scenarios. For example, it is intended to
extend the re-usability to the level of not only re-using motivate the learners in informal learning scenarios, to
software components but also infrastructure components, is contribute and make use of this content in a face-to-face
shown in Fig. 1. classroom situation in a fully integrated way. The following
subsections describe two scenarios which can be carried out
IV. EXAMPLE SCENARIOS INCLUDING CLOUD SERVICES with the help of the mentioned Cloud Services in more
Keeping in mind the previously mentioned benefits of detail. Our basic approach is to use existing services to
Cloud Computing, services such as, e.g., Twitter and create, collect and visualize students' contribution in various
Facebook, provide similar benefits to computer-supported educational settings and scenarios. These scenarios build
learning environments, e.g., by increasing flexibility, upon established learning and teaching scenarios; their
availability and the accessibility of services through realization with the help of the before-mentioned Cloud
standardized methods. Therefore, services as those described Services and the proposed architecture add flexibility in
above can also be understood as cloud services and can then time, space, synchronicity and re-usability of technology and
be used in learning scenarios in order to exploit the described data.
benefits of Cloud Computing based services. Integrating A. One-Minute Papers
cloud services as input channels.
Our suggestion does not primarily aim at defining new One-minute-papers are a flexible and efficient way of
cloud environments for education. The idea is rather to collecting feedback from small and large groups of learners
connect specific educational environments, e.g. around in seminars or lectures (also refer to, e.g., [5-7] for details
virtual or face-to-face classroom scenarios, with existing and empirical findings on the method). Students are handed a
Cloud Services. A technical infrastructure to support this is piece of paper with questions they have to answer in
outlined in Fig. 1. The major task performed by this (typically) one minute.
infrastructure is to provide a certain abstraction for the Example questions may focus on the contents of the
messages received through the different input channels, store seminar lesson, e.g., "What did I like?", "What was new to
these messages and later allow a flexible message me?", "What do I consider important?", "What have I
visualization to be used in learning units. learned?" Furthermore, they may also ask for topics and
relationships that are still unclear to the learner. In doing this,
a personal dialogue is established between student and
Browser
Channel
teacher, which can be especially difficult to establish in
larger groups. According to Stead [7], this may improve
Twitter
Channel
Storage Engine student motivation.
With the help of our approach and architecture, these
Facebook scenarios can be brought about by using any kind of
Channel
Message computational device (e.g. notebook, smartphone, tablet) and
E-Mail Abstraction the students' favorite input channels. Providing an
Channel
environment that enables a computer-supported variant of
SMS the One-Minute Paper method brings relief to teaching staff
Channel
by saving time and material compared to the pen and paper
Visualisation version. Students' comments can be easily organized,
… compared, visualized and stored. Especially for larger
amounts of students, this is expected to ease the handling of
learners' feedback. First experiences on the use of a web-
FIG. 2.ARCHITECTURE TO SUPPORT MULTICHANNEL INPUT based input service (available to smartphones, tablets and
notebooks) to realize the One-Minute paper method have
This architecture is a generalization of an approach that been recently described by Bollen et al. [10].
has been implemented and tested with certain specific cases
B. Supporting Self-Learning Phases
[4]. In the sequel, we describe some example scenarios
illustrating our understanding of the benefits that Cloud Another application scenario is the support of self-
Services might bring to learning scenarios. Here, we see learning phases between classroom sessions. It is important
advantages in both, formal and informal learning settings. A for students to be able to transfer the newly acquired
differentiation can additionally be made with regard to knowledge to situations in their everyday life. The discovery
synchronicity – contents can be generated and directly used of one’s own examples, together with a sensitivity for
in class, e.g., to support face-to-face scenarios, to replace similarities and applicability, does also ideally lead to a
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1st International Workshop on Cloud Education Environments (WCLOUD 2012)
deepening of knowledge and makes learning contents more does it support smooth transitions between varying
easily retrievable when needed. scenarios?
Tasks like this can appear in almost every domain at Most notably, computer-supported learning scenarios can
every stage of a lecture, seminar or student project. Results be categorized along the dimensions of
can be collected and visualized for an in-class usage. Besides • time: Is the user's interaction within the scenario
this, as mentioned before, students are regularly prompted to considered synchronous or asynchronous?
report on situations and examples that illustrate the learning • location: Are participating learners are co-located or
content. Therefore, the learner would be able to contribute are they in remote places?
and share examples for future sessions. • Group scale: How many learners are interacting in
As an example, which originates from first experiences the given scenario?
and trials, the learners' task was to relate a new topic in a To give two examples, in this scheme, a classroom
seminar with everyday life's experiences. The teacher discussion would be considered a synchronous, co-located
prepared sentence opener questions to guide the learners, scenario in a large group. A collaborative modeling activity
who had one week time to collect and communicate their between two learners using a shared workspace environment
findings - using tablets, notebooks or smartphones and would be a remote, synchronous scenario in a dyad. Fig. 3
wherever and whenever appropriate. illustrates the dimensions described above:
Again, the proposed architecture allows for a flexible
generation and accumulation of students' contribution over
time, together with a visualization support that helps teachers
and students likewise organize and share results.
C. Group discussion support
As a third application scenario, we present a situation that
utilizes the described architecture in a synchronous, co-
located manner. In a classroom situation, the proposed
system can be used to visualize textual contributions that
have been created by the learners and sent from various
sources. These contributions are received and processed
immediately and can be presented with the help of a large,
shared display, e.g. by using a video projection. Similar
approaches have been described, e.g., by Liu and Kao [11]
and by Bollen et al. [12].
By these means, classroom discussions can be supported Fig. 3. Dimension of educational scenarios
in a way that can be beneficial in a number of ways:
• contributions can be formulated and submitted Along these dimensions, we can further explain the
without interference and influence from peers aspects of interoperability and scalability of computer-
• contributions can be submitted anonymously, which supported learning environments. We can regard an
can raise participation in controversial topics or for environment being scalable, if it allows the realization of
more introverted persons scenarios along instances of the dimensions mentioned
• the course and structure of a discussion can be made above. We consider an environment being interoperable
explicit in a shared visualization between scenarios, if it allows smooth transitions between
• discussion results can be stored for later (re-)use, instances of various scenarios.
review and comparison As an example, if an environment allows the collection
of learner's contributions individually over a period of time,
Scenarios like those described above benefit from the and is able to present these contributions using a shared
integration of Cloud Services by increasing interoperability display in a classroom context, this environment is capable to
of peripheral devices. Heterogeneous Cloud Services like scale over time and group scales, and we may consider it as
Twitter and Facebook allow participation independent of being interoperable, if the transition between those scenarios
both location and time. requires little or no effort (concerning the use of devices,
different software or configurations).
V. INTEROPERABILITY AND SCALABILITY OF SCENARIOS Here, we claim that the use of Cloud services (especially
in a way presented in the architecture above), is a means to
Important features of computer-supported learning
gain high scalability and interoperability, not only between
environments are interoperability and scalability towards
hardware devices, operating system and software
educational scenarios. Is a learning environment (or a set of a
applications, but in particular between educational scenarios.
interoperating environments) scalable a) against an
From the point of view of cloud services in educational
advancing number of different scenarios and b) against a
scenarios, which we are presenting in this article, cloud
varying number of involved students? Is a learning
services are regarded as being advantageous in the context of
environment (or a set of learning environments) providing
interoperability between different education scenarios, i.e.
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1st International Workshop on Cloud Education Environments (WCLOUD 2012)
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