Automated Orchestration of Online Educational Collaboration in Cloud-based Environments
Article No.: 31, Pages 1 - 26
Abstract
Integrated collaboration environments (ICEs) are widely used by corporations to increase productivity by fostering groupwide and interpersonal collaboration. In this article, we discuss the enhancements of such environment needed to build an educational ICE (E-ICE) that addresses the specific needs of educational users. The motivation for the research was the Małopolska Educational Cloud (MEC) project conducted by AGH University and its partners.
The E-ICE developed by MEC project fosters collaboration between universities and high schools by creating an immersive virtual collaboration space. MEC is a unique project due to its scale and usage domain. Multiple online collaboration events are organized weekly between over 150 geographically scattered institutions. Such events, aside from videoconferencing, require various services. The MEC E-ICE is a complex composition of a significant number of services and various terminals that require very specific configuration and management.
In this article, we focus on a model-driven approach to automating the organization of online meetings in their preparation, execution, and conclusion phases. We present a conceptual model of E-ICE-supported educational courses, introduce a taxonomy of online educational services, identify planes and modes of their operation, as well as discuss the most common collaboration patterns.
The MEC E-ICE, which we present as a case study, is built in accordance with the presented, model-driven approach. MEC educational services are described in a way that allows for converting the declarative specification of E-ICE application models into platform-independent models, platform-specific models, and, finally, working sets of orchestrated service instances. Such approach both reduces the level of technical knowledge required from the end-users and considerably speeds up the construction of online educational collaboration environments.
References
[1]
J. Williams. 2015. Collaborative learning spaces: Classrooms that connect to the world. Retrieved from http://tiny.cc/scn4rz.
[2]
J. Savolainen and M.-M. Virnes. 2016. The Effect of Virtual Working Spaces on Higher Education Collaborative Learning in JAMK. Bachelor's Thesis. JAMK University of Applied Sciences.
[3]
L. Stefan. 2012. Immersive collaborative environments for teaching and learning traditional design. Procedia - Soc. Behav. Sci.
[4]
I. K. Ficheman, R. de Deus Lopes, and S. E. Kruger. 2002. A virtual collaborative learning environment. In Proceedings of the Simpósio Ibero-Americano de Computação Gráfica.
[5]
N. Wahls, A. Méndez-Betancor, M. Brierley, et al. 2017. Collaborative learning in global online education using virtual international exchanges. Retrieved from http://tiny.cc/mgn4rz.
[6]
H. Hu. 2015. Building virtual teams: Experiential learning using emerging technologies. E-Learn. Dig. Media.
[7]
B. Meyer. 2015. Learning through telepresence with iPads: Placing schools in local/global communities. Interact. Technol. Smart Educ.
[8]
A. Hargreaves, and M. T. O'Connor. 2018. Collaborative Professionalism: When Teaching Together Means Learning. Corwin Press.
[9]
D. Raths. 2015. Six ways videoconferencing is expanding the classroom. Retrieved from http://tiny.cc/rin4rz.
[10]
D. Seewungkum, H. Ketmaneechairat, and M. Caspar. 2012. A framework of virtual classroom model on the internet. In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Future Generation Communication Technologies (FGCT’12).
[11]
B. Giesbers, B. Rienties, D. Tempelaar, and W. Gijselaers. 2013. Investigating the relations between motivation, tool use, participation, and performance in an e-learning course using web-videoconferencing. Comput. Hum. Behav.
[12]
D. Rodriguez and R. Garcia-Martinez. 2014. A proposal of interaction modelling formalisms in virtual collaborative work spaces. Lect. Notes Softw. Eng.
[13]
C. J. Lesko Jr, C. R. Russell, and Y. A. Hollingsworth. 2012. ROTATOR Model: A framework for building collaborative virtual workspaces. In Virtual Reality and Environments. Retrieved from https://www.intechopen.com/books/virtual-reality-and-environments/rotator-model-a-framework-for-building-collaborative-virtual-workspaces.
[14]
Y. Wang and S. Shawn Lee. 2013. Embedding virtual meeting technology in classrooms: Two case studies. In Proceedings of the ACM SIGITE Conference on Information Technology Education.
[15]
Y. Tang and K. F. Hew. 2017. Using Twitter for education: Beneficial or simply a waste of time? Comput. Educ.
[16]
A. I. Wang. 2014. The wear out effect of a game-based student response system. Comput. Educ.
[17]
J. Mahapatra, S. Srivastava, K. Yadav, K. Shrivastava, and O. Deshmukh. 2016. LMS weds WhatsApp: Bridging digital divide using MIMs. In Proceedings of the 13th Web for All Conference.
[18]
N. Balta and K. Tzafilkou. 2019. Using Socrative software for instant formative feedback in physics courses. Educ. Inf. Technol.
[19]
H. Treffz, J. Restrepo, P. Esteban, and A. M. Jimenez. 2010. Virtual collaborative learning environments with the telepresence platform supported by the teaching for understanding pedagogical framework: Experiences in higher educational process in Colombia. Retrieved from https://www.intechopen.com/books/e-learning/virtual_collaborative_learning_environments_with_the_telepresence_platform_supported.
[20]
A. El Mhouti, A. Nasseh, M. Erradi, and J. M. Vasquèz. 2016. Cloud-based VCLE: A virtual collaborative learning environment based on a cloud computing architecture. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Systems of Collaboration (SysCo’16).
[21]
Y. Rhazali, Y. Hadi, and A Mouloudi. 2016. A based-rule method to transform CIM to PIM into MDA. Int. J. Cloud Applic. Comput.
[22]
A. Balanskat, R. Blamire, and S. Kefala. 2006. The ICT impact record: A review of studies of ICT impact on schools in Europe. European Schoolnet. http://tiny.cc/bd1ftz.
[23]
M. Webb and M. Cox. 2004. A review of pedagogy related to information and communications technology. Technol. Pedag. Educ.
[24]
H. P. Chia and A. Pritchard. 2014. Using a virtual learning community (VLC) to facilitate a cross-national science research collaboration between secondary school students. Comput. Educ.
[25]
L. Cai, Y. Yang, and Y. Yang. 2004. A new idea of e-learning: Establishing video library in university network league. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on E-commerce Technology for Dynamic Business.
[26]
E. S. Alim and H. Jin. 2017. Deployment of cloud computing for higher education using Google apps. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conferences on Information Technology. Information Systems and Electrical Engineering (ICITISEE).
[27]
W. Luna and J. L. Castillo Sequera. 2015. Collaboration in the cloud for online learning environments: An experience applied to laboratories. Creat. Educ.
[28]
L. F. Zapata Rivera and M. M. Larrondo Petrie. 2016. Models of collaborative remote laboratories and integration with learning environments. Int. J. Online Biomed. Eng.
[29]
G. L. Kolfschoten, R. O. Briggs, J. H. Appelman, and G. J. de Vreede. 2004. ThinkLets as building blocks for collaboration processes: A further conceptualization. In Groupware: Design, Implementation, and Use. CRIWG 2004. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, G. J. de Vreede, L. A. Guerrero, and G. Marín Raventós (Eds). 3198.
[30]
V. Agredo Delgado, C. A. Collazos, H. M. Hardoun, and N. Safa. 2017. Collaboration increase through monitoring and evaluation mechanisms of the collaborative learning process.
[31]
L. Czekierda, S. Zielinski, and M. Szreter. 2017. Benefits of extending collaborative educational cloud with IoT. In Proceedings of the IEEE 26th International Conference on Enabling Technologies: Infrastructure for Collaborative Enterprises (WETICE’17).
[32]
T. Engelmann, J. Dehler, D. Bodemer, and J. Buder. 2009. Knowledge awareness in CSCL: A psychological perspective. Comput. Hum. Behav.
[33]
L. Kobbe et al. 2007. Specifying computer-supported collaboration scripts. Comput.-support. Collab. Learn.
[34]
K. E. Psannis, C. Stergiou, and B. B. Gupta. 2019. Advanced media-based smart big data on intelligent cloud systems. IEEE Trans. Sustain. Comput.
[35]
C. Gutwin and S. Greenberg. 2002. A descriptive framework of workspace awareness for real-time groupware. Comput Supp. Coop. Work.
[36]
C. A. Collazos, F. L. Gutiérrez, J. Gallardo, et al. 2019. Descriptive theory of awareness for groupware development. J. Amb. Intell. Hum. Comput.
Index Terms
- Automated Orchestration of Online Educational Collaboration in Cloud-based Environments
Recommendations
Streamlined orchestration
Effective classroom management is considered a key criterion to making classrooms effective learning environments. Supporting classroom orchestration-the teacher-centric real-time management of classroom activities-is central to achieving effective ...
Exploring Teacher’s Orchestration Actions in Online and In-Class Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning
Educating for a New Future: Making Sense of Technology-Enhanced Learning AdoptionAbstractTeacher orchestration of technology-enhanced learning has received increasing attention as a factor for enhancing students’ learning gains. However, a limited number of studies have investigated the impact of learning settings on teachers’ ...
Transition in pedagogical orchestration using the interactive whiteboard
This paper revisits the analysis of how the interactive whiteboard (IWB) can contribute to effective pedagogy. It builds on previous work concerning the relationship between the features of IWBs and associated technologies and some key components of ...
Comments
Information & Contributors
Information
Published In
February 2021
392 pages
Copyright © 2021 Association for Computing Machinery.
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].
Publisher
Association for Computing Machinery
New York, NY, United States
Publication History
Published: 16 April 2021
Accepted: 01 July 2020
Revised: 01 July 2020
Received: 01 March 2020
Published in TOMM Volume 17, Issue 1
Check for updates
Author Tags
Qualifiers
- Research-article
- Refereed
Funding Sources
- MRPO Project
- Malopolska Regional Government and AGH-UST
Contributors
Other Metrics
Bibliometrics & Citations
Bibliometrics
Article Metrics
- 0Total Citations
- 161Total Downloads
- Downloads (Last 12 months)15
- Downloads (Last 6 weeks)2
Reflects downloads up to 03 Mar 2025
Other Metrics
Citations
View Options
Login options
Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.
Sign inFull Access
View options
View or Download as a PDF file.
PDFeReader
View online with eReader.
eReaderHTML Format
View this article in HTML Format.
HTML Format