Hellenic Open University Technologies for Open

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Hellenic Open UniversityTechnologies for Open
Distance Learning

• Presenter Panayiotis Siafarikas
• President of the HOU

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Presentation Synopsis

• The Hellenic Open University
• Organization of HOU
• Schools of HOU
• Courses organisation
• Basic e-Learning Technologies
• Module portals
• Students fora
• Webcasts
• State-of-the-art e-Learning Technologies
• E-Classrooms (virtual classrooms)
• Peer-to-peer collaboration (virtual collaboration
  space)
• Conclusions

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Part 1

• The Hellenic Open University

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The Hellenic Open University Today (2004)

• 4 Schools
• 6 Bachelor Courses
• 18 Postgraduate Courses (24 in year 2005)
• Approximately 12,000 students
• 1,000 tutors
• Over 20,000 students (within the next 3 years)

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The Hellenic Open University Schools

• School of Sciences Technology
• School of Humanities
• School of Social Sciences
• School of Applied Arts

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The Hellenic Open University Courses Organisation

• Course Coordinator (Faculty Member)
• Tutors (each tutor responsible for 10 to 30
  students)
• 5 Face-to-face meetings
• 4-6 Projects (distance)
• Face-to-face final exams

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Cities for face-to-face meetings
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The Hellenic Open University Students tasks

• Students study learning material from distance
  (books and e-content)
• Communicate frequently with their tutor (e-mail,
  phone, fora)
• Submit (electronically) 4-6 projects per course
• Receive feedback from their tutor
• Meet in face-to-face meetings
• Attend the final exams

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The Hellenic Open University Educational Material

• Books appropriate for ODL (study from distance)
• Over 500 books developed by the HOU

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Part 2

• Basic e-Learning Technologies

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Basic e-Learning Technologies

• From module portals to the central students
  portal
• Students fora
• Video lectures (streaming video webcasts)
• E-mail, Distribution Lists, e-Panels, etc.

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From module portals to http//online.eap.gr
Free area contains information for the public
Module portal for INF10 Introduction to Computer
Science
Registered students area Requires password
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From module portals to http//online.eap.gr
Module portal for INF10 Introduction to Computer
Science Registered Students area
Additional Education Material, projects, results,
solutions, hints, etc.
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From module portals to http//online.eap.gr
The central HOU portal (based on IBM
WebSphere) Available from 2004
The student logs in and then has access only to
the areas (modules) that (s)he attends
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Students Fora
Forum for a students group. The students may ask
questions, or reply to questions asked by other
students, or read the tutor responses. Here a
student asks and the tutor responds, etc.
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Web Casts
Web casts (or video-Lectures) combine a series of
transparencies with narrative and a simple video
(mostly the speaker).
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Part 3

• State-of-the-art
• e-Learning Technologies

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State-of-the-art e-Learning Technologies

• Virtual classrooms
• Collaboration space

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Virtual Classrooms
A group of 32 students, geographically
distributed over Greek Islands. The first meeting
of this group was held in Athens, while all the
rest were held in a virtual classroom, where the
students had the opportunity attend the meeting
from their island. All meetings were recorded and
made available through the groups web site in
order for the students to be able to review them
later, or be briefed on what was discussed.
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Virtual Classrooms
The tutor explaining to 16 participants in this
virtual classroom an algorithm. The students can
see the slides and the tutor in the video frame.
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Virtual Classrooms
A student asking a question - this image was
extracted from the recording of the virtual
classroom, available to all students of this
group.
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Virtual Collaboration Space
Student pairs that collaborate in the design of a
software system, sharing (from distance) a common
working space. The geographic distribution of
the pairs that participated in a project.
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Actors Components
The main components are shown together with the
main actors that took part in the project (tutor,
facilitator and students). For this purpose, a
technological framework was used to facilitate
peer-to-peer interaction, which supports
collaborative activities of partners at a
distance over low-bandwidth connections.
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The ExperimentParticipants

• Optional assignment (involved collaborative
  building of an algorithm for a bus-ticket venting
  machine using a flowchart representation)
• From the active student population
  (approximately 350), 150 students expressed their
  intent to participate
• 130 students submitted the solutions

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Solutions
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Analysis Tutors view
The tutor is able to see the solution, the
collaboration (each student actions are marked
using different colour i.e. red and blue) and the
discussion (chat)
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Part 4

• Conclusions Links

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Conclusions

• In the case of the Hellenic Open University, the
  evolution from a traditional distance-learning
  model to an e-learning model was not the goal.
  The main objective was the constant improvement
  of the education quality and in certain cases
  improvement cannot be achieved without the use of
  current technology and the exploitation of
  e-learning infrastructures. The careful
  introduction of e-learning facilities in the
  courses educational procedure can aid in
  overcoming major problems such as the limited
  participation in face-to-face meetings, the
  constant demand for updated material available
  even on daily basis, and the high dropout rates
  of geographically remote areas.

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Links

• Papers presenting the use of e-Learning
  technologies in the HOU can be found at
• http//quality.eap.gr
• The HOU main page at
• http//www.eap.gr
• The students portal at
• http//online.eap.gr
• The students fora at
• http//forum.eap.gr

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THANK YOU