Abstracts:

The field of information technology extends continuously. In universities, the challenge is to manage increasingly large student groups, while at the same time the teachers need to use a lot of time in developing new IT courses and updating the old courses. Unfortunately, many universities face the lack of teaching resources to deal with the situation. To address these problems, we have started an Open Source Courseware (OSCu) project. The fundamental goal of the project is to increase cooperation between universities in course development. In this project, we produce open course materials, and use these materials for distributing courses to several universities. The distributed course model offers universities an easy and inexpensive way to broaden their course selection and to distribute knowledge between teaching personnel from different universities. This paper introduces the principles of the course material production and the distributed course organization in the OSCu project. We also discuss the issues identified when planning and implementing our first course according these principles during spring 2002. (pp. 243-254)

Keywords: university education, distributed course organization, course material reusability

The project presented here is Concourse. The project is aiming at the development of an online writing community as a study support environment for students in Higher Education. Concourse is the name of an online collaborated writing center and is intended as a virtual space for online interaction, a place for collaborated writing in a knowledge rich environment. It offers services required for professional development of students and for the development and exploitation of knowledge about scientific writing. Examples of services provided by the system are services for information access, information dissemination, communication, study rooms, research, support, coaching, training and study, and knowledge management. In this paper, we present our design research approach that we applied in the Concourse project. After that, we elaborate on the design guidelines and the online collaborated writing center Concourse based on these guidelines, as a part of this approach. (pp. 255-262)

Keywords: knowledge communities, design research, collaborated writing

Silvia E. Matalik
Institute for Educational Science
Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen
Dezernat 20
DE-52056 Aachen, Germany
E-mail: mataliki@lbw.rwth-aachen.de

Tim Seipold, Carsten Pils, Frank Imhoff
Department of Computer Science IV
Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen
Ahornstraße 55
DE-52056 Aachen, Germany
E-mail: seipod@i4.informatik.rwth-aachen.de, pils@i4.informatik.rwth-aachen.de, imhoff@i4.informatik.rwth-aachen.de

Practice is an indispensable aspect in learning. In pedagogic, constructivist learning methods, which promote situated learning in authentic context, are widely used. In an inter-disciplinary project, we have been working on a framework (named VIP) for practice-related e-learning. In particular, practical courses in computer science are considered. The framework is guided by general principles for constructivist learning environment. Pedagogical concepts for a representative virtual practical course have been developed, which are supported by three technical building blocks in the framework: an e-learning platform, a video-conferencing system and an interactive simulation environment. While for the first two blocks available tools can be reused, new concepts must be developed for the interactive simulation environment, whereas well-proven event-driven and real-time simulation approaches are adopted. In addition, to facilitate situated learning in virtual groups, the session concept and a client-server architecture with CORBA as communication infrastructure are applied. Major design and implementation concepts are presented in the paper. The representative virtual practical course is performed at our universities to evaluate and to improve the concepts and techniques of the framework. (pp. 263-274)

Jacques Bulchand, Jorge Rodríguez
Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran
Canaria
Departamento de Ekonomia y Direccion de Empresas
Campus te Tafira
ES – 35017 Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain
E-mail: jbulchand@dede.ulpgc.es, jrodriguez@dede.ulpgc.es

In this paper, we propose a methodology for the development of strategic information system (IS) and information and communication technology (ICT) plans in higher education. The methodology we propose is composed of nine steps and involves the whole of the university community, not just IS/ICT technicians. These nine phases, derived from strategic planning procedures, are preplanning, external environment assessment, internal evaluation, strategic interest themes identification, mission and vision statements declaration, strategic axes identification, goals and strategies definition, project and specific actions definition and implementation and evaluation. Paper ends showing application of this planning procedure to the Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. (pp. 275-283)

Pierre-Yves Cunin, Christine Lacombe, Jean-François Desnos and Christian Lenne
CICG 351 Avenue de la Bibliotheque
BP 53
FR – 38041 Grenoble Cedex 9, France
E-mail: christine.lacombe@grenet.fr

GreCO is a common project of the five universities of Grenoble [2] aiming at widespread deployment, within themselves, of information and communication technologies for education in every aspect. One major cornerstone is the design and implementation of a common portal able to support the full set of services, dedicated to education, in a way ensuring coherence (with respect to the five universities) flexibility and customizability. The paper first presents briefly the major objectives and components of the GreCO project. Then it focuses on the strategic project "Portal", enlightening goals, organization and technical approaches and solutions. The GreCO (Grenoble Open Campus) project is the result of a study launched in June 1997, and brings together the five universities in the district of Grenoble. Its aim is the harmonious deployment of Information and Communication Technology applied to Education (ICTE) within the universities. It has the clear ambition of making Grenoble into a model for university education, both nationally and internationally, by 2004. (pp. 285-292)

ICE stands for Information, Controlling, Entscheidung (in English: Information, Controlling, Decision) and is an information system developed to support higher education policy decision-making which has proven itself in practice. The system is currently in use at the German Ministry of Education and Research, at science and research ministries in ten German federal states and at other organisations active in the field of higher education policy (eg, the German Science Council and the German Academic Exchange Service) The debate on protecting personal data which arose in the 1980s led to increasing sensitivity in the population regarding data protection questions and to stricter data protection rules. Both resulted in fewer possibilities of statistical data analysis being allowed: In many fields, statistical analyses can only make use of so-called aggregated datasets. With its ICE information system, the HIS now provides a solution which is capable of extracting a maximum of information from fundamentally limited aggregated datasets. At the same time - subject to their appropriate availability - the system also allows the analysis of individual case data records. The following outlines the main system features. ICE is a web application, is Java based, platform independent (for example, backend runnable under Windows, Linux, SUN OS), and database independent (eg, Oracle, Informix, MySQL), offers very high data import and data analysis flexibility, uses XML technology and the Apache Cocoon based ICE Publishing Framework, which means that it provides a wide range of output formats (XML, HTML, XHTML, Excel, Gnumeric, PDF, etc), simple data exchange with third party programs, and is capable of handling future technologies. has further developments planned in the direction of data expansion, internationalisation, and towards mobile computing (functional expansion of the existing cellular version into a handheld version, ICE-Mobil) (pp. 293-304)

Viljan Mahnič
University of Ljubljana
Faculty of Computer and Information Science
Tržaška 25
SI - 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
E-mail: viljan.mahnic@fri.uni-lj.si

We describe the development strategy, architecture, and logical design of a data warehouse that can be built gradually, exploiting the benefits of the bottom-up, data mart approach. Connections between individual data marts are planned in advance with the aim of building a sequence of data marts that makes it possible to analyze the educational process as a value chain. Queries can be made across different subject areas (viz. enrolment applications, enrolment, examination, and degree records) in order to obtain a snapshot or a slice of the entire value chain that shows how far a subset of students has moved from the enrolment application to their final degree. (pp. 305-311)

Keywords: data warehouse, data mart, star schema data model

Elsa Cardoso, Helena Galhardas, Rito Silva
Instituto Superior Tecnico
INESC-ID
Rua Alves Redol 9
PT – 1000-029 Lisboa, Portugal
E-mail: elsa.cardoso@inesc-id.pt, hig@inesc-id.pt, rito.silva@inesc-id.pt
WWW: www.esw.inesc-id.pt/~eac www.esw.inesc-id.pt/~hig, www.esw.inesc-id.pt/~ars

Maria José Trigueiros
Instituto Superior de Ciências do trabalho e da Empresa
Avenida das Forcas Armadas
PT - 1649-026 Lisboa, Portugal
E-mail: mjtrig@iscte.pt

Keywords: decision support Systems, data warehouse, information systems

Clare Uhomoibhi
Department of Information Services
University of Ulster
Shore Road
UK – Newtownabbey BT37 0QB, United Kingdom
E-mail: c.uhomoibhi@ulster.ac.uk

Alan Masson
Institute of Lifelong Learning
University of Ulster
Shore Road
UK – Newtownabbey BT37 0QB, United Kingdom
E-mail: aj.masson@ulster.ac.uk

Lyn Norris
EduServ
Queen Anne House
11 Charlotte Street
UK – Bath BA1 2NE, United Kingdom
E-mail: lyn.norris@eduserv.org.uk

Keywords: e-learning, integration, authentication

Brian Kelly, Marieke Guy
UKOLN, University of Bath
UK – Bath BA2 7AY, United Kingdom
E-mail:b.kelly@ukoln.ac.uk, m.guy@ukoln.ac.uk

Hamish James
AHDS, Kings College
UK - London, United Kingdom
E-mail:hamish.james@ahds.ac.uk

In this presentation the authors describe approaches for the development of quality assurance (QA) procedures for a digital library programme. The authors argue that QA procedures are needed in order to ensure that deliverables from digital library programmes will be interoperable and give be easily deployed and repurposed. The adoption of open standards is acknowledged as essential in digital library programmes but in a distributed development environment it can be difficult to ensure that programme deliverables actually implement appropriate standards and best practices. The authors describe the approaches to the development of a quality culture based on encouragement of use of QA by project holders in one digital library programme which is funded by the JISC in the UK (pp. 335-344)

Keywords: quality assurance, QA

Jean Sykes, John Paschoud and Christine Cooper
London School of Economics & Political Science
10 Portugal Street
UK - London WC2A 2HD, United Kingdom
E-mail: j.paschoud@lse.ac.uk

Work is in progress by LSE staff to create a Managed Information and Knowledge Environment, simple and managed access to a wide range of appropriate and permitted content for a broad range of users. The portal is only one small part. More difficult tasks are identifying information content (internal and external) for different user types, and developing suitable middleware for managing access, in an institutional, national and international context. Two projects will be highlighted: SECURe, working on the access management middleware, and UK Computing Plus, offering electronic information access to certain library visitors.(pp. 345-351)

Keywords: access management; Integration; authorisation

Mikael Linden
CSC The Finish IT Center for Science
Tieteellinen laskenta Oy
PL 405
FI - 02101 Espoo, Finland
E-mail: mikael.linden@csc.fi

The increase of personal services on the web and the co-operation between organisations have made it necessary to find ways to identify network users regardless of which organisation they are representing. New middleware technologies for user authentication and authorisation are being developed and deployed. This paper outlines the problem of cross-organisational user administration and presents related new technologies and activities in the academic world. Although the paper uses higher education as an example, the results can be generalised to cover cross-organisational services in other kinds of institutions as well. (pp. 353-359)

Keywords:User administration, authentication, authorisation, cross-organisational services

Ursula Hilgers and Peter Holleczek
Regionales Rechenzentrum der FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg
Martensstrasse 1
DE – 91058 Erlangen, Germany
E-mail: hilgers@rrze.uni-erlangen.de, holleczek@rrze.uni-erlangen.de

IP networks are more and more used for transporting distributed applications. Examples are teleconferences or high quality video and audio transmission. Adding such services to IP networks continuously raises the quality of service requirements. As the ''best effort'' service of the IP protocol is not able to fulfill these demands, new mechanisms must be provided in network components. In particular, they must allow data transport with different transmission characteristics. We have investigated these mechanisms by measurements on current network devices like routers and switches in order to find out, what quality of service can be expected in existing networks. Based on the results of theses measurements, we developed a network architecture that is able to fulfil the quality of service demands of all except the most demanding applications on current IP network technology. (pp. 361-371)

Keywords: IP networks, quality of service, multimedia applications