Adoption of Blended Learning MOOCs in INDIA

M.Tech Dissertation Report

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of

Master of Technology

by

Naveen Kumar

Roll No: 133050056

under the guidance of

Prof. D. B. Phatak

Department of Computer Science and Engineering

Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay

Mumbai

August 12, 2015

1

Abstract

edx is massive open online course(MOOC) provider and online learning platform created by Mas-

sachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University. edx is a non-profit and edx source has

been made available to the open source community as different modules such as Learning Manage-

ment System(LMS), Course Management System(CMS), edx-ora(Open Response Assessment) and

etc.EdX organization itself has a MOOC named as edX which host courses from various institute

across the world. In our study we first concentrated on feature based survey of several learning

management systems(LMS) in which we included both open sourced and proprietary LMSs then we

concluded with few features which may need to be implemented in edX-platform for better perfor-

mance. Secondly, we presented an approach for adaption of blended learning MOOC into edX. Then

implementing a ”IIT BombayX MOOC Model” and it is a new type of methodology in education

system. Then after creating a local center(institute) in the blended model to be introduced.Using our

model successful completion rate in e-learning can be increased upto its limits hence, the throughput

of the e-learning system will be improved.

i

Acknowledgements

This report would not have been possible without the kind support and help of many individuals

and organization. I would like to extend my sincere thanks to all of them.

I am highly indebted to Prof. Deepak B. Phatak for his guidance and constant supervision

as well as for providing necessary information regarding the project & also for their support in

completing the project. Without his guidance and persistent help, I am afraid, this dissertation

would not have been possible. In addition, thanks to Mr. Nagesh Karmali for providing his

guidance, help and support during the project.

i

Declaration

I declare that this written submission represents my ideas in my own words and where others

ideas or words have been included, I have adequately cited and referenced the original sources. I

also declare that I have adhered to all principles of academic honesty and integrity and have not

misrepresented or fabricated or falsified any idea/data/fact/source in my submission. I understand

that any violation of the above will be cause for disciplinary action by the Institute and can also

evoke penal action from the sources which have thus not been properly cited or from whom proper

permission has not been taken when needed.

ii

Contents

List of Figures 1

1 Problem Statement 2

1.1 Problem Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

1.2 Existing System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

1.3 Proposed System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

2 Introduction 4

2.1 Massive Open On-line Course . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

2.2 Few Existing MOOCs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

2.3 Challenges and Advantages of MOOCs[7] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

2.4 Blended Learning MOOCs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

2.5 Advantages of Blended Learning MOOCs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

2.6 Difference between MOOCs and Blended MOOCs[11] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

3 Technical Requirements 10

3.1 Django Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

4 Blended Learning MOOCs of IITBombayX 12

4.1 Introduction to Blended Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

4.2 Design and Analysis of Blended MOOCs of IITBombayX[13] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

5 Blended MOOCs MIS Reports 17

5.1 Management Information System report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

5.2 Management Information System Modules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

5.2.1 Faculty Module[3] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

iii

5.2.2 Student Module . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

5.2.3 Program Coordinator Module . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

5.2.4 Administrator Module . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

5.2.5 General Information Module . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

6 Design and Work Flow 23

6.1 Design And Work flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

6.1.1 Sequential Steps For Approval of Hierarchy of Users . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

6.1.2 Data Flow representation of Blended Learning Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

7 Implementation 28

7.1 Modification in Blended Learning MOOCS Code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

7.1.1 Single sign in user . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

7.1.2 Session Logout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

7.2 Experiment - 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

7.3 Blended Learning System Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

7.3.1 LMS User Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

7.3.2 CMS Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

7.4 Implementation and Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

7.4.1 University as a central server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

7.4.2 Local University Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

7.4.3 MOOC Instructor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

7.4.4 Affliated college under local University . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

7.4.5 Local Instructor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

7.4.6 Local Student . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

7.4.7 Grading System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

7.5 Experiment -2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

8 Conclusion and Future Work 37

iv

List of Figures

2.1 Massive Open Online Course . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

3.1 Django frame work[2] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

4.1 Login page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

4.2 Selection role for different users . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

4.3 Selection of on-line courses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

4.4 Enrolling a course list panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

4.5 student information for course enrolled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

5.1 Login MAP Application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

5.2 Login MAP Application for different users . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

5.3 Study table of MAP application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

5.4 Grading issue for each student and Down loadable file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

5.5 Admin panel of MAP application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

5.6 General information per student of MAP application[3] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

6.1 Data Flow representation of Blended Learning Model[12] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

7.1 LMS and CMS interface of Blended Learning Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

7.2 LMS and CMS interface of Blended Learning Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

7.3 CMS module in Blended Learning Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

7.4 Dashboard of MOOC University interface of Blended Learning Model . . . . . . . . . 33

7.5 Dashboard of MOOC Instructor interface of Blended Learning Model . . . . . . . . . 33

7.6 Dashboard of the Affiliated College interface of Blended Learning Model . . . . . . . 34

7.7 A table of users who needs approval interface of Blended Learning Model . . . . . . . 34

7.8 API design interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

1

Chapter 1

Problem Statement

1.1 Problem Statement

The concept of local center (institute) has been introduced. A local center consists of classrooms, (op-

tional) labs, Internet enabled access terminals. In addition local center also hosts software required

to carry out local activities. This software is managed by a local administrator who is responsible for

activities such as uploads and downloads as well as data integrity. Local faculty and local students

meet regularly to carry out activities such as discussions, group projects, quizzes and tests etc as

prescribed by the course designer.

We will be replacing the AI grading with Staff (Local Faculty) grading where the local faculty will

evaluate all the student responses. These grades will then be directly sent to the faculty. The local

faculty will themselves have to go through some calibration test and will be monitored by the coor-

dinators and seniors.

Application Interface is designed to invoke the data from front end and also to invoke from

back-end.

1.2 Existing System

In the current blended MOOC learning version the designed application programming interface is

designed such a way that no other user interface(UI) is supported.

2

1.3 Proposed System

We will be replacing the AI grading with Staff (Local Faculty) grading where the local faculty will

evaluate all the student responses. These grades will then be directly sent to the faculty. The

local faculty will themselves have to go through some calibration test and will be monitored by the

coordinators and seniors.

Brief Study on Blended Learning Assessment Methods.

The Application Programming interface is designed in such a way that all the APIs used in Blended

Learning version were called from all other external applications.

Modifications can be done in the Blended learning version like single sign in and session logout.

3

Chapter 2

Introduction

2.1 Massive Open On-line Course

A massive open on-line course (MOOC) [1]is an on-line course aimed at unlimited participation and

open access via the web. In addition to traditional course materials such as videos, readings, and

problem sets, MOOCs provide interactive user forums that help build a community for students,

professors, and teaching assistants (TAs).MOOC[1] aims to provide quality education with the help

of various features like videos, study materials, quizzes and on-line exams and trying to make it

more efficient than traditional education system. In MOOC, M stands for Massive which represents

scalability of Communities and connections of users, O stands for Open which represents that it is

at free of cost to everywhere in the World where as Internet can be accessed, O stands for On- line

which represents that it can provide a real time interactions between users and finally C stands for

Courses which represents that different kind of courses can be offered by this system as shown in the

following Figure 1.1.

EdX is a non-profit organization which is formed by the collaboration of Harvard and MIT. Open

EdX is an open source platform for building MOOCs with various advanced features to make the

online education more effective. EdX organization itself has a MOOC named as edX which host

courses from various institute across the world. This project aims to add additional features for IIT-

BombayX model of edX so as to develop a MOOC platform for IIT Bombay named as IITBombayX.

Development of edX aims to implement all standard features provided by edX and to enhance it by

including new features as local center(institute).

able). Discussion forums.

4

Figure 2.1: Massive Open Online Course

2.2 Few Existing MOOCs

MOOC that it can be used either in a educational organizations or in a corporate environments

where large scale interactive participation can be existed for learning and training process. I listed

below a few MOOCs and some of their respective features.

1. Coursera : Coursera is a social enterprise company owned by Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller,

partnering with leading universities aiming to educate millions of people to enables the best

professors to teach tens or hundreds of thousands of students.

features: Certification, Employee recruitment, Human tutoring, Enterprises pay to run their

own courses, Forums and peer grading, Secure assessments, Applicant screening, Sponsorships,

Tuition fees, With dead lines

2. edx : edX was founded by Harvard University and MIT, with the intention not only of offer-

ing interactive study on the web, but researching how students learn and how technology can

transform learning both oncampus and worldwide.

5

features:Video lectures, Virtual laboratory, Discussion forums, Emails & Notifications, edX

meet-ups, Different files formats, Calendar, Wiki, Different type of assessments, Support for

large traffic, Online quizzes, Multi-lingual support, Progress analytics, Certification etc.

3. Udacity : Udacity developed from free computer science classes offered through Stanford

University in 2011. It is a private educational enterprise founded by Sebastian Thrun, David

Stavens, and Mike Sokolsky with significant funding from venture capital. Like the other

MOOCs Udacity is rolling out courses in batches concentrating in fields such as computer sci-

ence and programming, web development, artificial intelligence, mathematics and entrepreneur-

ship.

features:Certification, Students resumes and job match services, Social networks integra-

tion,Forums,Employers paying to recruit students, Sponsored high-tech skills courses,No dead

lines,Proctored exams.

4. Futurelearn : Building on the decades of experience of the Open University, Futurelearn is

determined to be different to the other major MOOC players. Instead of redirecting existing

content Futurelearn will actively engage with people seeking selfenrichment as well as those

interested in more formal learning experiences.The role that entertainment plays in learning is

often overlooked. Take a glance at massive open online courses (MOOCs). Theyre often very

conventional, based on lectures broadcast at students, rather than engaging with them.

2.3 Challenges and Advantages of MOOCs[7]

Challenges to provide higher education in MOOCs

1. Accreditation

2. Self regulation and motivation

3. High dropout rate

4. Standards and grading

5. Automated grading

6. Peer grading? Teaching assistant grading?

6

7. The lecture dominates most courses

8. Assuring academic integrity

9. Application in the humanities

10. Learning analytics - a digital portfolio of participants activities?

Advantages of MOOCs[7]

1. Learner can use any on-line tool that are relevant.

2. People have no access to former higher education can participate.

3. Informal and can be organized easily.

4. Content can be created and shared as the course progresses.

5. Learning will be possible by the collaboration of learners and instructors.

6. Learners are learning from one another by discussion forums and social activities not by the

facilitators.

7. Enrollment is open to anybody in the World, no fee, no credentials needed but applicant

8. should have the Internet access.

9. Supports career opportunities.

10. peer grading supported.

2.4 Blended Learning MOOCs

Blended learning is a new educational model with great potential to increase student outcomes and

create exciting new roles for teachers. In this course you will learn about the different types of

blended learning. Blended learning is a learning process that is facilitated by the effective combi-

nation of different modes of delivery, models of teaching styles of learning and applying them in

an interactive meaningful learning environment.The model of blended learning is the combining of

on-line and face-to-face classroom components.Different learning problems requires different solu-

tions as each learner has a unique learning style and unique requirement. It brings learners together

7

along with instructors to support collaborative learning through interactive content which will create

high interest, accountability and real assessment. Even Corporate bodies are moving from classroom

training to blended learning because of the benefits of costs and savings, optimizing resources, scale,

speed and throughput.

Blended learning can increase access and flexibility for learners, increase level of active learning,

and achieve better student experiences and outcomes. For teaching staff, blended learning can

improve teaching and class management practices.

1. face-to-face and on-line learning activities and formats

2. traditional timetabled classes with different modes, such as weekend, intensive,external, trimester

3. well established technologies such as lecture capture, and/or with social media and emerging

technologies

4. simulations, group activities, site-based learning, practicals

2.5 Advantages of Blended Learning MOOCs

1. Elimination of duplicate work of local instructors.

2. Local instructors will spend more time with students face-to-face in person to improve the

student learning.

3. A better training from the Super-instructor to local instructors because some of local instructors

may less confident about teaching methods and other odds.

4. Better teaching from well established university

5. Better learning of each student when it compares with past learning.

6. Successful completion rate can be increased for every one.

7. Minimum pass grade is guarantied because of students may afraid of the standards of IIT

Bombay

8

2.6 Difference between MOOCs and Blended MOOCs[11]

1. MOOCs are a relatively new spin on web-based learning that opens up classes to the masses,

though usually not for credit.

2. Blended learning, on the other hand, uses technology to enhance traditional learning environ-

ments.

3. In blended classrooms, also know as flipped classrooms, professors use classroom time to interact

with students and use the Internet to deliver lectures, typically as web videos.

4. Among the many differences between blended classrooms and MOOCs is that the blended

classroom relies heavily on a physical meeting place to engage with students.

9

Chapter 3

Technical Requirements

This Chapter is presented to help people who works on open edX, IITBombayX, Blended learning

IITBombayx and MIS reports. Required technologies that one should learn are listed below. These

details are highly required for beginners to work with Dajango Framework[2].

3.1 Django Framework

1. Django Framework[2] is a python based web framework. Using django one can create complex

and database driven web application easily.

2. Like MVC model django follows MVT (Model-View-Controller). MVT is explained in the

following list.

3. Model is a python module. It is used to create database. In this python module, every class

represents a database table.

4. View is also a python module. It contains sevral methods. These methods serves user request

(HttpRequest). Every user request (URL) have a specified method in this module.

5. Templates are used to make web pages. Mako is a template system which is used by django

framework. Mako template system combines html and python together.

6. URLConf is one more important python module. It contains all URLs which are called by user.

7. Each URL in this module associates with a specific function in view module.

10

Figure 3.1: Django frame work[2]

8. After performing any requested tasks,the view returns an HTTP response object to the web

browser. Optionally, the view can save a version of the HTTP response object in the caching

system for a specified length of time.

9. Templates typically return HTML pages. The Django[2] template language offers HTML au-

thors a simple-to-learn syntax while providing all the power needed for presentation logic.

11

Chapter 4

Blended Learning MOOCs of

IITBombayX

4.1 Introduction to Blended Learning

Blended learning[12] is a learning process that is facilitated by the effective combination of different

modes of delivery, models of teaching styles of learning and applying them in an interactive meaningful

learning environment. This model is a combination of on-line education and face-to-face classroom

methods. The blended learning mostly depends on analysis of the learners requirements, the level

of understanding, the nature and location of the learners and resources available. The blended

learning is changed the way of learning activities like perceiving and delivering the information. The

advantages of this model is that the passive learning environment will become an active learning

environment. It brings learners together along with instructors to support collaborative learning

through interactive content. Even corporate bodies are moving from classroom training methods to

blended learning because of the benefits, costs and savings, optimizing resources, scale, speed and

throughput. The advances in technology have an impact on emerging models of blended learning.

12

Figure 4.1: Login page

4.2 Design and Analysis of Blended MOOCs of IITBombayX[13]

1. Login Initially, after appearing a login dashboard we need to login with the credentials as

login id and password if you are already a user if not you need to go for a registration dashboard

to register yourself.

2. Selection of roles : Here there are four types of roles depend on your possession i.e, head of

institute, program coordinator, course coordinator, teacher and then find a relevant courses to

enroll in a dashboard.

3. Courses Enrollment : Then we need to enroll for a courses, for this enrollment we need

to find a relevant courses then select a course to enroll to participate in the selected course.

For enrolling a course we need to fill the registration form to get approval from the program

coordinator.You will now get the message that your Institute has successfully enrolled for the

selected course.If your Institute does not wish to be a part of a particular course, you can

un-enroll from the course.

13

Figure 4.2: Selection role for different users

4. Team Management : In Team Management [12]module is to find out the Institute represen-

tatives , pending requests, course representatives, team members from your respective institute.

Institute representatives are HOD and program coordinator of their receptive institute can list

the details of their, here the HOD can change the program coordinator if he required at any

time.

In course coordinator dashboard[13] you will find the view course team, substitute teacher,

unenrollment. Clicking on a course you will list out the details of a students who were enrolled

for a course and course team. Here the coordinator see the the students enrollment requests

for thier respective courses and need for a approval or cancellation.

5. Students Information : After logging in as a Teacher, you will see three functions on the

14

Figure 4.3: Selection of on-line courses

dashboard of Upload Students, Student Details and View Report. Then teacher will upload

own CSV file which consists of the information of their students. The upload csv file consists

of student details as per their registration details are given, teacher will check the list of data

with uploaded csv file and edit if they have any errors as per data given, if found errors the

students approval get to be invalid.

In view reports we will find the performance of those students whose information has been

uploaded, here we can download the performance report file if we required.

15

Figure 4.4: Enrolling a course list panel

Figure 4.5: student information for course enrolled

16

Chapter 5

Blended MOOCs MIS Reports

5.1 Management Information System report

The Management Information System[3] is a web based application based on EDX architecture which

helps people to gather and analyze the data about students and courses given on a particular MOOC

platform. Management Information System extracts data of each participated student, faculty and

view the performance of individual among various courses and others, and these reports were not

available in the integrated form as given by this applications. In MIS feature is to view and access the

performance for all enrolled courses and able download only the data into files. The main objective is

view an interface for each member participates as student, faculty and others of various institutes to

assist the improvement, performance evaluation results in better learning. This module is described

for various section of participated users.All system information is maintained in a database, which

is located on a web-server. The application interacts with mysql and mongo database and perform

insertion, update as well as deletion as directed by the user.

17

Figure 5.1: Login MAP Application

5.2 Management Information System Modules

5.2.1 Faculty Module[3]

Faculty is the main module who guides the student enrolled in a course. He gives the answers to a

questions raised by the student in the discussion forms and provides the content, videos related to

course which he offered for a semester. In the MIS reports the faculty shows various reports in case

of student approach.

Course Enrollment : Initially, the first dashboard of a faculty shows the list of students of the

courses for which the faculty is assigned. On the basis of enrollment data the reported is generated

in the form of bar graph by clicking the graph we get the details of the course in the form of table.

In the table data contains who all enrolled for their course included as student id, student name,

student enrolled course. The faculty can search for a course and details will displayed in the form of

table.

Grading reports : Grading reports can be shown on clicking bar graph on a specified course, it

shows the total marks, user name and the marks of each quiz with the overall average of each student

enrolled for that course.

Discussion Form : The reports of discussion form shows in the form of bar graph depends on

answered, unanswered questions and discussions.The faculty can filter the data based on courses by

searching in the drop down menu.

18

Figure 5.2: Login MAP Application for different users

5.2.2 Student Module

The system is designed to improve the student learning and development for student education in all

aspects. The student role is to enroll for a course and attempts all the discussions, quizzes, assign-

ments. Administrator, faculty and program manager all are focused on increasing the attentiveness

and quality of education prevailing across large group of students whereas general information reports

are prepared for knowing the level of education across various groups. The student module reports

were designed on following entities.

Attendance : In this dashboard[3] the the graph is plotted in the bar as the appearance of student

for a course regularly. For each course the information is gathered on the total number of sections

attended over total sections, this results in how the student show effective towards a course and

makes him to improve a course.

Course Marks : In this dashboard the graph is plotted in bars on the basis of marks secured by

total over each particular course, it shows the average marks overall, the actual grades were depicted,

and this graph shows the maximum and average grade secured for a particular course along with

student grade simultaneously.

Structure of Course : The course dashboard is subdivided into many sections. This section

helps the student to know how to search and move around the entire course, i.e. how the course is

19

Figure 5.3: Study table of MAP application

designed and how the quizzes, various topics and other activities are divided.

5.2.3 Program Coordinator Module

In the program coordinator dashboard contains all the information of all the institutes who were

enrolled for IITBombayX who are supposed to offer a course through IITBombayX[12]. In this

module the programmer has all the data related to enrolled institutes, courses offered, students of

participants, number of students under each institutes and course-wise number of students in the in-

stitutes. Total Number of Enrollments : This report describes the number of students enrolled

for all the courses in all the partner institutes.It also gives detailed description of the number of

students enrolled course-wise for a particular institute. Thus, the course-wise efficiency and student

participation can also be viewed by the Program Manager.

Certificate Issued : The certificate issued for a student has two types honor certificate and

verified. Firstly the graph gives institute wise detail about the number of courses which provide ver-

ified and number of courses which provide honor certificates. The bar chart has detailed description

about the number of students who have got their respective certificates accordingly honor or verified

enrolled for courses under an institute.

20

Figure 5.4: Grading issue for each student and Down loadable file

5.2.4 Administrator Module

This panel is used by the administrator to view the overall performance and health of the system

running the courses.

Disk Usage : For the administrator, it is very important to know how much space is occupied by

each course and how much space is still unused or unoccupied. Disk usage is calculated in terms of

the courses which are running on IITBombayX [12]site.

Registrations Done : This report gives the number of users registering on IITBombayX per day

in the form of a line graph in which each node corresponds to a particular date.

Enrollment Details : This report gives a number of enrollments on a particular date is shown,

on further clicking a particular date, the course name and number of enrollments for a particular

course are shown. Here too, the Administrator can filter the data based on date.

5.2.5 General Information Module

It specifies how much socially beneficial our system is to the people of the country through some

reports generated based on level of education, age, gender, state and subject .

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Figure 5.5: Admin panel of MAP application

Figure 5.6: General information per student of MAP application[3]

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Chapter 6

Design and Work Flow

6.1 Design And Work flow

In Adaption of blended learning MOOCs six types of users will participate in function the model.

Here every user should be approval by the higher functionality user, this is the main task over the

system. Each user shows their functionality depends on the other user according to their request

accessed. The following figure chart shows how the college will approves the user.

The following six users were clearly explained in the following description.

1. University : The main function of university is to approval the MOOC instructor and local

university which were requested to approval. MOOC University behaves has a central server

and final grades are to be alloted by the MOOC university.

2. MOOC Instructor : This user is adopted from existing edX-platform with a proper modifi-

cations to it. Goals of this user are creating MOOCs courses and manages them.

3. Local University : Local university function is to approval the local collages under the

affiliated university. And also to add the respective courses, assignments, exams and queries

under the approval of MOOCs University.

4. Affiliated College : Activities of this user are approving all local instructors and students of

this college.

5. Local Instructor : Activities of this user are following respective MOOCs instructor to guide

the students, guiding and grading the students.

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6. College Students : This user is also adopted from existing edX-platform with a proper

modifications. Activities of this user are opting the MOOC courses, and following the both

local instructor and MOOCs instructor.

6.1.1 Sequential Steps For Approval of Hierarchy of Users

The following steps explains about approval process in Adaption of Blended Learning MOOCs.

1. Blended learning model administrative sends a notification to all universities about the model

and functionalities to the participated MOOCs Universities.

2. Interested universities who all want to participate will sign up and sends a request to add for

blended learning model system.

3. Blended model system verify the details of each university and approves the request from

Universities.

4. There after MOOCs university sends a notification to MOOCs instructors and local universities.

5. MOOCs instructors and local universities sign up the blended learning model and sends request

to system.

6. Blended learning model collects the details from MOOCs instructor and local universities and

send to the information to respective local university.

7. Local university verify the details of each user and approves to participate in blended learning

model system.

8. Local universities sends notification to all affiliated colleges, students,local instructors.

9. All sign up users were verified by their local universities and affiliated colleges, and also make

them to participate in blended learning system.

10. Participated users were registered to respective courses and attends for video lectures, assign-

ments,quizzes,quires.

11. Finally the local teacher is able send the grades to blended learning system and the system

approves the grades final allocation of grades were given by the blended learning system.

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6.1.2 Data Flow representation of Blended Learning Model

A course is announced as cs101X from IIT Bombay as a central server and which can handle all the

activities to be performed. There are many stages to perform and different roles were allocated at

each stage BLM model. The data flow of blended model responsibilities were explained as follows.

Course: First, the announcement of a course, interested students can register can register them self

on an edx.org

Registration for a course: Here any number of students can register to a course by providing

valid data while register to a course.

central coordinator:

• The central coordinator responsible to handle overall operational management of Infrastructure,

ant type of queries, problems solving, progress etc.

• Inspection of local co-coordinator and support.

• Monitoring progress and addressing the execution of each problems.

Central Course Assistant: In these each assistant is assigned to a local centers to guide the

activities to be performed.

• Here the assistants use to train the local faculty on respective topics, tools and there responsi-

bilities to be done.

• training local administrator on general and course of specific tools.

• Here they need to handle the discussion forums i.e central forums.

• Assessing and selecting local faculty and local administrator

• Monitoring local quizzes, group projects, discussions etc. at assigned centers

• Supplementing/complementing faculty lectures with additional forums for ”weak centers

• Preparing and analyzing results.

Local co-ordinator:

• Overall operational management[13] (Infrastructure, progress, queries, problem resolution etc.

at a center

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• Monitoring progress and anticipating/addressing execution problems at a centre.

Local administrator:

• Installing and supporting general and course specific tools at a center

• Inspection of local infrastructure and support (local co-ordinator)

• Monitoring progress and anticipating/addressing execution problems

Local faculty:

• Handling local interactions (discussions, doubt clearance etc.)

• Supervising quizzes/tests

• Evaluating quizzes/tests

• Monitoring/mentoring group/individual projects

Local student:

• Attending local interactions

• Attempting quizzes/tests at local centers

• Completing individual/group projects

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Figure 6.1: Data Flow representation of Blended Learning Model[12]27

Chapter 7

Implementation

7.1 Modification in Blended Learning MOOCS Code

7.1.1 Single sign in user

1. In blended learning MOOCs code found an issue that there are multiple logins with same

identity is possible.

2. I have modified a code that a multiple users can login with same ID is not possible at same

time.

3. If a user tried to login with same Id then the user shown on interface already a user as login

with same id and login is not possible.

7.1.2 Session Logout

After a user login into an account as a teacher or a student, he might be inactivity for a some period

of time.As far as my experience goes, locking the screen on a workstation after 10-15 minutes is

considered best practice. To enforce such a policy it would help to reference an established security

standard that says the same. Unfortunately I have only found standards so far that mention screen

locking as a must, but do not suggest appropriate values for ”time of inactivity before locking”.

I have done a modification in the code given a session time for 300 seconds for inactivity and gets

logout from a account.

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7.2 Experiment - 1

7.3 Blended Learning System Implementation

Adaption of Blended Learning System is implemented through modifying the edX-platform. Blended

learning system also is divided into two components as LMS(Learning Management System) and

CMS(Course Management System) and modules were added into their respective studios. Instructor

and local university were added into LMS module and college, local instructor and students were

added to CMS module. The details of each user were registered in LMS module and stored in

database. Here first Blended course providing university behaves as a central server. Both local

instructor and Affiliated college get approval from central server. The figure shows the modules of

LMS and CMS interface.

Figure 7.1: LMS and CMS interface of Blended Learning Model

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7.3.1 LMS User Interface

The home page of LMS module provides links for sign in and sign up for users. Different sign in links

are presented for different user types. These links are used to redirect them to different registration

forms.In sign in page also different sign in links are presented for different user types. These links

are used to redirect them to different dashboards according to user type.

7.3.2 CMS Interface

The home page of LMS module provides links for sign in and sign up for users. Different sign in links

are presented for different user types. In CMS web page the details of courses and work asserted will

be done in this module.

7.4 Implementation and Results

7.4.1 University as a central server

University plays a main role in CMS interface acts as a main server which contains all the data

from registered users and their respective details from the local college.Registration process for this

user type collects complete details from user to make an approval to register a course. Interface is

developed for this user to carry out administrative activity of each registered user is approving MOOC

Instructors and Local Universities user types. All users who were registers for MOOC were merged

in the form of table and table contains the details of user of each in a specified column. The registers

user need to to agree all the terms and conditions of the MOOCs provided instructions.MOOC

instructor who is able to manage the courses and approvals done my the university. The following

dashboard shows the registered user needs an approval from the University.

7.4.2 Local University Interface

In CMS module the local university acts as a main component which approves the local college

which are under university affiliated college. A dashboard also developed for this user to carry out

administrative tasks. Administrative tasks are approving Affiliated Colleges of this Local University.

All affiliated colleges who needs approval are given in a table in the dashboard of this Local University.

Administrative people are responsible for checking and and approving them.

30

Figure 7.2: LMS and CMS interface of Blended Learning Model

7.4.3 MOOC Instructor

Instructor is who enable to manage courses data. The registration process of this user type also

collects all information related to a Professor. Here the MOOCs instructor responsible to create a

course and offer the course in the blended learning system. Uploading all related data according to

the course and made approval from the local university interface.

7.4.4 Affliated college under local University

This user newly developed in LMS module and it represents a private affiliated college. The reg-

istration process for this user collects all details related to a private affiliated college to carry out

administrative tasks of this user, a dashboard is implemented.Administrative tasks are approving

Affiliated College Students, Local Instructors of Affiliated College. A list of users who need ap-

proval are given in a table in the dashboard of this Affiliated College. Administrative personnel of

this Affiliated College checks and approves them. In dashboard the approval colleges from different

31

Figure 7.3: CMS module in Blended Learning Model

universities were need to approval.

7.4.5 Local Instructor

This user developed in LMS module, and it represents a instructor from an affiliated college.A

dashboard interface is developed, instructor can follow a course from MOOC Instructor can upload

assignments, courses related quires,quizzes,projects,marks of his class students. The local instructor

need to submit the final marks to the main server and main server evaluates and submit the final

grade to registered user.

7.4.6 Local Student

This user is adopted from edX-platform,registration process collects information related to a college

student. Dashboard also modified according to blended learning system requirement. This user can

opt courses which are available and participate to learn and complete the course. Student is to

register the course and watch the related course videos, attending queries reply, asking queries to

professor directly in the discussion forms when ever he required, attending assignment, completion

of quizzes in time and finally the grades were alloted to student.

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Figure 7.4: Dashboard of MOOC University interface of Blended Learning Model

Figure 7.5: Dashboard of MOOC Instructor interface of Blended Learning Model

7.4.7 Grading System

Automate grading system is implemented in blended learning system.The AI grading system is

replaced with Staff (Local Faculty) grading where the local faculty will evaluate all the student

responses. These grades will then be directly sent to the faculty. The local faculty will themselves

have to go through some calibration test and will be monitored by the coordinators and seniors.

Peer Grading (Automate grading) The faculty evaluates a certain number of responses(say 20)

which will be used by students for calibration before they can begin peer grading. When the student

has submitted his response, he will be given a certain number of responses(say 4 out of the above

20) to evaluate. The student will evaluate in order to get ready to peer grade.Implementing peer

evaluation for projects too, calibration on projects and then evaluation will be time taking. There

33

Figure 7.6: Dashboard of the Affiliated College interface of Blended Learning Model

Figure 7.7: A table of users who needs approval interface of Blended Learning Model

will be lesser number of students per institution and hence this will be done on a much smaller scale.

Finally grades were done on automate grading system which we have been implemented in blended

learning system.

7.5 Experiment -2

API Design

Application Interface is designed which can call from any other UI. In blended MOOCS the API is

designed such a way that no other UI is allowed to extract the data from back-end server database.

There are some security issues which data cannot be extracted other then the APIs used in Django

34

framework. Here are some API’s found from the blended MOOCS in CMS and LMS part.

Figure 7.8: API design interface

1. In the present blended learning system the[1] API is designed to support User Interface which

cannot be edited.

2. Many Django APIs[2] are used in the present blended learning system, some APIs are mentioned

below

(a) rest framework The Web browsable API is a huge usability win for your developers.

Authentication policies including packages for OAuth1a and OAuth2. Serialization that

supports both ORM and non-ORM data sources.

(b) dogapi[2] This section details Datadog’s HTTP API. It makes it easy to get data in

35

and out of Datadog. The Datadog API uses resource-oriented URLs, uses status codes to

indicate the success or failure of requests and returns JSON from all requests.

(c) celery When you send a task message in Celery, that message will not contain any source

code, but only the name of the task you want to execute. This works similarly to how

host names works on the Internet.

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Chapter 8

Conclusion and Future Work

Transforming the teaching and learning methods is a continuous effort across the world today. The

technological revolution has enabled it bringing to us a highly dynamic and updated knowledge base.

The student community is also very active on the Internet and can make the best use of the available

online platforms for their benefit. In the Indian scenario, customized platforms such as MEC prove

to be helpful for the students since they dont have to refer to multiple sources for a topic. This

study also highlights the advantages of using MEC as a source of knowledge for the students from

the engineering background. Online courses need to reach out to their publics to bring in a sense of

reality. Regional associations for students and teachers would help the participants to come together,

adding a sense of reality to the course.

MOOCs promise to open up higher education by providing accessible, flexible, affordable and

fast-track completion of universities courses for free or at a low cost for learners who are interested

in learning. The popularity of MOOCs has attracted a great deal of attention from HE institutions

and private investors around the world seeking to build their brands and to enter the education

market. Institutions will need to look more closely at and learn from the different initiatives outside

traditional institutions that are developing new business, financial and revenue models to meet the

different needs of new groups of learners .

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