E-Sikshak – A journey and possibilities

Sandesh Jain

C-DAC, Hyderabad

3rd NKN Annual Workshop 2014

At

IIT, Guwahati

Agenda

• E-Sikshak – overview

• Usage of e-Sikshak

• 2nd generation of E-sikshak

– Personalized e-learning (My-Sikshak)

– Cloud based e-learning (Megh-Sikshak)

• E-Sikshak as service over NKN

• Future e-learning ecosystem with NKN

E-Sikshak - overview

• Outcome of an R&D initiative supported by DeitY, Govt. Of India during 2004.

• E-Sikshak Release 1 – Depict the traditional classroom learning process in

online mode

– Component based e-learning services

– Multilingual mode of instruction

• Limitations – Built on primitive technology with low scalability and

extensibility.

– Non standard compliant

eSikshak Release 2

• Multilingual e-learning framework with following salient features: – e-learning components viz. user management, course & content

delivery, query handling capability, assessment, collaboration in different modes, etc., required for effective online learning environment.

– Incorporation of standard compliances: International web-content standard SCORM 2004 version 3 and IMS Question and Test interoperability ver 2.1 (IMS QTI)

– Better scalability and extensibility with MVC architecture. – Total of ten (10) Indian language support viz., Hindi, Telugu,

Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Marathi, Sanskrit, Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati.

– Incorporation of video conferencing facility with counselling and virtual classroom scheduling facility.

– Provision of mobile interaction.

Stakeholders in eSikshak

Basically there are three stakeholders in eSikshak

– Administrator

– Instructor

– Learner

Features are divided into following categories:

– Organization (Users & Courses)

– Course Content

– Assessment

– Collaboration

– Communication

– Personalization

Features in eSikshak

Stakeholder-wise categorization of features -

Usage of eSikshak

• 10,000+ learners have experienced e-learning services through e-sikshak installed over 15+ institutes across India and three installations outside India.

• To name a few user agencies…

– Indian Law Institute [ILI], New Delhi

– Rice Knowledge Management Portal [RKMP] , Directorate of Rice Research (DRR)

– National Institute of Agricultural Extension Management (MANAGE), Hyderabad

– Jayoti Vidyapeeth Women’s University, Jaipur

– College of Air Warfare, Hyderabad

2nd Generation of e-Sikshak

• Instructional design/ pedagogy features

– Personalized e-Learning services

– My-Sikshak

• Technological features

– Usage of Cloud computing and its infrastructure

– Megh-Sikshak

PERSONALIZED ELEARNING FRAMEWORK

MySikshak

My-Sikshak (Personalized e-Learning framework) which extends the learning

environment with personalized e-Learning services assisted by instructor. It mainly

focuses on the needs and aspirations of individual learners. This model recognizes

that every student is an individual, with a distinct learning style, learning pace,

learning path and learning aspiration.

Features Supported Salient Features

Interoperable Services

Standards Compliant

Intelligent filter mechanism to group

the learners

Collaborative activity/course building

environment for instructors

User interface with rich interaction

Platform independent.

User Registration

Course Organizer

Learning Path Editor

Dash Board

Personalized Content and Activity

Delivery

Adaptive Assessment Formulation

Semantic Query Handler

Inputs for achieving personalization

• Felder-Silverman Learning Style Model (FSLSM)

– Identification of learning style

• Prior course knowledge modeling

– Identification of proficiency level

FSLSM

• Felder-Silverman Learning style model(1988)

• Particularly applicable to engineering education

• Depends on how student receives and process information.

Product Features

Course organizer

• Folder hierarchy based conversion into SCORM compliant course.

• Collaboration among the Instructors to upload the content in to the course

Learners’ information in dashboard

• Dashboard provides assistance to instructor in analysing the learning styles of the student cluster.

• Cluster management tool provides the facility of creating/deleting/modifying the student clusters and their corresponding characteristics.

Product Features

Learning Path Editor

• Provide facility to instructor to design the SCORM compliant learning path template based on learner’s prior knowledge and learning style.

• Provision for instructor to add and modify the e-learning activities like quizzes, examples, case studies, within the template, specific to the group identified.

• Leads to the creation of personalised learning path template comprising of learning content and activities.

Product Features

Personalized Content and Activity Delivery

• SCORM compliant learning path template assigned for learners.

• Track the learners’ activities.

Adaptive Assessment Formulation

• Pre, Formative and Summative Assessments.

• Formative assessment using Computerized Adaptive Testing (CAT)

• Summative assessment using Computerized Classification Testing (CCT)

• Question Repository conforming to standards (IMS QTI).

Product Features

Query Handler

• Query Handler capable of semantically identifying the queries and supervised with expert rating mechanism. (Supervised Semantic Query Handler)

• Ontology editor provides facility to create subject specific ontologies with help of experts.

• Provides assistance to instructors for replying the queries with additional multimedia support from web.

e-Learning using Cloud

Motivation for Megh-Sikshak

To address challenges faced by the educational

institutes:

– Infrastructure requirement for establishing the e-learning

environment.

– Continuous sustenance of the infrastructure with updating

the services.

– Lack of technical competency for maintaining the e-

learning environment.

– Continuously growing requirement for resources in e-

learning environment. (Scalability)

Cloud based e-Sikshak (Megh-Sikshak) is an

initiative to offer e-Learning services by

leveraging cloud computing benefits like

– Elasticity for optimal utilization of infrastructure

– Quick provisioning of infrastructure on demand

– High availability

Megh-Sikshak

Conforms to SAAS maturity

level 3

Supports

Multi-tenancy

Tenant

Registration and

Management

Delegated Administration

Flexible Services

Allocation

Multi-lingual

eLearning Services

eLearning Framework

Tenant Management & Home Pages

E-Sikshak as service over NKN

• Starting with most basic e-learning services to be embraced by teacher-student fraternity

• Adding services on demand.

• Offering courses on information security

• Expectation: – Collaboration among students and faculty of various

institutes.

– Reposition of organized and unorganized learning patterns generated by students

– Learning analytics

Future e-learning ecosystem with NKN

• Bring more participation of stakeholders and help in identification of new stakeholders to be introduced in learning process

• Augmenting Life Long Learning

• e-portfolio management and sharing system by various stakeholders with similar interests

• Personalized e-learning services for students