A LOW COST COMMON EDUCATIONAL FRAMEWORK*

Charles H. Pickman Northrop Grumman One Space Park Redondo Beach, CA, 90278 310-721-0812 chpickman@msn.com Dr. Dar-Biau Liu California State University Long Beach Department of Computer Engineering and Computer Science 1250 Bellflower Blvd. Long Beach, CA 90840 562-985-1594, liu@csulb.edu

ABSTRACT Many institutions of higher learning have curricula which can be designed and implemented at minimal cost and effort based upon a proposed common educational framework. A common educational framework is a low cost and flexible software suite of integrated open source applications which can be rapidly modified to support specific coursework. Teachers can choose to develop some of their coursework within their department based on a common educational framework; which enables exploration, learning and goal setting among adjacent disciplines and departments. Teachers can develop a structured and tailored educational plan over a multi-semester course of study. Teams of students within each course can independently work on their projects, resulting in a realistic learning environment enhanced by interdepartmental and interdisciplinary interaction. A common educational framework enables increased faculty interaction and development within departments and between departments. A proposed low cost open source common educational framework is discussed and evaluated. INTERDISCIPLINARY DEVELOPMENT AND INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN There are many instances when departments develop curricula within their own deparments without much interaction with external departments and faculty [4,7]. While not a critical issue, a department with an isolated curriculum may not take advantage of the full range of educational opportunities. It may be difficult without any support to ___________________________________________
*

Copyright 2009 by the Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges. Permission to copy without fee all or part of this material is granted provided that the copies are not made or distributed for direct commercial advantage, the CCSC copyright notice and the title of the publication and its date appear, and notice is given that copying is by permission of the Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges. To copy otherwise, or to republish, requires a fee and/or specific permission.

238

CCSC: Southwestern Conference reach across adjacent departments, perhaps surmounting established barriers, without a common set of goals or a common structure. Difficult collaboration between educational departments has the result that adjacent and related subject matter may be lightly covered or not at all. These interdepartmental gaps may result in educational deficiencies that are subsequently covered in the student's education or in the workforce. The goal of a common educational framework is to rapidly highlight and identify many educational gaps, help fill the gaps in the student's curricula, and allow for active curricula development across departments when necessary [2]. The additional effort to work with a framework significantly increases the interaction between students and enriches the educational environment. There are many technical areas that share adjacent and related subject matter which establishes joint or common areas for learning and exploration; for example, between Mathematics and Communication Theory. Naturally there are correllaries between adjacent educational departments and adjacent commercial businesses. Many times innovative workers from adjacent companies collaborate creatively to develop new products and create new business areas [6]. Similarly, it can be seen that educationally useful connections can be formed between teams within departments and between adjacent departments; each involved team can work on their main subjects and the adjacent material via their unique interaction. A common educational framework (CEF) or framework can be developed and implemented across these adjacent departments, and significant educational advances can be made due to the interdepartmental interaction between teams. Each department can utilize a CEF and tailor and design their coursework to match specific areas of the framework. In this manner the departments can be uniquely served by the framework while being supported by a common structure. Each teacher can develop their own material and can then choose to participate with other instructors in other departments. The various actions for CEF deployment tend to spread the development workload for the framework and the modified open source applications. Since a CEF is software based the bulk of the workload will fall upon the Computer Science department; however, once the framework is established at an institution the modifications can be controlled and minimally updated over time each semester, driven by unique deparmental and interdepartmental educational goals. See Figure 1 for an example data flow between the various educational elements. Each teacher can choose to use a CEF as necessary in their c our s e w o r k : a s - i s , updated, additional modules. The department courses can be run independently or FIGURE 1. Educational Data Flow, with CEF feedback in conjunction and coordination with other department classes. Each teacher can modify the framework and modules to meet their class objectives. Additional parallel work by the departments is required to update and synchronize a CEF between semesters to ensure common modules and resources are provided at the beginning of each semester for all related departments. 239

JCSC 24, 4 (April 2009) The flexibility and control provided by the framework can assist teachers in developing their curricula, and expanding their interaction with other departments. Each teacher and department can implement their plans while relying upon a CEF to form a stable teaching environment. COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT RELATIONSHIPS There are many related technical areas in education and business. Some of the strongest relationships occur between Computer Science (Software, Network Theory), Electrical Engineering (Communication Theory, Information Theory), and Mathematics (Graph Theory, and foundations of the other areas). These separate fields of study have many overlapping regions, and many overlapping fields have borrowed from each other during their invidual development [10]. The cross-pollination between fields of theory has led to many significant theoretical breakthroughs [8]. In a similar manner the business world relies upon breakthroughs to achieve technical excellence, advancement and innovation. The collaboration between adjacent fields of study can carry over to the commercial world. Since Maxwell mastered and combined electric and magnetic waves, there have been many breakthroughs in the commercial world based on adjacent fields of study. During his many productive years in industry, T. A. Edison harnessed of many newly discovered scientific theories to develop and innovate. It is expected a CEF will generate educational excitement and interest among adjacent fields in academia. Successfull students will learn how collaboration benefits both sides of the relationship. As the students enter the technical workforce many similar innovations should occur. The earlier the students begin to collaborate, the sooner the students will find their studies can enhance both their educational goals and their career goals. There have been many studies that show earlier and increased application of coursework in the workforce tends to stengthen the learning experience and improve the material retention [1]. The overall result is an improved learning environment and enhanced education. SMALL AND LARGE SCHOOL UTILIZATION Many smaller schools do not have all the resources of larger institutions. The CEF can be supported by a smaller school budget since the framework can be already established and concurrently used by many larger institutions of higher learning. A smaller school can choose to use the framework with minimal modification as an extension of their coursework. The smaller school can take advantage of the prior efforts to create and maintain the framework among many other institutions. A smaller school may not have all the departments or the faculty of a larger school; as a result, the small school may not get all the interactions found in the larger school. This is still acceptable, since many students will gain additional experience with the framework which will be retained while they advance through their education. It is also a positive feature that smaller schools can interact with larger schools when necessary to provide additional interdepartmental interaction. There are many on-line interfaces that can be used to provide sufficient communication and interaction. It would appear that

240

CCSC: Southwestern Conference as more schools use a CEF, then there would be increased opportunities for many types of implementation and collaboration. STUDENT EXPECTATIONS AND DEVELOPMENT Students expect to learn the course material. Many times courses have a well defined and mature curriculum. The student is expected to read and learn the established material. So the student and the teacher have similar expectations. In higher level courses there is challenging material to cover; however, the application of many theories requires real-world assumptions, adjustments, simplifications, modelling, simulation and other necessary modifications. These real-world modifications are often required to allow the theory to be applied successfully. The upper-level coursework is applied with great rigor in an interactive environment [5]. The students using the framework get a deeper understanding of how theory applies and get a better education when they actually use the theory to support their efforts. The CEF enables student interaction on many levels, so many additional applied concepts can be taught and learned. STUDENT DRIVEN INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN Many students find their education is out of their control within each course. It would motivate many students to allow them to help modify and adapt the coursework to match their educational goals [3]. While faculty is in control of a CEF, the students can apply some feedback to modify the coursework for their and future students and faculty. The small part the students play in the effort can greatly increase their motivation and involvement. The teacher of a CEF can apply their talent, in addition to the student's effort, to modify and improve the framework design within their department and institution. The faculty can selectively modify the design to achieve important educational goals. There is coordination required between departments to ensure the framework is consistent and applicable; however, compatiblity is maintained through views provided into a CEF, see Figure 2 for an example of a three view framework. Each course is provided a unique FIGURE 2. Example: A Common Educational view into a CEF, similar to database Framework views. The students and faculty can modify and design their view to improve their educational outcome. There are expected to be a number of ways to modify the framework in the short term and long term. It may 241

JCSC 24, 4 (April 2009) be possible to setup a central organization to maintain a CEF and provide meaningful support and feedback for student and faculty originated suggestions and modifications. EXAMPLE: LOW COST MOBILE NODE NETWORK SIMULATOR A simple example of a CEF could be an integrated multi-computer simulator [9]. The simulator would provide many areas of learning and exploration. The simulator would be the same for all users, but have specific areas that can be explored. For example, an aerospace engineering course would be most interested in the flight patterns and aerodynamic operation part of the simulations. A special aerospace view is provided to allow the students to explore and modify the flight conditions and monitor the flight dynamics. Another group of mathematicians might be interested in the networking and communication of packets across the network. Their view would allow them to inspect the flow of information across the network and record other related network statistics. Yet a third group of communication engineers may be interested in the point-to-point communication links and their stochastic behavior under simulated channel fading and lossy conditions. Again, a third unique view is provided to allow this class to simulate, test and observe their models and operation. This proposed simulator could be expanded and adapted to meet the needs of a number of different and adjacent disciplines. This expanded simulator could form the basis of a CEF and could be later used as the generic framework for future modifications. EVALUATION AND BENEFITS While many areas can agree a mobile node simulator would be a good common platform, other areas may have other simulators in mind. While not clear at this time, there may be other areas for framework development and design. Examples include areas in the social sciences, economics, politics, and urban development. It is hoped that as a CEF is used it is adaptable and flexible, and can be modified according to the needs of its user community. The benefits of an established CEF are a common plaform from which to generate and maintain various coursework and curricula. Since the framework is primarily software with some hardware in-the-loop, the performance of the framework can be improved over time, only limited by the imagination of its developers and users. Another benefit of a CEF is a collaborative user community can support and define their unique goals, while supporting the framework evolution.

242

CCSC: Southwestern Conference ONGOING AND FUTURE WORK The CEF effort and its utility is at an early stage of development. The authors are beginning to work with a few teachers at our university and another local university to establish interest and understading of the CEF. We are determining the CEF potential for supporting teacher instruction and student learning at a college level. As the architecture and CEF matures it is possible the effort will be turned into a software forge project or similar open source collaborative platform development. CONCLUSION A common educational framework has been proposed as shown to be useful for higher learning. Many institutions of higher learning can take advantage of the many benefits and interactions between adjacent deparments and institutions. The CEF is an open framework which allows simple inspection, review, modification and implementation. The result is a flexible eductional framework which has many exciting avenues to be explored and developed. REFERENCES [1] Anuradha A. Gokhale,Associate Professor Western Illinois University, Collaborative Learning Enhances Critical Thinking, Article, Journal of Technology Education, Volume 7, Number 1, Fall 1995 http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JTE/jte-v7n1/gokhale.jte-v7n1.html [2] Caine, R., Caine, G., Connections: Teaching and the Human Brain, Wheaton, MD: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 1991. [3] Designing Courses: Instructional Design for Online Learning, http://www.ibritt.com/resources/dc_instructionaldesign.htm, updated December 1, 2008. [4] Fitzharris, L, Curriculum development, Journal of Staff Development, 20, (3), 1999. [5] Gonzalez, J., An Interactive Teaching Approach Based on Student-Teams, 38th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, October 2008. [6] Hayter, C., The Network-Centric Innovation Imperitive: How Manufacturers Work with Their Suppliers to Develop New Products, http://www.atp.nist.gov/eao/netcentric_nov06.pdf, Fall 2006. [7] Howard, J., Curriculum development, http://org.elon.edu/catl/documents/Curriculum%20Development.pdf, Summer 2007. [8] IGERT: Interdisciplinary Graduate Training In Nonlinear Systems, Cornell University, http://igert.cam.cornell.edu/, 2004.

243

JCSC 24, 4 (April 2009) [9] Pickman, C., A Low Cost Mobile Node Network Simulator, Department of Computer Engineering and Computer Science, Cal State University, Long Beach, California, December 2008. [10] 6 Degrees of Computer Science, http://compsci.ca/blog/6-degrees-of-computer-science/, April 22, 2007.

244