Tartu University

27-28th February 1998

Present: Otu Vaarmann, Jaan Lellep, Paul Tammela, Ossi Nykanen, Jaagup Kippar Alfredo Moscardini and Eric Fletcher

Discussion. Four meetings were held which were very productive. We formulated styles and protocols that may be useful to all members of the project.

Outcomes

1. The structure of the Web interface was suggested to be the following.

As you can see there are four levels:

The Top level (Level 1) is the entry point and will have the appropriate button

Level Two is a general level. It is split into two. One section will contain all the Tempus actions (minutes, dates of meetings, Bulletin Board etc.) the other will contain general details about the course. A major component of this will be a student database.

Level Three will contain the information specific to a particular module. There will be a database connected to this level which is a subset of the level two database.

Level Four will be the actual module in question.

The Student Database will contain such information as:

1. Names, Addresses, University, course taken, background
2. Number of accesses to various parts of the system, time spent
3. Exercise completion Rates, Marks, A textentry for illness etc.
4. Any further suggestions from the team???

It will have three types of user:

1. The Administrator (Level Two modifications)
2. Teachers (Level Three modifications)
3. Students (Read only)

Certain tools were thought essential for the benefit of all the team:

1. Bulletin boards at levels two and three
2. Chat lines at level three
3. Text Editor ant all levels
4. External Material Linkage Tool (Level 2 0. This tool is to accept videos etc. into the chatlines or Internet lectures)
5. Groupwork Tool
6. Course Development Tool

The latter two tools will be useful for anyone wishing to set up a new course or add modules to the present one. These would be done at the end of the project when everything was tested and running.

We also discussed screen formats and came up with the following suggestions

The general screen in normal mode will be as below.

A will contain the navigation, B the main text and C the response to hotspots

When running the Chatlines we thought there should be three modes

1. a teaching mode
2. a discussion mode
3. groupwork mode (for students only )

This will be the teachers view

Only the teacher controls the blackboard. He can allow a student to write in it if he thinks it is justified. The teacher can import graphs, tables, and formulae. This could be done in two ways: from a pre-prepared stack or freehand. Freehand would be very desirable nut we were not sure whether it could be done.

The teacher can see all comments but in some cases the teacher may not want students to see other student s answers so he should be able to switch the student to this mode

Here the student sees only his dialogue and the teachers.

This is similar to the teaching mode except that here everyone has equal rights. Everyone can take charge of the blackboard and the teacher is just an observer or advisor. This would be useful for Brainstorming sessions for example.

This is the same as above except that the teacher is absent.

The Student Database. Eric will design this with the help of Ossi. It will then be implemented by the Estonians. The design is to be finished by 1st May and the first prototype working by the 1st June 1998

The Mathematical Modelling Course. The navigation has been given to Jaagup who will complete it by the end of March. The material has been deviled between Otu, Jaan, Paul and Alfredo and will be given to Jaagup in an agreed format. The whole course will be on he web by the summer meeting in July.

The Chatline. Jaagup is to commence work on this immediately. It is hoped to have a demo session in May between Alfredo, Jaan, Paul, Otu and Ossi. Jaagup will come to Sunderland for one week to help set this demonstration up.

The Summer School. At this school, it is hoped to be able to give a full demonstration of the course.