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Dcollins icl-belfast-v5
The document outlines the Forge project, which aims to enhance telecommunications education through remote experimentation using the Future Internet Research and Experimentation (FIRE) initiative. It highlights the challenges faced by educational institutions in providing hands-on experimentation and proposes a system for resource reservation and interaction analytics. Recommendations are made for improving integration and user experience, addressing issues like resource scarcity and learning analytics, while emphasizing the project’s contributions to standardization in online education.
Dcollins icl-belfast-v5
- 1. FORGE ENABLING FIREFACILITIES FOR THE E-LEARNING COMMUNITY Diarmuid Collins Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
- 2. Engineering and Experimentation •To understand the physics and engineering phenomena in wireless communications it is really important to reinforce theory with experimentation • The most effective way to demonstrate such physical properties and impairments of wireless signals is though radio laboratories
- 3. Lab Experimentation Physical Experimentation •Expensive, in particular for low-budget institutions • Deploying and maintaining experimental facilities is costly • Developing cutting edge telecommunications technologies requires massive effort and budget • Learners constrained by location and lab opening hours • Underutilised Online Experimentation • Offers remote access to resources. • Not limited by time or location • Empowers education by enabling hands on experimentation • FORGE focused on enhancing online telecommunications engineering by enabling remote experimentation
- 4. Future Internet Researchand Experimentation (FIRE) • The FIRE initiative is a European endeavor that promotes the creation of wide-scale federations of high performance testbed and experimentation facilities for Internet and network-related research. • €20 million investment
- 5. E.g., Trinity CollegeDublin IRIS Testbed
- 6. FORGE • Transforms FIREtestbeds into learning resources for education • Educational Layer over FIRE testbed facilities • Similar usage patterns between researcher & educational learner • Resources are discovered, selected, reserved, provisioned (OS and Tools) • Experiment executed, controlled, monitored, results collected • Resources release.
- 7. FORGE: Hidden Complexity •Steps are Preconfigured and Automated • Teacher – discover, select reserve, provision resources • Student – web based control and monitoring elements • Supported by: • Widgets: micro-applications that perform a dedicated task • Adapters: Backend scripts that interact with FIRE testbed facility
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- 9. List of Recommendations(1) • Reservation Mechanism • Not available in all FIRE facilities • Hidden from learners • Integrates easily with widget + adapter • Resource Scarcity • Multiple learners use same experimentation resource • Add multiplexing / queuing Layer • Lab has clear pre/post/transition states. • Maximum experiment duration • E.g., 1 minute, three learners – iMinds w-ilab.t testbed. • Level of control • Software & hardware failure • Watchdog programs, scripts, instructions to support experiment recovery
- 10. List of Recommendations(2) • Multi-platform and easy integration to existing eLearning platforms e.g., LMS, eBook, website, etc. • User interactions should be collected with Learning Analytics • Inclusive of lab reservations, student interactions, and so forth • Learners should be uniquely identifiable (where possible) • Possible to spot cheaters or improper resource usage • Introduce xAPI actions and verbs • E.g., User launched page • E,g., User answered question • Calculate action to action time spent by learners on course material
- 11. Challenges Encountered • Authentication •Learning analytics - Who is using course, How, etc. • Security • Block Anonymous access • Securely share resources among multiple FIRE accounts • Standardised Reservation API • For reserving FIRE facilities • Resource occupation: availability, scalability and scheduling • Reassessed and redesigned • Policy Strategy E.g., Best effort or premium • Queuing mechanism • A fallback mechanism – in case testbed does not work • e.g., non-interactive version of lab
- 12. FORGE Contributions • PromotingAwareness of FIRE Testbed facilities • Methodology and process for using FIRE Testbed equipment • FORGEBox architecture – reference architecture • 18 courses (10 partner and 8 open call courses) • WiFi, LTE, OFDM, IoT, TCP, HTTP, video streaming, and so forth. • Taught worldwide in over 10 countries • Over 2000 students • Contributed to Standardisation • IEEE P1876: Standard for Networked Smart Learning Objects for Online Laboratories Working Group • IEEE Actionable Data Book (ADB) for STEM Education • SIG on Remote labs and Online Experimentation • Publications: 9 Published
- 14. More information… www.ict-forge.eu info@ict-forge.eu Try ouronline courses and download our iBook for free! This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no. 610889
Editor's Notes
- #3 Understand architectural designs, limitations and trade-offs. Radio Laboratories
- #4 FORGE enables remote experimentation
- #5 FIREs Ambition of being Europe’s Open Lab for Future Internet research, development and innovation
- #6 • Virtualization management techniques to deliver a unique cloud-based software-defined radio testbed • Experimentation units • Virtual computational platform (GNU Radio) • Dedicated USRP hardware
- #7 Facilitates a flipped Lab – in the context of the Flipped Classroom [The flipped classroom is a pedagogical model in which the typical lecture and homework elements of a course are reversed. Short video lectures are viewed by students at home before the class session, while in-class time is devoted to exercises, projects, or discussions.]
- #9 Support different types of users – student, teacher, etc. Authentication, Authorization, and Identity (AAI) management for users Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) implementation that allows better integration with Virtual Learning Environments (VLE) Implement a bridge service between AAI widget and LTI 2.0 support library. User activity monitoring. Audit users, Report about students Experience API (xAPI) External Learning Record Store FORGEBox provides a ready to use solution for a course.
- #11 FIRE Facility Learning Analytics compliant What happened Reproduce all actions performed.