Virtual Learning Environment of the Proportion Topic in Primary School Students

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International Journal of Modern Education Forum (IJMEF) Volume 3 Issue 3, August 2014 DOI: 10.14355/ijmef.2014.0303.03

Virtual Learning Environment of the Proportion Topic in Primary School Students Elena Ruiz

Instituto Politecnico nacional, Mexico elen_fruiz@yahoo.com.mx Abstract This article demonstrates the technological factors involved in the development of this educational software proposal, which is embodied as a Virtual Learning Environment developed under the Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) standard version 1.2, using agile software development methodology, SCRUM. This tool supports teacher’s activities in the classroom, this software contains activities that strengthen the topics of ratio and proportion of the sixth-grade student of primary school according to the curricula of Secretaría de Educación Pública (SEP), in Mexico.

Keywords Virtual Learning Environments; Agile Software Development Methodologies; Object Oriented Programming; SCORM

There are specific models to develop proportional thinking, among which may be mentioned: "Ballroom Design" and "Furniture of a house". For reasons of space only the latter will be described. A more detailed description can be found in [2].

The model of "Furniture of a house" addresses both qualitative and quantitative parts. For the first, the student uses graphical elements to establish relationships between them using verbal categories (larger than, smaller than, etc.) (see Figure 1(a)). For the second, amounts are used to formalize these relationships (160 cm is twice 80 cm) (see Figure 1(b)).

Introduction In recent years the increased use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the teaching learning process has had a big impact, because more people can have access to knowledge without being in person in a classroom as well as the significant reduction in the time of preparing teaching materials to teach topics.

Technologyin Education Basic education is the cornerstone of the professional training for people. It is important to build a good foundation from this level to adequately develop future relevant concepts. Mathematics taught in sixth grade is particularly important, especially the topics of ratio and proportion as they are associated with the development of proportional thinking, which allows a subject, after a certain mental process, to establish the equivalence relationship between magnitudes ratio [1].

A subject has a fully developed proportional thinking when he/she can explain this relation of relationships both qualitatively, i.e. using intuition and quantitatively, i.e. using numbers. Thus there are two aspects of proportional thinking: qualitative proportional thinking and quantitative proportional thinking.

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FIG. 1.ASPECTS OF PROPORTIONAL THINKING

Today, the use of technology is widespread in our daily life and education is not exempt. Education is enhanced with the use of technology through educational software and the Internet among others, the first one implements, computationally, educational activities that support the understanding of concepts [3], and the Internet allows more people to have access to knowledge without having to be physically present in a classroom.

By combining these two technologies a more robust software known as Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) is obtained. AVLE is a computer system designed to facilitate the management of learning resources [3].

An important aspect in developing VLE's is the use of standards to ensure quality and to meet the needs and intended purposes. The Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) was created to establish

International Journal of Modern Education Forum (IJMEF) Volume 3 Issue 3, August 2014 principles and necessary guidelines for the effective development and efficient implementation of largescale educational training on new web technologies [4].

This standard fits the definition of Learning Object (LO), a digital or non- digital entity, which can be used for learning, education or training [5]. The LO is a philosophy rather than a technology itself, which is based on the stream of computer science known as OOP. So far, the LO’snot only lack of a universally accepted definition, but also they are a matter of controversy [6].

SCORM divides the world of technology in functional components, which are: - Sharable Content Object (SCO): content that can be supported by a web browser, plus it can send information to the system. It is divided into: simple SCO and data handling SCO. The minimum unit of the SCO’s is the Assets.

- Learning Management System (LMS) is software for Internet/Intranet which manages learning resources on servers. It manages users, learning resources and communication services and handles the delivery of media learning resources to the students.

- Two-way communication through an API between the SCO and the LMS which uses 15 variables defined by the standard for data exchange.

Figure 2 shows the functional components of SCORM.

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implementation of the activities mentioned in the first point to create functional systems. And finally, an evaluation of the systems is needed for the correct use of colors, shapes, visual design, usability, content, skills, etc. according to the group of study to which it is directed.

“Peques y Grandes” “Peques y Grandes” is educational software, designed as a VLE, which is meant to be a support tool for the teacher in the classroom for teaching the proportional thinking topic. In a broad sense, it has the most important features of an VLE such as: management of information (additions, deletions, updates and queries), definition of user roles (administrator, teacher and student), authentication of users to the system, implementation of structured activities in the form of courses, standardization tool for activities with SCORM content, generation of questionnaires with text and images with the self - grading option, and some customization of the GUI (change of color from a list of 10 predefined combinations).

In this section the main elements of software such as users, development methodology, architecture and technologies used will be described.

UserType Each user of the system can perform certain tasks.

Table I shows the specific actions for each type of user.

TABLE I. FUNCTIONALITY BY THE USER

Type

FIG. 2 FUNCTIONAL COMPONENTES OF SCORM

Combining technology with education is a good choice to modernize the teaching – learning process, however, develop appropriate tools to meet this goal is a challenge in several respects. First, you have to consider items related to what and how to teach, this involves: 1) identify the topic or course to be taught, as there are many topics and we should select the most important ones, either by difficulty or because they represent the importance for subsequent materials, and 2) develop activities that support the teaching of the topic and demonstrate its importance. Secondly, one must analyze the available technological tools for the

Actions -Management of students, teachers and groups.

Manager -Management of Passwords.

-Enrollment and group movements of students.

-Management of questionnaires and learning resources.

-Follow-up of the Academic Records of the students.

Teacher -Statistics and academic reports of students and groups.

-Management of Forums and Chat.

-Use of the learning resources (activities sand courses), Student forum sand chat.

Development of Methodology The methodology used in the software development process is an important factor because with it you can have a good grasp of customer needs. Currently, there are two types of methodologies: the traditional such as waterfall, spiral and prototyping [7] and agile such as extreme Programming (XP) [8-9] and SCRUM [10] .

In the case of “Peques y Grandes” SCRUM was used because it is an iterative methodology in which prototypes or parts of the system are generated and

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International Journal of Modern Education Forum (IJMEF) Volume 3 Issue 3, August 2014

continuously improved. Stakeholders involved in the methodology are: customer, system administrator, team (developers) and specialists (in this case of computing and pedagogy).

Each iterative phase is called sprint, which can have a maximum of 30 days. At sprint zero, known as preparation phase, we establish the needs of the software, design, technologies used, priority customer needs, estimates of effort of the development team, assigning tasks and the objective of each of the following sprints. In the next iteration the prototype established in the preparation phase is developed and a meeting with the whole team is scheduled in order to answer questions about customer needs and factors that may delay the delivery of the sprint. At the end of each sprint the prototype is presented along with the testing and reviews made by the development team, once approved by specialists and customer improvements are proposed, from sprint two the previous suggestions presented are taken and improved in the current sprint.

The most significant advantage of this methodology is to have the customer involved in the development team, because as software evolves with iteration and the result is a more robust prototype that suits the needs. For “Enanos y Gigantes” an important aspect was to have the assistance of a specialist in the area of education as a guide to implement existing teaching models for proportional thinking.

Architecture “Enanos y Gigantes”is based on IEEE 1484 Learning Technology Systems Architecture (LTSA) [11] (see fig.

1), established by the Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers Learning Technology Standards Committee (IEEE LTSC), as a reference for the identification of its components.

FIG. 3 IEEE 1484 LTSA ARCHITECTURE

The IEEE 1484 LTSA architecture adapts itself to each of the critical parts of the VLE: students, Learning resources repository, teachers, student data storage (academic logs, personal data), and interaction between them.

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The IEEE 1484 LTSA architecture adapts perfectly to the Client – Server Model [12]. One of the advantages of the architectures portability, all the resources are hosted on the server and the client just need web Access from any Computer via Intranet or Internet.

Describingeach part of the architecture: -Student Entity (SE): represents one person ora groupof people.

-Tutor / Professor (T):manager of learning resources and the SE such as academic logs.

-Student Logs (SL):A Data Base with all the information about the SE. -Learning Resources (LR):A Data Base with all the files of learning activities.

-Sent: recovers information about the LR and transform it into media content.

-Evaluation:generates information about performance in the LR of the SE stored in SL.

the

In “Peques y Grandess” SCORM version 1.2was used.It is noteworthy that SCORM does not validate the contents of the learning resources that make up the SCO, as only maps the resources based on the rules set to be transparent on systems that use the standard.

In addition to the components that use theIEEE1484, “Peques y Grandes” architecture uses tools that promote collaborative learning as a chat and discussion forums. In Figure 3the overall “Peques y Grandes” architecture is shown based on the IEEE1484LTSA architecture and the Client – Server model.

International Journal of Modern Education Forum (IJMEF) Volume 3 Issue 3, August 2014 FIG. 4 GENERAL ARCHITECTURE OF “PEQUES Y GRANDES”

Used Technologies As the technologies used for the development of “Pequesy Grandes”VLE, we chose to use: 1) My SQL for databases, 2) PHP as server side programming language, to get information from the database and launch the contents of the learning resources, 3)HTML,CSS and Java Script to display multimedia content on the client side, and 4)AJAX for sending and receiving data asynchronously to update specific components of the page, taking into account the standards of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) [13] for the popular browsers: Internet Explorer 8or higher, Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Opera. The reasons for each of the tools use dare described as follows.

Database Manager System (DBMS) My SQL has become the most popular DBMS open source because of its high performance, high reliability and ease of use.

It is also the database of choice for a new generation of applications based on LAMP (Linux, Apache, My SQL, PHP / Perl/ Python) applications. Many of the larger and fastest growing organizations in the world including Face book, Google, Adobe, Alcatel Lucent and Zapp sorely on My SQL to save time and money on their high-volume Websites, business-critical systems and packaged software.

MySQL runs on more than 20 platforms including Linux, Windows, Mac OS, Solaris, and IBM AIX, which makes flexible the control of the tool [14].

PHP (recursive acronym for PHP Hypertext Pre processor) is an alternative programming language under the GNU license. It was originally designed to create dynamic web pages. This language allows developers to create complex applications with a very short learning curve, as its syntax is very similar to that of C and Perl. Compared with Microsoft technologies like ASP and ASP.NET, ColdFusion, JSP / Java and CGI / Perl, PHP is a high-performance language that runs on most operating systems such as Unix (Linux or Mac OS X) and Microsoft Windows, and can interact with the most popular web servers with its CGI version, module for Apache, and ISAPI. It also, allows connection to different types of database servers such as My SQL, Post greSQL, Oracle, ODBC, DB2, Microsoft SQL Server, Firebird and SQ Lite [15].

Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) is a language used for publishing content on the World Wide Web (WWW), it is a standardized format based on labels to describe the content as tables, paragraphs, headings,

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insert images, lists, links, etc., is combined with Cascade Style Sheet (CSS) to give visual format and to separate content from style. Additionally, is combined with a dynamic scripting language called JavaScript, because sometimes certain actions are needed in HTML pages such as operations, validate strings, change styles at runtime, etc.

When is necessary to get information from external websites or server, the Asynchronous JavaScript And XML (AJAX) technology is used in order to avoid having to refresh the whole page to display the required information at that time [13].

Implementation Taking the teaching models of Ruiz [2], the activities that support the student to acquire the concept of proportional thinking were chosen, in addition to the factors mentioned above. It is important to establish that the activities should be structured in the right way in order to have a proper sequence that allows the student to make sense and meaning of the concepts.

“Peques y Grandes” takes the structure of a LO-based course: diagnostic questionnaire, introduction to the topic, activities for the qualitative and quantitative proportional thinking, and evaluation.

The questionnaire consists of ten questions to get a sense of the knowledge that the student has on the topic, the final questionnaire varies from the initial context as well as having a higher degree of difficulty, for more information review the reference [2].

The activities implemented from the teaching models were “El salón de fiestas”, “El mobiliario de una casa” y “La mudanza” figure 4 shows the implemented activity.

FIG. 4 ACTIVITIES FROM THE TEACHING MODEL “EL MOBILIARIO DE UNA CASA”

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International Journal of Modern Education Forum (IJMEF) Volume 3 Issue 3, August 2014

Overall Operation Figure 5 shows the homepage of “Enanos y Gigantes”, it has the tabs home, log in, colors and contact. In the colors tab there is a color list on the left to personalize the interface.

FIG. 8 STUDENT LOGIN PAGE

Preliminary Results

FIG. 5 HOME PAGE

Each user must login to access the system; according to his/her level access the system shows the actions permitted the following figures presents the login page for each type of user.

In collaboration with “Jaime Torres Bodet” primary school, we worked with the groups of sixth grade A and B, having a 58students total sample. A validation of “Peques y Grandes” was conducted. On the technology side the aspects checked were: distribution of information, visual content, colors, font size and font type, based on the opinion of the students, this is done through a questionnaire of preference of colors, shapes and computer usage.

In the pedagogical part, students use “Peques y Grandes”, first the diagnostic questionnaire is conducted, followed by the use of proportional thinking activities and finally an evaluation was conducted to compare the knowledge before and after using the tool.

About the technological validation the results were.

- 90% thinks that the distribution of the visual interface is correct according to their age, they familiarize with the images well distributed without information overload.

FIG. 6 ADMINISTRATOR LOGIN PAGE

- 52% mentions that Comics Sans MS font type is correct, with a font size between 14 and 16 pixels, “Peques y Grandes” has a similar font type with sizes between 12 and 14 pixels, which adapts to the students preferences.

- The colors preferred were: Violet, Red, Green, Turquoise and Blue, from which are considered in “Peques y Grandes with the exception of violet chosen from the color list to personalize the interface.

Conclusions

FIG. 7 PROFESSOR LOGIN PAGE

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The use of technology in the teaching - learning process has had a greatly development in recent years, but it is not only important to use technology, it should take into account three important factors when

International Journal of Modern Education Forum (IJMEF) Volume 3 Issue 3, August 2014 developing educational software: Why, What? And How Teaching and development tools (methodology, standards, and technologies).

The first point is vital, why we choose the topic?, there are deficiencies in the field of Mathematics at primary level in Mexico, in the case of the topics of ratio and proportion that are linked to proportional thinking, these are the basis for branches of mathematics such as: Algebra, Trigonometry, Calculus, etc. as well as other sciences such as: physics, chemistry, etc.

The second point after the topic or course to teach is defined, pedagogical foundations for teaching techniques are essential; “Peques y Grandes” is based on the teaching models of Ruiz [2], which were successfully tested on pencil and paper.

The last important point is to define the software development process that best suits the client's needs, and to use appropriate measures to ensure the success of the tools.

The use of standards in the educational software has great advantages such as reusability, portability, activities and courses scalability, because having an established model is easier to integrate more course content and / or activities.

Another important point is to take into account the target group of users; in this case “Enanos y Gigantes” has a population of young children between 11 and 13 years, which requires that developers have special attention in the visual design and layout to attract attention, in order to avoid boredom, and therefore a poor performance in the pedagogical aspect.

AKNOWLEDGMENT

The working team thanks the principal Rebeca Magallán López and the teachers of sixth grade Marcela Iveth Carrillo Pérez and Leonardo Jacinto Salmerónof “Jaime Torres Bodet” primary school for the Access to the facility and the continuous enhancement of “Peques y Grandes” and for the help on the tests and validations ion the technological and pedagogical parts.

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