CC BY
0Ялова К.М.
доцент кафедри програмного забезпечення систем Днтровсъкого державного технЫного утверситету, кандидат технЫних наук, доцент
Яшина К.В.
доцент кафедри програмного забезпечення систем Днтровсъкого державного технiчного утверситету, кандидат технiчних наук, доцент
ФУНКЦЮНАЛЬНЕ МОДЕЛЮВАННЯ АКАДЕМ1ЧНО1 ПЛАТФОРМИ МАСИВНИХ
В1ДКРИТИХ ОН-ЛАЙН КУРС1В
ACADEMIC MASSIV OPEN ON-LINE COURSE-PLATFORM FUNCTIONAL MODELING
Yalova K.M.
associate Professor system software Department of the Dniprovsk State Technical University, PHD.
Yashyna K. V.
associate Professor system software Department of the Dniprovsk State Technical University, PHD.
АНОТАЦ1Я
В статп форм^зовано результати arnni3y предметно! обласп стосовно проектування академь чно! MOOC-платформи, що представлеш у вигляд ново! функцюнально! модель Результати функцю-нального моделювання наведено в математичнш та грaфiчнiй формах. Грaфiчнa форма моделi розроб-лено засобами фyнкцюнaльно-орiентовaно! методологи BPMN. Розроблена фyнкцiонaльнa модель дозволяе визначити та врахувати ролi користyвaчiв платформи, описати ди, достyпнi для кожного типу користyвaчiв та розробити архитектуру aкaдемiчно! MOOC-платформи.
ABSTRACT
To formalize the results of the data domain analysis the authors developed the new functional model of the academic MOOC-platform which is presented in the article. The functional modeling results are presented in mathematical and graphical forms. The graphical form of the model is developed by the mean of the BPMN methodology. This functional model allows determining the roles of system users, describe the actions available for every type of user and develop the academic MOOC platform architecture.
Ключовi слова: моделювання предметно! об-ласп, функцюнальна модель, шформащйш технологи в педагопщ, дистанцшне навчання, академь чна платформа
Keywords: data domain modeling, functional model, information technologies in pedagogy, distance learning, academic MOOC platform
Introduction. The rapid development of information technology allows using computers not only for processing, storage or transfer of information resources, but also as a means of organization of the educational environment [1].
Distance learning is the interaction between a teacher and students at a distance, reflecting all the typical components of the educational process (objectives, contents, methods, organizational forms, teaching aids) and realized by specific interactive media. The training systems using information technologies and providing training materials on the Internet are called e-Learning Systems.
The development of e-Learning systems have passed the stages of dissemination of educational materials via e-mail and e-learning systems such as MOODLE (Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment) to the academic MOOC (Massive open online courses) platforms such as EDX. MOOC is a training course with a massive interactive participation, the use of e-learning technology and open access through the Internet. Academic MOOC platform as a general term is a system created by means of information and digital technologies, providing a process of acquiring knowledge when a source of information and students are separated by time and distance [2]. The word «academic» in the given definition refers to the mandatory compliance of the platform training materials to the established normative documents of the university specialties, namely curricula of specialties and work programs of disciplines.
IN GENERAL, THE DEVELOPMENT AND INTRODUCTION OF AN ACADEMIC MOOC PLATFORM AT THE UNIVERSITY ENABLES [3]:
- to provide distributed access to electronic versions of educational materials created by teachers, by cycles of disciplines, within a given form of training, a qualification level and a semester;
- to optimize the dissemination process and to unify the representation of the electronic versions of training materials;
- to provide tools for creation of electronic assignments and tests for the evaluation of knowledge acquired by the students (intermediate and final control, and self-control);
- to use different forms of theoretical material presentation: video lectures, multimedia clips, online workshop, etc.;
- to get statistics on the activity of students, the number of their accesses to training materials, the knowledge assessment results.
THE MAIN AIM OF THE ARTICLE IS TO
PRESENT THE RESULTS OF THE DATA DOMAIN ANALYSIS FOR THE ACADEMIC MOOC-PLATFORM ELABORATION. THE AUTHORS HAVE DEFINED THE FOLLOWING RESEARCH TASKS:
- the determination of the academic MOOC-platform functional requirements;
- the description of the information resources exchange scheme in the system of «teacher-student»;
- the creation of the data domain functional model;
- the representation of the created functional model in the graphic form by the means of BPMN methodology and as the mathematical model;
- the development of the academic MOOC-platform architecture, including the level and structure description.
Methods: the data domain analysis, mathematical modeling, functional data domain analysis by the means of the Business Process Modeling Notation 2.0 (BPMN).
Main results.
Functional modeling with BPMN methodology.
As for any software application, a lifecycle of the academic MOOC platform development consists of five main stages: analysis of the functional requirements or domain analysis, design, implementation, testing and exploitation. Using a spiral life cycle model for the academic MOOC platform development gives opportunity to simultaneously have a working version of the software application, to specify the requirements of the project, to determine its quality and to plan work on the next version.
Under the domain analysis the type of research is meant, in which a real or imaginary object is divided into its component parts (elements) and these elements and relationships between them are studied. The result of the domain analysis is development of functional and object models of the domain.
The domain models should meet the following requirements [4]:
- formalization providing a clear description of the domain structure;
- clarity for customers and developers through the use of graphic means of the model display;
- possibility of implementation, which implies the existence of means of physical implementation of the domain model within the framework of existing software;
- ensuring evaluation of the domain models implementation efficiency based on the specified methods and indicators.
Typically, models are built at three levels: at the external level (requirements definition), at the conceptual level (requirements specification) and at the internal level (requirements implementation). Thus, at the
The scientific heritage No 12 (12),2017 external level a model answers a question of what a system has to do, in other words a composition of the main components of the system: objects, functions, events, organizational units and technical facilities, is determined. At the conceptual level a model answers a question of how the system should operate. In other words, the nature of interaction of the system components of the same and different types is determined. At the internal level a model answers a question of which software and hardware help to implement the system requirements.
A functional model is a domain description based on the analysis of semantics of objects and phenomena, performed without orientation on the future use of programming or technical computer tools, in which the functional aspect of domain modeling is emphasized
[5].
The composition of a functional model greatly depends on the context of a particular it-project and can be represented by a fairly wide range of documents in the form of text and graphic information. Often a functional domain model is called a business process model
[6]. A business process is defined as a logically complete set of interrelated or interacting activities that supports the organization's activities and implements its policies, aimed at achieving the set goals.
To develop the academic mooc platform functional model authors of the article have taken into account the following requirements which are imposed to distance learning systems:
1. Providing timely and round-the-clock delivery of e-learning materials.
2. Customizing and personalizing to the learner's unique needs. Obtaining theoretical knowledge, practical skills, and conducting self-control of acquired knowledge.
3. Students are given the opportunity to set their own rhythm of training and volume of received knowledge, which leads to the increase of intellectual potential through self-learning.
4. Freeing students from having to spend considerable time searching for information.
The developed functional model of an academic mooc platform is the result of domain analysis and its requirements definition process, it is shown in fig. 1 as a model as-to-be within the bpmn 2.0 methodology.
Fig. 1. Functional model AS-TO-BE of the academic MOOC platform
Bpmn 2.0 is a modern standard for business process modeling, which describes graphical notation for mapping business processes in the form of business process diagrams [7].
To do this, bpmn 2.0 uses a basic set of intuitively understandable elements that allow you to define complex semantic structures. In addition, the bpmn specification defines how the diagrams describing the business process can be transformed into executable models in the bpel language (business process execution language) - an xml-based language for the formal description of business processes and protocols of their interaction with each other. Bpel extends a web-services interaction model and includes a transaction support into this model.
The development of the data domain as-to-be functional model begins with creation of the as-is model, describing the existing situation. The authors have evaluated and compared the most popular modern e-learning systems (sakai, wrc e-education system), virtual classroom (claroline lms, dokeos), virtual learning environment (moodle, prometey), mooc-platform (edx), contents management system (atutor), learning management system (ilias) [8]. The comparative analysis results allow revealing advantages and weakness of the educational services sharing via the internet as the as-is model.
Creating the as-to-be functional model of the academic mooc platform allows determining the roles of system users: students, teachers, staff of the education quality monitoring center and unregistered users, and describe the actions available for every type of user.
The first action, with which an interaction with a platform begins, is a user authorization, the results of which impose restrictions on the actions available through the application web-forms, including:
- review of only general information on the structure of directions, specialties and courses for the students' training - available for unauthorized users;
- review of the courses content with ability to select and enroll, review of one's achievements, review of current courses and their bookmarks, learning the educational material, organizing feedback - available for an authorized student;
- review of a list of courses and their content, obtaining data on activities and achievements of students, using a chat, creation of educational materials in a mode defined, determination of the list of laboratory classes, practical tasks, hints and managing impact for the educational process, the determination of evaluations for each task, setting of a complexity level, general control over the educational activity - available for an authorized teacher;
- system configuration, the control over work capacity and fixing of system work as a whole, testing of new models, administering DB, controlling over the access rights, publication of educational materials in the system - available for system administrators.
Mathematical modeling of the data domain. For the formalized representation of information on a functional model of the academic MOOC platform the authors developed a mathematical model which is defined as follows:
C = ( E, G, S), (1)
WHERE C IS A DOMAIN LIMITED BY automation requirements, which can be described as a system specified as a set of processes
by relations between the processes g and a dictionary of glossaries s of each level of the model.
Every business process of the domain ei is described by inputs i, outputs o, managements l and re-
sources m. The sets of information streams of the domain can be written as follows: a set of incoming
streams of a business process Ii = {ii,...jN}. A set
of outgoing streams Oi = { 0\,... ,oN } of the process
ei describes the output data obtained during the interaction within the academic mooc platform. Li is a set of
management streams Li ={ll,...,lN}, which describes objects that regulate and define rules for the domain processes. Mi is a set of streams and resources
Mi = { Mi,...,Mn } of the process eb which describes
resources that are used or perform the processes of interaction with the platform. Every business process of the domain can be described as follows:
El = (lt, Oi, L ,Mt). (2)
The multitude of relationships g between the processes E = {E17...,En } , which define constant links
and dynamic interaction of the system components, is generally specified by the following area of values:
G = (GOI, Gol, GOM ) (3)
Where goi is a relationship between the processes, in which the result of the ith process is an input influence on the jth process; gol is a relationship between the processes, in which the result of the ith process sets rules, algorithms or restrictions on the implementation of the jth process; gom is a relationship between the processes, in which the result of the ith process is a resource for the jth process.
In the framework of the domain there were defined only relationships goi of the type input-output, where goi is a multitude of the outgoing streams of the process eb which turn into the incoming streams of the process ej, and their existence allows you to start the implementation of the process ej, thus the output ki of the ith process is the input k2 of the jth process:
v)1 = Go.i(et), i)2 =Vk .
Taking into account the aforementioned, the expression (i) can be written in the following way:
C = <E, Gio , S) .
The obtained mathematical model allows us to display the analyzed domain in a formal way, taking into account its decomposition into elementary functional steps, describing relationships between objects, schemes and algorithms of their interaction.
The results of creation of a functional domain model give the opportunity to develop architecture of the platform, highlighting its function modules and defining the rules of distribution rights of access to data based on the roles of users of the system. The created functional model has allowed the authors to define five level of the academic mooc platform architecture [9]:
1. The level of user access to the data. It includes a graphical interface of the system, transferred through a browser.
2. The level of services providing storage of users' identifying data. Common services provide the collaboration among all users of the system (Synchronous /
Asynchronous) and the event management (Calendar / Scheduling / Reminders) to support users' workflow.
3. The level of learning services, which provide core functionality for creation and use of the educational resources.
4. The level of storage of all the data involved in the system. As a database of the system, relational databases, NoSQL-databases or XML can be used.
5. The level includes client-server network and physical hardware, utilizing standard internet technology protocols.
To manage the e-content of the academic mooc platform, the functions of adding, deleting, editing, moderation information resources, data search, obtaining results of data-mining should be provided for administrators. The data on the number of users, the amount of transmitted data, the waiting time restrictions for issuing the queries results give the opportunity to set technical and hardware specifications of the academic mooc platform servers.
Conclusions. To formalize the results of the data domain analysis the authors have developed the new functional model of the academic MOOC-platform which is presented in the article. The created functional model describes data domain actors, functions of each role of system users, rules of data access distribution and information resources exchange scheme.
The functional modeling results are presented in mathematical and graphical forms. The graphical form of the model is developed by the mean of the bpmn methodology. On the base of the functional model the authors have developed the academic mooc platform architecture, including its level and structure.
The presented functional model can be effectively used for the identification and theoretical justification of the principles, forms, methods of effective use of the ict and remote forms of teaching in the education in higher educational institutions.
For the successful use of academic mooc platform in a modern university of ukraine, it's necessary to perform the following organizational activities [10]:
- to determine the organizational and functional structure of a content management system, to specify the rights and obligations of all participants in the educational process, to describe the roles of teachers and system administrators;
- to develop a template for creating electronic versions of training materials that will set the rules of unified style and composition of the e-content of the system;
- to set a format and a structure of video materials and media elements;
- to establish corporate policies and guidelines regarding the use of the system, to set the time intervals of updating training materials of the system;
- to train students and teachers on the use of electronic computer means that will be used for the development of e-content electronic of the system.
Prospects for the further research.The authors of the article have defined perspective issues of further scientific research, namely:
- techniques, methods, tools and technologies of creating virtual laboratories for the remote acquisition of practical skills;
- the search, analysis or elaboration of the methods of evaluating the acquired knowledge quality;
- the search, analysis or elaboration of the methods of implementing the modules of coordinated control and self-control of the quality of acquired knowledge;
- the organization of remote training of pedagogical staff of educational institutions;
- the optimizing of the methods of storing graphic and multimedia data in a database;
- the questions of data protection answering.
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