Development and Implementation of a Mathematical Model of Distant Education System
CHAPTER ONE
Research Objectives
Distance education has created a major shift in how educators and students think about teaching and learning. The objective of the study is to design an Internet-based distance education system that will:
- allow students to learn in more convenient locations and often at more convenient
- open educational opportunity to unreached population of students who do not have opportunity to attend conventional universities.
- enable more people to extend the period of their education from a limited number of schooling years to a lifelong learning process.
CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
Introduction
Distance Education is not a new concept. In the late 1800s, at the University of Chicago, the first major correspondence Programme in the United States was established in which the teacher and learner were at different locations. Before that time, particularly in pre-industrial Europe, education had been available primarily to males in higher levels of society. The most effective form of instruction in those days was to bring students together in one place and one time to learn from one of the masters. That form of traditional educational remains the model today. The early efforts of educators like William Rainey Harper in 1890 to establish alternatives were laughed at. Correspondence study, which was designed to provide educational opportunities for those who were not among the elite and who could not afford full time residence at an educational institution, was looked down on as inferior education. Many educators regarded correspondence courses as simply business operations. Correspondence education offended the elitist and extremely undemocratic educational system which characterized the early years in this country (Pittman, 1991). Indeed, many correspondence courses were viewed as simply poor excuses for the real thing. However, the need to provide equal access to educational opportunities has always been part of our democratic ideals, so correspondence study took a new turn.
As radio developed during the First World War and television in the 1950s, instruction outside of the traditional classroom had suddenly found new delivery systems. There are many examples of how early radio and television were used in schools to deliver instruction at a distance. Wisconsin’s School of the Air was an early effort, in the 1920’s, to affirm that the boundaries of the school were the boundaries of the state. More recently, audio and computer teleconferencing have influenced the delivery of instruction in public schools, higher education, the military, business and industry. Following the establishment of the Open University in Britain in 1970, and Charles Wedemeyer’s innovative uses of media in 1986 at the University of Wisconsin, correspondence study began to use developing technologies to provide more effective distance education.
Correspondence Study to Distance Education
In 1982, the International Council for Correspondence Education changed its name to the International Council for Distance Education to reflect the developments in the field. With the rapid growth of new technologies and the evolution of systems for delivering information, distance education with its ideals of providing equality of access to education, became a reality. Today there are distance education courses offered by dozens of public and private organizations and institutions to school districts, universities, the military and large corporations. Direct satellite broadcasts are produced by more than 20 of
the country’s major universities to provide over 500 courses in engineering delivered live by satellite as part of the National Technological University (NTU). In the corporate sector, more than 40 billion dollars a year are spent by IBM, Kodak, and the Fortune 500 companies in distance education programmes. What, exactly, are the prospects and promises of distance education? Desmond Keegan (Keegan, 1980) identified six key elements of distance education:
CHAPTER THREE
SYSTEM MODELS
In a distance education system, it is essential to have an effective electronic means for managing, delivering, processing and presenting educational materials. This system is built on learning model based on curriculum sequencing approach. The learning material is presented in a dynamic web page suitable to the learner. The system evaluates/monitors the trends of the learning activities of the learner to show both the study and overall performances.
Let cik be courses to be learned by the learners where i = 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (learner’s year of study) and k = 1, 2, .., n (k is the course number registered for). For easy learning and representation each course syllabus is split into topics (tl) which in turn are split into subtoptics (slm) where necessary with l, m = 1, 2, 3,…. But in case cik is a final year project, cik are split into chapters rather than topics. (Adewale, 2007)
CHAPTER FOUR
SYSTEM DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION
System Design
Due to large flexibility of information delivery over the internet, the system is designed as a standard internet application. The client side simply requires the standard internet browser installed on the local computer while the main application functionality is assured by the server side.
CHAPTER FIVE
CONCLUSION, RECOMMENDATION AND FUTURE RESEARCH
Conclusion
The web-based Distance Education System was designed with the aim of eliminating some of the difficulties encountered during the study period of the beneficiaries of distance education.
Effort was made by the designer of the system to make the assessments of the learners easier for the users of the system. The issue of interaction among students/learners was also addressed with the use of some collaborative study performance evaluation techniques.
In order to make e-learning content portable across different hardware and software systems, a new way of developing e-learning content was used. This new approach assumes that e-learning content can be organized and disseminated in a uniform format as small chunks of learning materials commonly referred to as learning objects. It seems that developing and delivering learning content as objects will promote reusability, interoperability and content sharing between different training vendors and educational institutions. When combined, the learning objects, due to their reusability in different learning scenarios may form educational resources that can be used in different environments by different individuals.
Furthermore, each learning object was organized such that, it has a description that enables learners to search for and find the right objects for the right topic.
Security of data is also ensured by the use of passwords and usernames which must be applied to the system by any user before access is gained. The access level also ensures protection of data from corruption and illegal or unauthorized use.
Recommendations
In developing or adapting distance instruction, the core content remains basically unchanged, although its presentation requires new strategies and additional preparation time. Suggestions for planning and organizing a distance delivered course include:
- Hands-on training with the technology of delivery is critical for both teacher and students. A pre-class session in which the class meets informally using the delivery technology and learns about the roles and responsibilities of technical support staff should be
- Government or the organizers of the Distance Education System should make sure each site is properly equipped with functional and accessible equipment. A toll-free “hotline” for reporting and rectifying problems should also be
- Government should make cyber cafes available at each local government areas to facilitate the use of the Distance Education
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