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Achieving High-Level Performance and Quality of Service in Support of Innovation in Online and Distance Education Programs
Authors: Jacques Levin and John Scigliano, Nova Southeastern University, Ft Lauderdale
Florida 33314
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ORGANIZATION OF THE PRESENTATION
Section 1: IntroductionSection 2: The ProblemSection 3: The GoalSection 4: The I-Zone CenterSection 5: Online Tracking SystemsSection 6: An In-House Workflow ProcessSection 7: Conversion/ImplementationSection 8: Conclusion & Future Implications
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Section 1: Introduction
Nova Southeastern University (NSU) decided to deliver through distance learning the majority of its programs, and the I-Zone (Innovation Zone) Center was created to provide a University-wide Faculty Support Center.
This type of innovation support for higher education through services is gaining ground as indicated by William Graves in a recent issue of EDUCAUSE entitled “Performance through IT-Enabled Innovation” where he said that “Higher education also can use IT innovatively to redesign academic and administrative services for improved effectiveness and efficiency” (Graves, 2005, p. 79).
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Section 2: The Problem
The problem addressed in this project was the difficulty for the I-Zone staff to service a university that educated 22,000 students – mainly via online and distance learning.
To cope with the rapid growth of online courses offered by the entire university, the I-Zone Center was created in the fall of 2000, supporting initially 26 online courses. By the fall of 2005, the total number of online courses offered by NSU reached 2,662.
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Section 3: Our Goal
Our goal, during the early years of the I-Zone operation, was to accomplish the difficult task of implementing rapidly a Web-database application to record each employee’s task so as to control the quality of their service.
The goal included providing the I-Zone management with timely quarterly reports and the tools to plan for the rapid growth of the Center.
This goal is in keeping with Graves’ ideas about innovation in higher education “The time is right for higher education to embrace the opportunities of the Internet revolution systematically by responding to performance obligations and their challenges with strategies that are counterintuitive to tradition bound strategies” (Graves, 2005, p. 96).
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Section 4:The I-Zone Center
Since its creation, the purpose of the I-Zone has been to provide
support for online teaching solutions while developing and
implementing a variety of pedagogical online teaching models.
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The I-Zone Services Available
Among the services available are the following: Assisting faculty in the design and delivery of instructional
courses Converting Web-based courses to WebCT © Converting course content documents to HTML. Creating custom graphics. Producing instructional videos. Producing instructional CD-ROM's. Assisting with online instructional strategies.
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Section 5: The Solution
The solution that was initially adopted was to implement a series of online, Web-based, applications to track the services offered by the I-Zone Center.
These applications included the Faculty Request Tracking System, The Media Production Request System, and The Psychotherapy Topic Selection System. Each system is explained in detail below.
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Online Tracking Systems
The Faculty Request Tracking System The Media Production Request System The Psychotherapy Topic Selection System
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The Faculty Tracking System
This first application was critical to ensure the quality of service offered by the I-Zone Center.
Initially, the only contact the NSU faculty had with the I-Zone staff was via phone, email or face to face meetings, and the staff – 5 members at the center’s conception – had great difficulty in handling hundreds of phone calls and emails.
The task, for example, of finding a document, a CD or a video that a faculty member wanted to update one year later, was very time consuming.
To solve the problem, a Web-based application – the Faculty Request Tracking System – was implemented (See Figure 1).
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Figure 1. The Faculty Request Tracking System
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The Media Production Request System
Following the success of the Faculty Request Tracking System, a second application – the Media Production Requests System - was created to monitor the services offered by the Center for its media and video production.
The media production staff must enter daily the progress made on CD and video production. The services offered by the system now are priceless.
Figure 2 contains a sample of a list of requests posted by staff members as they completed their tasks.
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Figure 2: The Media Production Request System
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The Psychotherapy Topic Selection System
Word of the success of the Web applications spread quickly within the university, and many departments started to request special applications.
As an example, we describe below the Psychotherapy Topic Selection system. Here the students must select a topic among a list, but no two students can select the same topic. This is accomplished by deleting the selection from the list as each student selects a topic.
A multi-user interface was implemented to let, on the one hand, the department to enter the list of topics before the term starts, and on the other hand, to give students access to a pull-down menu with a list of topics (See Figure 3).
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Figure 3: The Psychotherapy Topic Selection System
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Section 6: An In-House Workflow Process
Initially, each system was described during a special staff meeting, where the I-Zone Manager explained the purpose of the system, the data to be tracked, the different types of users involved (faculty, staff, manager, administrator), the reports to be generated, and the time frame involved.
A rapid development approach (RAD) was used to produce a prototype that was reviewed during the next meeting, and the cycle continued until all parties were satisfied.
Nevertheless, the entire development cycle was still too time consuming, so an in-house workflow process to cope with this was designed and implemented.
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The Copyright Permission Request System
The Mission Goal #1: The Team Goal #2: The Resources Goal #3A: The Information Needed Goal #3B: Intended Use. Goal #3C: Reporting Info Needed
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The Copyright Permission Request System
After four years of this experience, Diane Lippe, Director of the I-Zone Center, generated the next application, a Copyright Permission Request System.
She did this by writing the specifications using a Microsoft Word © document, following strict guidelines that she developed.
The guidelines included a summary of the objectives and a description of each goal in terms of tables and pull-down menus concise enough to serve as a programming script.
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The Mission
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Goal#1: The Team. The makeup of the team is presented along with the responsibilities and specific tasks of each team member.
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Goal#2: The Resources. Here the resources are listed with a detailed explanation of the departments involved, their responsibilities and how they interfaced with the system.
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Goal#3A: The Information Needed. This will include information on the requestor, the author, the editor, the item format (article, book, etc.), how the material is submitted (email, interoffice, etc.)
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Goal#3B: Intended Use. Here, we specify the intended use (online course, presentation, etc.), the media (WebCT, website, etc.), the academic term (spring, summer, etc.).
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Goal#3C: Reporting Info Needed. The reporting info needed is provided in a table.
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Section 7: Conversion/Implementation
In this section, we review the method we used to implement rapidly a Web-database application that recorded each employee’s task. This was done to control the quality of their service
We implemented the entire project using open-source software. We opted for the Apache server, the Perl language and the MySQL database. The Apache HTTP server is a very popular Web server with more than 65% of
Internet Web sites using it. The Perl language was developed over a decade ago, and has evolved into a
powerful but simple to use, object-oriented language that works well with databases.
MySQL is an open-source database that was developed in Sweden. It has become one of the most widely used databases for the Web.
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Implementation
As explained in our paper entitled “Refactoring and Redesigning a Multidimensional, Open-Source Web Application Development System Using a Relational Database to Enhance Adaptability” presented at the International Conference on Internet Computing in Las Vegas”, we designed a general purpose, multidimensional, open-source Web application development system. The system used a three-tier structure
On the client side, a hierarchy of screens is displayed that sends back the output of a Perl program running on an Apache Web server.
On the server side, a Perl program receives as input the data submitted by a form, reading and writing data from the server and interfacing via DBI to a database.
On the server side, a relational database management system (MySQL) stores the specifications for the Web application program.
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Conversion
Finally, we automated the entire process by developing a conversion program written in the Perl language. The objective of this program was to scan the Word document that described the specifications of the copyright application and produced as output, the three-tier architecture (Figure 10).
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A three-tier architecture
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Section 8: Conclusion and Future Implications In this paper, we presented a series of unique processes to
automate entirely the production of a Web-based application, from its specifications, to its conversion, and finally to its implementation.
Open source software, using the Perl © language, the MySQL Database ©, and the Apache © Web server, enabled us to design a system that would work in several different application development areas.
As we explained in a previous paper, through the refactoring process, the system was made more adaptable, took significantly less time to maintain, and could be easily modified for future applications.
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Future Implications
We feel that this type of automation of processes in support of innovation at the University is in tune with the direction that Graves so aptly presented in his EDUCAUSE article:
“Those colleges and universities that are willing to fund and manage IT in support of innovation are laying the innovation infrastructure and the cultural foundation for becoming high-performance institutions capable of commanding their own futures” (Graves, 2006, p. 96).
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References
John A. Scigliano and Jacques C. Levin. 2000, June. “One Stop Shopping in an Online Education Mall”, Technological Horizons in Education, 27(11), pp. 72-80. http://www.thejournal.com/magazine/vault/A2881.cfm.
Jacques C. Levin, John A. Scigliano, and Dominique Y. Descroix. Online Learning and Intercommunication Tools in a University Environment. ITHET 2003 Proceedings, Marrakech, Morocco July 7-9 2003. http://www.claywall.com/proceedings.pdf
Jacques C Levin and John A. Scigliano. 2004, June. “Refactoring and Redesigning a Multidimensional, Open-Source Web Application Development System Using a Relational Database to Enhance Adaptability”. 2004 International Conference on Internet Computing, Las Vegas. http://68.153.197.235/CSREA/index.pdf
W.H. Graves, W. H. 2005. November/December. “Performance through IT-Enabled Innovation”, EDUCAUSE, 40(6), 79-98
