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id	Vol-3194/paper7
wikidataid	Q117344905→Q117344905
title	Active E-Learning by Doing with ALDO
pdfUrl	https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3194/paper7.pdf
dblpUrl	https://dblp.org/rec/conf/sebd/BartoliniL22
volume	Vol-3194→Vol-3194
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Active E-Learning by Doing with ALDO

Active E-Learning by Doing with ALDO1
(Discussion Paper)

Ilaria Bartolini1 , Andrea Di Luzio1
1
    Department of Computer Science and Engineering (DISI), Alma Mater Studiorum, University of Bologna, Italy


                                         Abstract
                                         It has been proved how teaching and learning educational processes can largely benefit from the
                                         application of ICT-based services within e-learning platforms, such as collaborative editing and advanced
                                         data visualizations. However, among state-of-the-art solutions, no one is able to tackle the problem
                                         in a comprehensive way. In this extended abstract, we discuss ALDO (Active e-Learning by DOing),
                                         a novel, advanced digital framework supporting integrated facilities for effective, active e-learning.
                                         ALDO includes an active repository for collecting, sharing, retrieving, and analyzing relevant materials,
                                         collaborative editing services, an e-learning platform, and advanced visualization tools to inspect the
                                         spatial and temporal dimension of specific data contexts. All such services and tools are made available to
                                         teachers/students through a dedicated Web portal. Although the present research was carried out within
                                         the H2020 Project DETECt (Detecting Transcultural Identity in European Popular Crime Narratives), by
                                         focusing on the specific data context of European crime narrative, the generality of the framework makes
                                         it suitable for any type of educational task. The design and creation of above tools and services, together
                                         with their uses, are presented and discussed through a series of real examples taken from DETECt.

                                         Keywords
                                         E-learning, Web services architecture, data management, data visualization




1. Introduction
Thanks to the success of ICT and the resulting explosion of the digital transformation, we are
currently assisting in the rapid deployment of web-based services that enable collaborations and
interactions between users from any type of organization and from very far locations. When
considering the educational and academic contexts, remote interactions/collaborations are com-
monly implemented by schools and universities through the adoption of collaborative editing
systems and e-learning platforms [7, 10]. More specifically, several studies have confirmed the
benefits of using collaborative writing [7, 10, 11] and e-learning platforms [6, 2] in teaching. It
has been proven that greater benefits in teaching and learning processes can be achieved by
including multimedia digital materials within e-learning courses [1]; this also promotes students
inclusion with respect to the possibility to attend frontal lectures, by overcoming geographical
limits and economic barriers [9]. This opportunity was further confirmed during the recent
pandemic. Any attempt to produce a “complete” e-learning platform should therefore consider

                  1
     The research reported in this scientific publication has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon
2020 research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement No 770151 (DETECt).
SEBD 2022: The 30th Italian Symposium on Advanced Database Systems, June 19-22, 2022, Tirrenia (Pisa), Italy
$ ilaria.bartolini@unibo.it (I. Bartolini); andrea.diluzio2@unibo.it (A. Di Luzio)
                                       © 2022 Copyright for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
    CEUR
    Workshop
    Proceedings
                  http://ceur-ws.org
                  ISSN 1613-0073       CEUR Workshop Proceedings (CEUR-WS.org)
�collaborative editing of learning materials and ICT-based facilities as a “must” of the services to
be offered.
   DETECt (Detecting Transcultural Identity in European Popular Crime Narratives) is a multi-
disciplinary project that addresses the problem of identifying a European intercultural identity
starting from the analysis of popular crime fictions (i.e., criminal narratives, films, and TV
series).1 This to demonstrate that popular culture is a powerful resource to connect European
citizens and foster their reciprocal understanding. Within this context, we conceived ALDO
(Active e-Learning by DOing) a multi-functional digital infrastructure which allows “anyone”
access to diversified digital resources together with advanced tools and services for the integra-
tion of research and learning activities in formal and informal educational contexts [4]. This
digital infrastructure is made up of the back-end where data collection, sharing, curation, and
analysis take place (within the active repository) and the front-end which includes a collabo-
rative atlas, a case studies section, and a learning community. Although specifically designed
for DETECt, ALDO’s generality makes it the perfect solution for any educational activity in a
single integrated platform.




Figure 1: Active e-learning exploiting ALDO framework.


   Figure 1 shows how reaching effective, active e-learning is feasible with ALDO. In our view,
teachers and students can use the repository to collect multimedia materials and metadata.
Using the tools provided by our collaborative editing/repository platform, teachers can work
together to create advanced teaching materials based on the “raw” data uploaded. Moreover,
through appropriate selections (“views”) of the collected data and metadata it is possible to
create advanced visual displays, through interactive maps, graphs, and timelines. Such advanced
materials (i.e., teaching materials, maps and graphs) can therefore be used within the e-learning
platform to enrich the resources made available to students within the individual courses.
Similarly, students can create their own materials in the repository (by building new documents
   1
       H2020 DETECt project (2018-2021): https://www.detect-project.eu
�or working on the basis of the resources already present in the e-learning platform), working
alone or collaborating in groups, and then uploading their evaluation tests to the courses
attended in order to obtain an assessment by the teacher. To the best of our knowledge, ALDO
represents the first attempt to closely integrate all described services and tools into a single
reference digital platform.
   The rest of the paper is as follows: Section 2 introduces the related work; Section 3 describes
ALDO by detailing the underlying software architecture and the design and creation of provided
tools and services; Section 4 concludes the manuscript.


2. Related Work
Due to the absence in literature of complete digital infrastructures able to support teachers
and students in all above described e-learning features and services, our study focuses on
individual reference-based educational solutions, by paying particular attention to the possibility
to develop customized implementations of the related technologies. Concerning e-learning
platforms, Moodle2 was found to be one of the most used [3] open source Learning System
Management (LSM) and also one of the best evaluated [6, 8]. For these reasons, it was quite
natural for us to include Moodle technology in the design of ALDO. As regards cloud platforms
able to offer documents storage tools and update data services through collaborative writing,
it has emerged that Google Docs, in combination with Google Drive, is widely used in the
field of education with documented benefits in terms of both student productivity and student
involvement [7, 10, 11]. However, since it is not possible to develop customized implementation
of Google Docs, for our purposes we had to refer to an open-source alternative to Google Drive
and Google Docs, as we will detail in the next section. In addition to this limitation, both Moodle
and Google Drive do not effectively support the possibility to manage traditional metadata
information.

Table 1
E-learning features/services: a comparative analysis.
                                                            Google         ALDO
                                                Moodle      Drive +        digital
                                                             Docs       framework

                              E-learning          Yes         No           Yes
                             Data + Metadata
                                                Partially   Partially      Yes
                                Repository
                              Collaborative
                                                  No          Yes          Yes
                                 Editing
                             Interactive Data
                                                  No          No           Yes
                               Visualization
                              Open Source
                                                  Yes         No           Yes
                                Software


  Table 1 expresses a comparative analysis of the literature in terms of e-learning features/services.
As it is possible to observe, the peculiarity of ALDO consists in being able to effectively and
    2
        https://moodle.org
�efficiently provide all needed services and features that are normally provided individually by
state-of-the-art platforms.


3. ALDO Digital Framework at Work
ALDO digital framework is made by a software architecture (back-end) and a set of services
and tools integrated in the dedicated Web portal (front-end), as depicted in Figure 2.
   In the following, we illustrate their design, creation, and uses to demonstrate how they can
facilitate teaching and learning activities in any context of use.3




Figure 2: ALDO software architecture.



3.1. Software Architecture
In setting the best software architecture for ALDO, we have assumed the use of free and/or
open source software as a fundamental requirement. The harmonious integration of the many,
different customized software libraries included in the ALDO software architecture (see Figure 2)
is carried out within a dedicated, additional “middleware” software layer. More in details,
the persistence of the collected multimedia materials and metadata is managed by an active
repository based on database technologies. All comments, tags, annotations, uploaded files,
and conversations are stored in the repository that maintains different type of data like “raw”
multimedia data, qualitative descriptions (i.e., metadata like the title of a series, the author,
the description, etc.) and quantitative descriptions (e.g., annotations, comments provided by
teachers/students).


   3
       We invite the reader to experience ALDO first hand at: https://www.detect-project.eu/portal
�   Within the active repository, users can search by metadata, by keyword and tag, or simply
navigate the multimedia material exploiting a visual browsing tool providing users the means
to interact with any data of interest (audio, video, textual documents, PowerPoint, etc). In this
regards, DETECt emphasizes the collaborative actions that allow users to discuss, interact and
prepare advanced learning material for modules and courses.
   Since ALDO Web portal acts as a showcase for all the services and tools made available to
teachers, students, and public users, the choice of its reference structure has been virtually
forced. ALDO Web portal is divided into public sections and private sections with restricted
access.
   Restricted access sections include the e-learning and collaborative editing platforms. The
learning community includes a Moodle through which teachers can create their own course by
keeping and utilizing the material from the repository. The sections with public access are case
studies and those related to maps and graphs (i.e., the Atlas) used to offer advanced views of
the multimedia materials and metadata of specific contexts. The Atlas is an interactive dynamic
multi-layer navigational tool offering the user the capability to search for information and
explore temporal-spatial dimensions of data in specific contexts of interest through interactive
maps and graphs that are completely synchronized with the data from the repository. The user
can even access case studies through the Atlas by their location. Users can browse by region
and find something of interest in this way. The case study section offers an overview of research
about significant fictional worlds. Here the entries are a mix of textual description, videos, and
links which take you to other relevant portions of the Web portal.

3.2. Repository and Collaborative Editing
Collaborative editing is a process of writing documents that involves multiple people and is
aimed at producing a work through individual contributions. The use of collaborative writing
tools can offer substantial benefits to any activity, ranging from increasing user engagement to
simpler work processes.
   However, designing and implementing a graphical user interface for an online active repos-
itory enabling collaborative editing is not a trivial task. The first step towards this goal is to
identify all the characteristics that a collaborative system must guarantee in terms of provided
services. Among such features, a collaborative environment has to be able to arrange users in
groups, limit users’ privileges by assigning them different roles or reducing their permissions in
accessing documents, offer each user the ability to collect or create documents, perform reviews,
validate the work of contributors (through synchronous and asynchronous communication),
and make specific annotations and/or comments to documents. Finally, a collaborative system
must provide an automatic versioning system that keeps track of all document changes: this
allows users to keep the history of the changes made and provides the possibility to retrieve
them, starting from a previous activity.
   Two open source software platforms have been exploited to join above goals withing ALDO
repository: Nextcloud4 , for the development of the online file system functionalities, and Libre-
Office Online5 , for the implementation of the collaborative editing services. The two platforms
   4
       https://nextcloud.com
   5
       https://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-online
�have been opportunely customized with the final result of a novel, modern collaborative platform
that is simple and intuitive to use and that meets all above requirements.
   The first, basic functionality offered by the ALDO digital framework is represented by the
possibility for the users to collect/analyze multimedia materials and perform the classical
actions of deleting, copying/moving, and downloading uploaded files. In addition, users have
the possibility to take advantage of a preview of the files, by directly inspecting the file content
or the related details (i.e., the file size, the creation date, etc.). This function is particularly useful
for examining the contents of a file without having to download it. Moreover, users can add to
“favorites” the files they work on more often so they can view them all through with a single
click on the dedicated menu item. Further, it is possible to access to the various activities done
on each file, the comments inserted, the sharing activities and, above all, the different versions
of the file. We remind that this last feature is an indispensable service for a collaborative editing
tool. Finally, the interface provides a tagging field where the users can insert tags and/or view
the tags associated to each file. The great advantage of providing the users with a tagging
service is that, once the users have tagged documents, the tags can be profitably exploited for
searching purposes: users can search for documents of interest by entering specific tags in the
dedicated “search bar”. This represents a fast and convenient direct access to the repository
materials.
   As further functionality, if the structure of the folders is based on an ontological modeling of
semantic concepts relevant to a case of study, users can also add metadata concerning concepts or
individual files simply by inserting an excel file in one of the intermediate folders (i.e., metadata
concerning concepts) or in the folder where the multimedia files are present (i.e., metadata
concerning the individual files). The import of metadata within the database is automatic;
this operation enables the search for files and folders through the metadata search interface.
Through this interface, it is possible to view all the information concerning a specific concept
as well as all the multimedia files associated to it. In addition, thanks to the customization
of LibreOffice Online platform, the users can edit, directly from the Web browser, text files,
spreadsheets and power point presentations contained in the repository.

3.3. E-Learning Platform
This section exposes the rationale for choosing Moodle as reference technology to build the
ALDO e-learning platform, and how the tool has been implemented to respond to the needs of
teachers involved in the project activities.
   Our design choice assumed that users (i.e., scholars and teachers) were already regular users
of the Moode platform (made available by their universities). In this context, to facilitate the
creation of their content, we have decided to deliver a quite standard implementation of the
Moodle focusing more on offering an easy-to-use Web interface and, above all, a tight integration
with our collaborative editing platform. This ensures to make easy and comfortable the sharing
of teaching materials, created and stored in the collaborative repository, to students. In fact,
ALDO e-learning platform provides the teachers (under appropriate verification of credentials)
the possibility to load resources into courses picking them directly from the repository.
   In details, a teacher can create the materials in three different ways: (i) activities, (ii) resources
and (iii) blocks. An activity is a tool through which students learn by interacting with each other
�or with the teacher, thus presupposing the active participation of the student. Some examples
of activities, among the others, are glossary (that allows participants to create and manage lists
of items, such as a dictionary or a collection of resources and information) and crosswords
(a gamification tool that allows students to memorize the terms of the glossary by means of
crosswords based on its definitions). A resource, instead, is an element that a teacher can add to
the course to support learning, unlike activities they do not presuppose active participation
between teacher and student: the student simply looks, reads and studies what is present in the
resources. An example of resource are files inserted by the teachers within a course. Finally, a
block is an element that the teacher usually adds to the sides of the course page and provides
additional information or useful tools to facilitate learning. Some of the most common blocks
are calendar (that shows course events, like deadlines for activities included in the course) and
a text box that displays the description of the course.

3.4. Advanced Data Visualization
The basic reason to support the automatic generation of advanced data visualizations is to
provide users with data inspecting tools, like interactive maps, graphs, and timelines, able to
explore the spatial and temporal dimensions of specific data contexts. This is possible through
specific multimedia data analysis and/or metadata aggregations from the repository able to
define views of interest for the users [5]. Such views allow the emergence of peculiar data
characteristics and the possibility to navigate them at different levels of granularity. The
interactive resources will allow students to generate their own corpora to be examined from
quantitative and qualitative perspectives. They will be invited, for example, to examine research
questions based on these materials: the questions might be prepared by the teacher but they
might also be developed by the students through the observation of the visualizations. Students
will be asked to answer these questions by conducting independent research, using resources
included in the portal but also, and primarily, by researching other relevant sources.
    We have equipped our data with geographic references so that to be able to derive two different
types of visualization interfaces: maps, through Leaflet6 , and graphs, exploiting Highcharts.7 In
our implementation of Leaflet we focused on the most typical use of the technology: inserting a
map into a Web page, mapping geo-referenced data (metadata plus related multimedia resources,
all persistently residing in the active repository), and adding other elements such as markers
and popups. In fact, using Leaflet, metadata and multimedia resources associated to each data
entry can be arranged on the map and displayed through markers.
    Since Leaflet allows the display of more resources/metadata for the same location, it is also
possible to have a preview in the tool-tip of different data type like videos, audios and images.
Since all the platforms that are part of our digital framework are deeply integrated with each
other, it is also possible to maintain the reserved access to files displayed in the map by inserting,
instead of the preview, a link that goes directly to the relative folder in the repository, so that
only users with credentials and display rights for that files can access them. As for the automatic
generation of graphs, we have chosen to use the Highcharts library for this specific task because
it is the leading open source software for the generation of graphs/timelines.
    6
        https://leafletjs.com
    7
        https://www.highcharts.com
�4. Conclusions
In this extended abstract, we discussed a novel, advanced digital framework for active e-learning
called ALDO. ALDO represents a complete, integrated solution for the effective collection,
sharing, retrieval and smart analysis of domain-specific’s multimedia data, together with ad-
vanced online collaborative tools and interactive data visualizations made available to users
through the dedicated Web portal. An integrated e-learning platform is also provided to facilitate
transnational teaching and learning activities in any context of use. Since its launch in 2019,
ALDO has been fully operational: it has been used by many partners in the 18-member DETECt
consortium to deliver their institutional courses, including, and especially, during the pandemic
period.


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