The Model and Deployment of E-learning on Cloud Computing

The Model and Deployment of E-learning

on Cloud Computing

Chao-Tung Yang

Department of

Computer Science

Tunghai University

[email protected]

Wei-Ting Yeh

Department of

Computer Science

Tunghai University

[email protected]

Fang-Yie Leu

Department of

Computer Science

Tunghai University

[email protected]

Abstract

In this paper, we explain how to combine cloud computing with e-learning environment. Also, we will demonstrate how to construct a complete e-learning cloud containing the essential components for deployment stage and provide an example of the experimental application to further analyze its pros and cons against the conventional method. This architecture contains a private cloud on local hardware resources and a SaaS services that powered by the external large-scale cloud services provider like Google. After reading the full papers, you will learn how to establish a fully functional e-learning cloud with low cost and low technical barriers.

Keywords

1.

Introduction

E-learning was result of the forth industrial revolution also known as the information revolution which leads to popularization of the personal computers and World Wide Web that allowed the digitalization of education tools and environment. E-learning set itself apart from the traditional mediums by focusing heavily on multimedia presentations with comprehensive knowledge management and search system; therefore, e-learning changed the conventional communication between teachers and students which in term transformed the very essence of education. Since the immense population growth of the personal computers throughout the 80s, e-learning had gone through many major improvements over the past 30 years. During the first 10 years, e-learning 1.0 stressed on the proper usage of the internet, then version 2.0 began to utilize web2.0 and further enhance interactive applications; finally the new generation of e-learning underline the importance of socializes learning through social software such as blog, wiki, podcasting, and the virtual 3D reality world of "Second Life."

Cloud Computing was one of the most significant advancement for information technology in the past decade, and had since became the mainstream trend. With its establish grid computing that introduced numerous layers of services, everyone from academic fields to business, governmental officials to average consumers, was enjoying the revolutionary experience of cloud computing.

By analyzing the characteristics of cloud computing, the advantages it would bring to e-learning became easily apparent. First of all, e-learning developers (e.g. teachers & professors) no longer needed to worry about the minor balance between hardware and resources, consequently lower their dependency on professional knowledge. Secondly, users of e-learning systems (e.g. students and workers) would only require having some light weight, low cost devices, such as tablet, ultra book, or smart phone, to interact with the e-learning systems through internet connection. Finally, all data used with the e-learning program whether they were personal notes or progress reports would be saved and backup automatically which greatly reduced data management time the storage spaces with improved security.

Base on the above summary, we believed the correlation of cloud computing with e-learning system would become the conventional approach that combined the fields of information technology and education. Hence our thesis would explain the model created by fusing cloud computing technology into e-learning environment along with the set up procedures, as well as producing our own e-learning cloud to provide an overview of its advantages and short comings for future refinement and expansion.

2.

BACKGROUND REVIEW

2.1.

E-learning

Nowadays E-learning has become an indivisible part of education due to the trend of utilizing the newer information technology. learning is the computer and network-enabled transfer of skills and knowledge. E-learning applications and processes include Web-based E-learning, computer-based E-learning, virtual education opportunities and digital collaboration. Content is delivered via the Internet, intranet/extranet, any media-container

Research Notes in Information Science (RNIS) Volume14,June 2013

with audio or video, like satellite TV and CD-ROM etc. It can be self-paced or instructor-led and includes media in the form of text, image, animation, streaming video and audio. [1]

2.2.

Open Source Software for E-learning

2.2.1. Moodle

Moodle is a Course Management System, also known as a learning Management System or a Virtual learning Environment. It is a free open source software package for producing Internet-based courses and web sites and so to create an effective online learning environment. Moodle can be installed on any computer that can run PHP, and can support an SQL type database (for example MySQL). It can be run on Windows and Mac operating systems and many flavors of Linux. [2]

2.2.2. MediaWiki

MediaWiki is a free software open source wiki package written in PHP, originally for use on the well-known Wikipedia. It is now also used by several other projects of the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation and by many other wikis, including this website, the home of MediaWiki. [3]

2.2.3. PhpBB

Because phpBB is released under the GNU General Public License, you may make changes to the code without first having to obtain permission from the phpBB Group. Our extensive database of user-created modifications makes changing and adding features as simple as pasting code into the appropriate files, while the styles database contains hundreds of style and image packages to customize your board. [4]

2.2.4. Crawlzilla

crawlzilla help you easily create a free search engine software, with it, you do not have to rely on commercial companies closing for searching, do not have to worry intranet site data index features and objectives of the crawlzilla, the most important is to provide users with an easy to use easy to install search platform, it can also be customized to meet the search requirements, developed by Taiwan National Center for High-performance Computing (NCHC). [5]

2.3.

Cloud Computing, IaaS, PaaS, SaaS

According to USA NIST's definition [6], Cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. This cloud model is composed of five essential characteristics, three service models, and four deployment models. Our main focuses here are the three service models:

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). The capability provided to the consumer is to provision processing, storage, networks, and other fundamental computing resources where the consumer is able to deploy and run arbitrary software, which can include operating systems and applications.

Platform as a Service (PaaS). The capability provided to the consumer is to deploy onto the cloud infrastructure consumer-created or acquired applications created using programming languages, libraries, services, and tools supported by the provider.

Software as a Service (SaaS).The capability provided to the consumer is to use the provider’s applications running on a cloud infrastructure2. The applications are accessible from various client devices through either a thin client interface, such as a web browser (e.g., web-based email), or a program interface.

2.3.1. Virtualization

Virtualization provides more operational flexibility and increases the utilization rate of the underlying physical hardware. Here we specially refer to the hardware virtualization, which provides the ability to create virtual machine that acts like a real computer with an operating system. Software executed on these virtual machines is separated from the underlying hardware resources. Virtualization is also an essential component in IaaS cloud computing service model. [7] [8]

2.3.2. Ezilla

Ezilla helps users quickly and easily build their own private cloud. Ezilla integrates storage, networking, and computing resources under a cloud and allows cloud service providers to swiftly deploy cloud service environments that are built on a user-friendly, web-based interface. It is created by Taiwan National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC), Pervasive Computing Lab (Percomp Lab). [9.] Its core function components include:

1. Both KVM and Opennebula provide the hardware virtualization ability, with KVM offers the generation functions for virtual machine while that the OpenNebula handles virtual machine’s management and monitoring capabilities.

2. Moose (MooseFS) as its file system.

3. DRBL (Diskless Remote Boot in Linux) providing a diskless or OS-less environment for multiple machines. 4. Cloud middleware with multiple web-based VM control widget providing the higher management for whole

infrastructure and a visual user interface that offering cloud visualizer service.

2.4.

Related Work

Frank Doelitzscher et al. introduced to build a private cloud and showed how their cloud offerings in each of the cloud service models, i.e. IaaS, PaaS and SaaS, addressed the requirements and needs of e-learning and collaboration in an university environment. This private cloud computing architecture is called CloudIA, which was explained and its special issue of Single-Sign-On using Shibboleth has been emphasized. Unique compared to other IaaS frameworks CloudIA is creating VM images by choosing a base image and post installing software packages selected by the user on the fly. The PaaS approach is supported by a Servlet Container Platform and mainly used for study courses at the HFU. A very successful collaboration application CollabSoft has been adapted to SaaS with the support for different authentication technologies. [10]

Paul Pocatilu et al. presented the positive impact of using cloud computing architectures upon e-learning solutions development. It focuses on the benefits of cloud computing for e-learning solutions and the e-learning project management challenges when cloud computing architecture is used. Using cloud computing for e-learning solutions influences the way the e-learning software projects are managed. There are specific tasks that deal with finding providers for cloud computing, depending on the requirements (infrastructure, platform or services). Also, the cost and risk management influences the way the e-learning solutions based on cloud computing are managed. [11]

Sarah Stein et al. explored the distinct ways that a Cloud was designed specifically for education and could be applied to K-12 education’s academic mission. It uses observations from a case study in North Carolina rural high schools using an educational Cloud called the Virtual Computing Lab to access dynamic geometry and algebra software. They also addressed the benefits and challenges that K-12 education faces when considering the adoption of Cloud computing for pedagogical aims in the following areas: diversity of software applications, software license cost savings, security, extending machine life, availability of broadband connectivity outside of school, affordability of class time delivery and cultural vs. technical barrier. [12]

Marinela Mircea et al. showed how to identify the particularities of using Cloud Computing within e-learning environment in higher education. An analysis of the data and the main activities that exist within a university was the starting point for choosing a cloud model that should take into account the special security requirements of higher education and the available cloud solutions as well. [13]

3.

THE MODEL OF E-LEARNING CLOUD

This section describes the creation of a fully functional e-learning Cloud Model, and must have elements. First, we analyze the traditional e-learning to indicate the various components that must be archive, including the Digital Educational Materials, the Discussion Requirement, Research Demand, Teaching Function, Search Function, and Professional Knowledge Base. Furthermore, we utilize the widely popular social network, as well as some additional needs, such as multimedia playback and sharing, language translation, and website analysis, etc. Collectively we referred to these as “Educational Source & Requirement.” According to Figure 1, these “Educational Source & Requirement” elements will go through a carefully planned conversion known as “Cloudify”, which will import numbers of cloud computing technology and software, then divided into the local components of the provisioning hardware/software environments as well as a fully developed free external service(for related software, refer to previous Background info.) After the “Cloudify” processes take place the completed e-learning Cloud Model will consist the following:

Figure 1.

1) Virtual Classroom

Use Moodle as a base to create comprehensive functions for managing digital textbook and provide online courses with learning assessment review, which can become a good complement/replacement for traditional teaching methods. Such model allows students to receive a wide range of courses, while educators can easily find the instructions they need. Moreover, instructors can monitor students’ base on the statistics of the Moodle platform, then adjustment their own teaching according.

2) Online Knowledge Base

Here we use MediaWiki as foundation, since an e-learning environment must have a good knowledge management system to be used as expertise, query, and supervision and sharing platform.

3) Internet Forum

Build from phpBB, the Internet Forum is an essential part of the e-learning field, which features a complete online discussion function for all users, also able to be embedded in a variety of media to present diverse opinions. In addition, it allows for different levels of users (visitors, students, lecturer, and system administrator) to contact each other online and exchange views.

4) Horizontal Search Engine

Horizontal search engine will provide a convenient and comprehensive search feature that allows users to quickly and accurately find any information of E-learning Cloud. We construct this engine using Crawlzilla.

5) System monitoring & management

This section is related to the IaaS and PaaS parts of cloud computing. We use KVM within Opennebula and Hadoop to construct the virtualization environment and establish management and monitoring mechanisms. This sector will be responsible for managing the whole local infrastructure. It will expand the benefits of IaaS and PaaS cloud computing to the entire E-learning Cloud, which includes the use of Load-balance technique in order to maintain the stability of the whole system and reduce energy consumption. As well as using distributed storage and system backup mechanism to prevent accidental data lost and service interruptions. On the other hand, the well design monitoring system will allow IT professionals to better the efficiency of maintenance and adjustment of the underlying hardware resources. Furthermore, PaaS will provide amateur software developers with the most convenient and time efficient platform, while stay mostly invisible to the common E-learning Cloud users.

6) Main Website

A complete e-learning Cloud should have a main site as central hub to connect all other components of the platform, and serve as the entrance of the entire cloud. It should provide an excellent user interface, with easy- access tutorial, so all users can quickly understand the various functions of the e-learning cloud. Here we use Wordpress to build this website.

7) Social Network

Social network is among the most popular of knowledge sharing network, where currently the majority of e-learning services are connected with. A linked social network allows e-e-learning Cloud to distribute knowledge faster with instant feedback and greater learning benefit.

8) Additional E-learning Functions

Aside from these core components, the user may also want additional features, such as multimedia playback and sharing, different language translation, external information search, advanced data analysis capabilities, online file sharing/editing, and etc. There are worldwide cloud service providers like Google or Dropbox which provides a lot of well-developed free cloud software services. All these features can be used if necessary when construct our own e-learning Cloud.

4.

THE DEPLOYMENT OF E-LEARNING CLOUD

Author names and affiliations are to be centered beneath the title and printed in Times New Roman 11-point, non-boldface type. Multiple authors may be shown in a two or three-column format, with their affiliations below their respective names. Affiliations are centered below each author name, italicized, not bold. Include e-mail addresses if possible. Follow the author information by two blank lines before main text.

Figure 2. The model of a Fully Functional e-learning Cloud

The Deployment of e-learning Cloud can be divided into seven stages:

1) Infrastructure Construction

The first stage will apply virtualization technique in cloud computing to all hardware resources to form a re-allocable hardware resources pool. Here we use Taiwan NCHC’s Ezilla (including KVM & Opennebula) to create the virtualization environment and the virtual machine’s managing functionalities.

A combination of KVM plus Opennebula, KVM creates the virtual machine while Opennebula manages the virtual machine’s functionalities. In addition, we also use Hadoop to build a distributing file suitable for the massive data storage and handling, as well as a base for horizontal search engine services.

2) Core Components’ Base Template Creation

This stage will utilize the architecture employed in the previous stag, resulting in a blank virtual machine. Then the installation of the essential software including Moodle, MediaWiki, phpBB and Wordpress, afterward these virtual machines shall become the base templates. In addition, this is also the stage where system administrators should consider the characteristics of the services provided by e-learning cloud and begin to customize the original virtual machines (modified copy of the virtual machines, while retain the original) in order to meet the future demands of the users .If necessary, kept constant contact with both teaching service providers and users to determine their needs.

3) Use Ezilla‘s Web User Interface to Deploy

This stage will make use of the corfunction-established virtual machine from last stage to provide e-learning services using Ezilla’s web interface (with the selected virtual machine online.) The basic requirements for these services, such as computing power, occupied memory and storage resources, and so on

should be considered prior to enter this stage. Once completed, all three core elements of e-learning Cloud (Virtual Classroom, Online Knowledge Base and Internet Forum) should function smoothly.

4) Set the Horizontal Search Engine

This stage uses the Hadoop part of the Infrastructure from stage 1) as base along with Crawlzilla to build a horizontal search engine that functions across the entire e-learning Cloud.

5) Organize all Components

This phase will use the Wordpress template from stage 2) to establish a Main Website that interlinks with other e-learning Cloud service elements to become a complete e-learning Cloud, while also serve as entrance for the users.

6) Include External Cloud Service and Social Network as Additional E-learning Functions

This stage is divided into two parts:

I. Apply free application service provided by outside cloud service suppliers in accordance with specific demands and eliminate the cost for research and development; here we have a few examples: Analysis and Translation services provided by Google, YouTube Multimedia services.

II. Link existing community networks, such as Facebook, Twitter, or Plurk in a variety ways, from simply post evaluation to complete embedded discuss functions, or even connects to the community network with applications services.

7) Monitor and Maintain

The last stage will exploit the “Monitor” function of Infrastructure from stage 1) to observe the condition of the hardware resource consumption of the entire working platform, as well as the load balance and fault tolerance of the virtualization technology. If a problem occurs, the system administrator should notify IT professionals to make adjustments to the detailed parameters or hardware resource allocation.

After the completion of steps 1) to 7), a fully functional e-learning Cloud is formed with its operational structure shown in Figure 2, which provides a complete e-learning service. In this case, the computing resources’ are primarily used by the hardware resources of the local infrastructure, as well as the application services supplied by external cloud service providers.

5.

EXPERIMENT

5.1.

Experimental Environment

In this section, we will integrate the solutions presented in this paper with project K-16 of Tunghai University. Our responsibility as sub-project 3 is to provide IT support for all K-16 project members and offering a complete e-learning function to other sub-project groups. The entire project which consist a team of thirty people, including twenty-eight individuals who provide educational research with additional two as IT services supporters, will study a set of around two to three hundred learners. Also, three computers, two with C2Q-Q9550 CPU/4G RAM and one with i7-2600K CPU/16G RAM, are required to form the local Hardware Resource pool.

5.2.

Results & Discussion

First, we use the conventional method to build a e-learning environment, as shown in Figure 3, Method 1, where all e-learning software are installed on the same computer. While such setup appears very simple at first, the user will soon discovered the heavy work load it places on the machine; with higher usage in CPU and memory that can often cause a system slow down. Moreover, if damage should occur with the computer it may easily lead to the complete data loss and service malfunction. On the other hand, Method 2 allows different e-learning software to be installed on separate computers to provide services, which greatly reduces the stress on each machine and grants additional system/data security. However, there are disadvantage to this method as well. First of all, the hardware computing power of individual device will not be effectively used. Therefore, if a particular service requires higher computing resources, then it will be very cumbersome to divert the task to a machine with stronger performance (i7-2600K.) Furthermore, every data backup must be carried out three times which greatly increasing the time for maintenance.

When we import cloud computing technology by using Ezilla as the chief infrastructure administrator, as shown in Figure 4, with number 1 to 7 indicate the steps mentioned in the fourth chapter. Through this picture the usage of the virtual machine template is expressed more clearly (step 2 & 3.) Also the computing resources for the three base computers are more sufficiently used and managed. The related creation, backup and recovery advantages are listed below:

Table 1. The time cost’s difference between ours and conventional method

Our Solution Conventional Time to create an

e-learning cloud component onVM.

5~6 hours at first, but < 20mins per run afterward.

Every time needs about 1 hour or more. Time to backup an e-learning cloud component. <10mins(snapshot)

<30mins(complete) Usually > 30 min. Time to restore an e-learning cloud component. Usually < 30 min. (depend on data size) Usually > 60 min.

From Table1, it is easy to see that even though the initial construction using cloud computing will take up a significant amount of time, every subsequent building of new e-learning cloud elements can save up to forty minutes or more, thanks to the mechanism of the virtual machine. When other sub-projects of the same e-learning elements (moodle, etc.) with more complex needs (for example: to distinguish the learning environment in order to manage or use a completely different styles that apply to different objectives, such as transformation style supported by moodle), new learning elements can be created within a very short time using the existing model (as shown in Figure 4, with both Virtual Classroom one and two taking less than 20 minutes to be completed.) In addition, backup and recovery are much more flexible and concise than traditional methods. Since unlike the traditional backup that requires user to pay close attention file system structure, the backup here has option of both “snapshot” and “image” with the former being very time efficient and suitable for experimental changes on smaller system.

6.

CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK

Nowadays, the demand for e-learning is constantly increasing. However, the escalating expenses to create such teaching and learning environments also becomes a major issue which every educational organization must face. Furthermore, there are other difficulties, including the development of educational software and the underlying construction of hardware environments; fortunately, the popularization for open source materials along with the continuous advancement of cloud computing technology greatly reducing the cost and technical threshold of the e-learning environment. This thesis presents a complete solution through the integration of e-e-learning, cloud computing, open source software, and external cloud resources to provide deployment method for more learners and educators.

Figure 4. Utilizing Cloud Computing

At the moment, the solutions we provide still require IT professionals to assist education providers on creating the e-learning elements they need. Though, in the future, we hope to create a simple and easy-to-use web-based user interface that allows educators and course managers to quickly select the digital teaching components (pre-installed in the virtual machine template) they need. Such web interface will communicate with infrastructure control layers (e.g., opennebula, ezilla) to find the required teaching elements virtual machine templates for creating the needed e-learning components, as well as providing appropriate IP, initializing the account permissions settings, and automatically organizing all e-learning components together. Finally, the web interface will guide the users to their online e-learning environments. In addition, when the e-learning environments are no longer needed, the web-based user interface can offer complete data backup and export. We expected adding this mechanism can reduce the using difficulty and improve flexibility. However, the issue of security and single-sign-on mechanism are not addressed in this thesis, yet will surely be tackled in future study.

In the end, the thesis proposed through a combination of e-learning, cloud computing and open source spirit, to indicate the key elements of a complete e-learning cloud, and to help expanding e-learning education throughout the world.

7.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This work is supported in part by the National Science Council, Taiwan R.O.C., under grants no. NSC 101-3113-S-029-001, and NSC 102-3113-S-029-001.

8.

REFERENCES

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