Browsing by Author "Manzoor, Hamza"

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    Crossing the Borders: Re-Use of Smart Learning Objects in Advanced Content Access Systems
    Manzoor, Hamza; Akhuseyinoglu, Kamil; Wonderly, Jackson; Brusilovsky, Peter; Shaffer, Clifford A. (MDPI, 2019-07-19)
    Researchers in many disciplines are developing novel interactive smart learning objects like exercises and visualizations. Meanwhile, Learning Management Systems (LMS) and eTextbook systems are also becoming more sophisticated in their ability to use standard protocols to make use of third party smart learning objects. But at this time, educational tool developers do not always make best use of the interoperability standards and need exemplars to guide and motivate their development efforts. In this paper we present a case study where the two large educational ecosystems use the Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) standard to allow cross-sharing of their educational materials. At the end of our development process, Virginia Tech’s OpenDSA eTextbook system became able to import materials from Aalto University’s ACOS smart learning content server, such as python programming exercises and Parsons problems. Meanwhile, University of Pittsburgh’s Mastery Grids (which already uses the ACOS exercises) was made to support CodeWorkout programming exercises (a system already used within OpenDSA). Thus, four major projects in CS Education became inter-operable.
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    Disseminating Learning Tools Interoperability Standards
    Manzoor, Hamza (Virginia Tech, 2019-06-27)
    Until recently, most educational tools have worked in silos. If a teacher wanted her students to complete small programming exercises, record videos, and collaborate through discussion boards, three disconnected tools were probably needed. Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) is a communication protocol that enables different learning tools to talk to each other and share scores with a Learning Management System (LMS). While most commercial LMS now support LTI, most educational software developed by small research efforts do not. This is often because of the lack of resources needed to understand the working of LTI and the process of using LTI in their applications. Our aim is to encourage the use of LTI within the CS Education community. We have developed tutorials that include example applications. We also provide a use case of how LTI is implemented in the OpenDSA eTextbook system. As another use case, we have enabled auto-grading of Jupyter Notebook assignments by providing immediate feedback to students and updating scores to the Canvas gradebook. We provide a Jupyter plugin to upload notebook files to the Web-CAT auto-grading system. We integrate Aalto University's ACOS content into OpenDSA as a third use case.