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DonNTU master Ivanyushchenko Nikita

Ivanyushchenko Nikita

Faculty: Computer Science and Technology

Department: Automated Control Systems

Major: Information Control Systems

Subject of final work:

Choice of learning management system architecture

Supervisor: Ph.D., assistant professor Privalov Maxim
Topic`s of graduation materials: Biography | Abstract

Introduction

The development of computer technologies, the increasing use of computers in all spheres of human activity and ubiquitous broadband access to the Internet make perfect all of the existing Internet-oriented systems and designing new ones. No company can do without management systems and web-site with the possibility online interaction.
Virtually any organization of any employee may, with access to a global network of the planet at any time be able to engage with the company.
In this paper we make the choice of architecture for a system of quality management of educational process. It will consider several such systems, generated a list of system requirements.

Urgency of building a quality management system of educational process.

At the moment the quality management system training process is very high demand, due to stricter requirements to education in general and the transition to market competition among universities. It is therefore logical question is constructing a system for organizing Internet data access educational process. Since this type of work at the University for the first time, the aim is also to develop a common system architecture.

Analysis of existing development

Let's see some similar systems, we distinguish the main features and capabilities and create your list of functions the system developed.
  1. Information system "Quality management of educational process. Accounting for progress and attendance", SSTU (Samara State Technical University) [1].
    System is implemented and operating successfully. It is intended to provide a comparative and analytical information to improve the quality of the educational process University of planning and decision-making by management, increase the speed of obtaining information and its accuracy.

    Features:
    • recording and analysis of academic achievement and attendance of students;
    • formation and maintenance of a list of specialties and disciplines of the university, maintaining the relevance of input data;
    • efficient delivery of relevant information in the automatic mode;
    • stamped performance as a 5-grade, and in the 100 point system;
    • formation of user groups by assigning each user to certain rights of access to information;
    • creation of various statistical and analytical reports for all user groups;
    • control of the users in the system.

    Advantages of system:
    • information provided helps to identify the least quality in terms progress and attendance areas in the learning process, allows for a comparative analysis of its separate parts;
    • use this system to create a central repository of accounting attendance, current and total students' progress. Only a single data entry system will provide online analytical accounting and control current progress, as all students, as well as a separate group or a particular student's attendance at all sessions or a single discipline;
    • information system is the division into groups of users and their job opportunities. Guide University is able to control the process of filling the system information, conduct an appropriate analysis of introduced and existing in the data, on request to obtain any statistical information from the system. Deans can control the situation by their faculty. Employees of departments, teachers can view and print reports introduced their information, both personally and throughout the department.

  2. Information System of the University of Colorado, Boulder. The system is currently installed and functioning [2].

    The system provides the following features:
    • for students: ads, schedules, estimates, fees, job offers, news and events, location of user files.
    • for teachers: ads, schedule, financial statements, the layout of learning materials.
    • to staff: ads, accounting tools, news, paid consultations.

    Platform Moodle [3] was not considered, since its purpose - only distance learning and all the necessary tasks, it does not cover.

    Similar systems are being developed for each institution individually, taking into account the peculiarities of the educational process and additional functions and are closed. In addition, the deployment of the finished system over the existing wide variety of ASU University, a well-functioning for a long time is very problematic and costly.

    Therefore, the use of already finished system is not possible.

Problem investigation

In this paper we need to develop the system architecture quality management of educational process with the requirements of reliability, fault tolerance, protection of stored data. A similar system, we can create your list of requirements:
  1. for students:
    • opportunity to view data on the performance of both the general for the entire course of study, and current: statistics delivered laboratory work, the implementation of course work;
    • choice of optional subjects;
    • ability to view data on attendance;
    • can view the calendar in the light of additional items;
    • access to university-wide news events;
    • access to job offers;
    • account outstanding library;
    • access to learning materials.

  2. for teachers:
    • view timetables;
    • monitoring progress and attendance;
    • adding educational materials;
    • introduction of common and current data on the performance;
    • advertising and news.

  3. for elders of groups:
    • entering data on attendance;
    • entering data on current performance;
    • advertising and educational materials.

  4. for entrants:
    • view current rating;
    • access to training materials and sample tasks;
    • migration into the role of the student upon successful admission.
It was considered two approaches to software development: service-oriented and multi-agent architecture.

A multi-agent architecture [4] - is a system formed by multiple interacting intelligent agents. Multi-agent systems can be used to solve such problems which are difficult or impossible to solve by single agent or monolithic system. Examples of such tasks are on-line commerce, management of emergencies and modeling of social structures. This architecture has been rejected due to its decentralized nature - no agents, managers throughout the system.

In the light of a very wide range of applications and heterogeneity of data, most logical architecture for this system is service-oriented architecture [5], characterized by a modular approach to software development, based on the use of services (services) with standardized interfaces.

At the heart of SOA are the principles of multiple use of the functional elements of information technology, Elimination of duplication of functionality to the software, unification of types of operating processes, the translation of the operating model of the company centralized processes and the functional organization based on industrial platform integration.

The components of the program can be distributed on different network nodes, and are offered as independent, loosely coupled, Replaceable service applications. Software systems developed in accordance with the SOA, often implemented as a set of web services integrated with the known standard protocols

For large information systems, enterprise-level and above, using a similar architecture is preferable for the following reasons:
  • reduce costs in application development, through streamlining the development process;
  • empowerment reusability;
  • irrespective of the platforms, tools and development languages;
  • scalability posed systems;
  • improve manageability of systems produced.
At present university has a sufficiently large automated control system, but only for internal use. Databases are distributed and contain almost all the necessary data. ACS includes such systems as "Dean", "Library", "Human Resources", "Applicant". AMS "Dean" is located on a fairly large area and at the moment of direct interaction between the nodes No, only the master node has access to all children, and each dean's office only has access to the site that maintains the faculty (Figure 1). This creates unnecessary difficulties in entering and updating data. Figure 1. The structure of the distributed database AMS "Dean"
Figure 1. The structure of the distributed database AMS "Dean"

In the light of the selected service-oriented architecture, the current structure of the various ACS is well suited for construction of the system.

The overall architecture is the entire system is shown in Figure 2. To access each database will be implemented by service, dealing with exchange of data with DB or its main node (as in the case of the database AMS "Dean"), including updating and adding data. Each of these services will have access the data only given automatic control system. Also, be implemented additional databases and additional services, necessary for the implementation of all system functions, such as: layout of learning materials, user registration, issuance of rights, placing ads. The main server is a web server, will process data provided by each of the services and the provision of the final result of the work system.

SSTU possesses comparable number of students (20 000). The average number of users each day - about 100, but the developed system also capable of working with applicants, so the load on our system will be slightly higher given the small number of data submitted by an applicant.

This architecture, by virtue of the division of responsibilities among services, are easy to cope with these pressures. Figure 2. SOA Quality Management System Training
Figure 2. SOA Quality Management System Training

Findings

In this auto have been considered a quality management system training process, analyzed their capabilities and formed a list requirements for the new system. Was selected service-oriented architecture, because it allows simply modify the system a change or expand the requirements are flexible and easy enough to implement it on an existing database system, AMS, so as the structure and functioning of basic database does not change and efficiency of the existing ASU University not zatragivetsya. In the future, the system will be realized and implemented on the basis of DonNTU.

Bibliography

  1. Samara State Technical University. Information system of quality management training process. Accounting for progress and attendance. - 2009. [Electronic resource]. http://ivc.samgtu.ru/node/161
  2. University of Colorado at Boulder, CUConnect. – 2008. [Electronic resource]. https://cuconnect.colorado.edu/uPortal/index.jsp
  3. Moodle Docs. About Moodle: features. – 2008. [Electronic resource]. http://docs.moodle.org/en/Features
  4. Wikipedia. Multi-agent system. – 2010. [Electronic resource]. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-agent_system
  5. Wikipedia. Service-oriented architecture – 2010. [Electronic resource]. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service-oriented_architecture
  6. Basic principles and methods of usage of portals in the learning process. Grivoryev S.,Grinshkun V., Krasnova G. http://www.ict.edu.ru/ft/002363/krasnova.pdf
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