Browsing by Author "Phiri, Lighton"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Open Access
    Investigating the impact of organised technology-driven orchestration on teaching
    (2018) Phiri, Lighton; Suleman, Hussein; Meinel, Christoph
    Orchestration of learning involves the real-time management of activities performed by educators in learning environments, with a particular focus on the effective use of technology. While different educational settings present unique problems, the common challenges have been noted to primarily be as a result of multiple heterogeneous activities and their associated intrinsic and extrinsic constraints. In addition to these challenges, this thesis argues that the complexities of orchestration are further amplified due to the ad hoc nature of the approaches and techniques used to orchestrate learning activities. The thesis proposes a streamlined approach to technology-driven orchestration of learning, in order to address these challenges and complexities. Specifically, the thesis proposes an organised approach that focuses on three core aspects of orchestration: activity management, resource management and sequencing of learning activities. Orchestration was comprehensively explored in order to identify the core aspects essential for streamlining technology-driven orchestration. Proof-of-concept orchestration toolkits, based on the proposed orchestration approach, were implemented and evaluated in order to assess the feasibility of the approach, its effectiveness and its potential impact on the teaching experience. Comparative analysis and guided orchestration controlled studies were conducted to compare the effectiveness of ad hoc orchestration with streamlined orchestration and to measure the orchestration load, respectively. In addition, a case study of a course that employed a flipped classroom strategy was conducted to assess the feasibility of the proposed approach. The feasibility was further assessed by integrating a workflow, based on the proposed approach, that facilitates the sharing of reusable orchestration packages. The results from the studies suggest that the streamlined approach is more effective when compared to ad hoc orchestration and has a potential to provide a positive user experience. The results also indicate that the approach imposes acceptable orchestration load during scripting of learning activities. Case studies conducted in authentic educational settings suggest that the approach is feasible, and potentially applicable to useful practical usage scenarios. The long-term implications are that streamlining of technology-driven orchestration could potentially improve the effectiveness of educators when orchestrating learning activities.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Open Access
    Simple digital libraries
    (2013) Phiri, Lighton; Suleman, Hussein
    The design of Digital Library Systems (DLSes) has evolved overtime, both in sophistication and complexity, to complement the complex nature and sheer size of digital content being curated. However, there is also a growing demand from content curators, with relatively small-size collections, for simpler and more manageable tools and services to manage their content. The reasons for this particular need are driven by the assumption that simplicity and manageability might ultimately translate to lower costs of maintenance of such systems. This research proposes and advocates for a minimalist and simplistic approach to the overall design of DLSes. It is hypothesised that Digital Library (DL) tools and services based on such designs could potentially be easy to use and manage. A meta-analysis of existing DL and non-DL tools was conducted to aid the derivation of design principles for simple DLSes. The design principles were then mapped to design decisions applied to the design of a prototype simple repository. In order to assess the effectiveness of the simple repository design, two real-world case study collections were implemented based on the design. In addition, a developer-oriented study was conducted using one of the case study collections to evaluate the simplicity and ease of use of the prototype system. Furthermore, performance experiments were conducted to establish the extent to which such a simple design approach would scale and also establish comparative advantages to existing designs. In general, the study outlined some possible implications of simplifying DLS design; specifically the results from the developer-oriented user study indicate that simplicity in the design of the DLS repository sub-layer does not severely impact the interaction between the service sub-layer and the repository sub-layer. Furthermore, the scalability experiments indicate that desirable performance results for small- and medium-sized collections are attainable. The practical implication of the proposed design approach is two-fold: firstly the minimalistic design has the potential to be used to design simple and yet easy to use tools with comparable features to those exhibited by well-established DL tools; and secondly, the principled design approach has the potential to be applied to the design of non-DL application domains.