Designing Of A Course Content Server For The Distance Learning Delivery Format

The paper expounds how within the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Technology the need to deliver the courses in the distance learning format is achieved by designing the departmental Course Content Web Server. This multi prong task is under taken by the faculty with the intent to design a non-proprietary system which is open source and is affordable in its implementation. The departmental faculty members, subscribing to the Open Source Software philosophy have undertaken this task and have design the Course Content Server from ground up using all the Open source Software and Open source Operating System. The subject Course Content Server (http://ecet.calumet.purdue.edu/), is currently being used for the delivery of more than 20 undergraduate and graduate courses. The paper describes the three main components of the Course Content Server, namely: 1) the Operating System Linux, 2) the content management system Drupal , an open source platform and 3) the relational database management system (RDBMS) MySQL. All of these components are open source and have no cost associated for the end user. Since the Course Content Server’s implementation the lectures are being delivered 24-7. The lectures are comprised of Spoken lecture voice along with the live interplay of screen video. This approach lends a very rich presentation medium which provides enhancements that include, color, font and size to the written characters. The instructor could design the software and demonstrate the results along with the lecture. Any software simulation or project demonstration could also be incorporated as part of the lecture. The instructor can tap into the vast reservoir of knowledge base that is available on NET and can make this an integral part of the lecture. This approach has totally changed the paradigm of Pedagogy. The paper further illustrates how, students maintain their own portfolio of work. The students submit all the assignments and related course material electronically right from their homes. The Course Content Server from the perspective of students provides an interactive and invigorating learning platform through which, communication between the instructor and students and among students takes place very effectively. This also provides new tools for the implementation of collaborative learning model.