The NAVKIT a european multimedia tool fo (1)

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The NAVKIT: A European Multimedia Tool for

Professional Training in the Field of Satellite

Navigation Technology

Fabio Dovis, Gabriella Povero, and Matteo Vannucchi

fabio.dovis@polito.it, gabriella.povero@ismb.it, matteo.vannucchi@polito.it

Abstract_{- Satellite Navigation and its applications are} becoming more and more important. In Europe, the European Commission confirmed the public funding of the European Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) Galileo. In this framework, new educational needs have arisen. A recently conducted survey has highlighted a general lack of educational material on GNSS-related subjects. The NAVKIT represents a first answer to the educational needs of the GNSS community. It has been designed to be a self-consistent tool for engineers or technicians not trained in navigation but it can be used also as supporting material in university lectures. The NAVKIT consists of audio-video lessons, two sets of exercises (solved exercises and problems statements), and a self-evaluation test. Ancillary parts are: Glossary, Bibliography and Questions&Answers section. The NAVKIT is HTML-based. It has been used during specific courses in Europe and in post-graduate courses in Asia. The tool was designed in a web 2.0 vision.

Index Terms – Satellite Navigation, Self-Learning, Multimedia Tools, e-Learning.

INTRODUCTION

The growing popularity of online material to be used for distance learning or e-learning is due to some concurrent factors. Online resources are available anytime and anywhere. Thus, the students can access the available material at their best convenience. In addition, the technical evolution of the last years increased the diffusion of this phenomenon providing new tools and devices, both from the hardware/software side (new devices, new software) and from the infrastructure side (almost ubiquitous broadband internet availability).

The distance learning is a complex environment. There are some relevant examples worldwide useful to understand how the distance learning and the related software/multimedia tools are becoming an effective means of education for some categories of potential students. In particular, apart from Universities providing new services to their traditional students, there are some institutions where this trend is more evident:

• Governments, Governmental Bodies, and Public

Institutions. These institutions usually have a wide

number of employees, spread in different locations, and the need to constantly update their knowledge. A relevant example is GoArmyEd [1], made by the US Army. The web portal was created to enable soldiers to achieve their educational goals while continuing to serve the Army everywhere in the world. The US army initiative merges the distance learning with the traditional education, adapting it to the soldiers needs. Another significant example is Eurocontrol [2], the European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation. Eurocontrol has to constantly train professionals from different countries to keep them updated with the evolution of air traffic management solutions. Eurocontrol started some e-learning courses targeting those professionals.

• Companies. Many companies and corporations have sites in distant locations. The new multimedia tools for the employees’ education/Lifelong learning are an important resource. The hi-tech companies and industries are the most active. For example, SUN Microsystems strongly believes in Immersive Education [3]. This multimedia tool creates a virtual environment with video games-like and second life-like features.

I. European Policy on e-learning

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actions in high priority areas, chosen for their strategic relevance to the modernisation of Europe’s education and training system. The European Commission has integrated its various educational and training initiatives under a single umbrella, the Lifelong Learning Programme. The estimated budget is of nearly €7 billion for the period 2007-2013. The new programme replaces previous education, vocational training and e-Learning programmes. The EU has an internet portal [8]-[9], completely dedicated to the online and distance learning issues. This portal underlines the EU Commission interest in this particular field of education.

II. Infrastructure evolution

In recent years e-learning approaches have become more and more popular thanks to many concurrent factors. Technological advances in ICT have played an important role: Internet has boomed and the broadband is available almost everywhere, even in mobile and nomadic environments. This evolution has permitted the spreading of digital contents very band-consuming such as videos or different multimedia files. Hardware has evolved as well (i.e. portable video players, netbooks). At last, even on the software side there are many improvements: now it is easier both to create multimedia contents and to enjoy them. The results are: more material available online, more institutions involved in the delivery of content, target audience consisting of different categories of people (students, professionals, etc.), ad hoc policies from institutions and governments. The modalities of distribution of the educational contents are various and range from provision of downloadable simple material through web pages to virtual environments. It is important to underline that this kind of education is an alternative or a complement to the existing traditional education.

Furthermore, the web 2.0 [16] introduces the participation of the users providing interaction capabilities and sharing of contents as well as collaboration opportunities. In the new approach the final user is an actor not only a viewer. The online education must become then a tool easing the exchange of information between different sources: the traditional content (digitalised and made available through the internet, as in the case of many university classes), the new complimentary material, as videos or interactive simulation tools, and the user generated contents (e.g. solutions for exercises, questions, experiences, etc.). This approach opens also new issues, as the validation of the contents. At the same time it creates an ‘environment’ favourable for the learning phase since the participation of the users becomes part of the educational content itself. This participation can occur in different ways. In non-traditional or unofficial educational tools like ‘English as Second Language’ podcast [10] users can interact with a blog or by questions. In other cases, such as in some distance learning courses, the interaction is due to the fact that the virtual classroom reproduces almost the same environment of the traditional classroom, thanks to

new e-learning/distance learning software and thanks to new approaches like Immersive Education [3].

III. The lacks of education in Global Navigation Satellite Systems

The ERIG project [11], funded by the European Commission under the Sixth Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development (FP6), studied the status of education in the field of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) in Europe and compared it with the situation in other geographical regions such as North America and Asia Pacific. The project was participated by some of the most important European Universities involved in GNSS activities. One of the most important findings of the analysis was that there is a general lack of distance learning education offers on GNSS topics differently to what happens in other fields. In addition, the User Needs Analysis

conducted in the framework of ERIG highlighted a need for professional training in GNSS related topics. Thus there is a non-expressed potential for distance and e-learning tools in this field as these methodologies are promising for education and professional training in GNSS related subjects.

One result of this strong demand of educational material on GNSS subjects is the NAVKIT, that is one of the outcomes of the ERIG project. It represent the first attempt to fill the gaps in GNSS education that were highlighted by the ERIG analysis with a multimedia education tool. Another important example is the fully-online tutorial [13] on satellite navigation made by the U.S. Institute of Navigation (ION) [12]. The ION e-learning tool is designed to provide a basic knowledge on GNSS technology and related applications. The course is minded for engineers and professionals registered to the ION website and the access to lessons requires the payment of a fee.

NAVKITDESIGN CHOICES

The first step for the development of the NAVKIT was, of course, the Design Phase, in which the main characteristics of the tool were defined taking into account the requirements of the project statement of work. As a result, it was decided that the tool had to be self-consistent, complete, and fully usable at the end of the project without need of further maintenance. In addition, its content did not have to focus on deep technical aspects and details, but at the same time it had to analyse the principles of satellite navigation and positioning and provide users with a more technical view than simple awareness. Finally, the tool was expected to represent a model for potential extensions after the end of the ERIG project. It was designed to fill the knowledge gaps identified by the educational field analysis. In order to match these requirements, a multimedia approach was selected for the implementation of the Education Kit.

In designing the NAVKIT three different aspects were taken into account:

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• The structure, i.e. the relations among the different contents.

• The provision, i.e. in which way the topics are provided to the final audience and which tools are used.

To define the scope of the education kit, the knowledge of the audience was, however, essential. In fact, most proper structures, tools and way of teaching are related to the background and the “learning attitude” of the final users. It was decided to prepare a tool which mainly addresses professionals like engineers or technician. As a matter of fact, the Industry Needs Analysis, that was conducted in the span of the ERIG project, highlighted how European industries are willing to deepen the education of their work force in the GNSS field. Consequently, the NAVKIT was designed for a category of users that is supposed to have already acquired a good mathematical preparation.

I. The syllabus

The full content of a complete training class on GNSS and Galileo would have been a huge amount of material to be prepared if compared with the scope of the project, i.e. set up a prototypal though self-consistent tool. Therefore, the provision of a class on ‘Basics on GNSS’ was chosen.

II. The structure

In order to assimilate technical subjects theoretical lectures must be integrated with hands on activities. To reach this goal, the NAVKIT structure was designed so as to drive the learner through some interlinked steps:

• learning by “attending” classes focused on the core of the topics

• understanding methodologies through the analysis of solved exercises and demos

• applying the learnt methodologies to proposed exercises • testing oneself preparation with a self-evaluation tool

III. The provision

It was decided that the NAVKIT should be an e-learning tool that could be used both for Computer Based Training and Web Based Training, or as part of some so called ‘blended learning’, in which the online component joins a more traditional teaching activity (classes, workshops or seminars, exercises, meetings with teachers). A multimedia framework able to integrate different kind of contents (slides, video, flash animations, etc.) seemed to be the most suitable technology platform to reach this goal. In fact, the multimedia material can be either provided to the users on CD-ROM/DVD or through a web-site.

It was decided to adopt a ‘constructive approach of the knowledge’, i.e. stimulate the growing of knowledge by adding small and self consistent modules that are properly organized in sequence and linked together. For this reason, the content is split in small modules called Sessions lasting 15-20 minutes each [15]. After each session the learner is invited to verify her/his comprehension of the taught concepts. A proper set of instruments, such as references to

books and other material, is provided to help in gluing the pieces of acquired knowledge.

THE NAVKIT

The NAVKIT opening Home Page is the entrance gate of the kit. From it, the user can access the Index Page and the Lesson Pages. All these pages are divided in three areas: Header, Footer and Central Area. The first two areas are common to Index and Lesson pages, while the content of the central area differs.

The Header is devoted to general purpose functions, such as buttons to access the bibliography page and the teachers’ curricula. In addition, there are two navigation buttons that point to the Home Page and to the Index Page respectively.

In the Footer there are links to complementary and additional material like the glossary, the Questions and Answers section and the Exercises section.

I. Index Page

The Index Page is shown in Figure 1. It allows the access to all the contents of the education kit through the Table of Content that is available in the right hand part of its Central Area. The Table of Contents is organised in Units, Chapters, and Lessons, reflecting the organisation of the content of the kit in a modular structure with small consistent “building blocks”. When the user chooses the lesson of interest, the related Lesson Page is displayed in both parts of the Central Area.

FIGURE 1 THE NAVKIT INDEX PAGE

I. Lesson Page

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the user can open the previous lesson or the next one by using the two relevant buttons or return to the Index Page to select another lesson.

FIGURE 2 EXAMPLE OF A LESSON PAGE

III. Exercises and tests

The teaching material is completed with a set of demos, exercises, and self-assessment tests to provide the user with the possibility to apply the learnt notions and to measure the acquired competences. The exercises are in the Exercise Page, which is activated through the Exercise Button in the Footer of Index and Lesson Pages. Two different categories of exercises are foreseen in the NAVKIT:

• solved exercises, where the user is guided step-by-step to find the correct solution,

• proposed exercises, where only the statement of the problem is given together with the final results.

Furthermore, users can get a measure of the acquired competences by using the self-assessment part. It has been designed as multiple-answer tests. Each Chapter has its own set of questions, that aims to validate the comprehension of topics that are taught in that specific part of the Unit. Questions are proposed to the user in a sequence. The user is notified if the answer is correct; in case of incorrect answer, suggestions are given on where hints on related topics can be found inside the training material, and the user is invited to re-address those subjects. At the end of the test, a summary indicating the correct/incorrect answers and the time used to give the answer is displayed. An example of the summary is shown in Figure 3.

IV. Questions and Answers

This section has been designed to provide the user with the point of view of international experts on some aspects of Global Navigation Satellite Systems and Related Applications. Thus, in this section there are questions that

are often asked by students in GNSS classes. Answers are given in short video recordings. The choice of oral answers has been made with the purpose of providing a virtual round table on GNSS topics. In a web 2.0 view, this section could become more similar to a forum or a blog.

FIGURE 3

SUMMARY OF THE SELF EVALUATION TEST

V. Glossary and Bibliography

Glossary and Bibliography complete the educational offer of the NAVKIT. The Glossary collects the most important terms and acronyms related to GNSS with a very brief explanation of their meaning. The Bibliography suggests to users some books and recent papers where further information and details on the subject can be found.

THE TRAINING MATERIAL

The core of the education kit is the training material, which is organised in a hierarchy of Units, Chapters, Lessons, and Sessions: each Unit consists of several Chapters; each Chapter is made up of Lessons. The Lesson is the basic unit of the teaching material to which users can access from the Index page. In order to facilitate the organisation and the management of the teaching material, each Lesson is further divided in Sessions that do not last more than 20 minutes each to keep the attention of the users focused on the teacher’s explanations. Each Session is focused on a specific topic to facilitate those users willing to revise some particular part of the Lesson.

The first Chapter of each Unit is entirely dedicated to the presentation of the Unit focus, the prerequisites and the targeted audience, the general organisation of the teaching material, the general learning goals and the competencies the user is expected to obtain at the end of the Unit.

Similarly, the first Lesson of each Chapter is devoted to give the user some items of information about the organisation of the Chapter, the topics taught, the specific learning goals.

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words and they included schemes and figures. In addition, they changed slides frequently to retain the audience attention, as suggested in [15].

In the present version of the NAVKIT only Unit 1 – Basics of Global Navigation Satellite Systems is available. It focuses on fundamentals on Global Navigation Satellite Systems. The aim of this module is to describe the principles governing Satellite Navigation and Positioning thus providing the user with some basic knowledge on how a GNSS works. The Unit has been designed as a starting point for technicians or engineers moving their first steps in the world of satellite navigation and positioning. Topics are presented so as to limit the mathematical content. The associated proposed exercises mainly address general aspects of satellite navigation systems rather than mathematical technicalities. It must be noticed that the mathematical content of the Unit is simpler in the first Chapters while it slightly increases in the last ones, which deal with signals structure and receivers. Therefore, a modular use of this Unit is possible. In fact, the first Chapters can be useful for the training of professionals not interested in how a GNSS receiver works but in understanding the principles governing satellite navigation. On the contrary, the last Chapters can be exploited, for example, in the training of technicians and engineers involved in the development of GNSS related applications.

In addition, a recommended fruition method is to use the NAVKIT as a virtual teacher for small groups of users with homogeneous background. This method could overcome some of the disadvantages deriving from the distance learning methodology, i.e. the absence of interaction and comparison. If this fruition method is chosen, it is suggested that some time for group discussion is scheduled at the end of each lesson, thus stimulating the exchange of ideas among the users.

VALIDATION OF THE KIT

In order to validate the kit, a questionnaire was prepared during the project. The questions were organized in four sections: Human Machine Interface, Lessons, Exercises, Auxiliary Sections. Answers could range from 1 (bad) to 5 (excellent). In addition, there was the possibility to add free comments. A last part focused on the user characteristics (education, profession, age, gender) was included.

The NAVKIT was validated in two steps. At the end of the ERIG project it was distributed to some European Small and Medium Enterprises, where engineers used it to learn about GNSS topics. All the users were asked to fill in a questionnaire and the fourteen of them actually did it.

The average results of this first validation campaign are presented in the column labelled ‘EU’ in Table I. It has to be underlined that some of the users enjoyed the NAVKIT in small groups of two-three persons of homogeneous background. From their free comments, it was evident the advantage of this kind of fruition, where the NAVKIT became a sort of virtual teacher which the users could stop to discuss and exchange ideas.

In a second phase the NAVKIT was distributed to M.Sc. students, PhDs and researchers of two Asian Universities: the Hanoi University of Technology in Vietnam and the Asian Institute of Technology in Bangkok, Thailand. Forty four questionnaires were collected. The average results are available in the column labelled ‘Asia’ in Table I.

TABLE I

RESULTS OF THE NAVKIT EVALUATION

Questions EU Asia

Do you think that the graphical appearance of NAVKIT is ..

Do you consider the user-friendliness of NAVKIT interface …

In your opinion the navigation through the different NAVKIT parts is …

Lessons

Do you think the organization of the content is … Do you consider the description of the teaching objectives …

What is your opinion on the proposed teaching approach?

What is your opinion on the clarity and effectiveness of the lessons?

Exercises

Do you think the solved exercises are useful to understand how to apply the theoretical lessons? In your opinion are the proposed exercises an effective mean to better understand the concepts taught in the lessons?

Do you consider the self-evaluation test an effective tool to test your preparation on GNSS?

Auxiliary sections

What is your opinion on the Questions and Answers section?

How do you consider the NAVKIT auxiliary sections (Bibliography, Glossary) ?

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The results arising from the questionnaires are quite encouraging. If the answers are analysed taking into account the age of the users, it is evident a higher sensitivity of younger people to issues related to the human machine interface, while people with an average age of forty five were more concentrated on lessons and exercises. This aspect was particularly evident in the free comments.

CONCLUSIONS

The NAVKIT 1.1 proved to be a good starting point to provide self-education on Satellite Navigation and Positioning. On the other hand, improvements in the human machine interface are possible and have been suggested by people who used the kit so far. In addition, the teachers have noted some rigidity in the way in which the recording were made. These improvements of the kit will be included in the version 2.0, that is currently under design.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

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[1] GoArmyEd official web page: www.earmyu.com/

[2] Web page of training activities offered by Eurocontrol:

www.eurocontrol.int/ians/public/standard_page/training_products.html

[3] The guide about immersive education made by SUN is available at: wikis.sun.com/display/IESIG/Home;jsessionid=118645C33FE41BE65 FCD9B89C1511701

[4] Lisbon European Council 23 and 24 March 2000 – Presidency Conclusions: www.europarl.europa.eu/summits/lis1_en.htm

[5] European Council, Report from the Education Council to the European Council "The concrete future objectives of education and training systems", 5680/01 EDUC 18, 23-24 March 2001, Stockholm (Sweden)

[6] http://ec.europa.eu/education/policies/2010/doc/rep_fut_obj_en.pdf

[7] Communication from the Commission, "Education & Training 2010" - The success of the Lisbon Strategy hinges on urgent reforms, Brussels, 11.11.2003 COM(2003) 685

eurlex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2003:0685:FIN :EN:PDF

[8] European Commission, Education and Training Homepage: http://ec.europa.eu/education/policies/2010/et_2010_en.html

[9] elearningeuropa website: http://www.elearningeuropa.info

[10] ESL podcast is available at: http://www.eslpod.com/website/

[11] Davies, Andrew, "Education, Research and Innovation and Technology Transfer in GNSS(ERIG) Final Report", GSA Virtual Library (http://www.gsa.europa.eu), August 2008

[12] U.S.A. Institute of Navigation: www.ion.org

[13] The tutorial is available for registered users at: http://www.ion.org/tutorials/

[14] Lo Presti, Dovis, Marchese, Povero, "NAVKIT 1.1 User Manual", May 2008

[15] Del Corso, Forno, Morrone, Signorile, “Development of didactic design guidelines for the production of e-courses”, 36th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, Oct. 2006, San Diego, CA

[16] Tim O’Reilly, What Is Web 2.0 - Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software, 09/30/2005, http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html

AUTHOR INFORMATION

Fabio Dovis, Assistant Professor, Electronics Department, Politecnico di Torino (Italy), fabio.dovis@polito.it

Gabriella Povero, Senior Researcher, Navigation

Laboratory, Istituto Superiore Mario Boella (Italy), gabriella.povero@ismb.it