SOCRATES-MINERVA Project – Meeting 1

1. Guy Mélard, ECARES et Institut de Statistique et de Recherche Opérationnelle, U.L.B (gmelard@ulb.ac.be) Atika Cohen Département Sciences Information et CommunicationFaculté de Philosophie et Lettres, ULB (acohen@ulb.ac.be) Solvay Business School, ULB SOCRATES-MINERVA Project – Meeting 1

2. Contents • Some history • Guy Mélard • Links with other colleagues • What should be done? • … for example at ULB • Some problems • Université virtuelle at ULB

3. Some history • November 2002: Project launch • Atika at Faculty of Applied Sciences • on project with basic courses/learning by projects/evaluation • now in Faculty of Letters, Dept. SIC • March 2003: project not transmitted by ULB • March 2005: project resubmitted by TUS, Guy proposed to be the contact person to avoid any difficulty

4. Guy Mélard • teaching in Dept. Economics (2nd year, informatics), Solvay Business School (postgraduate, quantitative techniques for management) • presently not involved in a similar project • but has developed a multimedia course for teaching forecasting techniques for National Bank of Belgium • also presently used in 3 of his courses at ULB, using Université virtuelle, under WebCT

5. Links with other colleagues • mathematics in Dept Economics, 1st year: Marjorie Gassner (now head of Dept) • physics at SBS, 2nd year: Philippe Emplit (now adjunct head, SBS) • chemistry at SBS, 1st year: Marie-Paule Delplancke Note: informally agreed but were not informed before this meeting, waiting for more details

6. What should be done? • Implement the project as well as possible, not much • Quick check reveals too small resources: • 40000 EUR for platform = 667 hours(*) • 34000 EUR for 3 courses = 560 hours(*) (*) at staff category 2 rate in Bulgaria • Use an available – free – platform to be installed locally • Use as much as possible of existing contents • Adapt the course for local needs/languages

7. For example at ULB (1/2) Given the profile of our students (Economics/Business School) • program in maths covers only part of the existing chapters of Université en Ligne • basic scientific background is probably lower • vocabulary and notations may differ Lack for resources: 400 students in each Dept 2 rooms of 25 seats for a faculty of 3500 students Last time to convince colleagues: June 2006

8. … for example at ULB (2/2) • remediation sessions (« guidance ») • organised to try remedy the large percentage of failure (80%) • mainly used during the first months of the year (before eliminatory exams of January) Note: most of two who attend, do not need them; most of those who would need them, don’t show

9. Problems (1/3) • Participation institutions 2 & 4 contact persons • Eligible costs • Decision for a platform/courses and risks • Expected output: what deliverables, when, by whom and in which languages? • not EN for courses? • EN for testing system? • EN for support system of advisors/coaches? • BG, FR, ES for scientific reports?

10. Problems (2/3) • Hardware/software requirements • client: nothing? • server: • operating system? • data base management system? • language support (FR, BG, …), unicode? • development language: Java? XML? Flash? • course development standard: LMS? • course development tools? • LDAP?

11. Problems (3/3) • Other small problems • ULB page 22 • organisation of the experiment • design of the assessment • 4 persons 0,5 full time, not feasible • translation, what? (1 EUR/line) • conference fees: 500 EUR (=? travel of one conference orator) • web site, forum for the project (private or not?) • evaluator from the commission?

12. Université Virtuelle de l'ULBhttp://uv.ulb.ac.be/ Vous entrez ici le nom d'utilisateur et votre mot de passe

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37. The End