IUDICO, Complex Online System for e-Learning and Testing

IUDICO is an online information system that allows computerization of the whole process of e-learning and online education: to deliver online educational material to students and provide flexible testing tools, manage educational materials, track students’ training results and automate their processing, and cover lots of other tasks that are essential for building of the effective e-learning process.

The system was originally developed specifically for the students who study computer sciences disciplines. Over time, IUDICO has grown from a set of basic e-learning tools into a universal online learning and testing process automation system. With all the new features it can now be used to build all kinds of interactive online instruments allowing to study various subjects, conduct questionnaires and carry out referendums.

For many years, lots of various systems for online education have been developed at Programming department of Lviv National University. For developing a new version of such system an open-source Google Code platform was chosen as the optimal and fastest platform for code sharing. By common efforts of teachers (some of whom are Abto Software employees) and their students, within the bounds of corresponding curricula, the state-of-the-art online learning, and testing system IUDICO was created.

There exist a lot of systems for e-learning which allows testing students’ knowledge in the form of a questionnaire but the IUDICO system is notable for the opportunity given to students to develop their practical skills in programming. A student gets a task to develop a program or complete a piece of code according to the training discipline (e.g. Programming Fundamentals, Database, Web Applications, etc.). The system automatically completes the code prepared by the student to a real solution and then forwards it to a specialized Web service. The task of this Web service is to compile the received code, link it with the necessary libraries and verify it on a set of tests.

The IUDICO system has a number of techniques, which are easy to adjust for any platform and programming language, for testing students’ knowledge and practical programming skills in various technologies which are difficult to test by means of other tests. At the moment the system allows testing students’ knowledge of the following programming languages: C++, C#, Java, Delphi and Perl.

The system can also automate the following parts of the training course:

• Preparation and delivery of learning material
• Planning & scheduling of e-learning process
• Students’ practice management.

• Ability to test the gist of knowledge and level of practical experience
• Fully supports

Sharable Content Object Reference Model(SCORM) standard for e-learning

• Convenient possibilities of adding other programming languages
• Online 24-hour access to the system
• Easy to adjust to any platform
• Interoperable with other systems within the learning process
• Gives students the opportunity to prepare for certification in various technologies.

IUDICO System contains a number of subsystems (plugins) listed below.

IUDICO Learning Management System (LMS) is used to:

• gather and deliver learning and testing content online
• personalize content and enable knowledge reuse
• consolidate training materials according to SCORM standards.

IUDICO Course Management Subsystem is aimed at creating various courses and their editing. The user is able to download a prepared course created in arbitrary SCORM-compatible course editor and export it. Joint access to courses allows to develop them in a group. The Course Management Subsystem provides all activities on learning materials preparation.

IUDICO Discipline Management includes means for creation and editing of necessary disciplines consisting of certain courses. Disciplines in their turn consist of chapters, and chapters — of topics which contain two types of courses: theoretical and/or practical. They can be opened and done in Player. The order of topics studying is also fixed in disciplines. This subsystem is accessible for users with Teacher’s role.

IUDICO Curriculum Management contains means for creation and editing of curricula which specifies time limits for a certain group of students. This subsystem’s plug-in is accessible for users with Teacher’s role.

IUDICO Testing System is designed to test students’ knowledge and skills within a certain time and course topic limits.

IUDICO Statistics is a IUDICO subsystem meant especially for controlling students’ grades and progress. At the moment the subsystem analyzes and reflects the data received from other subsystems and via LMS, but the possibility of long-term storage of the statistic information for future analysis is also planned to be implemented. This subsystem shows data to two types of users: teachers and students.

IUDICO Analytics Subsystem was developed on the basis Data Mining algorithms, which gives the possibility to analyze and forecast students’ successes, recommend them to revise or study certain sections of the training course. This subsystem of the course results analysis includes a recommendation system; subjects, topics, and students trouble-shooting system and a system of topics rating (together with tags and tags estimates for students and topics).

IUDICO User Management Subsystem fulfills the following functions standard for any information system of such kind: authorization, authentication, editing users’ profiles, as well as adding and deleting users from groups/roles. Some of the latest additions to the subsystem are: downloading and displaying user’s photo, assigning administrator’s role to teachers, supporting user’s set of roles, restoration of user’s password and adding users in a group.