From: esz001@cck.coventry.ac.uk (Will Overington)
Subject: Help needed about the tilemodule concept please
Organization: Coventry University
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 17:06:56 GMT

14th December 1992

Recently I have posted the two items below.
There were a very few responses, some by postings, some by e-mail.
I am grateful for these.

There now exists the possibility that I can use these ideas as the
basis for an Independent Study module here at Coventry University.
Independent Study modules are normally created by full time students
to be a small part of their course. We also have an Associate Student
scheme whereby people may take one or more modules from a course.
An Associate Student may take an Independent Study module.
We also have a Staff Qualification Scheme.
Thus, by combining the three schemes, I may well soon be able to do
academic work for credit on the concept of tilemodules and on the
authoring of a number of tilemodules.

Naturally, I am somewhat concerned that a new idea be acceptable and
wonder if anyone might like to comment on the acceptability of the
idea as an academic concept please.

----


The new concept of a tilemodule for application in computer based
distance education.

W. J. G. Overington

24th November 1992

In this article I introduce a concept that I have devised and for
which I have coined the word tilemodule to describe it.

I introduce the term tilemodule in the context of seeking to
develop an effective infrastructure for computer based distance
education within a participatory self-help group, though the
concept may well have far wider applications.  I have in mind
particularly the computer net newgroups such as
alt.education.distance and those of the alt.uu. hierarchy.

I also introduce the concepts of tileaggregation and cybertile,
using newly coined words, and also use the phrases claim chart
and claim file.

A tilemodule is a package of learning material and exercises that
is intended to take the learner something in the region of one
hour to three hours to complete, together with a cybertile
design.  Some tilemodules will be intended to take longer than
others.  A tilemodule that may take more than four hours should
be considered for being presented as two or more tilemodules.  A
person completing the tilemodule may place a copy of the
cybertile for that tilemodule upon his or her claim chart and
record details of dates in his or her claim file.  A tilemodule
will also specify what records of work the learner should retain
and a statement to any person assessing the work performed as to
what sort of tasks may reasonably be set to check the veracity of
any claim that the tilemodule has been completed.

A tileaggregation is a collection of tilemodules, not necessarily
by the same author, together with an overview tilemodule that
links them together academically, and a cybertile for the
tileaggregation.

A cybertile is defined as a design 64 pixels by 64 pixels.

A claim chart is defined as a plane of pixels, often of the same
colour so as to give a background effect, of whatever size, with
(x,y) coordinates such that (0,0) is top left; (lots,0) is top
right; (0,lots) is bottom left; (lots,lots) is bottom right.
This orientation is chosen so that a claim chart, or part
thereof, may be conveniently displayed on a vga style display.  A
cybertile placed upon a claim chart is placed so that the top
left corner of the cybertile is, using non-negative integer
values of i and j chosen by the user, at the pixel
((80*i)+8,(80*j)+8).

A claim file is a list of tilemodules with the date or dates of
completion.

There are several intended infrastructural features in my
suggestion of the tilemodule concept.  Firstly, a tilemodule will
take a person a lot less time to author than would a complete
course.  Secondly, in many cases a complete course is not what is
intended, just a specialist item on a specialist topic.  Thirdly,
the concept of a tileaggregation permits the construction of
recommended courses using tilemodules authored by a variety of
authors.  Such tilemodules could be interrelated within a theme,
for example, a course in Topics in the History of Science, made
up of tilemodules from maybe ten or twenty authors.  Fourthly,
the concept of a tilemodule is separate from any matters of
validation, credits at established educational institutions and
so on.  Hopefully, such issues will be discussed and progress
made, but that is within the concept of a tileaggregation, though
a tileaggregation as such will not necessarily imply any such
validation or accreditation.  I am here simply suggesting an
infrastructural framework so as to try to make progress possible
in the context of cooperative computer based distance education.

There should exist tilemodules specifying the authorship of a new
tilemodule within some given topic.

It might be helpful if I introduce two analogies.

A tilemodule is intended to be free standing, in the same sense
that a book is free standing.  There are good books, not so good
books, books that interest me, books that don't interest me, long
books, short books and so on.  All are books, rather than, say,
papers in a learned journal, where inclusion implies being within
some selected topic range, of a certain quality and so on.

Learning from a tilemodule might be analogized to reading a
posted item in a newsgroup, writing a tilemodule might then be
analogized to posting to the newsgroup, writing a tilemodule that
specifies the authorship of a new type of tilemodule would then
be analogized to newgrouping a new alt. group.  Here the analogy
implies that writing a tilemodule that specifies the authorship
of a new type of tilemodule should only take place by discussion
on the net.  The analogy is not perfect and there is probably
room both for such authorship tilemodules to be done as a
personal activity without prior discussion and also for there to
come into existence a discussion mechanism for someone to put
forward a proposed new authorship tilemodule.

There are endless possibilities for tilemodules.

Suppose that a tilemodule were specified that required the
learner to write five short items and post them to
alt.uu.lang.esperanto.misc not less than a week apart.  The
tilemodule would specify that copies of the posted items, showing
the dates, should be kept.  The tilemodule would thus provide the
learner with a gentle activity over the course of a month, with
adequate time to reflect upon what he or she were doing.  The
items might each be choosing one word out of an Esperanto
dictionary and using it in seven sentences, with the translation
in English.  Hopefully, there would always be some people
studying such a tilemodule, so alt.uu.lang.esperanto.misc would
be that much the richer for such postings being available.

Another tilemodule might specify writing a short story of between
one hundred and two hundred words in Esperanto and posting it to
alt.uu.lang.esperanto.misc.

Another tilemodule might involve posting to alt.uu.virtual-
worlds.misc a design for an object in some specified format.

I feel that the tilemodule concept would be really successful if,
say, a tilemodule for image processing of raw data from a Mars
space probe, including data files, were posted to an alt.uu.
group within hours of the data reaching earth from the space
probe.  This would need forward planning, and maybe a number of
previous tilemodules by various authors sent out previously, but
I feel that if such a thing could be achieved using the net, then
that would be a great step forward for net based education.


----

TILEMODULE:: DEFINE:: Fauna and Flora in Esperanto, FF1

W. J. G. Overington

2nd December 1992

PURPOSE::

The purposes of this tilemodule are as follows.

1. To provide the student with an experience of creativity and an
increase of his or her vocabulary in Esperanto.

2. To provide other students with a supply of texts that increase
their vocabulary in Esperanto.

METHOD::

This tilemodule consists of posting to alt.uu.lang.esperanto.misc
four sentences written in the Esperanto language, followed by 24
blank lines, followed by the translation into your own language
or a language that you know well.

The first sentence is always,

La hundo mang^as pomon.

The second sentence uses a different animal, or a bird, chosen by
you from a dictionary, yet still using pomon.

The third sentence uses a different fruit, or a vegetable, chosen
by you from a dictionary, with the animal or bird from the second
sentence.

The fourth sentence increases the number of fruits or vegetables
eaten, also changing the tense of the verb.

The world is full of animals, birds, fruits and vegetables.
Choose as you wish.

Here is an example, with the chosen animal being kato, the chosen
fruit being piro, the chosen number being nau^ and the chosen
language being English.

TILEMODULE:: OUTPUT:: Fauna and Flora in Esperanto, FF1

La hundo mang^as pomon.

La kato mang^as pomon.

La kato mang^as piron.

La kato mang^is nau^ pirojn.





















The dog is eating an apple.

The cat is eating an apple.

The cat is eating a pear.

The cat has eaten nine pears.



RECORD:: Keep a record of what you post, showing the date and
time, copied from the news spool area at your site.

ASSESSMENT:: A person assessing a claim that a student has
completed this tilemodule may reasonably ask the student to show
a print out of the posting to the alt.uu.lang.esperanto.misc
newsgroup.

CYBERTILE::

A student completing this tilemodule may, if he or she so
chooses, display the cybertile shown below on his or her claim
chart.

The cybertile is 64 pixels by 64 pixels, shown here with each
pixel represented by a letter.

A letter b represents a blue pixel.
A letter g represents a green pixel.
A letter y represents a yellow pixel.


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