When it is formally launched next February, Hibernia College will offer its own nationally accredited certificate, diploma and degree programs. The third-level institution will also provide full-service e-learning systems to other educational institutions that want to provide academic programmes online. The college is seeking students in Ireland and abroad, but Hibernia College students will be obliged to physically attend some seminars.
All of the college’s courses will be presented using proprietary software developed in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and called HELMS or Higher Education Learning Management System.
HELMS is built on Microsoft technology and is designed to benefit from the software maker’s .Net strategy, which allows software components to be re-used in other applications and for applications to be developed using interoperable standards such as SOAP and XML.
According to Dr. Nicholas Breakwell, knowledge officer with Hibernia College, any of the tools and features being developed under the .Net umbrella can be easily ported to work with the HELMS system. For example, collaboration tools to allow tutors communicate with their students can be based on Microsoft’s NetMeeting application.
Breakwell told ComputerScope that Hibernia looked at a range of technologies before aligning itself to Microsoft. The ability to reuse software, played a major part in the final decision, he said. ‘The advantage for HELMS is that we don’t have to spend millions on developing software, we can piggyback on what Microsoft is doing. We can take the software, manipulate it to our needs and insert that into HELMS.’
Basic course content will be in the form of text and images, similar to a standard Website. Students can also order hard copy versions of course materials by logging on to the site and placing an order. Once an order is made, the course content is automatically printed and bound within 24 hours and is ready to be dispatched to the student.
Other HELMS tools include a built-in notepad, allowing students to take notes while online; these notes can be saved and attached to particular lessons. HELMS has a dictionary facility and the system can also play audio files where necessary.
The courseware works best with Netscape and Internet Explorer browsers using 56kbit/s Internet connections, but the system is capable of being successfully used by students with connections as slow as 28.8kbit/s. Breakwell claims it is also possible to access the system over a mobile phone, at speeds of just 9.6kbit/s.
Hibernia hope to make their online courses as interactive as possible and HELMS includes a facility for using video clips.
However, with broadband out of the reach of many, Breakwell said video content would only be used where appropriate. ‘We’re mindful of the bandwidth demand,’ he explained. ‘We will only use video if it serves the course and not just for the sake of it.’
One possible feature, which may come into use by the end of next year, is based on agent technology. Similar to an application wizard found in Microsoft productivity applications, agents act as tutors in certain courseware environments.
Hibernia is hosting its systems on a number of Compaq servers housed in a Dublin colocation facility. The servers are connected to a 512kbit/s leased line that Breakwell described as ‘more than adequate for the number of students that we anticipate’.
The leased line has a redundant connection in the event of failure and all data is backed up daily and stored on separate servers. The servers are fully upgradeable and more machines can be added to the hosting farm as demand increases. ‘We’re working on the premise that the servers won’t run at any more than 30 per cent capacity,’ Breakwell said.
In addition to offering its own courses, Hibernia will help other institutions to provide e-learning to their students. Although the initial launch of the service will be focused around Hibernia’s courses, in the longer term the college envisages a 50:50 split between its own courses and those provided on behalf of other institutions.
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