How to design a tertiary level e-learning course

Last week I attended the Australian Institute of Training & Development (AITD) National Conference at the Australian Technology Park in Sydney. What I found interesting were the similarities and differences in the technology used for vocational short courses and university courses.

Training Materials for Open Source Software

While at the conference I had a call from an open source software company asking me how difficult it would be to develop e-learning courses to accompany new open source software products. It is difficult to get open source training materials to accompany new software. This is partly a matter of glamour: plenty of people want to help with the software, but the testing and training is not seen as prestigious. Also many open source products grown organically, so the training can't be planned from the start. Also until an open source product is proven, there can be reluctance to invest time in learning to use it. In addition skills in using a software product are seen to be low level.

Using Open Source Software Training for Higher Level Skills

One way around these problems might be to provide open access training for skills which can be sued with open source software. So for example, rather than training in how to use the OpenOffice.org word processor, teach how to produce documents using a word processor, with skills applicable to Microsoft Word as well. This also gets over the problem of having to provide exact screen shots with sets of keystrokes applicable to a particular version of a particular software package. Instead the student can expect that the exact keystrokes for the package they have will differ.

Top Down Course Design

The Integrated Content Environment (ICE) is a free web content management system from University of Southern Queensland (USQ) specifically designed for university courses. There is a USQ course template intended for the ICE system, but which can be used with just a word processor. This has the usual headings required for a course, such as the Course overview, Learning objectives, Graduate Qualities & Skills, Assessment, Study schedule, Course resources, Textbooks, Selected readings and Assessment. This is then followed by a list of modules, each with a name, table of contents, overview, Key terms/concepts, Learning Objectives, Assessment Tasks, pre and post module tests and sub topics, Module resources, Textbooks and Selected readings.

This may seem a very mechanical process, but beginning course designers can find themselves in a similar situation to one of their students trying to start an essay and not knowing where to begin. The structure provides a place to start.

Work Required by the Student

The University of Sydney provides a useful over. view of a university program in Australia. USyd describes a a normal full-time study load as 24 credit points (4 units of study) per semester. Each semester is 13 weeks of classes, followed by a study week and an examination period of two to three weeks. The 24 credit points involves an average of 9 contact hours per week (lectures, tutorials and seminars), plus up to 27 hours private study per students. Assuming the student is undertaking 4 units of study (called units, courses or subjects, depending on the university), this works out to 9 hours each. A figure of 9 to 10 hours is the typical among of time students are told they will have to student for an on-campus or off campus e-learning university course. It is a shame this can't be resourced to 7 hours a week, as it would then be a handy "one hour per day".

Assessment

USyd describes assessment as varying from a 6000 word assignment and no exam to a 4000 word assignment and two hours of examinations. Assessment can include group work, presentations and take home examinations. While not mentioned by Usyd, e-learning courses can use traditional written assignments, online group discussions and online examinations.

As an example assessment my Green ICT Course, has contributions to weekly discussion forums (20%) and two assignments (40% each). This equates to 50 words per point for the assignments. The green course requires the student to also discuss topics in a weekly discussion forum. There are 12 weekly forums. Each student is required to answer questions and also reply to other student postings. Assuming that the 60 words per point applies, this equates to the students writing 100 words per week (about two paragraphs).

A 6000 word assignment for full course assessment equates to 60 words per percent. The University of Melbourne sets 4000 words for undergraduate and 5000 words for postgraduate subjects.

One issue with reliance on written assessment can be academic writing abilities. USyd requires proof of proficiency in English for those where English is not their first language (IELTS Overall band score of 6.5 or better with minimum of 6.0 in each band or similar). However, even those with English as a first language and particularly those from a technical background, can difficulty. Universities usually have a have learning centre (such as the ANU Academic Skills & Learning Centre) to help students. Unfortunately few of these centres cater for online remote students.

Examinations

There appear to be fewer clear cut rules about examinations. The University of Melbourne equates an hour of examination to 1000 words of assignment (working out to 3 minutes per percent of assessment), or ten minutes of individual oral presentation.

UNE define a "university examination" as making up at least 30% of the assessment for a course. An online examination is considered "unsupervised" and in a similar category as a take home examination, made available to students for a week or less. While not mentioned in the UNE rules, an online examination will typically may set a time limit for completion, that is the student may have a week in which to attempt the examination, during that week once they start the examination, they may have tree hours in which to complete it. These definitions may seem archaic and irrelevant, but form example if an online examination was limited to only a fixed few hours this would cause problems depending on the time zone the student was in any local festivals. For this reason UNE does no permit supervised examinations to be held at night, on Sundays or public holidays or in most university vacation periods. Setting a period of at least a week would overcome most of these restrictions.

Students setting the examinations

Greetings from the high-tech Baume Theatre at the Australian National University in Canberra, where we are hosting a day of workshops on technology-enhanced learning, with alliance partner the University of Southern Queensland. I will be talking about "Mentored and collaborative techniques in e-teaching" later in the day. At the moment Jerry Maroulis (USQ) (is presenting on "Supporting science and education students with sustainable solutions by leveraging technology". He made the claim at the start that he gets the students to write their own examination papers. That got my attention, as preparing examinations is stressful for educators.

Jerry gets groups of students to each compose six questions. He then selects the best 84 questions and provides them to all the students. Then 60 of these questions are given to the students in an examination (which can be online). The idea is that the students will select questions that they see as important. The students then feel involved in the process. It should be noted that Jerry just gets the students to provide the questions, he prepares the answers.

What I found most interesting in this was that Jerry is teaching teachers at USQ. It is likely that his students will the go on to use these techniques when teaching their students at secondary schools. It may seem that such advanced techniques using student initiative and technology based learning are not feasible at school. However, those schools are now being equipped with the same computer technology as used at university and the students are no less responsive to being empowered to learn.

Mentored and collaborative e-teaching at ANU

The Australian National University is hosting a workshop on new teaching techniques with alliance partner the University of Southern Queensland in Canberra on 12 April 2010. I will be talking about "Mentored and collaborative techniques in e-teaching" and how I designed and ran a green ICT course. Comments, contributions and corrextions would be welcome.

Seminar on training green technologists online with ebooks, Adelaide, 19 - 20 May 2010

This is to offer a seminar on green technology, professional e-learning and e-books, Monday 19 or Tuesday 20 May in Adelaide.

I am an Adjunct Lecturer at the Australian National University (ANU) and a course designer for the Australian Computer Society (ACS). I will be in Adelaide for a meeting of ACS educators at University of Adelaide. So I thought I should offer a free seminar for anyone interested, assuming someone will provide a venue (ideally at or near Adelaide University).

My "Green Technology Strategies" e-learning course is offered to
University of South Australia postgraduate students as part of the 'Hubs and Spokes' Project with ANU.

The course was originally commissioned by the ACS for their globally accredited Computer Professional Education Program (first run February 2009) and is offered in the Postgraduate Program of Open Universities Australia from second semester 2010.

The textbook is available free online in the National Library of
Australia PANDORA Archive, as well as a print-on-demand book and Amazon Kindle e-Book.

The content of the course, as well as the techniques for preparing it to be part of a globally accredited program and converting the content of the Learning Management System into into a book, may be of interest.

Some recent talks:

• Mentored and Collaborative e-Learning for Postgraduate Professional Education
• Making e-Books for e-Learning on i-Pads

ps: The environment and technology do not necessarily mix. On a previous visit to an Adelaide technology park, I could not see the buildings for the trees and got lost. ;-)

Education for Electronic Data Management

The ANU asked me to run a course in Electronic Data Management (COMP7420). This is 3 units (half the length of a normal ANU semester long course) and is the equivalent of 60 hours work for the student (10 hours a week for six weeks). In finalising the content of the course I thought I should look at what guidelines, standards and other courses there are. The first difficulty with this is the narrow specialisation of the course.

The nearest similar course I could find was "Electronic Records and Document Management" ( LIBR 5009 012621) at UniSA School of Communication. AIIM have aElectronic Records Management (ERM) Certificate Program of four days duration (or online equivalent).

The Records Management Association of Australasia have an extensive list of Educational and training courses for records management. However, these are mostly for records management in general, not electronic records in particular. Listed for Monash University, Faculty of Information Technology, School of Information Management and Systems is their Graduate Certificate, Diploma and Masters of Information Management and Systems (Electronic Recordkeeping and Archiving Stream).

RMAA refers to "Records and Archives Competency Standards" available from Innovation and Business Skills Australia, but I was unable to find any mention of such standards on the IBSA web site.

National Archives of Australia have a web page detailing Qualifications for records staff. Knowledge, skills and experience are defined with reference to Australian Standard for Records Management AS ISO 15489 – 2002.There are two parts to this standard (General and Guidelines). NAA refer to the university courses listed by RMAA and also Australian Society of Archivists Inc (ASA). The Business Services Training Package (BSB01) of IBSA is referred to but with a non-functional web link.

NAA also provide the materials for a free short course "What you need to know about managing records when working for the Australian Government". This includes Powerpoint slides (pdf, 470kb), presenter's guide (pdf, 2.6mb) and a 20 minute self paced e-Learning module. The e-learning module is avialable in a tex/print version optimised for accessibility, as well as the HTML (low-bandwidth) and Flash (media-rich) versions. Unfortunately this is not a complete e-learning module as it lacks any form of assessment for the student to assess what they have learnt. However, it could be a very useful start for a course.

Planning the Future of IT Higher Education in Austrlaia

Greetings from the Australian National University, School of Computer Science retreat taking place near Canberra. Twenty nine people are spending two days working out where to take research and teaching in information and communications technology. In the afternoon I will be talking about "Forums and Feedback for e-Learning". The issued to be discussed are very much along the lines Professor Paul Ramsden, was discussing yesterday.

So far some issues were how to keep an emphasis on research (the ANU being a leader in the field) and how this could be combined with education. The classic way to do this is to have excellent postgraduate researchers and have them do the teaching. Another topic was masters by coursework. This particularly interests me as my Green ICT course is part of the ANU Graduate Studies Select program, which allows students to choose from subjects across the university disciplines (and some other universities), including online courses.

Forums and Feedback for e-Learning

I have written some notes for a ten minute presentation on "Forums and Feedback for e-Learning" for the Australian National University School of Computer Science. Comments and suggestions would be welcome. It essentially says that students teach each other via online forums, with the tutor asking a few clear questions to get things started and providing feedback.

This will be just a brief talk on the end of Lauren Kane's "Blended Learning in Higher Education".

E-learning courses save no teacher time

My students have just about completed the first COMP7310 Green ICT course at ANU. In terms of education it appears to have been successful, but was it cost effective to use e-learning? My conclusion is that the staff cost for this form of Mentored and Collaborative e-Learning for Postgraduate Professional Education is about the same as for conventional lectures and face to face tutorials. The time saved in not giving lectures and tutorials is taken up in feedback to students on the e-learning course. The time and cost for assessment is about the same as both use conventional manually marked assessment (and about the same proportion of the overall cost of the course).

Obviously there will be savings in not having to provide lecture theatres and tutorial rooms and extra costs in providing an e-learning system (the e-learning system is likely to be much cheaper than building costs). In addition there is the cost of the course materials used for conventional and e-learning courses (with e-learning material costing considerably more). Also there will be differences in the quality of the experience: students in a lecture rarely, if ever, get individual attention from a lecturer and get only a few minutes individual attention from a tutor per semester. But with an e-learning course each student gets hours of individual attention.

Calculating course cost

A typical ANU postgraduate course, such as "COMP6341 IT in e-Commerce" has three hours of lectures per week for ten weeks and seven two hour labs.

ANU Casual Sessional Rates range per hour from $95.44 to $238.61, depending on the amount of preparation required. Tutoring ranges from $69.15 to $122.95 per hour. The bottom end of the scale assume that the teacher has to spend an hour preparing for a one hour lecture or tutorial, thus taking two ours for one hour of student time.

Assuming that a lecture contains 100 students and tutorials have 24 students in each, there will be 4 tutorial groups. So there will be:

• 3 lectures x 2 hours x 10 weeks = 60 hours, plus
• 4 lab groups x 4 hours x 7 labs = 112 hours
• Total = 172 hours teacher time

The course also has two assignments and a three hour examination (the ANU complex marking rate is $40.98 an hour). Assume it takes one hour for each assessment item: 3 assessments x 100 students = 300 hours.

The course also has to be administered, so let us add one our per week, for 12 weeks: 12 hours. At the ANU "Other required academic activity category this is" $40.98 per hour.

Assuming that a flexible course, such as COMP7310 requires 15 minutes of time per student per week for 12 weeks, plus 1 hour for each of two assignments and the same 1 hour a week of administration, the total hours and cost come out to be very similar:

	Conventional	E-learning	Difference
Total Cost	$31,983.96	$29,770.80	-7%
Total Hours	484	512	5%
Per student $	$319.84	$297.71
Per student H	4.84	5.12

Some of the interesting things about this are that 38% of the cost of the conventional course is from the assessment, which is about the same as the e-learning course.

e-Learning Course on Green ICT Strategies: Part 14 - Wikiversity version

In Part 13 I prepared the remaining content for a new e-learning course on "Green IT Strategies", to be offered as part of the ACS Computer Professional Education Program. The Wikiversity, an educational equivalent to the Wikipedia, has an Information Technology school, so I added and entery for "Green IT" and "Introduction to Green IT" based on the material I prepared for the ACS course. I am unclear as to exacltly how the Wikiversioty functions, if it does function at all, but thought it might be worth making a contrbution.

The Wikiversity does not seem to have reached the point at which there is enough content to attract people to add more. Many of the entries are only stubs: with just a heading waiting for someone to fill in the details. Also there seems to be a lack of integration with the Wikipedia. You can use the same user-id for updating the Wikipedia and Wikiversity, but you have to add an external reference from the Wikiversity to the Wikipedia. The result is that it is difficult to use the Wikipedia content to build the Wikiversity.

e-Learning Course on Green ICT Strategies: Part 13 - More Pragmatism

In Part 12 I discovered I had scheduled two week sevens as part of preparing a new e-learning course on "Green IT Strategies", to be offered as part of the ACS Computer Professional Education Program. Having merged some of the topics so I had the required number of weeks for the course I got on with preparing the remaining content. This became progressively more difficult as I got to the more esoteric topics, such as quality management and auditing.

Also I asked my colleagues at the ANU to check the course details, which they proceeded to do in forensic detail. They found several errors in the first sentence. By the time they got to the end of the first paragraph I started to regret asking for comment, but these were all useful suggestions.

One frustration was that some of the standards used for ICT and environmental purposes are formal ISO ones. As a result the text of the standards are not freely available, ISO and its national counterparts, such as Standards Australia, sell copies of the standards. These standards are therefore not freely available online. There are many references to the standards, but little of use for students trying to understand them.

Another frustration continues to be material which is freely available, but in large PDF files. The Australian Government has provided the full text of a proposed Draft National Carbon Offset Standard, but it is tacked on the end of a discussion document in a PDF file.

However, hopefully many of those frustrations are now behind me. The revised Green ICT Strategies Course Outline is done, along with twelve weeks of content, two assignments and readings:

Weekly outline

	Green ICT Strategies (GICTS) is a new subject in the Computer Professional Education Program of the Australian Computer Society. The officially approved course description is available on the ACS web site, for which enrolments are open until 11 January 2009 for Study Period 1 (18 January to 19 April 2009). This is a working draft of the course material for 2009. For background on why the course is being prepared, see: "Educating ICT Professionals on Energy Efficiency". For details on how, see: Green IT Strategies Course. Most material is being prepared under an open access licence. Contributions and comments are welcome. The ACS CPeP program is the first in the world to be globally accredited. Enrolments can be in the Green ICT subject alone, or as part of the full CPe Program. Credit towards Graduate Diploma and Master courses are offered by university articulation. News forum Chatroom Terminology List Green ICT Strategies Course Outline Blog about the background to the e-Learning Course on Green ICT Strategies
	18 January 24 January Week 1: Introduction to Green ICT Strategies Understand environmental, social and business context for sustainability, and overview of background, boundaries. Readme 1st - Week 1 Work Notes - Week 1 Workload Assessment Seminar - Week 1 Discussion Questions - Week 1 Friday Message
	25 January 31 January Week 2: The Global ICT Footprint Estimate the embodied carbon and the footprint from use of telecommunications, data centres and desktop PCs. Read me 1st - Week 2 Work Notes - Week 2 Seminar - Week 2 Discussion Questions - Week 2 SMART 2020: Enabling the low carbon economy in the information age
	1 February 7 February Week 3: Enabling ICT Investigate how ICT systems can reduce energy and materials use by improving the efficiency of business systems by replacing the movement of goods with information (dematerialisation), improve the efficiency of machines (smart motor systems), logistics, buildings and grids. Read me 1st - Week 3 Work notes - Week 3 Seminar - Week 3 Discussion Questions - Week 3
	8 February 14 February Week 4: Energy saving - Data Centres and Client Equipment Computers and telecommunications equipment contributes about 2% to greenhouse gas emissions. Look at how data centres and client equipment can be made more efficient. Read me 1st - Week 4 Work Notes - Week 4 Seminar - Week 4 Discussion Questions - Week 4
	15 February 21 February Week 5: Materials Use Energy reduction is only part of making a Green ICT system, there is also the issue of use of materials and hazardous substances. Read me 1st - Week 5 Work Notes - Week 5 Seminar - week 5 Discussion Questions - Week 5
	22 February 28 February Week 6: Methods and tools Ensure that appropriate methods and tools for the planning, development, operation, management and maintenance of systems are adopted and used effectively throughout the organisation. Read me 1st - Week 6 Work notes - week 6 Seminar - Week 6 Discussion Questions - Week 6
	1 March 7 March Week 7: Business process improvement Recommend alternative solutions which reduce environmental impact, assesses feasibility, and recommends new approaches. ICT has the potential to provide significant environmental improvements, by replacing energy and materials consuming processes with more efficient ICT ones. How do you analyse business processes to identify alternative solutions which reduce environmental impact, assesses feasibility, and recommends new approaches? Read me 1st - Week 7 Week 7 - Work notes Seminar - Week 7 Discussion Questions - Week 7
	8 March 14 March Week 8: Improving Data Centre Energy Efficiency Investigate how to implement and assess data centre efficiency. Read me 1st - Week 8 Work Notes - Week 8 Seminar - Week 8 Discussion Questions - Week 8 EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres
	15 March 21 March Week 9: Enterprise Architecture The business of business is business, so any environmental goals have to fit into the systems capability strategy which meets the strategic requirements of the business. How do you incorporate Green ICT into the models and plans to drive forward the strategy, taking advantage of opportunities to improve business performance, as well as environmental benefits? Read me 1st - Week 9 Work Notes - Week 9 Seminar - Week 9 - Enterprise Architecture Discussion Questions - Week 9
	22 March 28 March Week 10: Procurement Much of the environmental benefits come about by selecting the right products and services. How do you write ICT requirement documents to ensure that your hardware, software and services suppliers provide green products? Read me 1st - Week 10 Work Notes - Week 10 Seminar - Week 10 Discussion Questions - Week 10
	29 March 4 April Week 11: Energy Star Program and Quality Management Ensure that the processes for producing a product or service sustainability will do so to a consistent standard. Investigate the fit between US EPA's Energy Star Program and those of Quality Management Systems. Read me 1st - Week 11 Work Notes - Week 11 Seminar - Week 11 Discussion Questions - Week 11 Assignment 2 - Assessment Criteria
	5 April 11 April Week 12: Compliance audit Assess the conformity of corporate systems to environmental standards, such as ISO 14000 series of environment management standards, Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT), and Energy Star Program. Read me 1st - Week 12 Seminar - Week 12 Draft National Carbon Offset Standard Discussion Questions - Week 12
	12 April 18 April Week 13: Review and discussion for assignment 2 - Prepare to go out and save the world Let us revisit the reasons we are studying Green ICT: to maximise positive environmental benefit and minimise the negative impact. What specific processes will you propose in Assignment 2, to improve energy efficiency and the use of materials in your organisation?

e-Learning Course on Green ICT Strategies: Part 12 Two Week 7s

In Part 11 I looked at courses were being offered around the world as part of preparing a new e-learning course on "Green IT Strategies", to be offered as part of the ACS Computer Professional Education Program. That showed what I was doing was consistent with the limited other courses available. So I continued on preparing the material for each week of the course (I have a Christmas deadline to have it finished). But at week seven (out of 13) I discovered a problem: I had scheduled two week sevens.

The course is thirteen weeks long. It was suggested I leave the last week for revision, giving twelve weeks. These were then divided into four topics, each with three weekly topics. I started with an introduction in week one and then went on setting down the topics for each week. But I forgot to count week one, thus ending up with an extra topic.

So now I had to work out what to do. This may seem a careless mistake which should have been caught earlier on, which it is. One reason for the mistake taking so long to find is the online preparation of the material. On my small screen, with a big font (to make it readable) only one topic can be displayed at a time. Thus I never saw the two "week 7" titles on the screen at the same time. Had I printed the document out, this would have been easier to spot.

When I went back and reread the advice I had been originally given by David Lindley, Academic Principal of ACS Education, I realised that the problem was not that bad. He suggested 4 major topics each of three weeks, with each week is a new sub-topic, which is what I did. But I got a little confused and wrote the introduction as a separate week. So all I had to do was merge the introduction into week one.

At this point I thought I should do some more checks of the material. I found a number of spelling mistakes. There seems to be a conflict between the Firefox add-on spell checker and the Moodle web based HTML editor, resulting in the spell checker not working some of the time (the same happens with the Blogger editor). Just to make sure, I used the grammar and spell checker extension for OpenOffice.org. This found a few repeated words, blank spaces, uses of "can not" instead of "cannot" and the like.

One problem I found was that one of the semianr topics (week 6) seems to be un-editable. I suspect there was some invalid HTML code which is causing problems for the Moodle editor. Running the code through HTML Tidy, fixed the problem.

e-Learning Course on Green ICT Strategies: Part 11 Other Courses

In Part 10 I reported on some Australian green ICT events I had attended as part of preparing a new e-learning course on "Green IT Strategies", to be offered as part of the ACS Computer Professional Education Program. That showed what I was proposing for the course was consistent with the approach others in Australia were taking with Green ICT. However, I tought I should look more widely and see what other courses were being offered around the world.

Margaret Ross, Southampton Solent University, UK and Bob Crooks, DEFRA gave an "Overview of Green ICT" to the BCS Academics Forum, 14 November 2008. This included many of the same information on the extent of carbon emissions from ICT as other presentations and ways to deal with it, but it also has a few slides on courses:

We need

• Students and staff to
  • understand the issues, be aware and skilled in tackling them, promote green behaviours
  • use their own and Estab’s ICT in greener ways
• Educational establishments to see Green as
enhancing reputation and attraction for students
• reducing costs (less Carbon = Less energy => less cost)
• Courses to provide
Accreditation of Green skills and knowledge
• Green dimensions

...
Assignments and Projects

Assessment:

* Case history or evaluation of an organisation
* Survey, eg of local SMEs
* Audits
* Learning Activities, eg multi-choice questions


Identifying for an organisation

* Benefits and risks
* “Road map” with priorities justified,
* Budget, time scale
* Business case

And the Curriculum...

* BCS initiatives
o ISEB module
o SME awareness
o Branch forum/mash ups

...

Leeds Metropolitan University is offering a MSc Green Computing. The part-time course modules are delivered as workshops, with self study and distance learning support. Assessment is typically by reports related to the student's work and so appears similar in concept to the ACS course:

Core Modules
ICT and the Environment: Assesses and measures the current environmental impact of ICT within a corporate context.

Green Computing Technologies: Investigates existing and emerging green computing technologies and systems.

Sustainable Computing: Considers the whole life cycle from procurement to disposal with a sustainable objective.

Responsibly Green: Analyses the legal and ethical issues from a Corporate 'Green' perspective.

Green ICT strategies: Develop, formulate and evaluate Green ICT strategies for practical implementation.

Research Methods: Research, methods, skills and practice for masters level dissertations.

Brian Henderson-Sellers, UTS, has set a Green ICT Project, OO Modelling Project Report, UTS, 2008:

Case Study for Project Work & Deliverables

STATEMENT TO BE MODIFIED BY STUDENT GROUPS…

1. Green ICT (GICT)

... Note: Following are the requirements for a system called GREEN ICT (GICT). GICT is a system developed to provide systems support for businesses implementing Environmentally Responsible Business Strategies (ERBS). This is an example of how in practical real-life projects, information is initially provided as a set of descriptive pages: usually half-baked, hardly complete and at times confusing. The requirements below are more organized than that, but still the students are encouraged to delve deeper into these requirements to identify what the user wants out of the system. The students will be able to appreciate how they can further correctly, completely and consistently model and document these requirements and their designs using the UML. These requirements also describe the business situation that is so important in understanding the context in which the project exists. Understanding the context of the project is a crucial ingredient of the quality process. ...

2. Background information on the Project

GICT is a software system to be designed to support businesses implementing Environmentally Responsible Business Strategies (ERBS). Therefore, GICT is not software that is specific to a particular industry. In fact, GICT must be able to be used by various types of industry categories, including both product and service industries. ...

3. Players

There are number of players (also called stakeholders) in the GICT system. ...

4. Organizational Portal (OP)

The GICT is made up of two major parts – the Organizational Portal (OP) and the regulatory standards portal (described next). ...

5. Regulatory Standards Portal (RSP)

Regulatory Standards Portal (RSP) is a large portal, maintained by the government of the country (take, for example, Australia) ...

Green ICT Workshop, UNI Strategic Pte Ltd, December 4–5, 2008, Singapore:

Participants will Learn About

• What is “green”, what is “sustainable”, and what is “greenwash”
• How to assess their organization’s current ICT eco-footprint and create objective standards for measurement and performance.
• How to create a systematic and strategic plan for reducing the cost and eco-footprint of ICT assets and operations.
• How to estimate, document, and realize cost savings of greening IT.
• How to estimate, document, and realize the environmental benefits of greening IT.
• How to present and justify green ICT initiatives to technical, financial, environmental, and Social Responsibility stakeholders.

Kent Connects ran a one-day "Green ICT Workshop", Jul 14, 2008:

... Socitm Consulting experts will help you and your colleagues move this agenda forward:

• Understand the carbon footprint of your current ICT and customer service operations
• Learn about successful initiatives in the UK and elsewhere to reduce the environmental impact of delivering services to citizens
• Discover how green awareness and more flexible working methods can save your authority money
• Lay the foundations of an effective and realistic Green ICT action plan
• Find out how to monitor progress using Green ICT key performance indicators

e-Learning Course on Green ICT Strategies: Part 10 The Content

In Part 9 I looked at some books for a new e-learning course on "Green IT Strategies", to be offered as part of the ACS Computer Professional Education Program. I didn't find any books worth using as a text and so decided to proceed using online readings only. As a way to get some relevant material and to check that I was on the right track with the course I organised a symposium in Canberra on Green ICT and talked at a Sustainable ICT Symposium at University of Melbourne. Also I talked to the people preparing Green ICT courses for TAFE.

I found that I was proposing to include in the course was consistent with what others said at the various events I attended. Also the management level course I was preparing should fit in well with the hands-on TAFE courses. Some of the materials from the symposia would be directly usable by the students in the course. One frustration was that many of the documents which had good content were very difficult to access as they were in the form of very large PDF documents. Also some videos could not be used as they did not have any accompanying text.

The ACS approved the draft of my course outline (one minor glitch had top be fixed when all my links to the SFIA web site turned out to be incorrect). A few days later the course was open for enrollments and students started applying. This then put pressure on me to complete the detailed, week by week, content for the course. To do this I continued to use the existing IT Service Management course as a template. I used the same titles and sequence for course content items, with each week having:

1. Readme 1st
2. Work Notes
3. Seminar
   
4. Discussion Questions
   
5. Friday Message

I used similar wording for these documents as the IT Service Management course, but changed the format of the documents from PDF to HTML. This makes the process of creating the content much easier. Instead of having to create the document with an external word processor, then convert into PDF and then transfer the file to the Moodle system, I am able to use the internal Moodle web editor to create and save the document in one operation. This should also make it easier for the students to read the documents online directly in the web browser, without needing to use a PDF viewer. The documents will not look as pretty when printed, but will still be very readable.

The documents used resemble those for a face-to-face course. Each document is the equivalent of between one half and two pages of text, with simple formatting of one column of text with headings, bold and italics (no colour or images used). The readme 1st gives the students an overall sense of where they should be up to that week.The seminar takes the place of lecture notes. The discussion questions are the equivalent of tutorial questions to be answered in the online discussion forum. The assignments and instructions about readings are much the same as they would be for a face to face course.

While the formatting is relatively simple and the documents short, considerable effort is still involved. It has taken me about two to three hours to prepare the documents for one week of the course. This is for a subject I am familiar with and without allowing for testing of the content, for example by trying the exercises or including preparing the marking schemes required. I expect that about five to seven hours will be required overall to prepare each week of material. This might be less if prepared texts and exercises were available, or more if I have to prepare content from scratch, rather than adapt material I have already written.

A major problem I have is the lack of a text book means I have to try and provide a coherent narrative from disparate sources. This is made more difficult as there is no accepted body of knowledge for the Green ICT field. Essentially I am having to make that up as I go along. Hopefully some of the students of this course will go on to define the field more clearly.

e-Learning Course on Green ICT Strategies: Part 9 Books

In Part 8 I revised the outline for a new e-learning course on "Green IT Strategies", to be offered as part of the ACS Computer Professional Education Program. While I have found some online references to use in the course there appear to be few books on "Green ICT". So far I have found four. Green IT: Reduce Your Information System's Environmental Impact While Adding to the Bottom Line (by Toby Velte) I have managed to buy a copy of. Green IT For Dummies, by Carol Baroudi, does not appear to be available until early 2009. The other two books, Green Computing and Green IT Best Practices (Jason Harris) and Green IT in Practice (Gary Hirdare) are both from 2008, but I can't find out much about them.

To see how useful Velte's book was, I looked for reference to Australia.There three useful ones. The first, on page 33 says that at the time of writing (the book was published 2008-09-08), there were no government mandated rules for the management of e-waste (which is still the case). On the next page is gives a reasonable description of the Byteback program. The next reference is to CD and DVD recycling programs. This all seems reasonable enough.

But I will have to wait until I have actually read the book for a full assessment (I am writing this in the State Library of NSW). While in Sydney, I visited the Apple store and checked the Green ICT Strategies e-Learning course web site worked okay on an Apple iPhone. You obviously have to zoom in to read the text, but the web based course interface of Moodle works fine on the iPhone. This would allow students to do m-Learning. In reality you will want a larger screen to read on, but even that is possible, with the i-Phone (and i-Pod Touch having the capability of plugging in an external large screen).

e-Learning Course on Green ICT Strategies: Part 8 Revised Outline

In Part 7 I loaded the draft course outline for a new e-learning course on "Green IT Strategies", to be offered as part of the ACS Computer Professional Education Program. into the Moodle Learning Management System (LMS). The outline then needed some further work on the weekly schedule of work.

David Lindley, Academic Principal of ACS Education, had originally suggested dividing the course up into four modules, with three topics in each, followed by a revision, to make 13 week. I had neglected to do this and had weekly topics following no particular order. So I have spent a few hours attempting to group modules under the SFIA topics. This proved extremely difficult to do.

With some structure to the weekly topics, I then tried to find some more content for each week. Most useful for this were the online open source course-ware on sustainability from the Natural Edge Project (NEP). One frustration with this is that the NEP's web site is not well formatted, making it difficult to read the materials and when I copied references to it I ended up with poorly formatted HTML in my document.

Green ICT Strategies

Prepared by Tom Worthington FACS HLM

Version 0.2, 7 November 2008. Draft for comment. Not Approved for delivery of a Course.

Welcome to our elective subject Green ICT Strategies (GICTS) within the Computer Professional Education Program of the Australian Computer Society.

When preparing this subject, as with all the subjects in the Computer Professional Education Program, we have assumed that you and your fellow students are over-achievers; self-motivated, disciplined, and determined to succeed. You have extensive prior knowledge and experience relevant to your study; you are open-minded about sharing your work and educational experiences; and you accept critical thinking as part of the learning process. Further, you are comfortable with, and competent in, written communications; and you recognise that effective learning can occur outside a traditional classroom. Most importantly, you want to control how, when, and where you learn.

Critical to your success in this subject is a regular and disciplined study routine. Only through consistency will you keep up-to-date. Every week there will be specific tasks to complete and, if you fall behind, it will be difficult to catch up.

Also important is that you correspond; at least twice every week; with your fellow students and tutor. Your correspondence must be intelligent and investigative. You will answer questions posed by your tutors, and then debate your answers with your classmates.

Learning Outcomes

Green ICT Strategies is an emerging discipline with no widely accepted approach. This subject is drawn from practices being developed in the public and private sectors internationally. Implementation methodologies and assessment tools currently being field-tested are introduced. Qualification schemes and accreditation are yet to be established and it is possible those completing this subject may be involved in that development.

The ACS course on Green ICT Strategies is based on:

1. The Engineering Sustainable Solutions Program, Sustainable IT Lecture Series, Natural Edge Project, 2008

2. Professor Garnaut's "Garnaut Climate Change Review Final Report, 2008

3. The Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT), Green Electronics Council. GEC 2006.

4. Energy Star Program , U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy, 2007

Competencies based on Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA)

The Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA) provides a common reference model for the identification of the skills needed to develop effective Information Systems (IS) making use of Information & Communications Technology (ICT).

Green ICT Strategies will target SIFA Level 5 competencies: "ensure, advise: Broad direction, supervisory, objective setting responsibility. Influences organisation. Challenging and unpredictable work. Self sufficient in business skills". With the following skills:

Category/Subcategory/Skill

At the completion of this subject the student can:

• Strategy & planning

  • Technical strategy and planning

    • Emerging technology monitoring: Identify new and emerging hardware, software and communication technologies for energy saving and materials reuse.

    • Methods and tools: Ensure that appropriate methods and tools for the planning, development, operation, management and maintenance of systems are adopted and used effectively throughout the organisation.

  • Business/IS strategy and planning

    • Business process improvement: Recommend alternative solutions which reduce environmental impact, assesses feasibility, and recommends new approaches.

    • Enterprise Architecture: Contribute to the sustainability of the systems capability strategy which meets the strategic requirements of the business. Incorporate Green ICT into the models and plans to drive forward the strategy, taking advantage of opportunities to improve business performance, as well as environmental benefits.

• Procurement & management support

  • Supply management

    • Procurement: Write green ICT requirement documents for to products and services.
      

  • Quality management

    • Compliance audit: Assess the conformity of systems to environmental standards, such as ISO 14000 series, Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT), and Energy Star Program.

Pre-requisites, Co-requisites

Business, Legal and Ethical Issues should be completed prior to undertaking this subject.

Content

Week1: Introduction to Green ICT Strategies

Objective: Understand environmental, social and business context for sustainability, and overview of background, boundaries.

1. Politics, Science and Business of Sustainability

   Investigate the principles of environmental sustainability and the science of climate change. Objective: You are asked to reduce the ecological footprint of an ICT organization. This organization could be the one you are currently working with or any other organization. How would you go about measuring the ICT system's demand on the Earth's ecosystems and developing a plan (strategy) to reduce the impact?

   1. Week 2: Professor Garnaut's "Garnaut Climate Change Review Final Report"
   2. Week 3: Introduction to Sustainable Development for Engineering and Built Environment Professionals, Natural Edge Project, 2008
   3. week 4: Sustainable Engineering: Engineering Sustainable Solutions Program Whole Systems Design Suite, Natural Edge Project, 2008

2. Technical strategy and planning

   Emerging technology monitoring

   Identify new and emerging hardware, software and communication technologies for energy saving and materials reuse.

   1. Week 5: Energy saving - Data Centres and Client Equipment
      

      Objective: Computers and telecommunications equipment contributes about 2% to greenhouse gas emissions. Look at how data centres and client equipment can be made more efficient. Reference: The Engineering Sustainable Solutions Program, Sustainable IT Lecture Series, Natural Edge Project, 2008

   2. Week 6: Materials Use

      Objective: Energy reduction is only part of making a Green ICT system, there is also the issue of use of materials and hazardous substances. How does the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) deal with material use? Reference: E-Waste Education Courses, Natural Edge Project, 2008
      

   3. Week 7: Methods and tools

      Ensure that appropriate methods and tools for the planning, development, operation, management and maintenance of systems are adopted and used effectively throughout the organisation.

3. Business/IS strategy and planning

   1. Week 7: Business process improvement

      Recommend alternative solutions which reduce environmental impact, assesses feasibility, and recommends new approaches.

      Objective: ICT has the potential to provide significant environmental improvements, by replacing energy and materials consuming processes with more efficient ICT ones. How do you analyse business processes to identify alternative solutions which reduce environmental impact, assesses feasibility, and recommends new approaches?

   2. Week 8: Business of Government

      The review of government ICT provides a useful example of where Green ICT Principles can be applied. How would you implement the Review of the Australian Government's Use of Information and Communication Technology by Sir Peter Gershon, October 2008.

   3. Week 9: Enterprise Architecture

      Contribute to the sustainability of the systems capability strategy which meets the strategic requirements of the business. Incorporate Green ICT into the models and plans to drive forward the strategy, taking advantage of opportunities to improve business performance, as well as environmental benefits.

      Objective: The business of business is business, so any environmental goals have to fit into the systems capability strategy which meets the strategic requirements of the business. How do you incorporate Green ICT into the models and plans to drive forward the strategy, taking advantage of opportunities to improve business performance, as well as environmental benefits?

4. Procurement & management support

   1. Week 10: Procurement

      Write green ICT requirement documents for to products and services.

      Objective: Much of the environmental benefits come about by selecting the right products and services. How do you ensure that your hardware, software and services suppliers provide green products?

   2. Week 11: Quality management

   3. Week 12: Compliance audit: Assess the conformity of systems to environmental standards, such as ISO 14000 series, Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT), and Energy Star Program.

Week 13: Revision and discussion for assignment 2

Objective: Let us revisit the Service Life Cycle. Let us discuss about the specific process you are going to improve in your organization through the assignment 2.

Workload

To complete the subject you will need to spend 8-10 hours each week reading, communicating with colleagues and tutors, and preparing assignments.

Review/Evaluation Methods

There are 2 areas of assessment in the subject;

• Contributions to the 13 weekly discussion forums, worth 20% of your total assessment.

• 2 assignments, worth 40% each.

To pass the subject overall, it is necessary to pass in both areas of assessment.

Teaching Strategies

By distance education through online learning methods plus one text book. Online learning is the main delivery method, moderated and supported by a tutor, mentor, student discussion forums and weekly feedback through ACS Education. Students are grouped in cohorts of 20. The students are also supported by the Registrar with email, phone, and fax contact.

Specialist Features or Equipment

The subject is supported by a website ACS Education hosted by Moodle where the online learning takes place. All learning materials plus discussion forums are available through this site, apart from the text book.

Course Designer

Tom Worthington is an independent ICT consultant and an Adjunct Senior Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science at the Australian National University, where he teaches the design of web sites, e-commerce and professional ethics. In addition, he has an interest in environmental design, and is the founding chair of the ACS Green ICT Group. In 1999 Tom was elected a Fellow of the Australian Computer Society for his contribution to the development of public Internet policy. He is a past president, Fellow and Honorary Life Member of the Australian Computer Society, a voting member of the Association for Computing Machinery and a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

References

There is no set text for this course. Online references will be used, including:

1. The Engineering Sustainable Solutions Program, Sustainable IT Lecture Series, Natural Edge Project, 2008

2. The Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT), Green Electronics Council. GEC 2006.

3. Energy Star Program , U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy, 2007

4. ACS Policy Statement for Green ICT, Australian Computer Society, 16 August 2007

5. The Personal Computer and Monitors Energy Efficiency Strategy, Tom Worthington, Report and Recommended Plan of Action, prepared for the Department of Environment, Heritage and the Arts, Version 1.0, 23 September 2008.

6. ROI Analysis: Reducing 856,000 Pounds of CO2 Emissions through Remote Services and Off-Hours Power Management, Government Case Study: Power Management and CO2 Reduction, Intel, 2008





Green ICT Strategies Course Outline by Tom Worthington is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License.