The NAVKIT a european multimedia tool fo (1)
Session T4C
The NAVKIT: A European Multimedia Tool for
Professional Training in the Field of Satellite
Navigation Technology
Fabio Dovis, Gabriella Povero, and Matteo Vannucchi
fabio.dovis@polito.it, gabriella.povero@ismb.it, matteo.vannucchi@polito.it
Abstract - Satellite Navigation and its applications are
becoming more and more important. In Europe, the
European Commission confirmed the public funding of
the European Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS)
Galileo. In this framework, new educational needs have
arisen. A recently conducted survey has highlighted a
general lack of educational material on GNSS-related
subjects. The NAVKIT represents a first answer to the
educational needs of the GNSS community. It has been
designed to be a self-consistent tool for engineers or
technicians not trained in navigation but it can be used
also as supporting material in university lectures. The
NAVKIT consists of audio-video lessons, two sets of
exercises (solved exercises and problems statements), and
a self-evaluation test. Ancillary parts are: Glossary,
Bibliography and Questions&Answers section. The
NAVKIT is HTML-based. It has been used during
specific courses in Europe and in post-graduate courses
in Asia. The tool was designed in a web 2.0 vision.
Index Terms – Satellite Navigation, Self-Learning,
Multimedia Tools, e-Learning.
INTRODUCTION
•
number of employees, spread in different locations, and
the need to constantly update their knowledge. A
relevant example is GoArmyEd [1], made by the US
Army. The web portal was created to enable soldiers to
achieve their educational goals while continuing to
serve the Army everywhere in the world. The US army
initiative merges the distance learning with the
traditional education, adapting it to the soldiers needs.
Another significant example is Eurocontrol [2], the
European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation.
Eurocontrol has to constantly train professionals from
different countries to keep them updated with the
evolution of air traffic management solutions.
Eurocontrol started some e-learning courses targeting
those professionals.
Companies. Many companies and corporations have
sites in distant locations. The new multimedia tools for
the employees’ education/Lifelong learning are an
important resource. The hi-tech companies and
industries are the most active. For example, SUN
Microsystems strongly believes in Immersive Education
[3]. This multimedia tool creates a virtual environment
with video games-like and second life-like features.
I. European Policy on e-learning
The growing popularity of online material to be used for
distance learning or e-learning is due to some concurrent
factors. Online resources are available anytime and
anywhere. Thus, the students can access the available
material at their best convenience. In addition, the technical
evolution of the last years increased the diffusion of this
phenomenon providing new tools and devices, both from the
hardware/software side (new devices, new software) and
from the infrastructure side (almost ubiquitous broadband
internet availability).
The distance learning is a complex environment. There
are some relevant examples worldwide useful to understand
how
the
distance
learning
and
the
related
software/multimedia tools are becoming an effective means
of education for some categories of potential students. In
particular, apart from Universities providing new services to
their traditional students, there are some institutions where
this trend is more evident:
• Governments, Governmental Bodies, and Public
Institutions. These institutions usually have a wide
In the last years, European Union developed its own vision
on e-learning. At the Lisbon European Council on 23 and 24
March 2000, the EU Member States set the objective of
becoming "the most competitive and dynamic knowledgedriven economy in the world, capable of sustainable
economic growth with more and better jobs and greater
social cohesion" [4]. According to the Lisbon strategy,
Europe should be the world leader in terms of quality in its
education and training systems: the goal is to achieve a more
dynamic European Union [5]. There is the need to improve
the implementation and spread out of electronic educational
contents even if the process is difficult, as the Commission
underlined in a report [6]. Furthermore, the eLearning
initiative of the European Commission seeks to mobilise the
educational and cultural communities, as well as the
economic and social players in Europe, in order to speed up
changes in the education and training systems for Europe's
move to a knowledge-based society [7]. The eLearning
programme is a further step towards realising the vision of
technology serving lifelong learning. It focuses on a set of
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October 18 - 21, 2009, San Antonio, TX
39th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
T4C-1
Session T4C
actions in high priority areas, chosen for their strategic
relevance to the modernisation of Europe’s education and
training system. The European Commission has integrated
its various educational and training initiatives under a single
umbrella, the Lifelong Learning Programme. The estimated
budget is of nearly €7 billion for the period 2007-2013. The
new programme replaces previous education, vocational
training and e-Learning programmes. The EU has an internet
portal [8]-[9], completely dedicated to the online and
distance learning issues. This portal underlines the EU
Commission interest in this particular field of education.
II. Infrastructure evolution
In recent years e-learning approaches have become more and
more popular thanks to many concurrent factors.
Technological advances in ICT have played an important
role: Internet has boomed and the broadband is available
almost everywhere, even in mobile and nomadic
environments. This evolution has permitted the spreading of
digital contents very band-consuming such as videos or
different multimedia files. Hardware has evolved as well
(i.e. portable video players, netbooks). At last, even on the
software side there are many improvements: now it is easier
both to create multimedia contents and to enjoy them. The
results are: more material available online, more institutions
involved in the delivery of content, target audience
consisting of different categories of people (students,
professionals, etc.), ad hoc policies from institutions and
governments. The modalities of distribution of the
educational contents are various and range from provision of
downloadable simple material through web pages to virtual
environments. It is important to underline that this kind of
education is an alternative or a complement to the existing
traditional education.
Furthermore, the web 2.0 [16] introduces the
participation of the users providing interaction capabilities
and sharing of contents as well as collaboration
opportunities. In the new approach the final user is an actor
not only a viewer. The online education must become then a
tool easing the exchange of information between different
sources: the traditional content (digitalised and made
available through the internet, as in the case of many
university classes), the new complimentary material, as
videos or interactive simulation tools, and the user generated
contents (e.g. solutions for exercises,
questions,
experiences, etc.). This approach opens also new issues, as
the validation of the contents. At the same time it creates an
‘environment’ favourable for the learning phase since the
participation of the users becomes part of the educational
content itself. This participation can occur in different ways.
In non-traditional or unofficial educational tools like
‘English as Second Language’ podcast [10] users can
interact with a blog or by questions. In other cases, such as
in some distance learning courses, the interaction is due to
the fact that the virtual classroom reproduces almost the
same environment of the traditional classroom, thanks to
new e-learning/distance learning software and thanks to new
approaches like Immersive Education [3].
III. The lacks of education in Global Navigation Satellite
Systems
The ERIG project [11], funded by the European Commission
under the Sixth Framework Programme for Research and
Technological Development (FP6), studied the status of
education in the field of Global Navigation Satellite Systems
(GNSS) in Europe and compared it with the situation in
other geographical regions such as North America and Asia
Pacific. The project was participated by some of the most
important European Universities involved in GNSS
activities. One of the most important findings of the analysis
was that there is a general lack of distance learning
education offers on GNSS topics differently to what happens
in other fields. In addition, the User Needs Analysis
conducted in the framework of ERIG highlighted a need for
professional training in GNSS related topics. Thus there is a
non-expressed potential for distance and e-learning tools in
this field as these methodologies are promising for education
and professional training in GNSS related subjects.
One result of this strong demand of educational material
on GNSS subjects is the NAVKIT, that is one of the
outcomes of the ERIG project. It represent the first attempt
to fill the gaps in GNSS education that were highlighted by
the ERIG analysis with a multimedia education tool.
Another important example is the fully-online tutorial [13]
on satellite navigation made by the U.S. Institute of
Navigation (ION) [12]. The ION e-learning tool is designed
to provide a basic knowledge on GNSS technology and
related applications. The course is minded for engineers and
professionals registered to the ION website and the access to
lessons requires the payment of a fee.
NAVKIT DESIGN CHOICES
The first step for the development of the NAVKIT was, of
course, the Design Phase, in which the main characteristics
of the tool were defined taking into account the requirements
of the project statement of work. As a result, it was decided
that the tool had to be self-consistent, complete, and fully
usable at the end of the project without need of further
maintenance. In addition, its content did not have to focus on
deep technical aspects and details, but at the same time it
had to analyse the principles of satellite navigation and
positioning and provide users with a more technical view
than simple awareness. Finally, the tool was expected to
represent a model for potential extensions after the end of
the ERIG project. It was designed to fill the knowledge gaps
identified by the educational field analysis. In order to match
these requirements, a multimedia approach was selected for
the implementation of the Education Kit.
In designing the NAVKIT three different aspects were
taken into account:
• The syllabus, i.e. which topics have to be addressed and
at what level of detail.
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October 18 - 21, 2009, San Antonio, TX
39th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
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•
•
Session T4C
The structure, i.e. the relations among the different
contents.
The provision, i.e. in which way the topics are provided
to the final audience and which tools are used.
To define the scope of the education kit, the knowledge
of the audience was, however, essential. In fact, most proper
structures, tools and way of teaching are related to the
background and the “learning attitude” of the final users. It
was decided to prepare a tool which mainly addresses
professionals like engineers or technician. As a matter of
fact, the Industry Needs Analysis, that was conducted in the
span of the ERIG project, highlighted how European
industries are willing to deepen the education of their work
force in the GNSS field. Consequently, the NAVKIT was
designed for a category of users that is supposed to have
already acquired a good mathematical preparation.
I. The syllabus
The full content of a complete training class on GNSS and
Galileo would have been a huge amount of material to be
prepared if compared with the scope of the project, i.e. set
up a prototypal though self-consistent tool. Therefore, the
provision of a class on ‘Basics on GNSS’ was chosen.
II. The structure
In order to assimilate technical subjects theoretical lectures
must be integrated with hands on activities. To reach this
goal, the NAVKIT structure was designed so as to drive the
learner through some interlinked steps:
• learning by “attending” classes focused on the core of
the topics
• understanding methodologies through the analysis of
solved exercises and demos
• applying the learnt methodologies to proposed exercises
• testing oneself preparation with a self-evaluation tool
books and other material, is provided to help in gluing the
pieces of acquired knowledge.
THE NAVKIT
The NAVKIT opening Home Page is the entrance gate of
the kit. From it, the user can access the Index Page and the
Lesson Pages. All these pages are divided in three areas:
Header, Footer and Central Area. The first two areas are
common to Index and Lesson pages, while the content of the
central area differs.
The Header is devoted to general purpose functions,
such as buttons to access the bibliography page and the
teachers’ curricula. In addition, there are two navigation
buttons that point to the Home Page and to the Index Page
respectively.
In the Footer there are links to complementary and
additional material like the glossary, the Questions and
Answers section and the Exercises section.
I. Index Page
The Index Page is shown in Figure 1. It allows the access to
all the contents of the education kit through the Table of
Content that is available in the right hand part of its Central
Area. The Table of Contents is organised in Units, Chapters,
and Lessons, reflecting the organisation of the content of the
kit in a modular structure with small consistent “building
blocks”. When the user chooses the lesson of interest, the
related Lesson Page is displayed in both parts of the Central
Area.
III. The provision
It was decided that the NAVKIT should be an e-learning
tool that could be used both for Computer Based Training
and Web Based Training, or as part of some so called
‘blended learning’, in which the online component joins a
more traditional teaching activity (classes, workshops or
seminars, exercises, meetings with teachers). A multimedia
framework able to integrate different kind of contents
(slides, video, flash animations, etc.) seemed to be the most
suitable technology platform to reach this goal. In fact, the
multimedia material can be either provided to the users on
CD-ROM/DVD or through a web-site.
It was decided to adopt a ‘constructive approach of the
knowledge’, i.e. stimulate the growing of knowledge by
adding small and self consistent modules that are properly
organized in sequence and linked together. For this reason,
the content is split in small modules called Sessions lasting
15-20 minutes each [15]. After each session the learner is
invited to verify her/his comprehension of the taught
concepts. A proper set of instruments, such as references to
FIGURE 1
THE NAVKIT INDEX PAGE
I. Lesson Page
A typical Lesson Page is presented in Figure 2. In its Central
Area the right hand part is devoted to the display of the
slides, while in the left hand part the talking head of the
teacher, the player commands, and an active table of content
with the list of the Sessions contained in the selected Lesson
are displayed. The user can choose to listen to all Sessions
sequentially or to listen to one particular Session. Audio and
video of the teacher are synchronised with the slides
displayed in the right hand area. A printable version of the
slides is available in PDF format. At the end of the lesson,
978-1-4244-4714-5/09/$25.00 ©2009 IEEE
October 18 - 21, 2009, San Antonio, TX
39th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
T4C-3
Session T4C
the user can open the previous lesson or the next one by
using the two relevant buttons or return to the Index Page to
select another lesson.
FIGURE 2
EXAMPLE OF A LESSON PAGE
III. Exercises and tests
The teaching material is completed with a set of demos,
exercises, and self-assessment tests to provide the user with
the possibility to apply the learnt notions and to measure the
acquired competences. The exercises are in the Exercise
Page, which is activated through the Exercise Button in the
Footer of Index and Lesson Pages. Two different categories
of exercises are foreseen in the NAVKIT:
• solved exercises, where the user is guided stepby-step to find the correct solution,
• proposed exercises, where only the statement
of the problem is given together with the final
results.
Furthermore, users can get a measure of the acquired
competences by using the self-assessment part. It has been
designed as multiple-answer tests. Each Chapter has its own
set of questions, that aims to validate the comprehension of
topics that are taught in that specific part of the Unit.
Questions are proposed to the user in a sequence. The user is
notified if the answer is correct; in case of incorrect answer,
suggestions are given on where hints on related topics can be
found inside the training material, and the user is invited to
re-address those subjects. At the end of the test, a summary
indicating the correct/incorrect answers and the time used to
give the answer is displayed. An example of the summary is
shown in Figure 3.
IV. Questions and Answers
This section has been designed to provide the user with the
point of view of international experts on some aspects of
Global Navigation Satellite Systems and Related
Applications. Thus, in this section there are questions that
are often asked by students in GNSS classes. Answers are
given in short video recordings. The choice of oral answers
has been made with the purpose of providing a virtual round
table on GNSS topics. In a web 2.0 view, this section could
become more similar to a forum or a blog.
FIGURE 3
SUMMARY OF THE SELF EVALUATION TEST
V. Glossary and Bibliography
Glossary and Bibliography complete the educational offer of
the NAVKIT. The Glossary collects the most important
terms and acronyms related to GNSS with a very brief
explanation of their meaning. The Bibliography suggests to
users some books and recent papers where further
information and details on the subject can be found.
THE TRAINING MATERIAL
The core of the education kit is the training material, which
is organised in a hierarchy of Units, Chapters, Lessons, and
Sessions: each Unit consists of several Chapters; each
Chapter is made up of Lessons. The Lesson is the basic unit
of the teaching material to which users can access from the
Index page. In order to facilitate the organisation and the
management of the teaching material, each Lesson is further
divided in Sessions that do not last more than 20 minutes
each to keep the attention of the users focused on the
teacher’s explanations. Each Session is focused on a specific
topic to facilitate those users willing to revise some
particular part of the Lesson.
The first Chapter of each Unit is entirely dedicated to
the presentation of the Unit focus, the prerequisites and the
targeted audience, the general organisation of the teaching
material, the general learning goals and the competencies the
user is expected to obtain at the end of the Unit.
Similarly, the first Lesson of each Chapter is devoted to
give the user some items of information about the
organisation of the Chapter, the topics taught, the specific
learning goals.
In order to achieve a good effectiveness of the teaching,
during the preparation of the training material the teachers
limited the use of textual content and preferred bullet lists.
They used different colours to highlight the most important
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October 18 - 21, 2009, San Antonio, TX
39th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
T4C-4
Session T4C
words and they included schemes and figures. In addition,
they changed slides frequently to retain the audience
attention, as suggested in [15].
In the present version of the NAVKIT only Unit 1 –
Basics of Global Navigation Satellite Systems is available. It
focuses on fundamentals on Global Navigation Satellite
Systems. The aim of this module is to describe the principles
governing Satellite Navigation and Positioning thus
providing the user with some basic knowledge on how a
GNSS works. The Unit has been designed as a starting point
for technicians or engineers moving their first steps in the
world of satellite navigation and positioning. Topics are
presented so as to limit the mathematical content. The
associated proposed exercises mainly address general
aspects of satellite navigation systems rather than
mathematical technicalities. It must be noticed that the
mathematical content of the Unit is simpler in the first
Chapters while it slightly increases in the last ones, which
deal with signals structure and receivers. Therefore, a
modular use of this Unit is possible. In fact, the first
Chapters can be useful for the training of professionals not
interested in how a GNSS receiver works but in
understanding the principles governing satellite navigation.
On the contrary, the last Chapters can be exploited, for
example, in the training of technicians and engineers
involved in the development of GNSS related applications.
In addition, a recommended fruition method is to use
the NAVKIT as a virtual teacher for small groups of users
with homogeneous background. This method could
overcome some of the disadvantages deriving from the
distance learning methodology, i.e. the absence of
interaction and comparison. If this fruition method is chosen,
it is suggested that some time for group discussion is
scheduled at the end of each lesson, thus stimulating the
exchange of ideas among the users.
VALIDATION OF THE KIT
In order to validate the kit, a questionnaire was prepared
during the project. The questions were organized in four
sections: Human Machine Interface, Lessons, Exercises,
Auxiliary Sections. Answers could range from 1 (bad) to 5
(excellent). In addition, there was the possibility to add free
comments. A last part focused on the user characteristics
(education, profession, age, gender) was included.
The NAVKIT was validated in two steps. At the end of
the ERIG project it was distributed to some European Small
and Medium Enterprises, where engineers used it to learn
about GNSS topics. All the users were asked to fill in a
questionnaire and the fourteen of them actually did it.
The average results of this first validation campaign are
presented in the column labelled ‘EU’ in Table I. It has to be
underlined that some of the users enjoyed the NAVKIT in
small groups of two-three persons of homogeneous
background. From their free comments, it was evident the
advantage of this kind of fruition, where the NAVKIT
became a sort of virtual teacher which the users could stop to
discuss and exchange ideas.
In a second phase the NAVKIT was distributed to M.Sc.
students, PhDs and researchers of two Asian Universities:
the Hanoi University of Technology in Vietnam and the
Asian Institute of Technology in Bangkok, Thailand. Forty
four questionnaires were collected. The average results are
available in the column labelled ‘Asia’ in Table I.
TABLE I
RESULTS OF THE NAVKIT EVALUATION
Questions
A.
Human machine interface
A1
Do you think that the graphical appearance of
NAVKIT is ..
A2
Do you consider the user-friendliness of NAVKIT
interface …
A3
In your opinion the navigation through the different
NAVKIT parts is …
B.
Lessons
B1
Do you think the organization of the content is …
B2
Do you consider the description of the teaching
objectives …
B3
What is your opinion on the proposed teaching
approach?
B4
What is your opinion on the clarity and
effectiveness of the lessons?
C.
Exercises
C1
Do you think the solved exercises are useful to
understand how to apply the theoretical lessons?
C2
In your opinion are the proposed exercises an
effective mean to better understand the concepts
taught in the lessons?
C3
Do you consider the self-evaluation test an effective
tool to test your preparation on GNSS?
D.
Auxiliary sections
D1
What is your opinion on the Questions and
Answers section?
D2
How do you consider the NAVKIT auxiliary
sections (Bibliography, Glossary) ?
EU
Asia
3,7
4,0
3,9
3,9
3,5
3,3
4,0
4,1
3,9
4,1
4,2
4,0
3,9
4,0
4,5
3,7
4,6
3,7
4,5
4,0
3,6
3,9
4
3,8
The results arising from the questionnaires are quite
encouraging. If the answers are analysed taking into account
the age of the users, it is evident a higher sensitivity of
younger people to issues related to the human machine
interface, while people with an average age of forty five
were more concentrated on lessons and exercises. This
aspect was particularly evident in the free comments.
CONCLUSIONS
The NAVKIT 1.1 proved to be a good starting point to
provide self-education on Satellite Navigation and
Positioning. On the other hand, improvements in the human
machine interface are possible and have been suggested by
people who used the kit so far. In addition, the teachers have
noted some rigidity in the way in which the recording were
made. These improvements of the kit will be included in the
version 2.0, that is currently under design.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The NAVKIT development was funded by the Galileo Joint
Undertaking/Galileo Supervisory Authority within of the
Project ‘Education, Research and Innovation Technology in
the field of GNSS’ (ERIG) - Contract ref. GJU/06/8070CTR/ERIG
978-1-4244-4714-5/09/$25.00 ©2009 IEEE
October 18 - 21, 2009, San Antonio, TX
39th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
T4C-5
Session T4C
REFERENCES
[1] GoArmyEd official web page: www.earmyu.com/
[2] Web page of training activities offered by Eurocontrol:
www.eurocontrol.int/ians/public/standard_page/training_products.html
[3] The guide about immersive education made by SUN is available at:
wikis.sun.com/display/IESIG/Home;jsessionid=118645C33FE41BE65
FCD9B89C1511701
[4] Lisbon European Council 23 and 24 March 2000 – Presidency
Conclusions: www.europarl.europa.eu/summits/lis1_en.htm
[5] European Council, Report from the Education Council to the European
Council "The concrete future objectives of education and training
systems", 5680/01 EDUC 18, 23-24 March 2001, Stockholm (Sweden)
[6] http://ec.europa.eu/education/policies/2010/doc/rep_fut_obj_en.pdf
[7] Communication from the Commission, "Education & Training 2010" The success of the Lisbon Strategy hinges on urgent reforms, Brussels,
11.11.2003 COM(2003) 685
eurlex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2003:0685:FIN
:EN:PDF
[8] European Commission, Education and Training Homepage:
http://ec.europa.eu/education/policies/2010/et_2010_en.html
[9] elearningeuropa website: http://www.elearningeuropa.info
[10] ESL podcast is available at: http://www.eslpod.com/website/
[11] Davies, Andrew, "Education, Research and Innovation and Technology
Transfer in GNSS(ERIG) Final Report", GSA Virtual Library
(http://www.gsa.europa.eu), August 2008
[12] U.S.A. Institute of Navigation: www.ion.org
[13] The tutorial is available for registered users at:
http://www.ion.org/tutorials/
[14] Lo Presti, Dovis, Marchese, Povero, "NAVKIT 1.1 User Manual", May
2008
[15] Del Corso, Forno, Morrone, Signorile, “Development of didactic
design guidelines for the production of e-courses”, 36th ASEE/IEEE
Frontiers in Education Conference, Oct. 2006, San Diego, CA
[16] Tim O’Reilly, What Is Web 2.0 - Design Patterns and Business Models
for
the
Next
Generation
of
Software,
09/30/2005,
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-isweb-20.html
AUTHOR INFORMATION
Fabio Dovis, Assistant Professor, Electronics Department,
Politecnico di Torino (Italy), fabio.dovis@polito.it
Gabriella Povero, Senior Researcher, Navigation
Laboratory, Istituto Superiore Mario Boella (Italy),
gabriella.povero@ismb.it
Matteo Vannucchi, Researcher, Navigation Laboratory,
Istituto
Superiore
Mario
Boella
(Italy),
matteo.vannucchi@polito.it
978-1-4244-4714-5/09/$25.00 ©2009 IEEE
October 18 - 21, 2009, San Antonio, TX
39th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
T4C-6
The NAVKIT: A European Multimedia Tool for
Professional Training in the Field of Satellite
Navigation Technology
Fabio Dovis, Gabriella Povero, and Matteo Vannucchi
fabio.dovis@polito.it, gabriella.povero@ismb.it, matteo.vannucchi@polito.it
Abstract - Satellite Navigation and its applications are
becoming more and more important. In Europe, the
European Commission confirmed the public funding of
the European Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS)
Galileo. In this framework, new educational needs have
arisen. A recently conducted survey has highlighted a
general lack of educational material on GNSS-related
subjects. The NAVKIT represents a first answer to the
educational needs of the GNSS community. It has been
designed to be a self-consistent tool for engineers or
technicians not trained in navigation but it can be used
also as supporting material in university lectures. The
NAVKIT consists of audio-video lessons, two sets of
exercises (solved exercises and problems statements), and
a self-evaluation test. Ancillary parts are: Glossary,
Bibliography and Questions&Answers section. The
NAVKIT is HTML-based. It has been used during
specific courses in Europe and in post-graduate courses
in Asia. The tool was designed in a web 2.0 vision.
Index Terms – Satellite Navigation, Self-Learning,
Multimedia Tools, e-Learning.
INTRODUCTION
•
number of employees, spread in different locations, and
the need to constantly update their knowledge. A
relevant example is GoArmyEd [1], made by the US
Army. The web portal was created to enable soldiers to
achieve their educational goals while continuing to
serve the Army everywhere in the world. The US army
initiative merges the distance learning with the
traditional education, adapting it to the soldiers needs.
Another significant example is Eurocontrol [2], the
European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation.
Eurocontrol has to constantly train professionals from
different countries to keep them updated with the
evolution of air traffic management solutions.
Eurocontrol started some e-learning courses targeting
those professionals.
Companies. Many companies and corporations have
sites in distant locations. The new multimedia tools for
the employees’ education/Lifelong learning are an
important resource. The hi-tech companies and
industries are the most active. For example, SUN
Microsystems strongly believes in Immersive Education
[3]. This multimedia tool creates a virtual environment
with video games-like and second life-like features.
I. European Policy on e-learning
The growing popularity of online material to be used for
distance learning or e-learning is due to some concurrent
factors. Online resources are available anytime and
anywhere. Thus, the students can access the available
material at their best convenience. In addition, the technical
evolution of the last years increased the diffusion of this
phenomenon providing new tools and devices, both from the
hardware/software side (new devices, new software) and
from the infrastructure side (almost ubiquitous broadband
internet availability).
The distance learning is a complex environment. There
are some relevant examples worldwide useful to understand
how
the
distance
learning
and
the
related
software/multimedia tools are becoming an effective means
of education for some categories of potential students. In
particular, apart from Universities providing new services to
their traditional students, there are some institutions where
this trend is more evident:
• Governments, Governmental Bodies, and Public
Institutions. These institutions usually have a wide
In the last years, European Union developed its own vision
on e-learning. At the Lisbon European Council on 23 and 24
March 2000, the EU Member States set the objective of
becoming "the most competitive and dynamic knowledgedriven economy in the world, capable of sustainable
economic growth with more and better jobs and greater
social cohesion" [4]. According to the Lisbon strategy,
Europe should be the world leader in terms of quality in its
education and training systems: the goal is to achieve a more
dynamic European Union [5]. There is the need to improve
the implementation and spread out of electronic educational
contents even if the process is difficult, as the Commission
underlined in a report [6]. Furthermore, the eLearning
initiative of the European Commission seeks to mobilise the
educational and cultural communities, as well as the
economic and social players in Europe, in order to speed up
changes in the education and training systems for Europe's
move to a knowledge-based society [7]. The eLearning
programme is a further step towards realising the vision of
technology serving lifelong learning. It focuses on a set of
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actions in high priority areas, chosen for their strategic
relevance to the modernisation of Europe’s education and
training system. The European Commission has integrated
its various educational and training initiatives under a single
umbrella, the Lifelong Learning Programme. The estimated
budget is of nearly €7 billion for the period 2007-2013. The
new programme replaces previous education, vocational
training and e-Learning programmes. The EU has an internet
portal [8]-[9], completely dedicated to the online and
distance learning issues. This portal underlines the EU
Commission interest in this particular field of education.
II. Infrastructure evolution
In recent years e-learning approaches have become more and
more popular thanks to many concurrent factors.
Technological advances in ICT have played an important
role: Internet has boomed and the broadband is available
almost everywhere, even in mobile and nomadic
environments. This evolution has permitted the spreading of
digital contents very band-consuming such as videos or
different multimedia files. Hardware has evolved as well
(i.e. portable video players, netbooks). At last, even on the
software side there are many improvements: now it is easier
both to create multimedia contents and to enjoy them. The
results are: more material available online, more institutions
involved in the delivery of content, target audience
consisting of different categories of people (students,
professionals, etc.), ad hoc policies from institutions and
governments. The modalities of distribution of the
educational contents are various and range from provision of
downloadable simple material through web pages to virtual
environments. It is important to underline that this kind of
education is an alternative or a complement to the existing
traditional education.
Furthermore, the web 2.0 [16] introduces the
participation of the users providing interaction capabilities
and sharing of contents as well as collaboration
opportunities. In the new approach the final user is an actor
not only a viewer. The online education must become then a
tool easing the exchange of information between different
sources: the traditional content (digitalised and made
available through the internet, as in the case of many
university classes), the new complimentary material, as
videos or interactive simulation tools, and the user generated
contents (e.g. solutions for exercises,
questions,
experiences, etc.). This approach opens also new issues, as
the validation of the contents. At the same time it creates an
‘environment’ favourable for the learning phase since the
participation of the users becomes part of the educational
content itself. This participation can occur in different ways.
In non-traditional or unofficial educational tools like
‘English as Second Language’ podcast [10] users can
interact with a blog or by questions. In other cases, such as
in some distance learning courses, the interaction is due to
the fact that the virtual classroom reproduces almost the
same environment of the traditional classroom, thanks to
new e-learning/distance learning software and thanks to new
approaches like Immersive Education [3].
III. The lacks of education in Global Navigation Satellite
Systems
The ERIG project [11], funded by the European Commission
under the Sixth Framework Programme for Research and
Technological Development (FP6), studied the status of
education in the field of Global Navigation Satellite Systems
(GNSS) in Europe and compared it with the situation in
other geographical regions such as North America and Asia
Pacific. The project was participated by some of the most
important European Universities involved in GNSS
activities. One of the most important findings of the analysis
was that there is a general lack of distance learning
education offers on GNSS topics differently to what happens
in other fields. In addition, the User Needs Analysis
conducted in the framework of ERIG highlighted a need for
professional training in GNSS related topics. Thus there is a
non-expressed potential for distance and e-learning tools in
this field as these methodologies are promising for education
and professional training in GNSS related subjects.
One result of this strong demand of educational material
on GNSS subjects is the NAVKIT, that is one of the
outcomes of the ERIG project. It represent the first attempt
to fill the gaps in GNSS education that were highlighted by
the ERIG analysis with a multimedia education tool.
Another important example is the fully-online tutorial [13]
on satellite navigation made by the U.S. Institute of
Navigation (ION) [12]. The ION e-learning tool is designed
to provide a basic knowledge on GNSS technology and
related applications. The course is minded for engineers and
professionals registered to the ION website and the access to
lessons requires the payment of a fee.
NAVKIT DESIGN CHOICES
The first step for the development of the NAVKIT was, of
course, the Design Phase, in which the main characteristics
of the tool were defined taking into account the requirements
of the project statement of work. As a result, it was decided
that the tool had to be self-consistent, complete, and fully
usable at the end of the project without need of further
maintenance. In addition, its content did not have to focus on
deep technical aspects and details, but at the same time it
had to analyse the principles of satellite navigation and
positioning and provide users with a more technical view
than simple awareness. Finally, the tool was expected to
represent a model for potential extensions after the end of
the ERIG project. It was designed to fill the knowledge gaps
identified by the educational field analysis. In order to match
these requirements, a multimedia approach was selected for
the implementation of the Education Kit.
In designing the NAVKIT three different aspects were
taken into account:
• The syllabus, i.e. which topics have to be addressed and
at what level of detail.
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October 18 - 21, 2009, San Antonio, TX
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•
•
Session T4C
The structure, i.e. the relations among the different
contents.
The provision, i.e. in which way the topics are provided
to the final audience and which tools are used.
To define the scope of the education kit, the knowledge
of the audience was, however, essential. In fact, most proper
structures, tools and way of teaching are related to the
background and the “learning attitude” of the final users. It
was decided to prepare a tool which mainly addresses
professionals like engineers or technician. As a matter of
fact, the Industry Needs Analysis, that was conducted in the
span of the ERIG project, highlighted how European
industries are willing to deepen the education of their work
force in the GNSS field. Consequently, the NAVKIT was
designed for a category of users that is supposed to have
already acquired a good mathematical preparation.
I. The syllabus
The full content of a complete training class on GNSS and
Galileo would have been a huge amount of material to be
prepared if compared with the scope of the project, i.e. set
up a prototypal though self-consistent tool. Therefore, the
provision of a class on ‘Basics on GNSS’ was chosen.
II. The structure
In order to assimilate technical subjects theoretical lectures
must be integrated with hands on activities. To reach this
goal, the NAVKIT structure was designed so as to drive the
learner through some interlinked steps:
• learning by “attending” classes focused on the core of
the topics
• understanding methodologies through the analysis of
solved exercises and demos
• applying the learnt methodologies to proposed exercises
• testing oneself preparation with a self-evaluation tool
books and other material, is provided to help in gluing the
pieces of acquired knowledge.
THE NAVKIT
The NAVKIT opening Home Page is the entrance gate of
the kit. From it, the user can access the Index Page and the
Lesson Pages. All these pages are divided in three areas:
Header, Footer and Central Area. The first two areas are
common to Index and Lesson pages, while the content of the
central area differs.
The Header is devoted to general purpose functions,
such as buttons to access the bibliography page and the
teachers’ curricula. In addition, there are two navigation
buttons that point to the Home Page and to the Index Page
respectively.
In the Footer there are links to complementary and
additional material like the glossary, the Questions and
Answers section and the Exercises section.
I. Index Page
The Index Page is shown in Figure 1. It allows the access to
all the contents of the education kit through the Table of
Content that is available in the right hand part of its Central
Area. The Table of Contents is organised in Units, Chapters,
and Lessons, reflecting the organisation of the content of the
kit in a modular structure with small consistent “building
blocks”. When the user chooses the lesson of interest, the
related Lesson Page is displayed in both parts of the Central
Area.
III. The provision
It was decided that the NAVKIT should be an e-learning
tool that could be used both for Computer Based Training
and Web Based Training, or as part of some so called
‘blended learning’, in which the online component joins a
more traditional teaching activity (classes, workshops or
seminars, exercises, meetings with teachers). A multimedia
framework able to integrate different kind of contents
(slides, video, flash animations, etc.) seemed to be the most
suitable technology platform to reach this goal. In fact, the
multimedia material can be either provided to the users on
CD-ROM/DVD or through a web-site.
It was decided to adopt a ‘constructive approach of the
knowledge’, i.e. stimulate the growing of knowledge by
adding small and self consistent modules that are properly
organized in sequence and linked together. For this reason,
the content is split in small modules called Sessions lasting
15-20 minutes each [15]. After each session the learner is
invited to verify her/his comprehension of the taught
concepts. A proper set of instruments, such as references to
FIGURE 1
THE NAVKIT INDEX PAGE
I. Lesson Page
A typical Lesson Page is presented in Figure 2. In its Central
Area the right hand part is devoted to the display of the
slides, while in the left hand part the talking head of the
teacher, the player commands, and an active table of content
with the list of the Sessions contained in the selected Lesson
are displayed. The user can choose to listen to all Sessions
sequentially or to listen to one particular Session. Audio and
video of the teacher are synchronised with the slides
displayed in the right hand area. A printable version of the
slides is available in PDF format. At the end of the lesson,
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October 18 - 21, 2009, San Antonio, TX
39th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
T4C-3
Session T4C
the user can open the previous lesson or the next one by
using the two relevant buttons or return to the Index Page to
select another lesson.
FIGURE 2
EXAMPLE OF A LESSON PAGE
III. Exercises and tests
The teaching material is completed with a set of demos,
exercises, and self-assessment tests to provide the user with
the possibility to apply the learnt notions and to measure the
acquired competences. The exercises are in the Exercise
Page, which is activated through the Exercise Button in the
Footer of Index and Lesson Pages. Two different categories
of exercises are foreseen in the NAVKIT:
• solved exercises, where the user is guided stepby-step to find the correct solution,
• proposed exercises, where only the statement
of the problem is given together with the final
results.
Furthermore, users can get a measure of the acquired
competences by using the self-assessment part. It has been
designed as multiple-answer tests. Each Chapter has its own
set of questions, that aims to validate the comprehension of
topics that are taught in that specific part of the Unit.
Questions are proposed to the user in a sequence. The user is
notified if the answer is correct; in case of incorrect answer,
suggestions are given on where hints on related topics can be
found inside the training material, and the user is invited to
re-address those subjects. At the end of the test, a summary
indicating the correct/incorrect answers and the time used to
give the answer is displayed. An example of the summary is
shown in Figure 3.
IV. Questions and Answers
This section has been designed to provide the user with the
point of view of international experts on some aspects of
Global Navigation Satellite Systems and Related
Applications. Thus, in this section there are questions that
are often asked by students in GNSS classes. Answers are
given in short video recordings. The choice of oral answers
has been made with the purpose of providing a virtual round
table on GNSS topics. In a web 2.0 view, this section could
become more similar to a forum or a blog.
FIGURE 3
SUMMARY OF THE SELF EVALUATION TEST
V. Glossary and Bibliography
Glossary and Bibliography complete the educational offer of
the NAVKIT. The Glossary collects the most important
terms and acronyms related to GNSS with a very brief
explanation of their meaning. The Bibliography suggests to
users some books and recent papers where further
information and details on the subject can be found.
THE TRAINING MATERIAL
The core of the education kit is the training material, which
is organised in a hierarchy of Units, Chapters, Lessons, and
Sessions: each Unit consists of several Chapters; each
Chapter is made up of Lessons. The Lesson is the basic unit
of the teaching material to which users can access from the
Index page. In order to facilitate the organisation and the
management of the teaching material, each Lesson is further
divided in Sessions that do not last more than 20 minutes
each to keep the attention of the users focused on the
teacher’s explanations. Each Session is focused on a specific
topic to facilitate those users willing to revise some
particular part of the Lesson.
The first Chapter of each Unit is entirely dedicated to
the presentation of the Unit focus, the prerequisites and the
targeted audience, the general organisation of the teaching
material, the general learning goals and the competencies the
user is expected to obtain at the end of the Unit.
Similarly, the first Lesson of each Chapter is devoted to
give the user some items of information about the
organisation of the Chapter, the topics taught, the specific
learning goals.
In order to achieve a good effectiveness of the teaching,
during the preparation of the training material the teachers
limited the use of textual content and preferred bullet lists.
They used different colours to highlight the most important
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October 18 - 21, 2009, San Antonio, TX
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Session T4C
words and they included schemes and figures. In addition,
they changed slides frequently to retain the audience
attention, as suggested in [15].
In the present version of the NAVKIT only Unit 1 –
Basics of Global Navigation Satellite Systems is available. It
focuses on fundamentals on Global Navigation Satellite
Systems. The aim of this module is to describe the principles
governing Satellite Navigation and Positioning thus
providing the user with some basic knowledge on how a
GNSS works. The Unit has been designed as a starting point
for technicians or engineers moving their first steps in the
world of satellite navigation and positioning. Topics are
presented so as to limit the mathematical content. The
associated proposed exercises mainly address general
aspects of satellite navigation systems rather than
mathematical technicalities. It must be noticed that the
mathematical content of the Unit is simpler in the first
Chapters while it slightly increases in the last ones, which
deal with signals structure and receivers. Therefore, a
modular use of this Unit is possible. In fact, the first
Chapters can be useful for the training of professionals not
interested in how a GNSS receiver works but in
understanding the principles governing satellite navigation.
On the contrary, the last Chapters can be exploited, for
example, in the training of technicians and engineers
involved in the development of GNSS related applications.
In addition, a recommended fruition method is to use
the NAVKIT as a virtual teacher for small groups of users
with homogeneous background. This method could
overcome some of the disadvantages deriving from the
distance learning methodology, i.e. the absence of
interaction and comparison. If this fruition method is chosen,
it is suggested that some time for group discussion is
scheduled at the end of each lesson, thus stimulating the
exchange of ideas among the users.
VALIDATION OF THE KIT
In order to validate the kit, a questionnaire was prepared
during the project. The questions were organized in four
sections: Human Machine Interface, Lessons, Exercises,
Auxiliary Sections. Answers could range from 1 (bad) to 5
(excellent). In addition, there was the possibility to add free
comments. A last part focused on the user characteristics
(education, profession, age, gender) was included.
The NAVKIT was validated in two steps. At the end of
the ERIG project it was distributed to some European Small
and Medium Enterprises, where engineers used it to learn
about GNSS topics. All the users were asked to fill in a
questionnaire and the fourteen of them actually did it.
The average results of this first validation campaign are
presented in the column labelled ‘EU’ in Table I. It has to be
underlined that some of the users enjoyed the NAVKIT in
small groups of two-three persons of homogeneous
background. From their free comments, it was evident the
advantage of this kind of fruition, where the NAVKIT
became a sort of virtual teacher which the users could stop to
discuss and exchange ideas.
In a second phase the NAVKIT was distributed to M.Sc.
students, PhDs and researchers of two Asian Universities:
the Hanoi University of Technology in Vietnam and the
Asian Institute of Technology in Bangkok, Thailand. Forty
four questionnaires were collected. The average results are
available in the column labelled ‘Asia’ in Table I.
TABLE I
RESULTS OF THE NAVKIT EVALUATION
Questions
A.
Human machine interface
A1
Do you think that the graphical appearance of
NAVKIT is ..
A2
Do you consider the user-friendliness of NAVKIT
interface …
A3
In your opinion the navigation through the different
NAVKIT parts is …
B.
Lessons
B1
Do you think the organization of the content is …
B2
Do you consider the description of the teaching
objectives …
B3
What is your opinion on the proposed teaching
approach?
B4
What is your opinion on the clarity and
effectiveness of the lessons?
C.
Exercises
C1
Do you think the solved exercises are useful to
understand how to apply the theoretical lessons?
C2
In your opinion are the proposed exercises an
effective mean to better understand the concepts
taught in the lessons?
C3
Do you consider the self-evaluation test an effective
tool to test your preparation on GNSS?
D.
Auxiliary sections
D1
What is your opinion on the Questions and
Answers section?
D2
How do you consider the NAVKIT auxiliary
sections (Bibliography, Glossary) ?
EU
Asia
3,7
4,0
3,9
3,9
3,5
3,3
4,0
4,1
3,9
4,1
4,2
4,0
3,9
4,0
4,5
3,7
4,6
3,7
4,5
4,0
3,6
3,9
4
3,8
The results arising from the questionnaires are quite
encouraging. If the answers are analysed taking into account
the age of the users, it is evident a higher sensitivity of
younger people to issues related to the human machine
interface, while people with an average age of forty five
were more concentrated on lessons and exercises. This
aspect was particularly evident in the free comments.
CONCLUSIONS
The NAVKIT 1.1 proved to be a good starting point to
provide self-education on Satellite Navigation and
Positioning. On the other hand, improvements in the human
machine interface are possible and have been suggested by
people who used the kit so far. In addition, the teachers have
noted some rigidity in the way in which the recording were
made. These improvements of the kit will be included in the
version 2.0, that is currently under design.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The NAVKIT development was funded by the Galileo Joint
Undertaking/Galileo Supervisory Authority within of the
Project ‘Education, Research and Innovation Technology in
the field of GNSS’ (ERIG) - Contract ref. GJU/06/8070CTR/ERIG
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October 18 - 21, 2009, San Antonio, TX
39th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
T4C-5
Session T4C
REFERENCES
[1] GoArmyEd official web page: www.earmyu.com/
[2] Web page of training activities offered by Eurocontrol:
www.eurocontrol.int/ians/public/standard_page/training_products.html
[3] The guide about immersive education made by SUN is available at:
wikis.sun.com/display/IESIG/Home;jsessionid=118645C33FE41BE65
FCD9B89C1511701
[4] Lisbon European Council 23 and 24 March 2000 – Presidency
Conclusions: www.europarl.europa.eu/summits/lis1_en.htm
[5] European Council, Report from the Education Council to the European
Council "The concrete future objectives of education and training
systems", 5680/01 EDUC 18, 23-24 March 2001, Stockholm (Sweden)
[6] http://ec.europa.eu/education/policies/2010/doc/rep_fut_obj_en.pdf
[7] Communication from the Commission, "Education & Training 2010" The success of the Lisbon Strategy hinges on urgent reforms, Brussels,
11.11.2003 COM(2003) 685
eurlex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2003:0685:FIN
:EN:PDF
[8] European Commission, Education and Training Homepage:
http://ec.europa.eu/education/policies/2010/et_2010_en.html
[9] elearningeuropa website: http://www.elearningeuropa.info
[10] ESL podcast is available at: http://www.eslpod.com/website/
[11] Davies, Andrew, "Education, Research and Innovation and Technology
Transfer in GNSS(ERIG) Final Report", GSA Virtual Library
(http://www.gsa.europa.eu), August 2008
[12] U.S.A. Institute of Navigation: www.ion.org
[13] The tutorial is available for registered users at:
http://www.ion.org/tutorials/
[14] Lo Presti, Dovis, Marchese, Povero, "NAVKIT 1.1 User Manual", May
2008
[15] Del Corso, Forno, Morrone, Signorile, “Development of didactic
design guidelines for the production of e-courses”, 36th ASEE/IEEE
Frontiers in Education Conference, Oct. 2006, San Diego, CA
[16] Tim O’Reilly, What Is Web 2.0 - Design Patterns and Business Models
for
the
Next
Generation
of
Software,
09/30/2005,
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-isweb-20.html
AUTHOR INFORMATION
Fabio Dovis, Assistant Professor, Electronics Department,
Politecnico di Torino (Italy), fabio.dovis@polito.it
Gabriella Povero, Senior Researcher, Navigation
Laboratory, Istituto Superiore Mario Boella (Italy),
gabriella.povero@ismb.it
Matteo Vannucchi, Researcher, Navigation Laboratory,
Istituto
Superiore
Mario
Boella
(Italy),
matteo.vannucchi@polito.it
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October 18 - 21, 2009, San Antonio, TX
39th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
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