19^th International CODATA Conference
Category: e-Learning

Use of aggregated parameters at development of practical tasks for distant-learning courses on sustainable development

Alexander Krivolutsky, Vladimir Tikunov (tikunov@geogr.msu.su)
Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia

Now interest to internet education has strongly increased. All over the world educational sites are popular, and the section "Education" is present on all search portals and is one of the most visited. While distant education plays a smaller role, than traditional. But already the most of high schools represents the educational content on internet in different kinds. Here the important role is played distant courses, access to which is possible only through a world-wide-web (WWW).

The basic problem now is the form of the organization of such educational internet-systems. Many of them contain only simple text lectures, frequently with a minimum of illustrations. It is not enough courses and educational innovations which would be original or universal from the point of view of adequacy of perception of the information by different training persons. Also it concerns to systems of distant learning, presented in internet now.

This article describes the example of creation of high-grade distant learning systems (DLS) on sustainable development concerning the social block. DLS is focused on students of the higher educational institutions having in the program a course on sustainable development. The basic methodical principles used at building of considered DLS are those. In a general view the system can be presented as several blocks: text lecture, the test on lecture, a practical part, the test by a practical part. Such form of construction of system is typical enough. However each block is necessary for organizing so that the student could apprehend most adequately a material and acquire principles which to it will allow to carry out own researches competently. The basic purpose of work - effective system of distant learning with elements of theoretical representation of a material and practical work. The primary goals - 1) creation of the subject-oriented environment, 2) development of system of practical tasks, 3) building system of examination.

The subject-oriented environment is understood as system of presentation of a lecture material (theoretical, text and graphic), and features of interface design. Here, the interface is a program environment of system. That is in this case the problem is solved how most effectively to visualize the given training course. Effective visualization means creation of the ergonomic and intuitive-clear subject-oriented environment. The important position is taken into account, that the student needs the individual form of representation of the knowledge, adequate to his perception. Modern information technologies allow to experiment in a direction of development of this position. First of all, by creation of flexible structure of a course and adjusted interface as "environment" of a course.

It is natural, that to each part of a course, its mainframes, it is necessary to change construction of the interface of system. Student’s interaction with training system can be essentially divided into the following parts: work with a theoretical material (electronic lecture), the test on a theoretical material, work with a practical part. Also various approaches to designing the interface therefore are required. Corresponding focused design of the interface was realized as follows.

As well as in the traditional textbook, in a computer course there should be a basic text, or electronic lecture. Unlike the simple textbook, in a computer variant it is possible to provide for links to additional sources, lectures and materials that allow to build a capacious and various educational resource. It is rather interesting the following scheme of presentation of material. Lecture is broken into separate thematic blocks which if necessary can be replaced with similar blocks, but already from alternative materials (lectures, courses, etc.). That is the student, at decrease in a level of perception of a material, can be "switched" in a real time to alternative variants. Such variant of the organization of a learning material can be presented generally on fig.1:

According to the aforesaid for creation of training system it is necessary to make the following: 1) basic text material compilation; 2) to choose set of illustrations; 3) to select additional (alternative) text a material; 4) to make system of hyperlinks on external thematic sources; 5) to create section in the context dictionary. The structure of a course should comply with complex thematic content.

The developed distant learning course is not completely independent and self-sufficient. It assumes use of traditional base courses. The course is additional educational material for increase of a level of geographical and cartographical knowledge of students. This factor defines a choice of a theoretical text material. In distant course the text material should not be too theorized, as it not the electronic textbook. But at the same time there should be basic theoretical positions, assigning essence of a considered theme. It is necessary thesisal statement of material focused to the help to students carrying out subsequent practical task. However it does not mean strong simplification of a material. By developing a course, it is possible to use a variant described above: use of alternative sources of educational material. Thus, there is original multilayered structure of a lecture material - instead of one block of the text on a theme it is possible to read through another alternative, or redirect by hyperlink to the expanded description of a theme somewhere on the internet. Also it is necessary to select illustrations for a course. They should be expressive and adequately illustrate a theoretical material with "sight" on performance of practical tasks.

The sequence of blocks though is important, but rigidly is not determined. It has recommendatory character, and student can change sequence of blocks.

The overall objective of a course is to teach students to work with the information. Map making is creative process. The author creates a map on the basis of the aprioristic knowledge based on the analysis of the chosen initial information. A map represents author's model of a reality. Process of map making is formalized enough, but not easy. Difficulties appear at a choice of the initial information, methods of cartographical modeling.

In practical tasks of a map are created on the basis of official statistics on administrative units. For example, parameters of morbidity very frequently are given entirely for Krasnoyarsk region, including Tajmyrsky and Evenki autonomous regions. Certainly, such averaging does not allow judging a real situation in these regions. The initial information is the first source of potential mistakes and errors. However not only poorly territorially differentiated data, but also an incorrect set of parameters deform a real picture, and lead to casual result. It is necessary to arm the student with principles which would allow to carry out adequately the geographical analysis of the received cartographical models. Thus, at system of distant learning there should be the theoretical elements allowing students to carry out practical tasks for deeper, based on system principles, knowledge.

The most suitable for the practical task on modeling with use of the aggregated parameters is integrated the estimation of public health as indicator of sustainable development. Now the most exact fixed parameters are parameters of a birth and death. Therefore such demographic parameters as the general factors of birth rate, death rate, factors of the infantile death rate, and expected life expectancy at a birth are the most authentic. Parameters of death rate inherently are integrated parameters. The reasons of death rate different, and in minority of cases they are connected to natural ageing the person. The majority of death prematurely, also is connected to social and ecological factors. Illness is the indicator of non-adopting to environment. Parameters of death rate fix actually occurring event. Parameters of expected life expectancy reflect possible event. Together they can reflect a vector of sustainable development. The general structure of training system can be presented as the following graph (see fig. 2).

Achievement of the purposes of sustainable development and management of this process demand development of corresponding criteria and parameters - indicators of sustainable development. The complex of such indicators should allow to execute diagnostics of a condition of system "nature - economy - population" and to open opportunities of correction of a condition of system on the basis of development of special programs. It is necessary for students to understand essence of indicators and to be able to use them in own researches. Indicators of sustainable development are developed at different territorial levels and on different thematic (branch) directions. By development of SD indicators at different levels are allocated: global, national (federal), subregional, regional and local (municipal) systems of indicators. For these levels are developed as the systems of indicators transmitting specific features, and the "through" indicators applied for any level (Bobylev, Solovieva, 2003). SD indicators on thematic directions are developed two types: particular (special) and integrated (aggregated).

Aggregation of different parameters is challenge. The basic problem thus is definition of weights of initial parameters in view of their importance. Main source of definition of weights is opinion of experts. Final value turns out by mathematical processing the expert data. Besides criteria are used: a territorial level, a degree and long term of influence of the factor, etc. In any case it is not recommended to apply equal weights (Report on the aggregation of Indicators for Sustainable Development, 2001).

The degree of aggregation is possible before reception of a uniform index for the basic aspects of sustainable development: ecological, economic, social, and institutional. So, on social aspect the following aggregated parameters are developed - index of development of human potential, the indicator of human well-being, an index of public health (Indicators of sustainable development of Russia, 2001).

At the international level the complex from 134 indicators of sustainable development (Indicators of Sustainable Development, 1996) with system of the basic indicators now is developed: social, economic, ecological and institutional. In group of social indicators are included: struggle against poverty; demographic dynamics and stability; improvement of formation, awareness and education of a society; protection and improvement of health of people; improvement of development of the occupied places. In work (Bobylev, Lushchik, 2003) the system of base SD indicators for Russia is offered: factor of updating of a fixed capital; power consumption of gross national product; total emission of polluting substances in atmospheric air; volume of dump of the polluted sewage; a share of utilized toxic waste products; volume of firm household waste products per capita; the area of especially protected territories; the area of territories, free from economic activities of the person. Social factors play the big role in the analysis SD. However uncertainty and variety of such general social characteristics as quality of a life, demand special carefulness in selection and designing of social indicators SD. Necessity of reflection of the big number of social factors does actual designing of an integrated parameter. In work (Tikunov, Tsapuk, 1999) the generalized factor of social trouble at which formula of calculation there are values of such parameters as death rate on one thousand person is used; a rate of unemployment in %%; a crime rate on 1 thousand person; number of divorces on 10 marriages; number of abortions on 10 sorts. These parameters reflect social intensity. For example, high values of a parameter of number of abortions directly I specify adverse position of women. Information and methodological basis of reception of regional indicators in Russia are the official statistical information and the scientific publications, allowing receiving adequate estimations of problems of sustainable development in various regions.

By development of regional indicators two approaches are used: 1) to the certain theme there corresponds the indicator ("theme – problem - indicator"), indicators are ungrouped on economic, social and ecological; 2) the system of key (base) indicators is allocated. The system of indicators contains the following types of parameters: base, reflecting priority problems and regional specificity; additional specific indicators (actual for concrete region). For example, authors of project "Development of indicators for an estimation of stability of process of economic and social reforms in the Russian Federation" have offered for pilot Tomsk and Voronezh areas of 38 indicators of sustainable development (including 12 key), and 36 parameters (including 17 key) accordingly. The aggregated parameters are included in key indicators: an index of human potential and true savings. For an estimation of stability of a regional policy indicators of nature capacity were widely used. The developed systems of regional indicators for Tomsk and Voronezh areas in view of their possible updating and differentiation allow carrying out inter-regional comparisons. These sets of parameters as a whole correspond to the systems of indicators offered by the international organizations and the separate countries that allow carrying out comparison of the countries with the Russian regions.

Let's result system of social indicators of sustainable development of the Voronezh area (the fat font marks key indicators): a natural increase of the population; factor of infantile death rate; a share of economically active population; disease of the population (communicating, systems of bodies of blood circulation, a new growth, an active tuberculosis); the share of the population with incomes is lower than a living wage; the attitude of mean income to a living wage; decile factor of differentiation of incomes; a rate of unemployment (on ILA methodology); intensity on a labor market (number of the registered unemployed on one vacancy); quantity of the registered crimes; budgetary security per capita; an index of development of human potential. In a number of works it is marked multifactor characteristics of health of the person, dependent from ecological, genetic, economic, social, behavioral and other reasons.

The set of researches is devoted to studying of influence on health of the person of ecological factors, but there is no yet a common opinion. Some researchers consider, that among the most objective general parameters, significant for an estimation of an ecological component (the least deformed such factor as negotiability), are death rate with the account sex-age structure of the population, general morbidity, physical inability and infantile death rate. The estimation of specific morbidity is complicated with low statistical reliability of the data because of small number of cases; perinatal death rate is essentially higher than taken into account. One of the most objective parameters accessible from official statistical sources - general morbidity on one thousand person and infantile death rate on one thousand children till 1 year. The first parameter is the general estimation of physical health of the population; the second - tendencies in a state of health and health services of the future generation. Actual parameter for modern Russia - number of infectious and intestinal diseases (Tikunov, Tsapuk, 2000). Public health reflects as individual adaptable reactions of each separate person, and ability of all society to carry out the social problems and to carry out biological functions. The state of health of the population is closely connected to social and economic conditions and serves as " the most exact and universal reflection of quality of a life " (Prokhorov, Tikunov, 2001). Quality of health is estimated with the help of various parameters (morbidity, time invalidity, physical inability, the hospitalization, standardized death rate and so forth). The most objective parameters of a state of health of the population which are used in many countries and are applied by the World organization of public health services, are: average expected life expectancy and infantile death rate (death rate of children in the age of till 1 year on 1 000 newborns) (Prokhorov, Tikunov, 2001).

We have chosen the characteristic of public health as the basic practical task for the students studying a rate on sustainable development of territories. This task is developed for distant learning students of the Black Sea branch of the Moscow State University in Sevastopol. It was based on the following positions. Distant learning is the process, submission of a teaching material combining system, the control of the received knowledge and interaction with the teacher-coordinator of a rate. The system of distant learning should be more complex on the order than educational programs, by virtue of that she includes both a material for training, and check of the knowledge received as a result of training. Performance of the task is conducted on parameters on public health. At disposal of students materials on 89 subjects of the Russian Federation (Russian Federation) and are given 178 countries of the world for 1990-2001 (12-years sample), describing number died in the age of till 1 year on 1000 born alive and the data on expected life expectancy of men and women (separately). The data on subjects of the Russian Federation except for that are differentiated for city and agricultural population. Data processing is conducted with use of estimated and typological algorithms of classification (Tikunov, 1997). Students have some ways for independent calculations of characteristics of public health on subjects of the Russian Federation. The first to lead calculations in comparison with other countries of the world. The second to lead calculations only on subjects of the Russian Federation and to compare them to the first variant. Further it is possible to complicate a problem and to lead calculations separately for city and agricultural population, having shown the received results on one card. The student should analyze results of modeling and explain the distinctions received at use of different algorithms of classification.

Very essential multi-variant approach is brought with an opportunity of a choice of different variants of calculations. So, first of all, three initial parameters can be included in calculations with different weights. For example, giving to parameters of life expectancy of weight 0,5 at weight for infantile death rate equal 1,0 leads to amplification of a parameter of life expectancy that is especially important for group of less developed countries. For an example we shall result two ranged lists. The first is received at carrying out of calculations with equal weights, and the second - with weights 1,0; 0,5 and 0,5. For the analysis only regions of Russia amplification of weight of a parameter of life expectancy of men as it extremely low and possesses negative time dynamics is meaningful. If to carry out comparison of regions of Russia separately for every year it is necessary to take care of comparability of estimations between years. It can be made with the help of normalization updating. So, parameters can be normalized from the worst values meeting in each three initial parameters at the analysis of all 12-years numbers; it is possible to use and theoretically possible worst values - 1 000 for the first parameter and 0 for the second and the third, etc. Uniform integrated estimations can be received at calculations with preliminary averaging initial parameters for 12 years, and it is possible to calculate integrated characteristics on regions of Russia for every year, and then to use them as initial parameters for calculation of one integrated estimation on regions of the country. It is possible to note, that these two ways conduct to reception of very close results. Use and still several updatings of calculations is possible. The received results are represented as cards. The stage of a choice of the best variant of calculations by students and their substantial interpretation of results, down to an opportunity of creation forecast scripts is especially important. Students have an opportunity to familiarize with earlier developed expert scripts, incorporated in the knowledge base of training system.

It is possible to put and other criterion functions, for example, what the increase in life expectancy of men in Russia is necessary that on public health to reach a level of Japan. Development of system assumes transition to scenario games.