“ Novel intelligent teaching and learning systems for supporting collaborative instructional provision across multiple dispersed sites ”

Educational establishments have increasingly adopted business models that entail collaborative delivery of their academic programs internationally, with partners and infrastructure providers. Apart from addressing standard logistical and operational issues, all parties involved with the process normally have to ensure that quality of academic delivery is assured. The paper reviews a number of new and novel intelligent systems, running under an umbrella Educational Collaboration Framework (termed the `EduCollaborator' framework) that may be utilized to support the maintenance of quality, for teaching and learning processes, in geographically dispersed multi-campus environments. The framework can typically be primed to guide and coordinate program delivery featuring multiple concurrent remote instantiations of course modules, as well as allowing tracking of both student and instructor performance, historically and in real time. The paper characterizes the `EduCollaborator' framework and associated metrics for evaluating the relevance, usability and effectiveness of such schemes. Specific issues relating to the scaling and customized adaptation of these systems to support both pedagogical and andragogical learning approaches will be reviewed. Additionally, potential problems pertaining to their adoption and deployment will be discussed, as will contextual issues affecting their efficacy.