=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-280/paper-16
|storemode=property
|title=From Informal Learner to Active Content Provider: SLEAM approach
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-280/p06.pdf
|volume=Vol-280
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/ectel/RostaninL07
}}
==From Informal Learner to Active Content Provider: SLEAM approach==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-280/p06.pdf
From Informal Learner to Active Content
Provider: SLEAM approach
Oleg Rostanin1 and Markus Ludwar2
1
German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), Kaiserslautern,
Germany oleg.rostanin@dfki.de
2
University of Kaiserslautern, Germany markusludwar@gmx.de
Abstract. Creation of the reusable learning content in the process of
work is a challenging but promising trend in e-learning and knowledge
management. While the main research focus nowadays is concentrated
on the extraction of the tacit knowledge and experience using wikis and
blogs, the fact is ignored that a lot of useful process-relevant information
already exists on the web or in the enterprise document management
systems (DMS) and needs to be brushed up and integrated into process-
embedded learning scenarios. The proposed approach helps knowledge
workers to transform documents found on the web and in the enterprise
DMS into reusable learning objects and make them available for adaptive
workplace learning.
Key words: Workflow embedded authoring, rapid authoring, topic map
1 Introduction
Recent studies in Germany showed [1] that only 20% of small and medium sized
enterprises (SME, with less than 500 employees) are using e-learning solutions.
However, the absence of official learning-at-work strategy in the enterprise does
not mean that employees do not learn during the work: they use online-sources,
search corporate DMS or intranet, ask colleagues who knows more (informal
learning). The results of information search are remaining available to the in-
formal learner, are stored in the bookmark list of the browser or in the local
file system. The found information is only partially relevant to the user’s needs
because internet articles or technical documents are not designed for the goal- or
context- aware learning. Nevertheless, in the opinion of authors, this information
is still valuable and can be reused by other team members if one transforms the
information into reusable learning objects (LO, see [2]).
The current article is structured as follows: The chapter 2 introduces to
a problem of content authoring for small enterprises and defines requirements
to an efficient process of content authoring. In 3 an overview of currently used
authoring strategies is given. In 4 we make a proposition of the optimized process
of process-integrated authoring (SLEAM). The article concludes in chapter 5 by
giving idea of the future work.
2 Problem setting
Assuming, a small company realizes the necessity of process-embedded e-learning
and would like to introduce e-learning solution. The first problem thet the com-
pany might face is that the responsible manager does not know what type of
learning content and on which topic do they really need. The company does not
also have means to hire a specialist to analyze the learning domain and produce
e-learning content. In this case, preparing of learning content has to be a part
of the employees’ job. As the learning content creation is not the main job of
the employees, the process of the content creation must take as little time as
possible.
Considering the situation described above, one can derive the following re-
quirements to:
1. The process of the learning content authoring:
(a) Must be performed by company insiders without taking them from the
main work for too long therefore it has to be integrated into the process
of work and use tools that are easy to learn.
(b) Authoring tools should be able to convert existing documents or web
pages into learning objects (LOs) rather that creating LOs from scratch.
2. The output of the content authoring process:
(a) Produced content should be fine-grained learning objects rather than
executable learning programs.
(b) Produced learning objects should be annotated with metadata according
to a standard format in order to be able to be imported into LCMS.
3 Authoring methods
Currently, there exist a lot of different approaches to learning content devel-
opment. We will evaluate them with respect to the requirements listed in the
previous chapter.
3.1 Instructional System Design - ADDIE
Instructional system design is one of the systematic approaches to the learning
program creation [3]. ADDIE is a traditional method that, provided the method
is applied by an experienced professional, guarantees creation of an effective
training program. An example of usage of the method can be found in [4]. The
method has well-known disadvantages. One disadvantage of the method is its
complexity. To use it efficiently the training program authors need high qual-
ification and experience. The second disadvantage is that the method is time
consuming.
Result: ADDIE does not satisfy our requirements
3.2 Rapid Instructional Design
Rapid Instructional Design (RID) tries to solve problems of ADDIE by simpli-
fying its process. For instance, in [5] the authors shortened the analysis phase
by interviewing experts instead of analysing organization processes in detail. In
general, RID introduces the Rapid-prototyping phase that follows after the De-
sign phase. In this phase a “quick-and-dirty“ learning program is compiled and
tested with real students. The phase is repeated until all the main drawbacks are
fixed. After that, the final development and implementation are followed. One
of the projects supporting RID is Explain-Project [6].
Result: RID does not satisfy all our restrictions, but is better suitable for
smaller budgets. The idea of testing the content before development is highly
relevant to the requirements defined in chapter 2. But, the main target of the
RID is a systematic creation of training courseware, whereas the authors of this
paper propagate an approach supporting adaptive informal learning in working
processes.
3.3 Rapid Authoring and Context-Aware Re-purposing of Learning
Content
Nowadays there is a lot of so called “rapid authoring“ tools appeared that allow
non-professionals to create learning courses in standard sharable formats using
existing MSOffice documents (see [7]) or making them from scratch. Similar ap-
proach presented in [8] advocates re-purposing of the existing learning resources
in order them to suit to a new learning context. Although we agree with the
idea of re-purposing, we argue that deeper integration of such framework into
working processes is needed.
Result: Re-purposing of the learning content is what a small company really
needs. But the methodology of integrating such framework into company processes
is missing. Rapid authoring tools are easy to use and allow to convert documents
into LOs. But produced LOs are monolithic, coarse-grained and contain lot of
garbage information. Therefore, they are difficult to reuse as part of adaptive
courses.
3.4 Weblog and Wiki Based Authoring
In [9], the idea of the configuring of individual learning spaces by using weblogs
and concept maps is presented. The method has following disadvantages: firstly,
the life-cycle of weblog posts is relatively short - they become unavailable after a
certain period of time; secondly, the learner has to write content by herself rather
than to reuse existing documents. Similar to weblogs, wikis can be used as effi-
cient means for a simple content creation and grasping practitioner’s experiences
[10]. Wiki pages have longer life time comparing to weblogs.
Result: weblogs and wikis are simple intuitive tools for the “from-scratch“
content creation. It means that our approach has to consider them as a very
important source of information that can be repurposed as reusable LOs.
4 Process of Workflow-Embedded Authoring
Having analyzed the overview from chapter3, the authors proposed a new ap-
proach of the process-embedded content authoring called SLEAM that stands
for Search, Learn, Extract, Annotate, Map that are the main phases of the
authoring process. In the fig. 1 the main phases of SLEAM are shown in the
working context:
Fig. 1. SLEAM process
1. After a user starts a new task, a knowledge gap preventing the user to
perform the task might be identified. Identification of the knowledge gap can
be done by the working environment (e.g. workflow management system, see
[11]) or by the user herself.
2. Search: After identifying a knowledge gap the user starts looking for the
necessary information in the internet, intranet or in the corporate DMS.
3. Learn: After the user found the relevant information, the process of learning
is started. If the found information does not satisfy current user’s needs the
process of search is repeated. If the user satisfied his information needs she
can return to the task and complete it.
4. Extract: The system asks user whether the found information can be reused
by other team members in the context of similar tasks and offers her to
extract reusable LOs from the documents. If the user agrees, a context-
aware rapid authoring tool is started that allows the user easily to extract
parts of documents or web pages as reusable LOs.
5. Annotate: After the LO extraction the user is proposed to annotate extracted
LOs with metadata. User context information should be used to assist the
user in annotating LOs with metadata (author, task name, search query).
6. Map: In order that the LOs could be efficiently used in the process of the
workflow-embedded e-learning, they have to be mapped to the ontology of
learning concepts (see [11]).
Comparing SLEAM to the authoring approaches listed in chapter 3 one can
find that the SLEAM approach integrates main features of rapid-authoring and
context-aware authoring, but:
1. SLEAM enhances rapid authoring methods by providing tools for LO ex-
traction from the documents instead of converting the whole documents to
LOs.
2. Unlike wiki-based authoring SLEAM practitioners do not have to create
some learning content, but to reuse existing documents.
3. Unlike context-aware content repurposing, SLEAM is working with raw ma-
terial for creating LOs and not with LOs as such.
Unlike in ADDIE or rapid instructional design approaches where the analysis
phase is given high priority, in SLEAM the methods of dynamic identification
of learning goals ([11]) is used. These methods exploit information retrieval and
machine learning techniques. In the same time, similar to the rapid instructional
design, SLEAM does not start developing LOs before the author is not sure that
the found information is really useful in the given context.
5 Conclusion and Outlook
SLEAM process solve the most of the requirements defined in chapter 2. It
enhances rapid authoring approach by integrating it into the working context
and by providing means for selective extraction of LOs.
However the SLEAM approach has several major problems:
1. Employees have to be motivated to produce content. This can be solved,
for example by providing browser plugins, that will propose employees to
save the documents that they found in internet as LOs. Other plugins can
be implemented for the Google Desktop Search or for the interface of the
corporate DMS.
2. In order to make the method more lightweight one needs to use automatic
metadata extraction mechanism. In this case the author will be assisted
during the LO annotation. To better classify LOs and map them to the
concepts in the learning concept ontology, text processing algorithms can be
used.
3. Copyright problems. The content found in the internet can be protected by
copyright laws and must not be reused without an approval by the original
author. This problem is difficult to solve by using software algorithms but
the users must be aware of the copyright issue.
The subject of the future work on SLEAM will be finding solution to the iden-
tified problems. The proposed technology was not evaluated yet, therefore case
studies will be planned and conducted.
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