=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-436/paper-9
|storemode=property
|title=The CD-Lomas project: an RCP-based Collaborative Distributed Learning Object Management System
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-436/paper9.pdf
|volume=Vol-436
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/eclipseit/LuciaFPT08
}}
==The CD-Lomas project: an RCP-based Collaborative Distributed Learning Object Management System==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-436/paper9.pdf
The CD-Lomas project: an RCP-based Collaborative
Distributed Learning Object Management System
Andrea De Lucia, Rita Francese, Ignazio Passero and Genoveffa Tortora
Dipartimento di Matematica e Informatica, Università degli Studi di Salerno,
via Ponte don Melillo 1,Fisciano (SA), Italy
{adelucia, francese, ipassero, tortora}@unisa.it
Abstract. In this paper we describe a SCORM conformant system, named CD-
LOMAS (Collaborative Distributed Learning Object MAnagement System),
which is evolving towards an RCP architecture. The proposed system supports
the creation of a community of users which shares and collaboratively creates
contents in a highly distributed environment. Artifact management features,
such as coordination of cooperative content development and versioning, and
context-awareness are also provided.
Keywords: Learning Object, SCORM, Content management, reusability,
community.
1 Introduction
Creating and reusing quality contents is one of the challenge of the e-society. Many
organizations (business and educational) in the entire world are creating digital
contents which are stored in Content Management Systems (CMSs) and spread
through the servers of the various companies. Contents are represented in terms of
Learning Objects and many Learning Object (LO) repositories are available on the
Web (eduSource)[12] since 1997 (MERLOT)[19]. Some of them are distributed, such
as (IMS Global Learning Consortium)[15], others adopt service oriented architecture,
such as (ARIADNE)[2], (De Moura et al.)[10][18], but they generally lack in
supporting collaboration and context awareness.
The adoption of standard formats such as SCORM [1][15][17] favors the reuse of
these contents in different technologic context. Indeed, SCORM enables to classify
the LOs by using LO Metadata [14]. In this way, it is possible to create repository of
multimedia contents that can be searched through sophisticated indexing systems and
exchanged through the web [11]. In spite of great interests towards LOs and their
standards, LOs have not been reused as foreseen. Reasons could be lack of quality [5]
and the static structure of learning repositories that, generally, offer only the
possibility of searching and browsing. Indeed, existing e-learning systems do not
provide support to meet the need of groups of user both in case of creation and
sharing of contents [3].
Content creation is a complex process involving several people with different roles
who have to cooperate to gain the best results. Also the sharing of contents requires a
group space where contents can be accessed and manipulated. On the contrary,
CEUR
ceur-ws.org
Workshop ISSN 1613-0073
Proceedings
Learning Management Systems support individual learning and personalized
workspace and, as a consequence, collaborative group-based learning is not
appropriately supported.
In this paper we present the RCP based evolution of CD-LOMAS (Collaborative
Distributed Learning Object MAnagement System) [8], an on-going research project
aiming at designing and developing a system for the management of LOs distributed
on several sites, the asynchronous collaboration on their development and the creation
of communities of users focused on the same interests. In particular, the aim is to
enable the sharing of contents represented using the standard SCORM.
The system also classifies the users in terms of their interests, considering the
produced materials, and enables to create user communities on the base of the interest
topics. In this way, people are provided with context awareness on the contents and
on the authors sharing the same interests. This solution enables a team of
geographically spread content creators to cooperate in the planning and in the
production of learning materials. Cooperation is supported enabling the course
manager to control the activities concerning the development of materials assigning
different permissions to the process actors depending on their role. Context awareness
is granted by notifying the interested people when an event concerning a LO of their
interest occurs, without generating an overload of messages. CD-LOMAS also
supports the LO revisions for granting the quality of the produced material.
The system was born as a Java application supporting only collaborative features
which now is evolving toward a collaborative and community framework, built on top
of the Eclipse Rich Client Platform. Indeed, the new release of the system will
support community management providing group space features.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 presents an
overview of CD-LOMAS, while Section 3 details its architecture. Section 4
introduces the RCP evolution of CD-LOMAS. Finally, Section 5 discusses
concluding remarks and future work.
2 CD-LOMAS overview
CD-LOMAS is a distributed environment supporting the cooperative handling of
LOs. It allows the distribution of LOs among different sites. In this way it is possible
to create a virtual community which cooperates in the production of the learning
material and interacts as all authors were in the same place. In particular, CD-
LOMAS supports content authors in the creation of LOs using cooperative or
collaborative authoring. The first approach enables authors to interact only during the
revision process and each author produces his/her individual content. Differently, in
collaborative authoring the concept of ownership becomes irrelevant and authors
work together.
CD-LOMAS enables the composition of a LO, supporting the reuse of existing
LOs spread among the various repositories. Authors are assisted in creating and
updating LOs following the standard SCORM and in sharing information.
Users can create groupspaces where they can cooperate in the creation and in the
sharing of contents. Groups are composed on the base of a classification of interests.
2.1 Learning object composition and configuration management
The proposed system has been designed starting from two open source
applications, RELOAD [21] and its Web version, WELOAD [24]. In particular, CD-
LOMAS reuses the features offered by these applications for composing LOs, for
inserting the associated metadata and for browsing LOs. RELOAD composes LOs on
the local computer of a user. This feature has been extended with the capability of
performing these operations when the component objects are scattered on different
Local CD-LOMAS repositories of the network. The user is able to search the
repository while composing LO and the location of the objects is transparent.
Tools supporting Configuration Management for software systems, such as
(ADAMS)[6] and (CD-LOMAS)[7] help to coordinate the activities of the
developers. The capability to add these functionalities to a LO repository enables
organizations to cooperate in the repository creation and in the sharing of LOs.
CD-LOMAS emphasizes the LO life cycle by associating the users with the
different operations they can perform on each LO. This feature, together with the
resource permissions definition and management, enables to reuse existing LOs and
to cooperate in the creation of new materials. The owner of a LO can finely tune the
permissions related to it, and can provide different kind of usage for several users or
user groups.
Quality management is also supported by associating each LO with a standard
template and an inspection checklist to be validated during the review process. Each
template can be customized for a specific LO.
The support for cooperation is provided through typical configuration management
features [7]. In fact, CD-LOMAS enables groups of people to work on the same LO,
depending on their roles. Different users can access the same LO according to a lock-
based policy or concurrently, if branch versions of the same LO are allowed by the
LO owner.
Teachers can cooperate in the creation of learning material by using the learning
project management features offered by CD-LOMAS. A user having the permission
can create a learning project involving a group of LO managers, where each LO
manager is responsible of the management of a LO. The LO manager can delegate
his/her permissions to a user or to a group of users if the LO is decomposable in
simpler LOs.
2.2 Supporting Context Awareness
The system has been enriched with features to deal with some of the most common
problems faced by cooperative environments, in particular context awareness and
communication among users [5] [23]. A first context-awareness level is given by the
possibility to see at any time the people who are working/using a LO. In particular,
context awareness is mainly supported through event notifications: i.e., messages
generated in response to specific events triggered by one of the subsystems of CD-
LOMAS.
Event notification in CD-LOMAS adopts a publish-subscribe paradigm: as soon as
an event concerning a LO occurs, the users who subscribed such event are notified.
CD-LOMAS increases the context awareness without overloading a teacher or a
learner with useless event messages. To this aim, a user can selectively specify the
events concerning a LO (s)he needs to be notified of.
In particular, (s)he can require to be informed about:
• events having a direct impact on the LOs on which the user has a locked reuse
permission or on which (s)he is working on;
• events concerning all the LOs referring to a specific topic;
• events concerning specific LOs;
• events generated by a specific teacher on a specific topic. In this case the
interested user sends a request module to the teacher that can accept or refuse the
subscription.
2.3 Handling Projects and Groupspaces
The main contribution of CD-LOMAS is its functionality to manage learning
projects aiming at producing contents, and learning community in general. It also
manages the cycle-life of LOs and the assurance of their quality. In particular, it is
possible to assign resources with specific roles to a given learning project.
• The Administrator manages the system itself, including human resources;
he/she also defines learning projects and the corresponding learning project
managers;
• The Learning Project Manager is the responsible of a learning project. (S)he
allocates and manages the resources allocated on a project, defines the LOs to
be developed and the corresponding LO managers, allocates resources to LOs,
and defines artifact dependencies;
• The LO Manager manages the evolution of a LO and defines roles and
permissions for content authors working on its components and assets;
• The Quality Manager manages LO templates and checklists;
• The Content Creator is responsible of the composition of a LO;
• The Reviewer verifies that the produced LO is conformant to the quality
requirements.
The roles above concern the planning and the cooperative creation of learning
materials inside a project. All members share the project space and can examine the
material checked-in by the others. CD-LOMAS also provides the possibility of
assigning permissions to teachers and students for searching and using LOs. In
particular, once a LO is checked-in the repository the learning project manager
decides the permissions (s)he eventually gives to other systems users. (S)he can
decide to globally share a LO with all other users, or only with a specific subset of
global roles (i.e., teacher or students), or (s)he can fix a group of users that can access
the owned LO (i.e., students frequenting his/her course, community of database
teachers). Each user or group of users can obtain different reuse capabilities, such as:
• derivative reuse, the LO can be downloaded in the user workspace and modified.
The user obtaining this capability becomes the owner of the variant and receives
a request to insert the source LO in his/her subscription list. In this way, when the
original LO is changed, the variant author is notified, thus (s)he can propagate the
changes in the derivate LO. Vice versa, the original LO owner can subscribe
events concerning the variant aiming at knowing how his/her material has been
improved.
• locked reuse, the LO is reused unchanged (referenced), the user course space
refers to the LO which can only be played;
• play, the user can take a look to a LO, which can be only played but cannot be
inserted inside a course;
• entry catalogue only, users can only receive the description of the object in a
ranked list. In the last case the system provides support to an interested user in
asking to the LO owner the permission to use or reference a LO. The LO owner
finds the request in the Feedback section accessible from his/her workspace. The
LO owner can grant or deny each permission.
It is important to point out that the system offers on one side the possibility to
create learning materials in a cooperative way, with specific roles and tasks assigned
to each team member, on the other side it enables to apply a unified content strategy
[4][22], where the members of a group create a community of interests and should
work together in collaborative way and no member owns any part of an object. The
manager of the group is the user who creates the groupspace. In this environment
authors freely work together aiming at ensuring that content is not written more than
once. Check-in, check-out, event notification, locking and versioning are still applied,
but all the users have the same permissions on the objects of the group.
Let us note that a SCORM LO is packed in zip format. To reuse and compose LOs
structured as zip packet is complex. Thus, we decide to entirely apply the standard,
but to store the LOs without packing them. The components of a LO are stored in the
local Database and the packet is created only when the LO is exported.
3. The CD-LOMAS architecture
The CD-LOMAS architecture is composed of two kinds of systems: the Global
LOR Management System (GLOR) and the Local LOR Management System
(LLOR). This two level architecture allows the access to learning materials
distributed among several LLORs by referring only to a GLOR. When needed,
several GLORs can be connected.
Hiding to the user the structure of the network enables to easily add new nodes,
obtaining scalability by distribution.
The basic functionality of a LLOR is to store LOs in SCORM format.
The GLOR assigns to each content author a workspace, an area reserved to
him/her, where (s)he manages the contents to create courses in a cooperative or
standalone way. The workspace is allocated on the LLOR of the LMS Machine in
which the author has his/her account.
The GLOR supervises the access to the resources stored at LLOR level. In
particular, the GLOR system manages the LOs lifecycles basing on events generated
during the cooperative or standalone LOs creation process. It also enables users to
search the distributed repository and to access, depending on the user permissions and
roles, to the required LOs.
In particular, the Global LOR Management System is decomposed into six
subsystems:
• The LO Manager subsystem which poses a great emphasis to the LO life
cycle by associating to the users the different operations that can be
performed on a LO. It is responsible of the critical functionalities needed to
perform effective collaboration in authoring and using LOs: access to shared
information, check-in and check-out, locking and version control. Moreover,
the LO Manager subsystem provides support for the definition of LO types
with related standard templates and for a checklist-based inspection and
review phase of the LO life cycle. It also handle the user access permissions
on LOs.
• The Collaboration Manager subsystem is responsible of managing learning
projects and the groupspaces associated to user communities.
• The Event Engine has in charge of collecting and dispatching events
concerning a LO. Users can subscribe particular events concerning LOs and
courses (such as the production, updating or deletion of a LO, or the
publication of a LO on a given subject), thus increasing the context-
awareness level. The Event Engine notifies interesting events to the
subscribed users of the CD-LOMAS system.
• The User Management subsystem manages users and their roles in accessing
CD-LOMAS services.
• The Administration subsystem provides several administration features, such
as adding or deleting a LLOR, security and reporting.
• Access to the database is achieved through the functionalities offered by the
Database Broker, which accepts queries from each client, forwards these
queries to the databases on the LLORs, collects the results and returns a
ranked list to the user.
The Local LOR Management System stores LOs and courses and contains the
teachers workspaces. When a LO is ready to be published it is transferred in the
repository, locally handled, and is available to be deployed. It includes the Extended
RELOAD component which has been obtained extending RELOAD, a largely
adopted LO editor [21].
Each user can compose LOs inside a personal workspace, using the LO Editor
offered by the Extended RELOAD component, enabling to compose a SCORM
package using local assets, local LOs or existing LOs spread through the network.
The Event Handler subsystem is responsible of generating and dispatching events
about LOs. Events are used to signal the GLOR about the life cycle of a LO, and to
enforce the user context awareness about interesting LOs.
4. Evolving towards Eclipse Rich Client Platform
The CD-LOMAS project is evolving towards a client application, built upon
Eclipse RCP. The RCP nature of current release of Reload let us easily embed it in the
CD-LOMAS architecture. This enables our system to inherit the benefit of using
native widgets, the inherent GUI organization based on and guided by views and
perspectives. We are going to develop a plug-in for each needed view, namely:
• My Workspace, allowing each user to compose his/her LO using assets locally
provided or composing LOs taken from the repository;
• GroupSpace, aiming at grouping LOs corresponding to a specific learning group.
It is a common space where several users can collaborate in the development of
the material of a course or can share information interesting for their group. Each
group has at its disposal a chat, a forum and a wiki.
• My LOs, showing the catalogue of the LOs owned by the user. Search can be
performed on the LO metadata and the owner of a LO can define the user
permissions on it;
• Request of Other Users, showing the requests of access permissions on the LOs
owned by the user;
• Global Learning Object Catalogue, showing the catalogue of all the LOs
available in CD-LOMAS. Each objects is described by some significant metadata
and a brief explanation. For any content in the repository, when allowed, users
can view reports displaying every course and people in the system that is
currently using the selected item;
• User Feedbacks, enabling the user to require feedback on events concerning
specific LOs, LOs belonging to a given subject or LOs produced by a given user.
The RCP RELOAD editor has also evolved towards this technology and exposes
all the features needed to standard embed itself in a plug-in architecture. Different
perspectives will enable to optimize the arrangements of the UI views. In particular,
we are initially creating three perspectives: one for the LO management and
searching, another for the access permissions and feedbacks, the other for the
management of the groupspaces. Fig. 1 and 2 shows the first two perspectives. Let us
note that Fig. 2 includes the RCP version of RELOAD inside the right-hand view in
the lower part of the screenshot.
Fig. 1. Access permission and feedback perspective
5. Conclusion
In this paper we have described the functionalities offered by the CD-LOMAS
system and its evolution towards an RCP based application. CD-LOMAS enhances
collaboration both in the creation of LOs and in the reuse of existing LOs.
We are testing the current RCP version of CD-LOMAS which favors the creation
of communities of content users/providers with the same interests. We are also going
to investigate perceptions on usability and usefulness of CD-LOMAS with lecturers
and students across different disciplines within the university. We believe that the
proposed collaborative features provide new opportunities for the socio-constructivist
scenarios needed to support collaborative learning that should be investigated.
We also plan to enhance the searching capabilities by using semantic web
techniques. Ranking of LOs and expertise management should also be considered in
the next release of the system and further contributions of the user community, such
as the possibility to share annotation and the other features of participatory systems.
Fig. 2. Learning Object Management perspective
References
[1]. ADL, The Advanced Distributed Learning initiative. http://www.adlnet.org (2008)
[2]. ARIADNE, http://www.ariadne-eu.org/ (2008)
[3]. Azevedo, I. Carrapatoso, E. Carvalho, C.V. : A Framework to Scaffold the Reuse of
Learning Object, in the Proc. Of the Eighth IEEE International Conference on Advanced
Learning Technologies, ICALT '08. pp. 39-40 (2008)
[4]. Boiko, B.,: Content Management Bible (Bible), B. Boiko Publisher: Wiley; II edition
(2005)
[5]. Boskic, N.: Learning Objects Design: What do Educators Think about the Quality and
Reusability of Learning Objects? Third IEEE International Conference on Advanced
Learning Technologies (ICALT'03) (2003).
[6]. CVS Home Page. 2006. http://www.cvshome.org.
[7]. De Lucia, A., Fasano, F., Francese, R., Tortora, G. , 2004. ADAMS: an Artefact-based
Process Support System. In Proceedings of 16th International Conference on Software
Engineering and Knowledge Engineering, Banff, Alberta, Canada, Knowledge Systems
Institute, USA, pp. 31-36 (2004).
[8]. De Lucia, A., Francese, R., Passero, I., Tortora, G.: CD-LOMAS: A Collaborative
Distributed Learning Object Management System. In: ICEIS 2007 - Proceedings of the
Ninth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems. Madeira, Portugal, 12-
16 giugno 2007, vol. SAIC, p. 34-44 (2007)
[9]. De Lucia, A., Francese, R., Passero, I., Tortora, G.: Migrating Legacy Video Lectures to
Multimedia Learning Object. To appear in Software: Practice and Experience, Wiley
InterScience. (2008)
[10]. De Moura, S., L., Coutinho, F., Siqueira, S., W., M., Melo, R., N., Nunes, S., V., (2005).
Integrating Repositories of Learning Objects Using Web-Services to Implement Mediators
and Wrappers. In the Proceedings of the International Conference on Next Generation
Web Services Practices (NWeSP’05)
[11]. Econtentplus program, 2005.
http://www.eu.int/information_society/activities/econtentplus/index_en.htm
[12]. eduSource. 2006.http://www.edusource.ca/english/what_eng.html
[13]. M. Hatala, G. Richards, T. Eap and J. Willms. The EduSource Communication Language:
Implementing Open Network for Learning Repositories and Services. 2004 ACM
Symposium on Applied Computing. pp. 19-27
[14]. IEEE LTSC. The IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee. Retrieved September
29, 2008, from http://ieeeltsc.org.
[15]. IMS Global Learning Consortium, 2006. http://www.imsproject.org. .
[16]. G. Kortemeyer. Re-Usable Learning Objects In Practical Use. (2008) Available at
http://www.lon-capa.org/papers/reuse.pdf
[17]. Lu EJL, Chenw YH. Design of a delegable SCORM conformant learning management
system. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning Blackwell Publishing Ltd, vol. 22: 423–
436 (2006).
[18]. S. L. de Moura, F. Coutinho, S.W.M. Siqueira, R. N. Melo, S. V. Nunes, 2005. Integrating
Repositories of Learning Objects Web-Services to Implement Mediators and Wrappers. In
Proceedings of the International Conference on Next Generation Web Services Practices
(NWeSP’05).
[19]. MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching).
Retrieved October 16, 2006, from http://www.merlot.org/Home.po
[20]. Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT),
http://www.merlot.org/Home.po (2008).
[21]. RELOAD, http://www.RELOAD.ac.uk/
[22]. Rockley , A. 2002. Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy (Paperback)
by Ann Rockley Publisher: New Riders Press.
[23]. Sarma and A. van der Hoek, 'Palantír: Coordinating Distributed Workspaces', Proceedings
of the 26th IEEE Annual International Computer Software and Applications Conference,
Oxford, UK, IEEE Computer Society Press, 2002, pp. 1093-1097.
[24]. WELOAD, http://WELOAD.lernnetz.de/.