permitted only for private and academic purposes. This volume is published and copyrighted by its editors. http://seam.eun.org http://www.aspect-project.org
eContentplus programme -project ASPECT: Adopting Standards and Specifications for
Michael Totschnig, Michael Derntl, Israel Gutiérrez, Jad Najjar, Roland Klemke, Joris Klerkx, Erik Duval and Franz Müller
José Luis Santos, Joris Klerkx and Erik Duval
Wim Muskee
Jasper Roes, Jeroen van Vuuren, Nico Verbeij and Henk Nijstad
Tien-Dung Le and Elena Shulman
Nikos Palavitsinis, Nikos Manouselis and Salvador Sanchez-Alonso
Ivana Bosnic, Katrien Verbert and Erik Duval
Jaroslaw Dziedzic
Roland Klemke and Birgit Schmitz
Rune Hjelsvold, Jingjing Fan, Yngve Nordkvelle and Kjell Are Refsvik
Kati Clements, Àgueda Gras-Velázquez and Jan M. Pawlowski Fourth International Workshop on Search and Exchange of e-le@rning Materials (SE@M’10)
Context and Objectives
Over the last fifteen years, considerable effort has been spent on the development of standards and specifications in order to improve the interoperability of e-learning systems, repositories, and content. These efforts have led to significant improvements in the arena of technical interoperability enabling the emergence and expansion of successful federations and alliances of learning object repositories such as the LRE, GLOBE, etc. Building blocks for this success have been the creation, evolution and adoption of standards such as the IEEE Learning Object Metadata (LOM), the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH), and the Simple Query Interface (SQI). More recent developments in this field include the definition of a Simple Publishing Interface (SPI) and the ongoing work within the
(LODE) specification to facilitate the discovery and retrieval of learning objects stored across more than one collection. The development of best practices (for example by projects like ASPECT and ICOPER), enabling more efficient use of these standards and specifications, has also proven instrumental in the successes of current learning content retrieval infrastructures.
of learning object repositories, data models for efficiently organizing multiple metadata standards, content packaging, digital curation, keyword extraction, user generated metadata and a series of issues encountered in federated metadata management.
Organizers
Program Committee
Repository Services for Outcome-based Learning
1 Vienna University of Economics and Business 2 University of Vienna, Faculty of Computer Science 3 Universidad Carlos III de Madrid 4 Open University of the Netherlands
5 Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Abstract. Despite the existence of numerous standards and specifications in technology-enhanced learning, there is a lack of interoperability of artifacts and services throughout the whole lifecycle of outcome-based education. In this paper we present the concept and prototypical implementation of an open architecture that aims to remedy these issues by providing a unified metadata and service layer for making key educational resources sharable, storable, findable, and interoperable. The reference model and its supporting technology architecture are tested by a family of prototypes implemented as extensions to or adaptations of existing mainstream systems like Moodle, .LRN, Elgg and Facebook. 1
Introduction Conceiving services that make learning resources usable for design and delivery of outcome-based learning is a challenge that current learning object repositories are not yet able to meet. On the one hand, learning designs are dissociated from the learning opportunities (course offerings) where they have been or will be put into context, and thus it is difficult for the users (both the learner and the teacher) of those repositories to understand how they can benefit from these resources in the most fruitful way. On the other hand, learning outcomes are not yet defined and linked in a systematic way to learning designs, and even if they were, information about the learning or teaching history of the user would be needed in a standardized format, if the system was supposed to make meaningful suggestions.
The ICOPER Reference Model (IRM) aims at providing a framework through
which innovative learning processes that exploit rich linkages between teaching
methods, learning designs, learner assessments, learning resources, learning outcome
definitions, user profiles for achieved learning outcomes and for learning needs, and
learning opportunities can be stored, shared and delivered through standardized
services and data formats. The Open ICOPER Content Space (OICS) is conceived as the
testbed for implementing the IRM. Figure 1 displays the key processes in designing
and delivering outcome-based education. From a pedagogical perspective, the
alignment of learning outcomes with assessment methods and teaching methods is one of
the core foundations of the Bologna Process [
In this paper, we present the architecture of the services that the OICS offers to client applications. These services draw upon existing specifications for content aggregation, federated search and publication that have been validated in numerous projects and organizations such as MACE, MELT, GLOBE, EducaNext and ARIADNE. All of those have been integrated into a middle layer API that provides easy-to-use services for the support of outcome based learning and teaching scenarios.
After describing the conceptual and data models defined in the IRM, we explain how these models are made available through the OICS services, and how these services are consumed by the prototypical tools developed in the ICOPER project. 2
OICS Architecture The OICS infrastructure is built as a composition of services developed and maintained at Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU) and K.U. Leuven (KUL). At both sides a learning object repository is used for storing metadata harvested from the ICOPER content providers. Metadata is synchronized between them through the Simple Publishing Interface (SPI) protocol
Content is fed into the OICS either through the OAI-PMH protocol or a publication
service based on the SPI protocol1. The ARIADNE harvester [
These services are explained in more detail in [
OICS Middle Layer The OICS middle layer tries to bundle the requirements of the IRM together in a coherent API that is accessible from a variety of systems and tools (see Figure 2). Its key focus is the integration of concepts and data related to the key processes in outcome-based education. The OICS middle layer provides services for search and retrieval of learning resources, for publication, for the management of users and groups and for the management of learning outcome profiles within these key processes.
Search and Retrieval. The search and retrieval service gives access to the OICS
resources by providing specific access methods for the different types of objects
(learning outcome definitions, teaching methods, learning designs and learner
assessments). Three example bindings for this service have been implemented:
The ATOM binding exposes all resources as ATOM feeds that can be filtered
based on values in the LOM metadata.
The JSON binding uses a REST interface and provides the results to the client
tools in the JavaScript Object Notation data format. JSON is a lightweight data
format heavily used by web developers due to its simplicity (e.g. native evaluation
of results in JavaScript) compared to the traditional XML data format approaches,
which often require cumbersome DOM-based processing.
A PHP search script forwards PLQL [
Publication. The OICS implements the Sword/AtomPub binding of the SPI specification, learning objects and metadata records can be published to collections. Extending the SPI specification, The OICS implementation allows updating and re1 For metadata editing and demonstration purposes the OICS also provides a web UI. trieving of parts of the metadata record thus making it very easy to query and manipulate individual metadata fields relevant in specific use cases.
Open ICOPER Content Space Learning Outcome
Definitions Learning Outcome
Profiles Teaching Methods Learning designs/ Units of Learning
Assessment Resources search / index search / index
/ export search / index search / index / recommend search / index … Content provider
S e r v i c e L a y e r
Desktop applications
Learning Management
Systems Widgets, 3rd party tools, …
Learning Outcome Profiles. Users of the OICS can manage their learning outcome profile according to the Personal Achieved Learning Outcomes (PALO) data model (see Section 3.3) both through a web UI and the same publication service as used for publishing learning resources. 3
Conceptual and Data Models of the ICOPER Reference Model
The OICS as a repository managing shareable educational resources implements the
following data models: (1) the ICOPER LOM Application Profile (AP) as a unified
metadata layer above learning designs, teaching methods, assessment methods,
learner assessments and learning content, (2) an IEEE RCD-based specification for
representing learning outcome definitions (LOD) and (3) the Personal Achieved
Learning Outcomes (PALO) specification [
ICOPER LOM Application Profile A metadata schema is needed to describe and store resources in a referatory. As one of the most widely used, supported, and implemented standards, IEEE LOM was profiled to enable the description of learning design resources (teaching methods, learning designs, assessment methods, and learner assessments), but care was taken to make the same profile also applicable to other types of learning resources stored in the OICS. The resulting ICOPER LOM AP ensures that resources described using different standards and specifications like IMS Learning Design (LD), IMS Question and Test Interoperability (QTI), and so forth, become semantically interoperable.
As one central feature, the AP allows defining intended learning outcomes for all resources in the OICS; to enable this, the Educational category of LOM was extended with an element containing a link to a learning outcome definition. This simple extension enables several added-value use cases and scenarios, as indicated and prototypically demonstrated in Section 6. 3.2
Learning Outcome Definitions (LOD)
The Learning Outcome Definitions (LOD) data model defines a conceptual base
schema for describing and sharing learning outcome definitions in the context of
online and technology enhanced learning. The data model provides a way to capture
the key characteristics of a learning outcome, independently of its use in any
particular context or target group. This model should enable the storage and retrieval of
learning outcomes across learning systems that deal with learning outcomes data.
This specification is based on, and is an application profile of, the IEEE Reusable
Competency Definitions (RCD) standard. EEE RCD is the only widely accepted
standard for describing competencies. It is a continuation (and replacement) of the
early efforts on the development of IMS Reusable Definition of Competency or
Educational Objective (RDCEO). This specification profiles IEEE RCD with one
metadata element defining the type of the learning outcome and its associated value
domain to capture whether a learning outcome refers to knowledge, skill or
competence following the definitions of the European Qualification Framework [
Personal Achieved Learning Outcomes (PALO)
The Personal Achieved Learning Outcomes (PALO) data model [
One of the main challenges of communities and systems that deal with learning outcome information is interoperability. Different communities and systems may use different data models to represent information on skills, knowledge or competence obtained by a person that is required for a job or a task. The PALO specification is a step towards a common model supporting the exchange of such data, to enhance interoperability of personal learning outcome information between, for example, learning management systems, e-portfolios, social applications and recruitment systems.
This data model enables describing relations between learning outcomes of learners, in addition to contextual and evidence related information. The PALO schema should enable capturing the following: Relations between achieved learning outcomes, regardless of the taxonomies or ontologies they belong to; Contextual information on where the achieved learning outcome is obtained or applied; Information about all types of evidence and assessment that prove the achievement of a learning outcome; Information about levels and ranking of an achieved learning outcome, like proficiency level.
The PALO model has been proposed as EU specification for capturing data of personal achieved learning outcomes at CEN Workshop on Learning Technologies2. 4
Linking Learning Outcomes, Teaching Methods, Learning Opportunities and Learning Designs The following hypothetical scenario illustrates how university administration, faculty and learners can benefit from making the systems that manage teaching and learning processes interoperable through the adoption of the services described in the IRM and provided by the OICS. 1. At University X, a new curriculum for a course program is developed. Each course description is linked to learning outcome definitions (LOD) and suggested teaching methods (TM), both stored in the OICS. 2. Best practices for TMs have been elaborated by a consortium of universities, and for each of them a template has been elaborated that can be used by instructional designers. 3. An instructional designer creates a new learning design (LD) for the program. He retrieves the LODs mentioned in the curriculum from the LOD repository and searches the TM repository for a suitable template including assessment methods. He imports it into his authoring environment, adds resources and learner assessments retrieved from the OICS. Since learner assessments are linked to learning outcomes and assessment methods, he is able to retrieve the most relevant resources. The LD is made available for feedback in a restricted collection. 4. Additional links to LODs and TMs can be added by program management. 5. Once the LD has been approved by the program management, the LD is published. 6. It is imported into the institutional LMS, and automatically a learning opportunity is pushed to a registry service for learning opportunities. 7. Upon each completion of the learning opportunity, feedback from teachers and learners is collected and the metadata is enriched. 2 See http://www.cen.eu/cen/Sectors/Sectors/ISSS/Activity/Pages/WSLT.aspx 8. Learners completing the learning opportunity, including the successful finishing of learner assessment (LA), have their learning outcome profile augmented with entries for each achieved learning outcome. The achieved learning outcomes are evidenced by assessment records (AR), results of the assessment process. 9. Prospective learners that use the OICS LOD repository for identifying learning outcomes that correspond to their learning needs, will be able to retrieve other learners that already have achieved these outcomes, and since their profile also links to units of learning and learning opportunities, relevant recommendations can be presented to the learner.
The different parts of this high level scenario have been implemented by partners of the ICOPER consortium in various prototypes that make use of the OICS repository services.. In the following, we describe for each of the processes in Figure 1 how they are realized in some of the prototypes. 4.1
Learning Outcomes - Definitions Learning outcomes can be defined for a single course, taught by several teachers, or be standardized across universities or whole domains. Instead of describing learning outcomes from scratch every time a new course is created, instructional designers should be provided with a list of relevant learning outcome definitions that they can link to their courses. For example, IEEE and ACM Computer Science task force has defined the list of learning outcomes for all computer science courses. These learning outcomes have been imported into the OICS and can be reused across different course and universities. In this way, different universities use common learning outcome terms for describing what students would achieve by finishing a specific course.
The OICS also provides a simple-to-use web interface for creating and editing them. A browsing interface is currently implemented for the ICOPER public website. New definitions can also be created from within several authoring environments and LMS and are submitted to the OICS through the publication service. 4.2
Teaching Methods and Learning Design: OpenGLM OpenGLM (short for Open Graphical Learning Modeler) is an open-source learning design editor, developed at Universität Wien. It is able to manipulate learning designs compliant with the IMS Learning Design specification. It was built to visually support the creation and reuse of teaching methods and learning designs. OpenGLM uses the search and retrieval services and the publishing service of the OICS Middle Layer; it uses those parts of the services that are related to retrieving, searching, editing, enriching and publishing learning designs (packaged as IMS LD units of learning), teaching methods and learning outcomes. OpenGLM is the key prototype supporting use cases in the “Teaching Methods and Learning Design” process in Figure 1. 4.3
Learning Content: OICS Roundtrip Authoring Re-use Open University of the Netherlands and Humance AG have implemented an OICS roundtrip authoring re-use prototype, that brings together an asset management software (MediaLibrary), an authoring environment (author42), and an LMS (OLAT). This prototype addresses the authoring and creation of units of learning with strong support for re-use of existing materials. It focuses on three main processes: 1. The collaborative collection and organization of media assets. 2. The collaborative creation of learning units based on these media assets. 3. The preparation for re-use of media assets and learning units.
The prototype has several connections to the OICS: through OAI-PMH targets
individual media assets (MediaLibrary) as well as units of learning (author42, OLAT)
are made available to the OICS infrastructure together with their LOM-based
metadata. The OICS search services are integrated in author42 to enable seamless
integration of existing media in the authoring process. More details on this prototype can be
found in an accompanying paper [
Learning Opportunities Knowledge Markets Consulting Ges.m.b.H. is implementing a prototype on top of its 2know2 platform, that allows to announce learning opportunities for courses that are linked to learning outcomes and teaching methods. The learning outcomes and teaching methods are directly stored in and retrieved from the OICS via the search, retrieval and publishing services of the OICS Middle Layer. New learning opportunities can be announced at the 2know2 platform with a news article and an RSS feed and can also be published in the repository for learning opportunities at the OICS. 4.5
Learner Assessment University Carlos III of Madrid (UC3M) has developed a prototype integrated into the .LRN platform that demonstrates various use cases related to the learner assessment process:
(1) Outcome-based search of assessment resources. Once defined assessment method and learning outcomes of a course, the instructional designer should find appropriate assessment resources aligned to them, and this process is enabled by the .LRN module. The designer is able to search for assessment resources in the OICS by keyword, but he is also able to filter the results by the intended learning outcomes of the course (available in the learning outcome definitions repository) and by the assessment method he decided to use to orchestrate the resources.
The described use case makes use of the search service of the middle layer API of the OICS in order to search assessment resources from several repositories. This service also provides means for the filtering process by learning outcomes and/or assessment method.
(2) Sharing annotations about assessment resources. Once an activity involving a published assessment resource has finished, teachers can make use of the annotation system in order to provide information about the students’ performance. Teachers could also collect students’ feedback to annotate the assessment resource with. This information enriches the published resource for potential instructional designers willing to re-use it.
This sharing annotation system uses some services of the OICS via the middle layer API. Firstly, the publication service is used to publish the resources and their LOM metadata in the OICS. Secondly, the service that allows updating the metadata record of a resource is used to update it with annotation information. 4.6
Learning Outcomes – Achievements UC3M’s prototype also takes care of the publication of the achieved learning outcomes into a learner learning outcome profile on the OICS.
After the completion of the course, and therefore the assessment activities, it is time for teachers to officially close the course. The implemented application provides the teacher with an interface to facilitate this task. It shows a list of the students of the course and the assessment result (grade) of each assessment activity carried out in the course. There is also a final grade automatically calculated as the arithmetic mean of all the results, but the teacher can modify it taking into account other factors. The teacher can also provide some textual feedback for any student’s final grade.
Once the teacher has finished this task, he can officially close the course. The results of this action is that the profiles of all the students passing the course (in this case it means a final grade of 5 or more because the prototype uses a grading scale 0 to 10, proper to the Spanish system) will be updated with the achievements of the course, that is, the learning outcomes achieved. These achievements are also evidenced by an assessment record, which is an official record corresponding to the final grade of the course and has the University as the assessing body.
This process uses the service of the OICS middle layer that allows updating the learner’s profile with assessment records and achievements.
Other tools and environments have been integrated with OICS services, and are able to publish achievements into a learner’s profile or display them: Umeå University, Sweden, has developed a Moodle block that imports learning designs into a course and exports learning outcomes for students enrolled in it. IMC, Germany, has extended its LMS Clix with functionality for the execution of outcome-based learning designs as well as the management of learners' PALO. eXact learning solutions (formerly Giunti Labs), Italy, has implemented access to
OICS’ learning outcome related features into its learn eXact enterprise LCMS. AGH – University of Science and Technology, Poland, has integrated the display of PALO profiles into Facebook. Tallinn University, Estonia, has integrated the e-portfolio environment, Elgg, with
OICS services for searching learning resources and for publication of PALO data. 5
Conclusions and Future Directions With the services we have designed and implemented for the OICS, we want to make learning resources available in the contexts where outcome related education takes place: LMS, personal learning environments, social networks. By providing richer linkages between learning needs, learning designs, teaching methods, learning outcomes and learning opportunities, teachers and learners will be able to make more innovative use of available learning objects. The OICS is also designed to store information about user’s experiences as annotations, and thus to create still more opportunities to discover relevant resources.
In order to provide a good practice of enabling the design and delivery of outcome based learning, prototypes implemented in ICOPER project extended the functionality of existing systems that are already used by teachers and learners.
Currently, the implemented prototypes are being evaluated by target end users like learners, teachers and instructional designers. The goal of the evaluation is to determine: Ease of use, usefulness and completeness of implemented outcomes based functionalities; Added value and innovation of introduced functionalities to target users; The extent that such applications are being adopted by universities Interoperability level of data exchanged using the specifications adopted and implemented in this project.
Acknowledgements. The work presented in this paper was supported by the European Commission in the eContentplus project ICOPER (ECP-2007-EDU417007). The Ariadne Registry of LORs
Jose Luis Santos, Joris Klerkx, and Erik Duval joseluis.santos, joris.klerkx, erik.duval
@cs.kuleuven.be Dept. Computerwetenschappen
K.U.Leuven Celestijnenlaan 200A
B-3000 Leuven
Belgium Abstract. The ARIADNE registry is one of the core components in an architecture that promotes interoperability of networks of repositories that facilitates the access to the learning content and encouraging the share and reuse of digital content. This paper explains the development of the ARIADNE registry of learning object repositories (LORs) and the role played by standards and speci cations. 1
Introduction
One of the problems of Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) is that creating
Learning Objects (LOs) is expensive and time-consuming [
LOs are typically stored in Learning Objects Repositories (LORs). In
ARIADNE, considerable e ort has been spent on the development of standards and
speci cations for LORs [
One of the problems for managing all these repositories within a network is the scalability. Currently, every repository is added manuallyin the harvester or in the federated search layer service. However, this time consuming process requires that one person con gures the targets and its parameters such as the requirements (e.g. query languages for querying or metadata formats for harvesting).
In addition, some extra information about the content inside of the repositories can be useful for managing this architecture. For instance, if we know that one repository contains LOs focused on mathematics, and we are interested in them, we can select this target to be harvested. To enable the sharing and exchange of this information with other networks of repositories, the information needs to be structured and managed.
This paper focuses on how the ARIADNE implements the ARIADNE
Registry that has been integrated in the GLOBE architecture [
The paper is organized as follows: section 2 which shows a possible use case of the approach. Section 3 introduces an explanation of the Registry Data Model co-developed in ASPECT project. Section 4 explains the Registry Architecture. Some statistics and data are presented in section 5. 2
Use Case. ARIADNE Foundation integrates the ARIADNE registry in its infrastructure This section focuses on a use case for the ARIADNE registry and discusses: (i) the integration of the ARIADNE Registry in existing architectures and (ii) increasing the collaboration between di erent institutions for exposing their LOs. Also, we introduce some technical details about the implementation. The nal goal is to explain the use of the registry in a non formal way.
ARIADNE Foundation has several repositories where the LOs are described by Learning Object Metadata. They expose the metadata using SQI and OAIPMH. However, they have noticed that the number of repositories is increasing and it's di cult to manage all the information from other content providers. These content providers describe their LOs using di erent speci cations like LOM and Dublin Core(DC), on the other hand some content providers expose the LOs using OAI-PMH and/or SQI. Looking for a good solution, they decide to integrate the ARIADNE Registry to manage this information because: 1. The ARIADNE Registry allows the de nition of LORs using IMS LODE.
That is open in terms of using speci cations. 2. The ARIADNE Registry exposes the information using SQI, RSS and OAIPMH. SQI allows to query the registry. RSS alerts subscribers when a new target is added. OAI-PMH allows to harvest all information from the ARIADNE Registry. These three speci cations allow to integrate their ARIADNE Federated Search Layer which queries di erent repositories to obtain di erent LOs from di erent repositories, the ARIADNE harvester which harvests metadata from di erent repositories and to build a federation of registries which allows to collaborate with di erent institutions.
The bene ts that they obtain from the integration of the ARIADNE Registry are: 1. They have centralized all the information from all the repositories where they harvest from. It saves time in terms of administration tasks. 2. They can implement other services on top of the registry to check the availability of the di erent services. This service allows that other services can check this information before trying to access the targets. This information optimizes the performance behavior of these services. 3. The integration of the registry allows that new targets added are widespread by di erent network of LORs which are federated with ARIADNE network. 3
ARIADNE Registry Data model
The ASPECT project [
ARIADNE has chosen this speci cation, because it is not restrictive in terms of use of speci cations, and it increases the possibilities of interoperatibility between architectures. In addition, the model does not restrict how the content collections are created. This is an important issue, because the content providers can choose how they create them and can o er metadata information about the collections that they are interested in.
This model is represented by a schema that contains three main elements Content Collection, Metadata Collection and Protocol. 1. Content Collection contains information about access rights, authoring, title description, keywords, etc. This is information about the content itself. 2. Metadata Collection contains information about how the metadata is exposed. Here, the content provider has to de ne which speci cation are used to expose metadata. This part of the speci cation has an element for de ning the speci cation called Protocol Implementation Description which is used for de ning extra information like the query language supported by an SQI interface or sets supported by an OAI-PMH interface. 3. Protocol contains speci c information about the speci cation used like the URL of the schema, namespace or the binding location.
Several examples can be found at the ARIADNE Registry site [13].
ARIADNE Registry Architecture The implementation of the registry enables ARIADNE to build a federation of registries, to provide access to collection information using SQI and to publish new content collections using SPI.
Connections to all the networks
querying one registry Federated Search
Harvester
Registry 2 MC OAI-PMH
CC CC CC
MC SQI MC SSPQII MC SRU/W
SQI OAI-PMH
RSS SPI
Synchronization
A registry can contain metadata collections (MC in the gure 1) or content collections (CC). The latter contain metadata collections (MC).
The nal goal of the registry is to create a network of networks of repositories, similar to current DNS functionality on the internet. All the registries are synchronized so if a harvester or a federated search service queries a registry, they can access all the content collections or metadata collections in the di erent networks. This approach is important: it allows automated discovery, decreases time spent managing repository information, and allows automated widespread updates.
This architecture shows how the registry can be synchronized with other registries. The registry exposes its contents using OAI-PMH so that other registries can harvest its content. In addition, the registry exposes its updates also using the RSS 2.0 speci cation, so that registries can be synchronized also with RSS feed readers. This RSS system can be used as a noti cation system, as it contains all the targets published.
The registry uses SQI for querying because it is neutral in terms of query language or results formats. Consequently, all SQI clients can query the registry. The registry supports di erent query languages like PLQL, VSQL and Lucene Query Language.
Finally, the registry implements an SPI interface for publishing content collections. For instance, when other content collections are harvested, they are inserted using SPI to publish content by reference, because the metadata in this case de nes a content collection already published elsewhere.
One of the main advantages of this implementation is that ARIADNE Registry is based on the ARIADNE Repository. This software is a exible implementation that allows di erent models of metadata. For instance, it supports LOM, ILOX, Dublin Core and this paper explains how it supports IMS LODE Registry speci cation. The idea behind this software is that we can index all kind of xml document. However, the nal goal is that we can built combined queries, for instance, using PLQL, based on the content of di erent tags.
Trying to validate this architecture, we have integrated the ARIADNE harvester with the registry. The following sequencing diagram 2 shows how a system administrator can con gure the harvester using the current implementation where the system administration can query the registry and add the targets that he/she is interested in. 5
Related Work One of the main goals of ARIADNE is to encourage sharing and reusing LOs. For this purpose, we have implemented a registry using the concept of content collection, integrating some technical information in the data model and allowing the federation of registries. Table 1 shows the similarities between existing approaches and the ARIADNE approach.
Domain Name System (DNS)[14] has conceptual similarities with the
approach explained in this paper. While DNS translates a name identi er to a
number identi er, the registry translate abstract information contained by the
content collection to a technical information contained in the metadata
collection. In addition, the federation of DNS allows the propagation between them of
the new sites. It is a similar approach that ARIADNE Registry implements with
with such a great amount of detail that makes them almost unreadable
(chapters 3.3 and 3.4 about le location in a package and references between them,
for instance) and di cult to understand. On the other hand, some topics that
should be explained with more details are too brief. This is the case with the QTI
description (chapter 4.9). The diagrams for QTI are helpful, but they are
contradictory to the description sometimes, especially when it comes to di erences
between QTI 1.2.1 and QTI Common Cartridge pro le. We couldn't nd de nite
answers for many questions for instance whether one can use pictures or video
in exercises. The diagram in paragraph 4.9.8 of the speci cation [
The Validator tool proved to be really very useful. However it didn't nd a problem with XML les that have the lename extension di erent than .xml. We suggest updating this tool, including also lename extension validation.
There is an urgent need for the o cial reference Common Cartridge player, which would be available to any developer that is interested in CC package creation. We just can't convert anything to CC if we can't see the proof that everything is working correctly. The speci cation, that doesn't give clear answers for many questions, makes the problem even bigger. Many issues just have to be tested in a reliable player. The reference CC player is on the top of my wish list today. 4
Conclusions Despite the obvious limitations of the Common Cartridge, we want to continue our e orts to familiarise ourselves with this standard and prepare some software tools, that would allow the conversion. However, Common Cartridge has too many limitations at the moment to be considered our main format for packaging the content. But we acknowledge, that it has not been designed for such a task. It was designed to make possible the creation of small exchangeable items, learning objects that can form building blocks for a teacher, who wants to create her own course. We would be happy to be able to create such small building blocks in the future, based on our existing content. But for this application to be successful, the CC standard should evolve and allow for more interesting, more complicated content.
We would appreciate some improvements and changes the replacement of
the "QTI 1.2.1 CC Pro le" with something better would be our rst postulate.
One possible solution could be a move to QTI 2.0 that solves many problems
of the old version (it has quite broad choice of exercise types, more logical and
concise syntax, support for HTML-like layout control and CSS styles). Or, as a
minimum, the new version of the CC pro le still based on QTI 1.2.1, but with
less restrictions (especially in <material> sections and in the <resprocessing>
area). We are open to discuss these issues and exchange ideas to make this
standard better and really useful for the software industry.
[
(http://www.imsglobal.org/cc/ccv1p0/imscc_profilev1p0.html)
[
Roland Klemke1, Birgit Schmitz2 1 Centre for Learning Sciences and Technologies
Open University of The Netherlands Valkenburgerweg 177, 6419 AT Heerlen, Netherlands roland.klemke@ou.nl
2 Humance AG Goebenstraße 10-12, 50672 Köln, Germany
bsc@humance.de Abstract. Content production processes currently experience a shift in focus. Due to the growing trend of highly individualized learning scenarios they have to face and to combine a multitude of different standards. The European eContent+ network of Excellence ICOPER researches possible strategies and implementations to deal with this new situation. In its course the project develops a comprehensive set of prototypes that use, evaluate and propose extensions to a large number of currently relevant standards such as IEEE RCD, SCORM or OAI-PMH. This paper describes a collaborative, re-use based authoring approach that was realized with one of these prototypes.
Keywords: authoring, re-use, interoperability, outcome-oriented learning
1 Introduction
Today’s technology enhanced learning scenarios focus on learning outcome oriented
delivery of learning processes, contents, and services. Rather than pre-defining static
curricula individual learning processes are enabled: learner profiles indicate
individual gaps, learning outcomes describe the required skills, recommended
learning materials help to close these gaps, and assessments indicate successful
mastery which is reflected back into learner’s profiles. This way, the learner gains a
large factor of ownership of learning [
In such complex learning situations interoperability issues become important: standards to describe learning outcomes, learner profiles, assessment items and learning materials are needed. Technical interoperability between different components of an overall learning delivery toolset is required in order to ensure seamless learning processes. Web-service based approaches help to simplify technical interoperability [12].
The learning outcome orientation also changes the way learning contents are produced and organized. The traditional “one-size-fits-all” approaches deliver the same content to a large target audience. The production of learning content at high cost is therefore justified. Outcome-oriented content production processes however, deliver highly individualized content and have to cope with a large diversity of interoperability standards due to the multitude of sources they are based on (different learning objects, learning outcomes, learning designs and learner profiles). The need for re-use is therefore essential.
The European ICOPER project [
In the course of the ICOPER project, a collaborative, re-use based authoring prototype was developed, that is based on the OICS. The prototype focuses on three main processes: 1. The collaborative collection and organization of media assets.
Media assets comprise individual content elements such as texts, pictures, videos, and audios, which form the basis of all content productions. 2. The collaborative creation of learning units based.
Learning units are navigable and interactive learning contents built out of individual media assets. 3. Preparation for re-use.
The previous two processes are supported by a background harvesting process which updates the metadata repository of the OICS in order to make updated contents searchable and retrievable. 2 Collaborative collection of multi-media assets A common problem to all collaborative, re-use based production processes is the retrieval, organization and management of media assets. Especially, when production processes have to cope with heterogeneous target groups (e.g. different languages, support for disabled people) or dynamic topic domains (with many subsequent content versions) media asset management is a complex matter.
Within the ICOPER project we therefore developed the MediaLibrary prototype.
This online tool offers the opportunity to share media within a community. As
opposed to other publicly available platforms (such as Flickr or YouTube), the
MediaLibrary is designed to support media production processes, content-re-use,
complex media models (with different versions, variants, languages, media formats)
and corresponding metadata. The MediaLibrary is connected to the OICS via an
OAIPMH interface through which media assets within the MediaLibrary can be searched,
browsed, and re-used. This way, media asset collections become part of larger
learning content and metadata repositories.
3 Collaborative creation of learning units
The creation of learning units involves different tasks comprising the development of
didactical concepts, storyboards and the actual content production which can be
supported by content authoring environments. In our authoring prototype we use a
customized version of author42 (named author42.ICOPER) that is a web-based
authoring environment with extensible interfaces [
author42.ICOPER is integrated with the OICS: as a result the whole repository (including contents from the MediaLibrary and other sources) can be searched directly from the content production environment and retrieved results can be seamlessly integrated in the current production process.
To enable this integration, author42.ICOPER was extended with a customized search interface that can be launched from within any content production step. The search interface allows searching the OICS using combinations of different metadata and keyword fields. Search results can be selected and integrated into the current content page just as the users own content would be: page layout, element sizing and positioning functionalities can be used to fit the search results into the content page.
Through a web-service-based publishing interface, the content created can be
published from author42.ICOPER into different repositories. In our prototype, we
chose the open source learning management system OLAT [
Preparation for Re-use
Both prototypes, the MediaLibrary and the author42.ICOPER, offer OAI-PMH targets to access their metadata and contents from external repositories. The OICS contains an OAI-PMH compliant harvesting module [11] that is capable of accessing these targets and retrieving the metadata accordingly. That way, the OICS maintains a searchable repository of metadata that refers to the original contents.
The search function of the OICS can be used in two different ways: (a) directly, through the OICS’ own search interface, or (b) integrated into other applications using the OICS’ web-service interface. The latter being the case in the author42.ICOPER integration of the OICS, which enables search results to be automatically and seamlessly embedded into the content production process. 5
Conclusion and Outlook We have presented a prototype to support collaborative, re-use based authoring for modern, outcome-oriented learning approaches. In a first evaluation of the abovementioned prototypes and their interoperability with the Open ICOPER Content Space (OICS), we performed an evaluation workshop at the JTEL SummerSchool 2010 in Ohrid, Macedonia. Ten participants with different backgrounds covering teachers, researchers, and students from computer science, technology enhanced learning and other fields took part in the evaluation.
In a first evaluation step, participants were asked to organize and metatag MediaAssets according to a selected LOD in the MediaLibrary prototype. These assets were re-used in the online authoring system author42.ICOPER to produce a unit of learning. Finally, participants published the results to enable further re-use via the OICS. Despite some technical problems that arose due to the prototypical status of the tools in use, participants could effectively solve their tasks and rated the toolset to be highly relevant.
In the meantime and with the prototype still under way, a new approach to connect
repositories and authoring tools undergoes standardization efforts: the Simple
Publishing Interface (SPI). This draft standard [
To Tag or Not to Tag?
Rune Hjelsvold1, Jingjing Fan1, Yngve Nordkvelle2, and Kjell Are Refsvik1
1 Gjøvik University College, Gjøvik, Norway
2 Lillehammer University College, Lillehammer, Norway
Abstract. In this paper we describe a study where students tagged
learning objects created by their professors. The study shows that the
student tags extend the professors’ view of the contents of the
learning objects and add a wider context for interpreting the content of the
learning objects. During interviews conducted at the end of the study,
the professors reported that the students’ tags represented a form of
feedback that would help them recognize discrepancies between the learning
objects’ intended purpose and the perceived purpose.
1
According to Kay and Knaack [
Al-Khalifa and Davis [
Learning Objects in a Pedagogical Context
The idea that what the teachers intend to communicate is received by students
is much criticized. In radical constructivism, it is claimed that it is less than
likely that the received message is congruent with the sent (Qvortrup [
The Student Tagging Study In this project we studied two groups of master students at Gjøvik University College. Each group consisted of approximately ten master students. Group 1 was a group of first year students on the Master of Media Technology program participating in a course on media data coding and compression. Group 2 was a group of second year students on the same program who had previously participated in a course on semantic web. The courses were taught by two different professors – one for each course.
Both courses were offered as blended learning in which regular lectures were recorded. The recorded lectures along with lecture notes in PDF were used to produce LOs stored in an LMS. The professors assigned keywords to each learning object as content-descriptive metadata.
The project was divided in two main parts. Firstly, the students used a webbased application to tag LOs blindly (i.e., students did not get to see other students’ tags). Secondly, semi-structured interviews were conducted in which the two professors and some of the students were interviewed individually.
The key characteristics of the two groups and the generated metadata can be summarized as follows: The individual student in group 1 generated 3.5 tags per LO on average, while the average in group two was 3.3. At the same time, the professor teaching group 1 assigned 14.6 per LO on average while the professor for group 2 assigned only 6.9 keywords per LO on average. On average, 1.3 tags generated by the individual student in group 1 also appeared as keywords assigned by the professor. The corresponding value for group 2 was 1.35. The overlap between the sets of tags generated by the students and the sets of keywords assigned by the professor per LO is further illustrated in Fig. 1. The upper part of the bars shown in brighter colors exposes the number of keywords assigned by the professors that did not appear in the sets of tags generated by the groups of students. The lower part of the bars shown in darker colors exposes the number of the number of tags generated by the groups of students that did not appear in the sets of keywords assigned by the professors. The middle part shown in the darkest color illustrates the amount of overlap between student-generated tags and professor-assigned keywords.
Finally, Figure 2 illustrates the level of agreement among students with regards to the tags. The ten most popular tags are enumerated along the horizontal axis (tag 1 being the most popular for the given LO). As can be seen on the figure, student tags mostly differ from the keywords chosen by the professors. Our study therefore indicates that the students’ interpretation of content of the LO is different from the professors’. It thus seems like student-generated tags would be useful as a complementary type of metadata to professor-assigned keywords. 3
Value of Student Tagging: Beyond Content Descriptive Metadata The two professors involved in the study and six of the students from group 1 were interviewed at the end of the study. The purpose of the interviews was to investigate whether student tagging added value beyond producing content descriptive metadata.
The students all agreed that the keywords provided by the professors were useful for them in interpreting the content of the LO. They even requested that student tagging of learning object should be introduced in all the courses they were signed up for. They found the keywords especially helpful in finding what the key aspects of the LO were.
Fig. 2. Level of agreement among students for the most popular tags
A majority of the students also considered it useful to be able to view fellow students’ tags. They also thought it would be useful if they had the opportunity to view students’ tags from earlier years of the course – even though no such tags existed in the demo system.
Both professors agreed that student-defined tags were quite similar to their own keywords although they were not the same. Most importantly, however, the participating professors emphasized that the tags represented a sort of feedback that would help them understand how well the students were able to grasp the contents of the LO.
The two participating professors both stated that the feedback from the students would have a real impact. In some cases, they found that the students had chosen tags that they would like to include as one of the professor-assigned keywords in the future. In other cases, the feedback indicated that the students had missed some important messages or misinterpreted the LO. In these cases, the professors said they would either modify the original lecture and accompanying LO, or they would repeat these issues again in future lectures to help the students achieve a correct and deeper understanding.
One striking observation is that none of the professors considered removing even one single keyword from any of the LOs even if the students did not use it as one of their tags. The professors saw the student-generated tags as a possible extension to the set of keywords they assigned – not as a potential replacement.
Although the study of student tagging of LOs and the follow-up interviews were rather small, they indicate that content-descriptive metadata in the form of professor-assigned keywords and student-generated tags add value beyond supporting searchability and reusability. The students consider professor-assigned keywords as a help in interpreting the contents of the LOs and the professors see student-generated tags as valuable feedback from the students both when it comes to the quality of the LO and the quality of the accompanying set of metadata. Our study was rather small, involving some 20 students, two professors, and 16 LOs. Still, the study gives some interesting indications on the usefulness of student tagging and interesting paths for further work.
Our study shows that there is some overlap between the tags that students create for LOs and the keywords the professors assign to the same LOs. There is, however, also a significant difference between the two. This difference may provide a wider context for interpreting the content and context of the LO. Our study also shows that student tags may be utilized in the quality management of the LOs. The professors could recognize discrepancies and patterns of differences between the student-generated tags and the original set of professor-generated keywords that might call for quick or dramatic alterations of LOs. As a means for quality improvement this dimension goes far beyond the quest for retrieval and reusability question to include issues of feedback, evaluation and might improve the level of collective engagement and learning retrieval.
This project is part of an ongoing process in developing a Learning Object Repository at Gjøvik University College that will provide student tagging capabilities.
Educational Resources Packaging Standards SCORM and IMS Common Cartridge – The Users Point of View 1Kati Clements, 2Àgueda Gras-Velázquez, 1Jan M. Pawlowski1 1Global Information Systems, University of Jyväskylä, 40014 Jyväskylä Finland, 2European Schoolnet, Rue de Lalaing 24, 1040 Brussels, Belgium kati.clements@jyu.fi, agueda.gras@eun.org, jan.pawlowski@jyu.fi Abstract. This paper reports on an exploratory study analyzing the Educational Resources’ packaging standards SCORM and IMS Common Cartridge’s (CC) regarding interoperability from the point of view of key users: teachers. The two specifications SCORM and CC to package Educational Resources have been developed to help the users to re-use Learning Objects from Learning Object Repositories (LORs) in Learning Management Systems (LMS) of schools. In our study, we found that teachers find packaging solutions highly useful, especially the interoperability between LORs and LMSs. Teachers also appreciated that they can modify packaged content after it has been uploaded to the LMS. The teachers also strongly appreciated the additional functionalities of CC packages while teaching courses online or giving home work/extra assignments to their students.
Keywords: Educational Resources, content packaging standards, Learning Object Repositories, SCORM, IMS Common Cartridge, teachers 1 Introduction This paper shows the views of teachers on interoperability between Learning Object Repositories (LOR) and Learning Management Systems (LMS) supported by two content packaging standards: SCORM and IMS Common Cartridge (CC). We set up a testing experiment and survey to find out 1) whether teachers would get any additional value from using these standards and 2) whether tools used to support these standards are reasonable for teachers to use in their everyday teaching.
According to The IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee, a Learning
Object is defined as "any entity, digital or non-digital, that may be used for learning,
education or training" [
Recent research involving packaging standards SCORM and IMS Common
Cartridge has been focusing on the technical specifications [
This study aims to examine what the real users, the teachers, think of using these Learning Object packaging standards and ask if they can see the interoperability between LOR and LMS facilitating the work they are doing in their everyday lesson plan creation process.
When trying to evaluate the impact of a learning technology standard to the users, it
is important to realize that specifications cannot be evaluated by users as users do not
work with them directly. Rather, interoperability specifications are implemented in
software tools offering a set of functionalities to the end user. End users can then
make use of the tool in practice and that use can be evaluated. The evaluation results
need to be analyzed in detail to assess whether problems are caused by the
interoperability specifications or by the functionality provided by the tool, or the user
interface through which the functionality is made available to the end user. [
To date, most popular Learning Management Systems support SCORM objects [11]
among these the system of Moodle. SCORM packages can be uploaded as single,
unmodifiable entries to Moodle.
2.2. IMS Common Cartridge
IMS Common Cartridge (CC) was supposed to enhance SCORM, offering more
flexibility and support for assessments, web 2.0 standards, content authorization,
collaborative forums and outcomes reporting [
IMS Common Cartridge is not as widely supported by different LMSs as SCORM perhaps because there are not yet as many tools to support it. However, LMS Platforms have gained growing interest towards IMS Common Cartridge support. It is still gathering momentum, which should increase by the announcement [13] from the popular open source platform Moodle to start supporting IMS Common Cartridge packages in the spring of 2010 on. Users can upload CC packages as a whole into the Moodle system much in the same way as uploading SCORM packages. 3 Test Setting Adopting Standards and Specifications for Educational Content (ASPECT) is a Best Practice Network for educational content that aims at improving the adoption of learning technology standards and specifications [14]. Standards and interoperability experts produce recommendations that are implemented by tools and content providers before being tested by teachers during school pilots. Tests were carried out in order to demonstrate in which way the implementation of Standards and Specifications leads to greater interoperability and cross-border re-use of content [15]. The Learning Resource Exchange (LRE) is a pan-European federation of Learning Object Repositories [16]. The service is offered to stakeholders providing digital content, such as ministries of education, commercial publishers, broadcasters, cultural institutions, and other non-profit organizations offering online content to schools [17]. The LRE was used as the testing LOR in the ASPECT project and it provided the possibility to get the same package available in all the different formats (web page, SCORM package, CC package, SCORM in Icodeon player and CC in Icodeon platform) in its metadata (see section 3.2 for further information).
Our main research aim is the validation of artifacts: the standards SCORM and CC
as well as corresponding tools. As these standards are widely implemented in tools
and rely upon them in practical experiments, the use of these tools can be considered
a valid evaluation of the standards [
Initial observations showed that the ICT skills of this group of teachers ranged from little knowledge (a few even unsure of what Google was) to advanced (users of LaTeX ). Up to 80% of the teachers had advanced ICT skills. The group of advanced teachers was strongly represented. The validation results must be seen in this light: Teachers participating in European projects tend to be more motivated towards ICT and improving their teaching methods. These teachers have clearly higher levels of motivation and are very eager to share their knowledge and expertise. As a consequence, it must be taken into account that if these teachers find the project tasks and concepts too difficult or uninteresting, one can be reasonably certain that this will apply even more so to teachers with average levels of ICT competence. 3.2. Tests Description The workshop combined straight-forward assignments and direct feedback gathering from the teachers in the form of interviews and two surveys. The test session was organized in May 2010, concentrated on the integration of Resources into Learning Management Systems and content packaging. In preparation for the tests, teachers had already learned how to create basic courses on Moodle platform. They also had learned how to browse the Learning Object Repository, LRE.
In the tests, teachers were initially asked to create a normal lesson plan using the Moodle learning platform in a “traditional” way by combining different Resources. Then they were asked to repeat the same task using a Resource on the same topic that had been ‘packaged’ by ASPECT content developers using both the SCORM and IMS Common Cartridge packages. The test task was to create a simple lesson plan made up of some text, an image, a quiz and a forum, on the topic of thermodynamics for Moodle, using four different approaches: 1) Using non-packaged content 2) Using the entire SCORM package (created from the non-packaged content) 3) Using an entire IMS Common Cartridge package (created from the nonpackaged content, with a forum added) 4) Picking up parts from the IMS Common Cartridge package The tests were designed to serve both as a basic training on the use of different types of packaged content and their features (necessary as the teachers had no previous experience with this kind of content) and at the same time obtain their reactions as rewards to usefulness in their everyday teaching, interest and facility to use. Each teacher had an empty Moodle course and editing rights. Each teacher designed the same lesson plan four times as described before. Teachers searched for the resource in question in the LRE, where it was provided in the 3 formats, both to view and download. For the non-packaged lesson plan, teachers had to use Moodle options to create the quiz and the forum themselves. Both the SCORM and Common Cartridge packages had the quiz included in the package, and the latter also contained a forum.
Additionally, teachers were presented with a dozen additional Resources packaged as SCORM and Common Cartridge to browse through and see their benefits, independently of the topic of the Resources. In all cases, to view the packaged content, Icodeon’s Common Cartridge Platform and SCORM player were used as the tools to show the packaged content. 4 Results Analysis As the sample size of the survey (n=44) was small, the results of the statistical analysis can only give us some indication on the teachers’ attitudes. The survey results were backed up by a qualitative analysis of interviews of the teachers.
Generally, the teachers reacted to SCORM Resources in much the same way that they treated unpackaged content; for example, they did not see much difference between having a SCORM Resource and a PowerPoint presentation. While they saw that a SCORM package could include more than one resource, they did not use it any differently than PowerPoint; both types of content were integrated into an LMS as a single, unmodifiable entity. In comparison, the teachers were very enthusiastic about CC content packaging. After importing a CC package into Moodle, the teachers could remove parts that they did not need, edit the content and change the order of different resources. Many teachers requested instructions on how to adapt Moodle to use CC packages and even some teachers expressed an interest in using CC to package their own content in order to share it with other teachers.
Most teachers had little interest in simply viewing and playing SCORM or CC packages. On the other hand, apart from the option to upload the complete packages into an LMS and have the different parts of the package converted into Moodle format, the teachers liked the possibility of being able to embed only parts of a Common Cartridge package in the LMS, or even blogs or websites, which is not possible to do with items from within SCORM packages. While this second option did not take advantage of the LMS's features, teachers liked to have the possibility to only integrate the parts of the cartridge into their courses that they liked or thought were relevant to their lesson. In the survey, • 25% said that taking an entire course in SCORM format and using it in Moodle (or their school's own System) would be extremely helpful • 39% said that taking an entire course in CC format and using it in Moodle (or their school's own System) would be extremely helpful • 43% said that taking a piece of the Learning Resource from one of the CC packages and using it with their other teaching materials would be extremely helpful Most of the teachers who did not see the approaches as extremely helpful, saw that the packages could be useful for them in limited cases like when giving homework or teaching an online course. The survey results indicate that teachers see the interoperability between LORs and LMSs created by the specifications SCORM and CC as useful for their everyday teaching – especially when the packaging allows them to alter the content after it was uploaded or selecting only bits of the package before uploading to LMS. IMS Common Cartridge specifies this interoperability.
Part of the objective of this research was not only to find out whether or not the teachers could see content packaging useful, but to find out if they could actually manage working with these standards with the ICT skills that they possess. Our initial hypothesis was that the tools supporting these standards have not yet developed enough to be easy enough for the teachers to use. However, according to the survey, normal web pages were unsurprisingly the easiest to use. 75% of the teachers found using entire SCORM packages really easy or reasonable, whereas they admitted having some problems when using CC packages, whether it was the package as a whole, or taking parts of it. However, interestingly none of the teachers evaluated that any of these methods as impossible to use in their every day teaching (see Fig. 1). 45 % 40 % 35 % 30 % 25 % 20 % 15 % 10 % 5 % 0 %
Reasonable
Some problems
Quite Complicated
Impossible to use in everyday teaching Using normal web page Using a SCORM package Using an IMS Common Cartridge package
Taking parts of an IMS Common Cartridge package Fig.1. “How easy/difficult was it to create a lesson plan...”. This study indicates that even though SCORM packages might not be the preferred solution for teachers, the longer period of development seems to have helped it to be easier to use than IMS Common Cartridge packages, which was not supported by Moodle before the spring of 2010. There seems to be a need to develop the tools for these standards to be more usable for teachers in the future. However this result would also indicate that the teachers did not like the easiest option best, which would suggest that they were able to look beyond the interfaces of the players into the ideas of interoperability and the standards.
Part of testing SCORM and IMS Common Cartridge with users, we looked at the opinions regarding the technical interfaces which show the contents of the packages. Teachers were asked to think of three typical use cases from their everyday teaching life: A) Showing Educational Resources to students in their class rooms B) Teaching an online course C) Giving online homework/extra credit work to the students 60 % 50 % 40 % 30 % 20 % 10 % 0 %
Web page
SCORM Player view
Common Cartridge player view
SCORM package in
Moodle
IMS Common I think they
Cartridge are basically package in the same and
Moodle I don't care which one I use ...you are just showing the materials to the students in your class? ...you are going to teach an entire online course? ...you are giving them online homework/extra credit work?
Fig. 2. Interface preferences of teachers in three use scenarios.
Overall, Fig. 2 shows that when it comes to just showing Resources in the classroom, that is easiest to do from a normal webpage, or even that it does not matter so much what the interface is. However, when you are creating an online course or giving homework to students, normal web page is no longer enough. Half of the teachers thought that using IMS Common Cartridge packages in Moodle would be the ideal way to teach online or give assignments in the form of homework or extra credit to the students. In the interviews with teachers it became obvious that Learning Management Systems like Moodle are widely used in schools and therefore standards that create interoperability between content and these LMSs, have additional value for teachers.
If we want students to study independently, you can give them a SCORM package that they unzip and then use. But if you want, for example, to integrate a package in Moodle, because in Portugal we use Moodle a lot, probably Common Cartridge is good, because we can prepare everything and import it into Moodle." (ICT Teacher from Portugal) “
After the workshop, teachers were asked, what would they prefer to use after learning about the functionalities of SCORM and IMS Common Cartridge packages and interoperability between LORs and LMSs. Most of the teachers ended up preferring IMS Common Cartridge packages (87%), leaving only 7% to prefer normal web pages and 9% to prefer SCORM packages. This result supports the finding that teachers were genuinely excited about the prospects of IMS Common Cartridge after one day of training and lesson plan making. The teachers also seemed to support the solution that was the most adaptable to their own needs rather than the solution that was easiest to use. 5 Conclusions Open educational materials and other web-based resources lead to new opportunities for sharing and re-using content. [21] European teachers are seldom aware of the content packaging standards SCORM and IMS Common Cartridge but understand the added value of re-using Educational Resources in their everyday teaching.
In this paper, we have presented the teachers’ view on the interoperability between LORs and LMSs while using SCORM and CC standards. Teachers showed special interest towards CC packages and in particular their use in Moodle system. In detail, the teachers enjoyed the possibility of editing a package, taking some elements and mixing them with their own teaching Resources very much in the same way as they do in with the non-digital Resources in their classrooms. CC supports this kind of interoperability, which is the key finding of this research as it aims to solve one of the biggest problems in the field [22]. In this study, the teachers said that they were more willing to use a solution that would be suitable for them than the solution which seemed the easiest to use. Also no teacher believes that packaging standards are impossible to use in everyday teaching, even though they can see some problems and complications in the process. After a standard is finalized, it takes a long time before tools are developed that actually deliver the functionality to end users in a way that is useful and usable [23]. Hence, for the success of the standard among users, it is crucial to develop CC tools and improve their usability.
We also need to recognize that many teachers still struggle to obtain the basic IT skills which are more essential for their day-to-day work even if these teachers were optimistic about content packaging – teachers with lower ICT skills might have a different point of view. In our opinion, training in content packaging standards may be something that remains of interest to a fairly small number of European teachers. However, it is not imperative for the teachers to know that these standards exist. What is vital for them is that the process of lesson preparation using Educational Resources will be smooth and quick. Further development of these standards and the tools around them is the way of assuring re-use of Educational Resources.
Acknowledgements This work has been done in the project “ASPECT: Adopting Standards and Specifications for Educational Content” (http://aspect.eun.org/), funded by the European Union, reference number 417008. The authors wish to thank José Moura Carvalho, Pascal Craeye, Delia Oprea, Svetlana Kubilinskiene, Ingo Dahn, Joris Klerkx, Lars Ingesman, Anicet Yalaho and Alenka Kavcic for their help in organizing the workshops and setting up the tests. The authors also wish to acknowledge the present work could not have been carried out without the help and enthusiasm of the 44 teachers from Belgium, Lithuania, Portugal and Romania.
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