Structuring and merging Distributed Content

New techniques in software development can be used to build e-learning environment. In fact, software components form the technical basis of computer systems and applications in distance education. Component providers regularly supply new components that cover some aspect of applications in this domain. Studying the aggregation of such components in this context is the focus of this paper, and also of the LORNET (Learning Object Repository NETwork) project. We propose to add to software components various metadata, which are then used to categorize the components and the forms of aggregation into which components can participate. These activities form the first phases of a software component aggregation process. The definition of a systematic process supporting engineers responsible of building applications from software components is our ultimate goal, and the work described here is a necessary step towards this goal.

Proceedings of the Virtual Conference: IADIS …, 2006

Alternate track papers & posters of the 13th international conference on World Wide Web - WWW Alt. '04, 2004

This paper describes one solution to the problem of how to select sequence, and link Web resources into a coherent, focused organization for instruction that addresses a user's immediate and focused learning need. A system is described that automatically generates individualized learning paths from a repository of XML Web resources. Each Web resource has an XML Learning Object Metadata (LOM) description consisting of General, Educational, and Classification metadata. Dynamic assembly of these learning objects is based on the relative match of the learning object content and metadata to the learner's needs, preferences, context, and constraints. Learning objects are connected into coherent paths based on their LOM topic classifications and the proximity of these topics in a Resource Description Framework (RDF) graph. An instructional sequencing policy specifies how to arrange the objects on the path into a particular learning sequence. The system has been deployed and evaluated within a corporate setting.

The Semantic Web: …, 2005

Recent advances in e-learning techonologies and web services make realistic the idea that courseware for personalized e-learning can be built by dynamic composition of distributed learning objects, available as web-services. To be assembled in au automated way, learning objects metadata have to be exploited, associating unambiguous, semantically rich, descriptions, to be used for such an automated composition. To this aim, we present a framework and algorithms for semantic-based learning objects composition, fully compliant with Semantic Web technologies. In particular our metadata refer to ontologies built on a subset of OWL-DL, and we show how novel inference services in Description Logics can be used to compose dynamically, in an approximated -but computationally tractable-way learning resources, given a requested courseware description.

2010

Abstract Making learning objects available is critical to reuse learning resources. Making content transparently available and providing added value to different stakeholders is among the goals of the European Commission's eContentplus programme. This paper analyses standards and protocols relevant for making learning objects accessible in distributed data provider networks. Types of metadata associated with learning objects and methods for metadata generation are discussed.

2009

In this paper we present COLORS an open source cooperative learning object repository system. Our aim is to provide an experimental platform for e-learning research that can be used also as a conventional learning object repository. In fact, there is a need for an infrastructure that must be easy to install, user-friendly with no especial training and extensible in term of functionalities to experiment research findings. Since our fundamental research is about learning objects, we need to have an access of a significant amount of learning objects. Furthermore we have a need to cooperate with other partners to build together this experimental corpus of learning objects. In this context, our approach is based on the concept of "repositories' network". In fact, our system allows different institutions to cooperate and to share together their learning objects by connecting their COLORS repositories by the use of a coordinator. The system architecture and functionalities are presented and commented. Moreover we show in this paper how this system is flexible and useful for a real and a wide share of content as well as an experimental infrastructure. Furthermore, we underline its compliance with both the IMS content package specification 1.1.3 and the IEEE learning object metadata standard.

2006

2006

Proceedings of the 2005 InSITE Conference, 2005

The definition used for learning objects considers them as any digital entity which can be used, reused or referenced during a technology-mediated learning process. Nowadays, this concept has became essential to the development of pedagogical content to be used in large scale educational projects to which are engaged a wide number of educational agents - students, teachers and faculty staff. Guaranteeing reusability of pedagogical content allows its use on different contexts. Therefore, a repository of learning objects that has a well-defined metadata structure can be used to customize learning processes. Recent researches on Learning Object have been contributing on the search of patterns for instructional content development, in order to make them adaptive, generic, portable and scalable enough to improve their potential for reusability. Besides, a wide range of virtual learning environments has been proposed to support these learning objects, with their properties and characteris...

Proceedings of the 2005 InSITE Conference, 2005

Learning objects are constructed and used by a community during an undefined period of time and formatted as digital entities on diverse document types to be used, reused or referenced during a technology-mediated learning process. A Learning Content Management System (LCMS) is needed to their storage and retrieval. Electronic document management, data warehouse and data mining techniques will be presented. Effective management of a really big repository of Learning Objects by a community on a large network needs a system that facilitates the right access to the right document by its content and not only by title, author or other usual indexing fields. Learning Objects must be found by their full content and indexed and customized according to each user or user groups’ necessities. The main indexing and retrieving techniques will be discussed and a solution will be presented. Different learning objects can be stored on a common repository and duplication must be avoided. To fulfill ...