ICOPER Project - Deliverable 4.3 ISURE: Recommendations for extending effective reuse, embodied in the ICOPER CD&R

The purpose of this document is to capture the ideas and recommendations, within and beyond the ICOPER community, concerning the reuse of learning content, including appropriate methodologies as well as established strategies for remixing and repurposing reusable resources. The overall remit of this work focuses on describing the key issues that are related to extending effective reuse embodied in such materials. The objective of this investigation, is to support the reuse of learning content whilst considering how it could be originally created and then adapted with that ‘reuse’ in mind. In these circumstances a survey on effective reuse best practices can often provide an insight into the main challenges and benefits involved in the process of creating, remixing and repurposing what we are now designating as Reusable Learning Content (RLC). Several key issues are analysed in this report: Recommendations for extending effective reuse, building upon those described in the previous related deliverables 4.1 Content Development Methodologies and 4.2 Quality Control and Web 2.0 technologies. The findings of this current survey, however, provide further recommendations and strategies for using and developing this reusable learning content. In the spirit of ‘reuse’, this work also aims to serve as a foundation for the many different stakeholders and users within, and beyond, the ICOPER community who are interested in reusing learning resources. This report analyses a variety of information. Evidence has been gathered from a qualitative survey that has focused on the technical and pedagogical recommendations suggested by a Special Interest Group (SIG) on the most innovative practices with respect to new media content authors (for content authoring or modification) and course designers (for unit creation). This extended community includes a wider collection of OER specialists. This collected evidence, in the form of video and audio interviews, has also been represented as multimedia assets potentially helpful for learning and useful as learning content in the New Media Space (See section 4 for further details). Section 2 of this report introduces the concept of reusable learning content and reusability. Section 3 discusses an application created by the ICOPER community to enhance the opportunities for developing reusable content. Section 4 of this report provides an overview of the methodology used for the qualitative survey. Section 5 presents a summary of thematic findings. Section 6 highlights a list of recommendations for effective reuse of educational content, which were derived from thematic analysis described in Appendix A. Finally, section 7 summarises the key outcomes of this work

Learner-centred Accessibility for Interoperable Web-based Educational Systems

This paper describes the need for an information model and specifications that support a new strategy for delivering accessible computer-based resources to learners based on their specific needs and preferences in the circumstances in which they are operating. The strategy augments the universal accessibility of resources model to enable systems to focus on individual learners and their particular accessibility needs and preferences. A set of specifications known as the AccessForAll specifications is proposed

Requirements for an Adaptive Multimedia Presentation System with Contextual Supplemental Support Media

Investigations into the requirements for a practical adaptive multimedia presentation system have led the writers to propose the use of a video segmentation process that provides contextual supplementary updates produced by users. Supplements consisting of tailored segments are dynamically inserted into previously stored material in response to questions from users. A proposal for the use of this technique is presented in the context of personalisation within a Virtual Learning Environment. During the investigation, a brief survey of advanced adaptive approaches revealed that adaptation may be enhanced by use of manually generated metadata, automated or semi-automated use of metadata by stored context dependent ontology hierarchies that describe the semantics of the learning domain. The use of neural networks or fuzzy logic filtering is a technique for future investigation. A prototype demonstrator is under construction

Defining adaptation in a generic multi layer model : CAM: the GRAPPLE conceptual adaptation model

Authoring of Adaptive Hypermedia is a difficult and time consuming task. Reference models like LAOS and AHAM separate adaptation and content in different layers. Systems like AHA! offer graphical tools based on these models to allow authors to define adaptation without knowing any adaptation language. The adaptation that can be defined using such tools is still limited. Authoring systems like MOT are more flexible, but usability of adaptation specification is low. This paper proposes a more generic model which allows the adaptation to be defined in an arbitrary number of layers, where adaptation is expressed in terms of relationships between concepts. This model allows the creation of more powerful yet easier to use graphical authoring tools. This paper presents the structure of the Conceptual Adaptation Models used in adaptive applications created within the GRAPPLE adaptive learning environment, and their representation in a graphical authoring tool

Defining adaptation in a generic multi layer model : CAM: the GRAPPLE conceptual adaptation model

Authoring of Adaptive Hypermedia is a difficult and time consuming task. Reference models like LAOS and AHAM separate adaptation and content in different layers. Systems like AHA! offer graphical tools based on these models to allow authors to define adaptation without knowing any adaptation language. The adaptation that can be defined using such tools is still limited. Authoring systems like MOT are more flexible, but usability of adaptation specification is low. This paper proposes a more generic model which allows the adaptation to be defined in an arbitrary number of layers, where adaptation is expressed in terms of relationships between concepts. This model allows the creation of more powerful yet easier to use graphical authoring tools. This paper presents the structure of the Conceptual Adaptation Models used in adaptive applications created within the GRAPPLE adaptive learning environment, and their representation in a graphical authoring tool

Developing front-end Web 2.0 technologies to access services, content and things in the future Internet

The future Internet is expected to be composed of a mesh of interoperable web services accessible from all over the web. This approach has not yet caught on since global user?service interaction is still an open issue. This paper states one vision with regard to next-generation front-end Web 2.0 technology that will enable integrated access to services, contents and things in the future Internet. In this paper, we illustrate how front-ends that wrap traditional services and resources can be tailored to the needs of end users, converting end users into prosumers (creators and consumers of service-based applications). To do this, we propose an architecture that end users without programming skills can use to create front-ends, consult catalogues of resources tailored to their needs, easily integrate and coordinate front-ends and create composite applications to orchestrate services in their back-end. The paper includes a case study illustrating that current user-centred web development tools are at a very early stage of evolution. We provide statistical data on how the proposed architecture improves these tools. This paper is based on research conducted by the Service Front End (SFE) Open Alliance initiative

A story environment for learning object annotation and collection : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Computer Science at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

With the increase in computer power, network bandwidth and availability, e-learning is used more and more widely. In practice e-learning can be applied in a variety of ways, such as providing electronic resources to support teaching and learning, developing computer based tutoring programs or building computer supported collaborative learning environments. Nowadays e-learning becomes significantly important because it can improve the quality of learning through using interactive computers, online communications and information systems in ways that other teaching methods cannot achieve. The important advantage of e-learning is that it offers learners a large amount of sharable and reusable learning resources. The current approaches such as Internet search and learning object repository does not effectively help users to search for appropriate learning objects. The original story concept introduces a new semantic layer between collections of learning objects and learning material. The basic idea of the story concept is to add an interpretative, semantically rich layer, informally called 'Story' between learning objects and learning material that links learning objects according to specific themes and subjects (Heinrich & Andres, 2003a). One motivation behind this approach is to put a more focused, semantic layer on top of untargeted metadata that are commonly used to describe a single learning object. Speaking from an e-learning context the stories build on learning objects and become information resources for learning material. The overall aim of this project was to design and build a story environment to realize the above story concept. The development of the story environment includes story metadata, story environment components, the story browsing and authoring processes, and tools involved in story browsing and authoring. The story concept suggests different types of metadata should be used in a story. This project developed those different metadata specifications to support story environment. Two prototypes of tools have been designed and implemented in this project to allow users to evaluate the story concept and story environment. The story browser helps story readers to read the story narrative and look at a story from different perspectives. The story authoring tool is used by the story authors to author a story. The future work of this project has been identified in the area of adding features of current tools, user testing and further implementation of the story environment

Continuous use of authoring for adaptive educational hypermedia : a long-term case study

Adaptive educational hypermedia allows lessons to be personalized according to the needs of the learner. However, to achieve this, content must be split into stand-alone fragments that can be processed by a course personalization engine. Authoring content for this process is still a difficult activity, and it is essential for the popularization of adaptive educational hypermedia that authoring is simplified, so that the various stakeholders in the educational process, students, teachers, administrators, etc. can easily work with such systems. Thus, real-world testing with these stakeholders is essential. In this paper we describe recent extensions and improvements we have implemented in the My Online Teacher MOT3.0 adaptation authoring tool set, based on an initial set of short-term evaluations, and then focus on describing a long-term usage and assessment of the system