Reusing and sharing learning designs in higher education

This paper discusses the emerging need and opportunities for the development of representations and forms for learning designs, the activities a teacher plans to engage learners in learning settings. The paper argues that effective teaching practice, especially that involving ICT, should be able to be described and represented in ways that facilitate sharing and reuse. The paper discusses the ways in which descriptions of learning activities and practices can be described and stored so that they might be accessed and used by others. It describes a Carrick Institute project which seeks to develop strategies and resources that will provide answers to these questions and goals for the sharing and reuse of quality ICT-based learning settings

EML and LMS related standard

IMS Global Learning Consortium, Inc. (IMS) is developing and promoting open specifications for facilitating online distributed learning activities such as locating and using educational content, tracking learner progress, reporting learner performance, and exchanging student records between administrative systems. The IMS project defines the following separate specifications. · Learning Resource Meta-data (p. 9). This is a specification of meta-data used to identify “learning resources”. · Content packaging (p. 13). A specification of how to assemble and distribute content in “packages”. · Resource identifiers (p. 17). This defines persistent, location independent resource identifiers. · Question & Test Interoperability (QTI) (p. 19). This defines the structure of questions and tests, and the grouping of these. · Enterprise (p. 33). This defines the way information on the learning 'enterprise' (instructional processes) is shared. · Learner information packaging (p. 37). This specifies how to record and share information on the learner. · Reusable Competency Definitions (p. 40). An information model for describing, referencing and exchanging definitions of competencies, primarily in the context of online and distributed learning. · Simple Sequencing (p. 42). This defines how to associate sequencing information with content packs (p. 13) and its default behaviour. Each specification has (or will have) at least three main parts: · Information model — an abstract description of the area modelled · Binding — binding to a particular language. For all specifications XML is the language of choice · Best practice — explanation of how to apply the model

Quality assurance and e‐learning: blue skies and pragmatism

This paper considers the role of quality assurance in e‐learning; reflecting on the conditions necessary for successful e‐learning. It reviews some of the current international work on quality assurance in this area and goes on to consider the ways in which the quality of a process or activity can be assessed—focusing on the use of benchmarking and specification of standards

Managing Knowledge and Technology to Foster Innovation at The Ohio State University Medical Center

Biomedical knowledge is expanding at an unprecedented rate—one that is unlikely to slow anytime in the future. While the volume and scope of this new knowledge poses significant organizational challenges, it creates tremendous opportunities to release and direct its power to the service of significant goals. The authors explain how the Center for Knowledge Management at The Ohio State University Medical Center, created during the academic year 2003–04, is doing just that by integrating numerous resource-intensive, technology-based initiatives— including personnel, services and infrastructure, digital repositories, data sets, mobile computing devices, high-tech patient simulators, computerized testing, and interactive multimedia—in a way that enables the center to provide information tailored to the needs of students, faculty and staff on the medical center campus and its surrounding health sciences colleges. The authors discuss how discovering, applying, and sharing new knowledge, information assets, and technologies in this way is a collaborative process. This process creates open-ended opportunities for innovation and a roadmap for working toward seamless integration, synergy, and substantial enhancement of the academic medical center’s research, educational, and clinical mission areas

A Personalized e-Learning Framework

With the advent of web based learning and content management tools, e-learning has become a matured learning paradigm, and changed the trend of instructional design from instructor centric learning paradigm to learner centric approach, and evolved from “one instructional design for many learners” to “one design for one learner” or “many designs for one learner”. Currently, there are mature technologies that can lead to the construction of a personalized e-learning environment, namely: Ontology, Semantic web, learning objects, and content management systems. In this paper, a personalized e-learning framework is proposed, where learning objects are classified according to their suitability for the different types and styles of learning, and where these learning objects are offered to individual learners according to their personal preferences, skills and needs

Learning objects: A practical definition

The author proposes that a good working definition of LOs should be used: digital objects that have a stated educational purpose; and digital objects that are marked for specific educational purposes. LOs can be defined as any reusable digital resource that is encapsulated in a lesson or assemblage of lessons grouped in units, modules, courses, and even programmes. A lesson can be defined as a piece of instruction, normally including a learning purpose or purposes

Adaptive Digital Resource Modeling as Service Provider and Consumer

International audienceThe increase in the production of heterogeneous and multi-source digital data over last years raises several issues regarding their management and use. Hence, users can face some difficulties in selecting the adequate digital resources and combining them to reach their objectives in a given activity. In this paper, we focus on digital resources design and management in order to enhance their retrieval, interoperability, adaptation and collaboration within an adaptive system. In practical terms, our work consists in a new method for digital resource design and management capable of enhancing their usability. It relies on RESTful web service-based methodology and platform thinking approach. We have implemented our method in an interactive and adaptive PLE to assist researchers in using and managing their digital resources, called PRISE for PeRsonal Interactive research Smart Environment. We have also undertaken some experiments with PRISE platform in our laboratory. The result showed that modeling digital resources with RESTful and platform thinking concept enhances digital resource usability in terms of retrieving, interoperability, adaptation and collaboration

Patterns of Learning Object Reuse in the Connexions Repository

Doctoral Dissertation abstract: Since the term learning object was first published, there has been either an explicit or implicit expectation of reuse. There has also been a lot of speculation about why learning objects are, or are not, reused. This study quantitatively examined the actual amount and type of learning object use, to include reuse, modification, and translation, within a single open educational resource repositoryâConnexions. The results indicate that about a quarter of used objects are subsequently reused, modified, or translated. While these results are repository specific, they represent an important first step in providing an empirical evaluation of the frequency and some reasons for reuse, as well as establishing metrics and terminology for future studies

Personalisation and recommender systems in digital libraries

Widespread use of the Internet has resulted in digital libraries that are increasingly used by diverse communities of users for diverse purposes and in which sharing and collaboration have become important social elements. As such libraries become commonplace, as their contents and services become more varied, and as their patrons become more experienced with computer technology, users will expect more sophisticated services from these libraries. A simple search function, normally an integral part of any digital library, increasingly leads to user frustration as user needs become more complex and as the volume of managed information increases. Proactive digital libraries, where the library evolves from being passive and untailored, are seen as offering great potential for addressing and overcoming these issues and include techniques such as personalisation and recommender systems. In this paper, following on from the DELOS/NSF Working Group on Personalisation and Recommender Systems for Digital Libraries, which met and reported during 2003, we present some background material on the scope of personalisation and recommender systems in digital libraries. We then outline the working group’s vision for the evolution of digital libraries and the role that personalisation and recommender systems will play, and we present a series of research challenges and specific recommendations and research priorities for the field