Girardin, F., Ayman, M., & Josep, B. (2007). Towards a practitioner-centered approach to the design of e-learning competence editors. In T. Navarrete, J. Blat & R. Koper (Eds.), Proceedings of the 3rd TENComptence Open workshop 'Current Research on IMS Learning Design and Lifelong Competence Development Infrastucture' (pp. 99-104). June, 20-21, 2007, Barcelona, Spain: TENCompetence.This article reports on the background research on requirements and current approaches to editors for learning curriculum designers. First we take a critique look at the state of the art in the domain of learning activity editors. We then look back in the information visualization and interaction literature to discuss the design challenged of such tools. From these current theories and applied works we define a set a rules that are crucial for the design of CDP
editors based developed on top of complex e-learning models. Finally, we exemplify the set of design rules with a prototype integrating tightly coupled
map-based and Gantt chart views.The work on this publication has been sponsored by the TENCompetence Integrated Project that is funded by the European Commission's 6th Framework Programme, priority IST/Technology Enhanced Learning. Contract 027087 [http://www.tencompetence.org

Ayman, Moghnieh

Girardin, Fabien

Josep, Blat

English

DSpace at Open Universiteit Nederland

 
   
 
   
   
 
   
   Int. J. , Vol. x, No. x, xxxx 1    
 
   Copyright © 200x Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. 
 
 
   
   
 
   
   
 
   
       
 
Towards a practitioner-centered approach to the 
design of e-learning competence editors 
Fabien Girardin, Ayman Moghnieh, Josep Blat 
Pompeu Fabra University, Department of Technologies, 
Passeig de Circumval·ació, 8 
08003 Barcelona, Spain 
E-mail:{Fabien.Girardin, Ayman.Moghnieh, Josep.Blat}@upf.edu 
Abstract: This article reports on the background research on requirements and 
current approaches to editors for learning curriculum designers. First we take a 
critique look at the state of the art in the domain of learning activity editors. We 
then look back in the information visualization and interaction literature to 
discuss the design challenged of such tools. From these current theories and 
applied works we define a set a rules that are crucial for the design of CDP 
editors based developed on top of complex e-learning models. Finally, we 
exemplify the set of design rules with a prototype integrating tightly coupled 
map-based and Gantt chart views. 
Keywords: e-learning, user-centered design, learning editors, competence 
development 
 
1. Introduction 
In our largely knowledge-based society there is a growing need for continuing 
professional development, in order to deal with the evolving character of professional 
knowledge and technologies. This leads to the creation of curriculums that are not limited 
to formal learning activities that lead to certificates or degrees, but that also include non-
formal learning activities. We define this collection of learning activities as Competence 
Development Programmes (CDPs) that are aimed at maintaining or increasing the level of 
a worker’s competence are generally. In order to support these activities, a technological 
infrastructure is required for storing, organizing and sharing the various bodies of 
knowledge; in addition, this infrastructure should provide lifelong learners with learning 
objects that fit their individual background knowledge, learning objectives, and other 
needs. Technological support for learning activities is not a new concept; a substantial 
amount of research has been carried out in the field of adaptive and intelligent Web-based 
educational systems (Brusilovsky and Peylo, 2003). However, the broader field of 
competence development poses several additional challenges and requirements such as 
the development of positioning, navigation and learning support services. Moreover, tool 
to support the practitioners who create and maintain CDPs must still be deployed. So far, 
very little work has be spent on transforming the complexity of learning path model 
(Koper and Tattersall, 2005) into usable tools for practitioners and learners. This paper 
proposes to move towards a practitioner-centered approach to the design of e-learning 
competence editors by first defining clear and intuitive guidelines to meet the challenges 
 
   
 
   
   
 
   
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opened by the underlying complexity of e-learning models. Then, we present a prototype 
that will be used by curriculum designers for positioning their material and for creating 
tentative learning paths, as well as by curriculum planner  (e.g. learner) for planning 
learning routes. 
This article is structured as follow. First we describe previous works in the domain of 
learning management systems. We compare them with a list a set of requirements for the 
design of competence editors. Then, we provide a theoretical framework on the 
challenges in the design of interactive visualization system. From that we define a set of 
rules that we applied to the design of our prototypical competence development program 
editor. We believe that these rules can help the development of more user-centered tools 
for data-rich e-learning environments. 
2. Related works 
The domain of learning activity editors has been fruitful these past years. We reviewed 3 
of the most compelling research works to understand their features and limitations. First, 
LAMS  (Learning Activity Management System)1 is a system for creating and managing 
sequences of Learning Activities. Its authoring tool allows teachers to create and modify 
sequences of learning activities and store these in the sequence repository), and 
monitoring (where a teacher can select a sequence from the sequence repository, assign a 
group of learners, activate the sequence for learners, and then monitor their progress). It 
features a very simple path creation without providing requirements in the relations. 
Moreover, it disposes to only a limited set of types of activities and resources in its 
toolkit. 
Moodle2 is a Course management system (CMS) for producing web-based courses. In 
this platform, a teacher has full control over all settings for a course and its management. 
He/she has a disposable a flexible array of course activities such as forums, quizzes, 
glossaries, resources, choices, surveys, assignments, chats, workshops. The learning path 
is ordered according to the course format by week, by topic or a discussion-focused social 
format. The social aspect and simplicity of the platform made it very successful. 
As part of the RELOAD project (Reload, 2005), Phillip Beauvoir and Paul Sharples 
of the University of Bolton have developed the Learning Design Editor. It supports the 
full IMS Learrning Design specifications for Levels A, B and C. In a project manager 
view, learning planners can organize their Learning Designs. This tool does not carry a 
very intuitive sense of creating learning path and sequencing activities. It is probably due 
to its purpose of staying at very close to the IMS-LD complex specifications. 
3. Design challenges 
The design and use of interactive information visualization tools such as e-learning 
editors have been widely studies in the past. As advised by (Schneiderrman et al, 2000) 
visual tools should be designed to be both displays and search tools at the same time. 
                                                
1 http://www.lamsinternational.com/ 
2 http://www.moodle.org/ 
 
   
 
   
   
 
   
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Some visual schemes generate only one view per information space, but allow the user to 
zoom in and out, rotate, or in general change his/her own viewpoint on the image 
resultant from the visualization. This approach to visualizing information spaces inhibits 
searching and browsing by making it difficult for users to isolate, identify, and analyze 
parts or aspects of the information space. Users should be allowed to customize and 
control the manner that the tool at hands addresses information spaces. Moreover, users 
should be able to specify which part of the information space to visualize in a dynamic 
manner, making browsing are re-querying information spaces a process of moving 
between different views and viewpoints at the same time. The latter approach is not only 
based on the fact that tools should allow free browsing, but also on the general need of 
users to identify relations within the information space and between information spaces as 
well. This engenders the necessity to represent a number of information spaces 
simultaneously within the same visualization or within a number of independent windows 
with tiling or any other design choice that developers might commit to answer this need. 
On the other hand, not all information spaces are complete or closed sets, some of them 
remain open or dynamic while others suffer from non-rectifiable gaps. Gaps in 
information spaces should be visualized and made noticeable for the users in order to ease 
their identification and isolation. Some visualization schemes have chosen to abstract 
such gaps in favor of the overall presentation or the look of the visual metaphor, but it’s 
rather vital for the study of such gaps that the latter be visualized in relational context 
with the rest of the information space. Finding what is missing in the information space is 
as important as finding what is actually there. 
4. Interaction design 
The efficiency of tools directly derive from the ability of humans to assimilate them and 
work around them, with these applications and schemes tailored in respect to the human 
cognitive process and taking account of its limitations and powers designers can hope to 
maximize their utility. A visualization that overwhelms human sensors will only frustrate 
its users whom will become largely prompt to erroneous behaviour and discontinuity with 
the information’s context. The failure to take human physiological properties into 
considerations may strongly be the explanation behind the failure of many complex 
information schemes to achieve high usability levels.  
Interactive visual tools, like the majority of software applications, may be dependent 
on the human environment in which they are deployed. In some environment, users don’t 
have the time to decipher complex information metaphors designed to represent large 
information spaces, while in others users may be totally dependent on their interaction 
with the information application to succeed in their work or quest. In short, understanding 
the properties of the targeted human environment and how humans behave 
psychologically in that environment becomes an issue of moderate if not high priority to 
the designers of visualization schemes and to those developing software application in 
general. However, being a special type of software, informative applications are not 
generally built only to cover the users’ need for a set of functionalities and are rarely 
developed to pertain to a closed set of tasks. These applications rather aim at making 
information spaces accessible and manipulative, and hence shed more importance on 
understanding the behavior of users within and around the information spaces visualized.  
Therefore, formulating a good understanding of the users’ behaviour around certain sets 
 
   
 
   
   
 
   
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of information spaces facility the design of schemes that afford some beneficial actions 
and inhibit others.  
5. Our approach 
As discussed earlier, we are challenged to invent powerful information visualization 
methods, while offering smoother integration of technology with task. This section 
summarizes our prototype facing this difficult challenge in the context of e-learning. The 
literature and state of the art review on learning activity editors, information visualization 
and interaction design revealed the issues we intend to tackle in our prototype. In the 
context of this work we believe important to follow the information seeking mantra 
extended with a direct manipulation approach. In consequence, we set rules for 
visualization and interaction of a CDP editor (Table 1) 
 
Table 1: design rules 
 
Visualization 
Integrated system Essential tools and views in a single integrated frame to preserve 
spatial continuity 
High interactivity Immediate feedback for all actions to preserve temporal continuity and 
to encourage exploration 
Different views Emphasize different aspects and perspectives 
Tightly linked views Changes in one view are reflected in the others 
 
Interaction 
Probing View more details about a learning object and to get an understanding 
of the relationships between the different views. 
Selecting to mark objects that are of short-term interest 
 
 
In consequence we developed a design approach to integrate these rules. We based our 
solution on the integration of tightly linked views using a map-based visualization and a 
Gantt chart. 
 
   
 
   
   
 
   
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Figure 1:  Screenshot of the prototype showing the integration of the tightly coupled map-based and 
Gantt chart 
6. Map-based visualization 
This first attempts lacked of strong metaphors to explore and navigation the information 
contained in a competence development program and a learning path. Therefore, we 
propose to use of the human sense of orientation to compose and manage Competence 
Development Programs. The proposition is to use the physical world (maps) metaphor for 
a learner to browse in a world of competences and learning object. The cities are replaced 
by learning objects (e.g. modules, courses, programs). The mountains, the roads and the 
rivers are here thematic and phases, which divide the learning object.  
We believe that in two-dimensional information such as maps, users are trying to 
grasp adjacency or navigate paths, whereas in graph-structured information, users are 
trying to understand parent/child/sibling relationships. Moreover maps represent what a 
simple tree structure cannot show and they allow the navigation within the different level 
of granularity of information. 
7. Gantt Chart 
A 2-dimensional map do not well render a time scale. On the other hand, Gantt charts are 
visualization tools to control and administer activities to complete a project. Therefore, 
we believe it could be well applied to CDP and follow our integrated systems and 
different views rules defined previously. 
 
   
 
   
   
 
   
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8. Conclusion 
In summary, our approach uses a first 2D maps visual representation for content 
navigation and exploration and learning path edition. Second it the representation of the 
relations in time with the units of learning relies on a basic Gantt chart. The whole 
information visualization systems is integrated system with high interactivities 
(contextual on the maps). It uses a well-known metaphor of space to get detailed 
information on a selected item (unit of learning). 
Acknowledgements 
The work on this chapter has been sponsored by the TENCompetence Integrated Project 
that is funded by the European Commission's 6th Framework Programme, priority 
IST/Technology Enhanced Learning. Contract 027087 (www.tencompetence.org). 
References 
Brusilovsky, P. & Peylo, G. Adaptive and Intelligent Web-based Educational Systems. Intl. J. 
Artificial Intelligence in Education. 2003, pp. 156-169. 
IMSLD (2003). IMS Learning Design. Information Model, Best Practice and Implementation 
Guide, Binding document, Schemas. Retrieved November 21, 2006, from 
http://www.imsglobal.org/learningdesign/index.cfm 
Koper, R., Tattersall, C. (eds.) (2005). Learning Design: a handbook on modeling and 
implementing network-based education & training. Heidelberg: Springer Verlag. 
Schneiderman, B., Feldman, D., Rose, A., and Grau, X. F. (2000). Visualizing digital library search 
results with categorical and hierarchical axes. In Proceedings of the Fifth ACM Conference on 
Digital Libraries (San Antonio, Texas, United States, June 02 - 07, 2000). DL '00. ACM Press, 
New York, NY, 57-66. Stuart Card et al. Readings in Information Visualization, Using vision 
to think. Morgan Kaufmann 
Reload (2005). Reusable e-Learning Object Authoring & Delivery Project, retrieved on October 27, 
2005 from  http://www.reload.ac.uk/.  
 
 
 
 
 


Towards a practitioner-centered approach to the design of e-learning competence editors

This article reports on the background research on requirements and current approaches to editors for learning curriculum designers. First we take a critique look at the state of the art in the domain of learning activity editors. We then look back in the information visualization and interaction literature to discuss the design challenged of such tools. From these current theories and applied works we define a set a rules that are crucial for the design of CDP editors based developed on top of complex e-learning models. Finally, we exemplify the set of design rules with a prototype integrating tightly coupled map-based and Gantt chart views

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Towards a practitioner-centered approach to the design of e-learning competence editors

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