There are many situations in the e-Learning experiences
that can compromise the success of the courses. Many
times simple reasons are great enough to motivate people
to abandon them. For example, if someone does not
execute a programmed activity inside the defined window
of time, it can compromise the rest of the course to that
person. In such situations it would be important that the
teacher knew about the situation in useful time, to be able
to take any corrective action.
Another example could be presented, involving the
professor and the learners. Let us assume that an activity
A2 is programmed to be executed by the learners and that
it depends on the previous knowledge of the result of the
evaluation of a work submitted by the learners to the
teacher (activity A1). If the teacher doesn’t inform the
learners about their classification in useful time, that can
compromise the execution of the activity A2.
It seems to be necessary to use mechanisms of automatic
management, in real time, of the envolvement of each
participant in a distance learning course using LMS
(Learning Management System). Such a functionality
allows the detection of deviations to the scheduled
activities planned for each actor. If it is the case, the
referred mechanism can initiate the process of sending
notifications to the relevant entities, enabling the
correction of these deviations.
Several organizations and consortiuns, involving the
industry, governmental institutions and universities, are
developing projects of standardization. It seemed
important to us to see how the referred aspects were
covered by those projects, and to perceive how it could be
possible to articulate our work with the ones that are
available from these organizations and consortiuns.
This article describes the work that the authors are
developing towards the specification of a layer for
real-time management of user interactions with LMSs,
during the operationalization of a course, and also
includes a management meta-data model, related to that
management layer