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2007 | Buch

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E-Learning Networked Environments and Architectures

A Knowledge Processing Perspective

herausgegeben von: Samuel Pierre, PhD

Verlag: Springer London

Buchreihe : Advanced Information and Knowledge Processing

Enthalten in: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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Über dieses Buch

Over the last decade researchers and practitioners have developed a wide range of knowledge related to e-learning. This book provides state-of-the-art e-learning networked environments and architectures carried out over the last few years from a knowledge management perspective.

The book is organized into four parts: After an introductory chapter which attempts to characterize the e-learning environments, Part I exposes the problems of building knowledge scenarios followed by Part II which analyzes the process of building knowledge environments. Part III summarizes the principles, methods and issues related to the design of knowledge networks and finally Part IV addresses the problem of retrieving resources and knowledge from networked environments.

Presenting a wide-ranging survey of methods and applications from contributors from around the world, this book will be a valuable resource for researchers, practitioners and graduates.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter

E-Learning Networked Environments: Concepts and Issues

1. E-Learning Networked Environments: Concepts and Issues

Abstract

This chapter presents the basic concepts and main issues that characterize the e-learning network environments from a knowledge management standpoint. Knowledge management is essentially focused on the concept of knowledge, and specifically concerns the competencies of those working for organizations. It involves two important processes: knowledge extraction and knowledge assimilation. The main issues of e-learning network environments include the design of knowledge scenarios that can be integrated into knowledge environments yet to be built, as well as the design of knowledge networks dedicated to supporting these environments and enabling the retrieval of learning resources. In this chapter, the problematic of building knowledge scenarios and knowledge environments is first presented. Then, the principles, methods, and tools required to build knowledge networks are summarized, and the problems associated with retrieving resources and knowledge in networked environments are addressed.

Samuel Pierre, Gilbert Paquette

Building Knowledge Scenarios

Frontmatter

2. Bridging the Gap Between E-Learning Modeling and Delivery Through the Transformation of Learnflows into Workflows

Abstract

E-learning pedagogical models are described in terms of educational modeling languages (EMLs). IMS-LD is accepted as the standard EML. It allows for the description of multiactor adaptable learning processes. Although some IMS-LD-compatible editing tools are being developed, no delivery platfonn is yet available. This chapter proposes to bridge this gap by looking at business process modeling languages and execution engines, in particular the Workflow Management Coalition Standard, XPDL. The first two sections of the chapter give the introduction and the context of the work. Section 3 describes IMS-LD as well as existing editing and delivery tools. Section 4 describes XPDL and some editing tools and execution engines. Section 5 proposes a transformation from IMS-LD to XPDL, and Section 6 describes the application developed to implement this transfonnation. The chapter ends with some conclusions on the work done and on the possibilities it opens to further research and applications.

Olga Mariño, Rubby Casallas, Jorge Villalobos, Dario Correal, Julien Contamines

3. A Toolkit for Building Geo-Referenced Lessons: Design, Implementation, and Praxis

Abstract

We coined the term mobile lessons for lessons held outside traditional classrooms. During these lessons, all actors are mobile and must move to perform the required tasks. Themes tackled in such lessons may be as varied as geography, history, ecology, dialects in linguistics … Mobile lessons are not a new teaching strategy, but mobile devices may render them more efficient and more attractive. The aim is to put students in conditions gentiane to the ones in which experts work. We implemented in Java a toolkit for creating and using mobile lessons and for monitoring students on the field. Contents and questions are described in XML. Using this software, teachers of a high school in Sardinia (Italy) developed and experienced a mobile lesson on the archaeological site of Nora. In light of this experiment, a wireless, distributed, and more sophisticated version of the software was implemented.

Sylvain Giroux

Building Knowledge Environments

Frontmatter

4. TELOS: A Service-Oriented Framework to Support Learning and Knowledge Management

Abstract

This chapter presents the basic orientations, the main use cases, and the conceptual framework of a TeleLearning Operating System. TELOS is a system under development within the LORNET research network (www.lornet.org) aiming to integrate components and services, and research results, produced by the different LORNET teams. TELOS research is at the convergence of three main trends: learning object repositories that facilitate the access to knowledge resources; learning and knowledge management support systems that use these referentials as building blocks; and the integration of these referentials and these systems in the context of the semantic Web.

Gilbert Paquette, Ioan Rosca, Stefan Mihaila, Anis Masmoudi

5. Cognitive Modeling of Personalized Software Design Styles: A Case Study in E-Learning

Abstract

This chapter discusses an approach to knowledge representation and processing based on representing information at a metamodel level and adapting it to the current user at various levels of abstraction. In this way both run-time data and program code are adapted to the user. Thanks to this approach, it is possible to model sophisticated concepts in a direct and natural way, avoiding technological details. We employed this technique for developing a user-adapted system for teaching object-oriented design patterns (OODP) by leveraging on existing technologies (software generation facilities, modeling languages, specific and general standard metamodels). The design of the prototype was drawn from an ad-hoc student cognitive model. The prototype is empirically evaluated and the findings discussed.

Mauro Marinilli

6. Skills SuperStore: Online Interactive Study Skills Environment

Abstract

An online interactive environment for provision of flexible student-centered study and interpersonal skills training is described, and preliminary results of its evaluation are reported. The system has been designed to assist higher education students develop study skills via formulating effective strategies that help them learn, retain, and apply new knowledge during their university education and beyond. The system’s features, functionality, and architecture were developed based on the findings of a viability study conducted at our institution and facilitated by (a) evaluation of various approaches for the provision of study skills training employed by higher education institutions worldwide, and (b) surveying students from various departments and disciplines. The system comprises a number of interactive modules used as flexible learning aids in conjunction with existing learning skills materials and resources. The interactivity of the system is achieved by users making choices, answering questions, and completing activities related to their own experiences.

Caitriona Bermingham, Abdulhussain Mahdi

7. E-MEMORAe: A Content-Oriented Environment for E-Learning

Abstract

Many documents and resources can be provided to students in the context of e-learning. They can be stored in learning objects repositories and then reused, combined, and adapted in different contexts. They can also be selected and organized in learning memories that are directly accessed by the learners. In the MEMORAe project, we adopted this second approach, by considering a course unit as a learning organizational memory. This memory stores not only selected resources, but also concepts representing notions to learn. The resources are indexed by the concepts that are part of two ontologies. These ontologies are also used to ease the navigation through the memory. In this chapter, we present this memory, the associated E-MEMORAe environment, and the results of an evaluation with students in the framework of the B31.1 applied mathematics course at the University of Picardy in France.

Marie-Héléne Abel, Ahcene Benayache, Dominique Lenne, Claude Moulin

Building Knowledge Networks

Frontmatter

8. Designing and Testing an Open-Source Learning Management System for Small-Scale Users

Abstract

The vision of reusable learning resources or objects, made accessible through coordinated repository architectures and metadata structures, has gained considerable attention within education and training communities. A proliferation of standards, architectures, Web technologies, and functionality abound to help realize this promise. This chapter outlines the issues associated with designing solutions for small-scale users such as small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). It describes the requirements and architecture for the development of an open-source small-scale learning object (LO) management system that supports the full management of learning objects, by bringing together the most promising advances in this field to attain a learning system for use by small-scale users to leverage the power of learning objects for improved training at an individual and organisational level.

Kevin Johnson, Timothy Hall

9. Reinforcement Agents for E-Learning Applications

Abstract

Advanced computer systems have become pivotal components for learning. However, we are still faced with many challenges in e-learning environments when developing reliable tools to assist users and facilitate and enhance the learning process. For instance, the problem of creating a user-friendly system that can learn from interaction with dynamic learning requirements and deal with largescale information is still widely unsolved. We need systems that have the ability to communicate and cooperate with the users, learn their preferences and increase the learning efficiency of individual users. Reinforcement learning (RL) is an intelligent technique with the ability to learn from interaction with the environment. It learns from trial and error and generally does not need any training data or a user model. At the beginning of the learning process, the RL agent does not have any knowledge about the actions it should take. After a while, the agent learns which actions yield the maximum reward. The ability of learning from interaction with a dynamic environment and using reward and punishment independent of any training data set makes reinforcement learning a suitable tool for e-learning situations, where subjective user feedback can easily be translated into a reinforcement signal.

Hamid R. Tizhoosh, Maryam Shokri, Mohamed Kamel

10. Secure Communication Layer for Scalable Networks of Learning Object Repositories

Abstract

The eduSource Communication Layer (ECL) defines a set of services, middleware, and communication conventions that enable repositories and tools to communicate with each other. ECL was designed and implemented within the scope of the recommendations in the IMS DRI specification. The ECL has been deployed worldwide and connects repositories in Canada, the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, and Europe. In this chapter we describe the design of ECL, its architecture, and its middleware components. We also describe novel ECL security infrastructure (ECL-SI) for Web services that provide the security framework for object repositories based on a trust federation. The security solution defines security profiles, infrastructure services, and middleware component for a low-barrier adoption by existing repositories. Although this infrastructure can scale to large networks; it is particularly sensitive to the needs of medium-sized and small organizations, which have complex attributes and accessing policies.

Marek Hatala, Griff Richards, Timmy Eap, Ashok Shah

11. Quality of Service and Collaboration Aspects in a Distributed E-Laboratory Environment

Abstract

This chapter proposes an architecture for implementing e-laboratory environment by taking into account several aspects concerning not only the educational process, but also the network infrastructure, the collaboration and quality of service (QoS) requirements, the types of content, etc. This is a flexible, parametrical, and component-oriented architecture designed to support collaboration among different actors or entities of the e-learning environment. According to the diverse aspects of QoS that an e-learning service comprises, this architecture was tested with different network loads. Experimental results show that improvements caused by traffic differentiation, even without special network loads, become even more significant as the number of users increases.

Alejandro Quintero, Samuel Pierre, David Tassy

Retrieving Resources and Knowledge

Frontmatter

12. Quality Rating and Recommendation of Learning Objects

Abstract

The unceasing growth of the Internet has led to new modes of learning in which learners routinely interact on-line with instructors, other students, and digital resources. Much recent research has focused on building infrastructure for these activities, especially to facilitate searching, filtering, and recommending on-line resources known as learning objects. Although newly defined standards for learning object metadata are expected to greatly improve searching and filtering capabilities, learners, instructors, and instructional developers may still be faced with choosing from many pages of object listings returned from a single learning object query. The listed objects tend to vary widely in quality. With current metadata and search methods, those who search for learning objects waste time and effort groping through overwhelming masses of information, often finding only poorly designed and developed instructional materials. Hence, there is a clear need for quality evaluations prior to making a recommendation that can be communicated in a coherent, standardized format to measure the quality of learning objects.

Vivekanandan Kumar, John Nesbit, Philip Winne, Allyson Hadwin, Dianne Jamieson-Noel, Kate Han

13. Data Mining in E-Learning

Abstract

This chapter presents an innovative approach for performing data mining on documents, which serves as a basis for knowledge extraction in e-learning environments. The approach is based on a radical model of text data that considers phrasal features paramount in documents, and employs graph theory to facilitate phrase representation and efficient matching. In the process of text mining, a grouping (clustering) approach is also employed to identify groups of documents such that each group represents a different topic in the underlying document collection. Document groups are tagged with topic labels through unsupervised key-phrase extraction from the document clusters. The approach serves in solving some of the difficult problems in e-learning where the volume of data could be overwhelming for the learner, such as automatically organizing documents and articles based on topics, and providing summaries for documents and groups of documents.¹

Khaled Hammouda, Mohamed Kamel

14. LORNAV: Virtual Reality Tool for Navigation of Distributed Learning Objects Repositories

Abstract

Navigation in a 3D world has reached its pinnacle with the advent of several technologies like Java, XML, Web services, VRML, X3D, etc. Much effort has been given to visualizing and navigating in virtual mall, cities, digital libraries etc. We designed a virtual reality (VR) tool, called Learning Object Repository Navigator (LORNAV) that extracts learning object metadata (LOM) dynamically from distributed repositories, creates 3D representation of these objects and displays them in a 3D environment using several visualization metaphors. The proposed tool allows the user to navigate through the 3D environment, view the associated metadata of the 3D objects, read/play the content, and select the objects of interest to create a personal space within the 3D environment. The creation of personal space provides users with a familiar navigation space consisting of learning objects of their choice.

Abdulmotaleb El Saddik, M. Anwar Hossain

Backmatter

Titel: E-Learning Networked Environments and Architectures
herausgegeben von: Samuel Pierre, PhD
Verlag: Springer London
Electronic ISBN: 978-1-84628-758-9
Print ISBN: 978-1-84628-351-2
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84628-758-9