D9.2.2 (Final) Description of the ATA Design

D9.2.2 (Final)

Description of the ATA Design

Main author : Mark Gellevij (UTWENTE)

Nature of the deliverable : Report

Dissemination level : Restricted

Planned delivery date : October 2004

No part of this document may be distributed outside the consortium / EC without

written permission from the project co-ordinator

Prepared for the European Commission, DG INFSO, under contract N°. IST 507838

as a deliverable from WP9

Submitted on 03-11-2004

Summary

The ATA Design and Development task objectives are to design and develop the ATA learning/training environment, instructional

strategies, methodologies, tools and technology-enhanced courses. This deliverable (9.2.2 ATA Design) is dedicated to give an

impression on two different design issues within ATA: supporting course designers and re-use of course materials.

For supporting potential course designers, the deliverable presents guidelines for designing a Telematics Enhanced Learning

Environment (TELE), gives an overview of possible work- and communication-forms within a TELE, and lists and discusses a

number of platforms or course management systems that are considered to be applicable within the ATA context.

To provide for ease of re-use of materials, this deliverable presents a mechanism and standards to be used for defining, creating,

finding and retrieving information and knowledge from course materials to be able to (re-)use these materials more flexibly within

ATA .

History

Filename Status Release Changes UploadedD09-02-02-F.pdf Final 1 03/11/2004

Kaleidoscope Deliverable 9.2.2 – Final, October 29, 2004 1 of 68

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. INTRODUCTION........................................................................................4

1.1 Overview..............................................................................................4

1.2 Reference Materials.............................................................................5

1.3 Definitions and Acronyms ....................................................................5

1.4 Assumptions ........................................................................................8

2. GENERAL ATA DESIGN ...........................................................................9

2.1 Advanced Training Academy framework ...........................................10

2.2 Learning Design services...................................................................11

2.3 Learning Content Management services ...........................................13

2.4 Learning Delivery services.................................................................14

3. INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN FOR TEL......................................................16

3.1 TEL in the form of DL.........................................................................16

3.2 Pitfalls in designing and using Distance Learning Environments .......16

3.2.1 Problems students encounter working with a DLE...........................17

3.2.2 Problems teachers encounter working with a DLE ..........................18

3.3 Possible Work forms in a DLE ...........................................................19

4. EXAMPLE OF A GENERIC COURSE DESIGN FOR ATA ......................23

4.1 Decide about Content, Materials, and Activities.................................23

4.2 Provide for a clear organization .........................................................25

4.3 Use Mutual Deadlines........................................................................32

4.4 Choose appropriate forms of Communication....................................33

4.5 Choose appropriate forms of Feedback.............................................36

5. ATA REPOSITORY - KALEIDOSCOPE KNOWLEDGE POOL ...............38

5.1 Learning Objects................................................................................38

5.2 TEL Ontology.....................................................................................40


5.3 Repositories for Learning Objects ..................................................... 42

5.4 Exchange and sharing of Learning Objects ...................................... 43

5.5 ATA content repository...................................................................... 44

6. ATA PLATFORMS AND TOOLS............................................................. 46

6.1 Analysis of TEL platforms and tools .................................................. 46

6.2 Description of ATA platforms and tools ............................................. 48

6.2.1 ATutor (ATutor 2004) ..................................................................... 49

6.2.2 Moodle (Moodle 2004) .................................................................... 50

6.2.3 ILIAS (ILIAS 2004) .......................................................................... 51

6.2.4 Manhattan (Manhattan 2004).......................................................... 53

6.2.5 Bodington (Bodington 2004) ........................................................... 55

6.2.6 ARCADE (Arcade 2004) ................................................................. 57

6.2.7 RELOAD (Reload 2004).................................................................. 58

6.2.8 TELETOP (Teletop 2004) ............................................................... 58

6.2.9 DIOGENE (Diogene 2004).............................................................. 59

6.2.10 TELENET ............................................................................. 61

7. BIBLIOGRAPHY...................................................................................... 64


Index of Figures

FIGURE 1 ATA ARCHITECTURE ............................................................................................................... 9

FIGURE 2 EXAMPLE OF THE MAIN MENU (HOMEPAGE) OF A DISTANCE LEARNING

ENVIRONMENT.................................................................................................................................. 25

FIGURE 3 EXAMPLE OF COURSE INFORMATION PAGE................................................................. 26

FIGURE 4 EXAMPLE OF A ROSTER ...................................................................................................... 27

FIGURE 5 EXAMPLE OF TOPICS DESCRIPTION................................................................................ 28

FIGURE 6 EXAMPLE OF MATERIALS DESCRIPTION ........................................................................ 28

FIGURE 7 EXAMPLE OF ASSIGNMENT DESCRIPTION .................................................................... 29

FIGURE 8 EXAMPLE OF EMAIL / GROUP ............................................................................................. 30

FIGURE 9 EXAMPLE OF DISCUSSIONS IN THE DISCUSSION FORUM ........................................ 30

FIGURE 10 EXAMPLE OF WEB LINKS MENU ITEM ........................................................................... 31

FIGURE 11 EXAMPLE OF PUBLICATION MENU ITEM....................................................................... 31

FIGURE 12 SEARCH OPTION .................................................................................................................. 32

FIGURE 13 ATA KNOWLEDGE POOL .................................................................................................... 38

FIGURE 14 ATUTOR................................................................................................................................... 49

FIGURE 15 MOODLE STUDENT MANAGEMENT ................................................................................ 50

FIGURE 16 MOODLE CALENDAR-BASED ACTIVITIES...................................................................... 51

FIGURE 17 ILIAS ......................................................................................................................................... 52

FIGURE 18 MANHATTAN .......................................................................................................................... 54

FIGURE 19 BODINGTON ........................................................................................................................... 55

FIGURE 20 ARCADE .................................................................................................................................. 57

FIGURE 21 DIOGENE................................................................................................................................. 61


1. INTRODUCTION

1.1 Overview

The ATA Design and Development task objectives are to design and

develop the ATA learning/training environment, instructional strategies,

methodologies, tools and technology-enhanced courses.

Task T2.2 - ATA Design is dedicated to generic course design,

instructional design, e-learning modules design, e-learning platform

specification and design, course authoring tool (wizard) design, e-learning

services design, etc.

This document aims to describe and define in detail the design of the

components of the ATA framework. It is developed within the FP6 NoE

Project “Concepts and methods for exploring the future of learning with

digital technologies” - Kaleidoscope.

Chapter 1 is an introductory one.

Chapter 2 describes the general scope of the Kaleidoscope WP9

Advanced Training Activities (ATA) and gives an overview of the general

ATA design.

Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 present some general ideas and guidelines for

the design and development of Technology Enhanced Learning within

ATA.

In Chapter 5, the ATA knowledge management infrastructure is

presented.

In Chapter 6, we describe the general requirements for the TEL platforms

and tools to be used in Kaleidoscope. The set of TEL platforms and tools

is given that will be suitable for ATA, followed by description of each of

them, stressing on the learning services to be provided by ATA.


Chapter 7 provides a list of the literature referenced.

1.2 Reference Materials

o Deliverable D6.4.1 “Definition of the requirements for the VDS platform”

o Deliverable D7.1.1 “Selection of the Open Source Portal Solution and

definition of management policy”

o Deliverable D9.2.1 “Target group needs analysis and ATA training 4+

year plan”

o Deliverable D9.1.2 “Definition of ATA target groups, organizational,

management and technology infrastructure”

o Deliverable D25.3.1 “Organisation and storage of metadata and

ontologies”

o Deliverable D25.4.1 “Current and future usages of E-learning metadata

and ontologies”

o FP6 NoE Project “Concepts and methods for exploring the future of

learning with digital technologies” – Kaleidoscope, Annex I (Description

of Work)

1.3 Definitions and Acronyms

AI Artificial Intelligence

AIDA Academy Industry Digital Alliance

ARCADE Architecture for Reusable Courseware

Authoring and Delivery

ATA Advanced Training Activity


CEN/ISSS Comité Européen de Normalisation /

Information Society Standardization System

CSCL Computer Supported Cooperative Learning

CSCW Computer Supported Cooperative Work

DE Distance Education

DTD Data Type Definition

ERT European Research Team

EU European Union

FP Framework Program

HCI Human Computer Interaction

ICT Information and Communication Technologies

ID Instructional Design

IEEE Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

IET Institute of Educational Technology

IMS Instructional Management Systems

IST Information Society Technologies

IT Information Technology

JEIRP Jointly Executed Integrating Research Project

JPA Joint Programme of Activities

KJA Kaleidoscope Joint Activitiy

LCMS Learning Content Management System


LDAP Lightweight Directory Access Protocol

LMS Learning Management System

LO Learning Object

LOM Learning Object Model

LTSC Learning Technology Standards Committee

NoE Network of Excellence

OWL Ontology Web Language

PDA Personal Digital Assistant

PDF Portable Data Format

POP3 Post Office Protocol

ODL Open and Distance learning

QA Quality Assurance

SCORM Sharable Content Object Reference Model

SIGs Special Interest Groups

SOAP Simple Object Access Protocol

SVL Shared Virtual Lab

TEL Technology Enhanced Learning

UDDI Universal Description, Discovery, and

Integration

URL Unified Resource Locator

VDS Virtual Doctoral School


VLEs Virtual Learning Environments

VR Virtual Reality

WG Working Group

WML Wireless Markup Language

WSDL Web Services Description Language

WYSIWYG What You See Is What You Get

XSD XML Schema Definition

XML eXtensible Markup Language

XSL eXtensible Stylesheet Language

1.4 Assumptions

It is assumed that the reader of this document has basic knowledge in

TEL domain and is aware of the Reference Materials.


2. GENERAL ATA DESIGN

ATA KJA aims to establish a flexible and sustainable training system for

providing researchers and practitioners in the TEL domain with knowledge

and skills at European and world level of excellence. This will be achieved

by developing a common methodology and a set of technology tools

oriented to provide highly specialized tailor-made training courses on

topics that the Kaleidoscope NoE member organisations demonstrate

excellence in, or on topics that have been especially studied and

investigated during the project life-cycle. Thus, the e-Learning capacity of

the participating institutions will be substantially strengthened and the e-

Learning researchers and practitioners will get access to some advanced

TEL research outcomes and teams.

Figure 1 ATA Architecture

ATA

Dissemination

SIGs

ERT

JIERP

Users Group

AIDA

Governance for integration

VDS

SVL

course

needs

content

environment

training


ATA will provide consultancy to the Kaleidoscope community on details

regarding the advanced training services: learning design theory and

practice, instructional design theories and models, technologies and tools

supporting training activities and services.

ATA will introduce a set of open source TEL platforms and tools to the

Kaleidoscope community and will provide support in training on the

practical use of these platforms and tools.

ATA organisation will provide the needed infrastructure for the

implementation of the training activities that ATA offers to the

Kaleidoscope community.

ATA organisation will provide a set of guides and tools in order to help

both the training providers as well as trainees on how to utilise the

infrastructure in the processes of training and learning.

ATA organisation will serve as the main Kaleidoscope knowledge pool

accumulating the resources produced by the Kaleidoscope community

and will make them available to the Kaleidoscope members in a first place

and to the public in general in the second place.

2.1 Advanced Training Academy framework

In order to provide the aspects described above, thе ATA framework will

offer the following set of services:

o Learning Design services

o Learning Content Management services

o Learning Delivery services

The ATA framework will include a set of components like TEL platforms

and tools, organizational entities, etc. Typically such components will be


designed to operate independently of each other. However, they will be

able to share common set of data and information according to the

standards. Each ATA provider will be able to use the components that are

available / best suits the local needs. Standards and specifications

adopted by ATA will allow interoperability between different tools and

platforms.

The ATA framework components are described in more details in

Deliverable D9.1.2 “Definition of ATA target groups, organizational,

management and technology infrastructure”.

2.2 Learning Design services

The ATA framework is based on the notion of Learning Design. Learning

Design is a concept used to identify the process in which a teacher (or

learning designer) plans, describes and delivers a particular training

session (task), aiming to help the learners to obtain specific planned

knowledge or skills. Each learning design (Koper, 2001) usually includes

description of people involved, their roles in the process, sequence of

tasks or activities to be performed, desired learning outcomes, content

resources planned to be used, and other tools or facilities involved. More

formally, learning design is the process of planning, structuring and

sequencing of learning activities.

IMS Learning Design (IMS LD 2003) is a standard specification

prescribing how the learning design should be precisely described using

software technology tools, and how these prescriptions can be taken into

account and applied in software tools and systems.

One of the biggest challenges in LD is to find the feasible compromise

between the contextualisation in the learning design, and the ability to

reuse the learning design in different contexts.


At the heart of the idea for the learning design is the concept of learning

activity – which is the interaction between the learner and a learning

environment (involving the teacher, other learners, various resources,

different tools and services), aiming that a planned learning outcome will

be achieved. In the Technology Enhanced Learning domain this learning

activity is also known as Learning Object.

LD is used to model learning activities, learning structures and

approaches, therefore it is closely related to various learning theories and

methodologies.

IMS LD specifications are widely recognised as the one most promising

general modelling framework in e-learning, because it is based on sound

ID modelling paradigmes and well compatible with other technology

standards in learning. However it is not well investigated, evaluated, and it

is missing sufficient testing within practical settings.

The IMS LD aims to describe how content and instructional design

strategies may be combined and represented, how various learning

theories can be applied in software learning environments and systems,

and how different ways of interactions between learners and instructional

design system can be realised in the learning environments.

One of the strongest advantages of the IMS LD is the flexibility allowing it

to combine the same set of learning materials into quite different learning

designs, as well as applying the same instructional design differently to

learners based on their reactions, roles and individualities.

The use of the Learning Design model allows to work towards achieving

the following research challenges:

• To develop a framework for modelling in learning, that is able to increase

the mutual understanding and sharing of practice between researchers

from different science domains.


• To experiment with different learning design models and to evaluate how

they can be implemented using the software available.

• To experiment with different models in order to determine what kind of

modelling is more feasible and useful: for example modelling based on

distinct domain knowledge models and instructional design models

(pedagogy), combined depending of the context; or modelling based on

combined domain and pedagogy knowledge (context explicitly expressed

into the model).

• To design and develop different tools supporting all the phases of the

learning design process.

2.3 Learning Content Management services

The Kaleidoscope project involves a big number of researchers working in

a wide spectrum of science domains. Often they use different terminology,

or even common terminology with different meanings of words and

concepts. In order for them to better understand each other we need to

provide a common vocabulary in the domain of Technology Enhanced

Learning (TEL), where researchers will have the same understandings

and knowledge representation by means of concepts and relations. As a

first step in this complex and difficult process, we need to create a formal

model of main concepts in the TEL domain and their most important

relations.

Instructional context defines the relations between resources used in

learning – their sequencing, role, interaction with the learner. One of

Learning design main goals is to provide the definition and location of the

instructional context. For an object to be used in learning, it must be used

in some specific way, in a well defined context. Objects (representing

knowledge in a particular domain) and strategy (representing the learning

context) lead to the main concept used in the Learning Design – Learning


Object. The main question is which learning object to use in a particular

learning context.

The first important knowledge management service that ATA have to

provide is a model of the TEL domain represented as a TEL Ontology.

Actual knowledge about each particular concept or relation from the TEL

domain can be thought of as a single Learning Object, or as a complex

relation between other learning objects. The process of defining, creating,

finding and retrieving the information and knowledge from each Learning

Object is currently called as Learning Content Management. So, the

second important ATA knowledge service has to deal with the

management of Learning Objects (LOs). The typical solution is to use

Digital Repositories (DR) of LOs, providing facilities to store, search and

exchange learning content, discussed in more detail in Chapter 5.

2.4 Learning Delivery services

In ATA, we propose to use a distributed model of technology infrastructure

for the delivery of training activities. This means that a centralised ATA

content repository will be maintained, and a set of TEL platforms and tools

will be offered in order to provide a full set of learning services.

In addition, each ATA learning provider is free to use for the purposes of

the ATA training its own set of technology tools or software platforms, if

they conform to and support the phases of the a general learning design

approach (outlined in Chapter 3 and Chapter 4) and can freely exchange

their own learning resources with the centralised ATA content repository,

following the ATA accepted standards for Learning Objects Metadata, TEL

Ontology and Content Repository.

ATA will be in close cooperation with SVL and VDS to experiment with

interoperability between available platforms and tools in order to provide in


the best possible way the proper communications between all training

activities and services.

At a conceptual level we may categorize the main services offered by the

ATA framework in the following groups, based on the basic functionalities

of one typical LCMS (Nikolov, Stefanov, Vladinova 2003):

o Communication between all parties involved in the learning

process – in different modes (generally synchronous and

asynchronous mode) using rich set of media (text, audio, images,

video).

o Development and integration of adaptable and reusable learning

objects based on different instructional theories and

methodologies.

o Storage and easy retrieval of learning materials in different

formats, recognized by different systems.

o Capturing and creation of user profiles, including the level of the

prior knowledge and user’s personal differences – abilities,

cognitive and learning styles, personality traits.

o Evaluation and assessment.

o Administration and user management.


3. INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN FOR TEL

In this chapter, an example of an instructional design approach used at

the University of Twente is presented, stressing on pragmatic issues

about problems students and teachers often encounter when using a TEL,

and listing possible workforms in TEL.

3.1 TEL in the form of DL

We start this chapter with narrowing the broad term Technology Enhanced

Learning down into the more specific term of Internet-based Distance

Learning. We feel that the most suitable form of TEL in the context of the

advanced training activities in the Kaleidoscope project will almost always

be some sort of distance learning based on the use of Internet. The

widespread locations of the potential participants of the training activities

and the limited budgets to travel and stay at a central place to follow a

course are often quite limited. Moreover, the current possibilities offered

by Internet technology give good opportunities for effective and efficient

learning where face-to-face meetings are no longer a fundamental

condition.

This section holds two parts. The first part lists a number of pitfalls that are

often experienced when a traditional course is transformed into a Distance

Learning Environment (DLE). The second part describes a number of

methods that can be deployed to enhance learning at a distance.

3.2 Pitfalls in designing and using Distance Learning

Environments

When being confronted with a DLE, teacher and students often

experience a number of problems. This section gives an overview of a

number of ‘beginner mistakes’ that hamper smooth and effective learning


in a distance course. For each ‘mistake’ or ‘problem’ a solution in terms of

an instructional design guideline is offered. The actual application and

implementation of these guidelines in a DLE is described in Chapter 4.

3.2.1 Problems students encounter working with a DLE

Constructivist learning environments are often implemented as

environments that offer a variety of different learning materials students

can choose from. In a DLE, designers also often put big number of

learning materials online with the idea to provide students with a lot of

opportunities to choose their own preferred information sources. The

effect of such ‘rich’ environments is not always as effective as expected.

Because of lack of guidance and direct support by a live teacher, students

may quickly become overwhelmed with information. Instead of creating a

situation in which students feel motivated too decide about their own

learning goals and appropriate paths to reach them, students feel lost and

do not know where to begin and where to end. A first pitfall in designing a

DLE is making it ‘too rich’, in terms of the amount of available information

sources. When designing a DLE, the amount of learning materials offered

should be functional.

Directly connected with the previous problem is lack of, or unclear course

organization. Constructivism promotes a certain degree of freedom for

students. Nevertheless, giving students a clear organization and structure

on the way how to handle the learning materials is even more important

than in a face-to-face course. After all, students rely heavily on the DLE as

their primary and most direct source of information. Although a teacher is

available online for support and in case of difficulties, this contact is often

delayed and not as direct as in a face-to-face situation. When designing a

DLE, clarity of organization of course content is needed to make sure that

students at all time know what to do in a course.


Difficult navigation in a DLE is also a barrier for efficient and effective use.

Navigation is about where to quickly and easily find certain parts of the

course. Students will become frustrated if the operation of the DLE itself is

hampering their learning processes. This means that the design of a DLE

must have a transparent look and feel, and that the content of the course

is placed in a consistent manner.

So far, problematic design issues within the DLE are discussed. Another

issue that may hinder effective learning using a DLE is an unsatisfactory

feedback mechanism. The primary contact between a student and a

teacher in a DLE is the feedback a student receives on his or her queries

and work. As the learning materials and assignments are often accessible

through the DLE itself, teacher feedback is the most important direct,

personal, and individualized form of interaction between the student and

its teacher. Students often find themselves waiting for a response, not

knowing when they will receive it. The content and amount of the

feedback is frequently limited and therefore quite abstract. Special care in

giving students feedback in time and making sure that the feedback lives

up to the expectations is essential for the motivation and learning when

using a DLE.

Finally, unavailable or failing technical support is a cause for huge delays

and frustration. Using a DLE relies heavily on ICT technology. As

technology may fail, support to overcome technical problems with the DLE

is a must. Students must always know who to turn to in case of a problem.

Also here, an indication of the period in which the problem will be solved

will prevent uncertainty and frustration.

3.2.2 Problems teachers encounter working with a DLE

Teachers who teach their course in a DLE for the first time often

experience an increase in workload as compared to a similar on-campus

or face-to-face version of it. This increase is not so much caused by the


preparation and design of a DLE. The increase of written communication

and feedback is the major problem in terms of increased teacher

workload. The fact that a DLE is used with teacher and students at remote

places and perhaps in different time-zones brings about the necessity to

use texts as primary forms of communication. It takes a big amount of

extra time to type text compared to having a conversation with someone.

In addition, written texts take more effort in terms of carefully conveying a

message. In absence of non-verbal cues, the meaning of plain text is

easily misinterpreted. In short, teachers experience an increase in

workload, both in terms of time as in effort. Solutions to these problems

lay in use of non-textual means of communication, standardized forms of

feedback, model or example solutions to assignments, and the use of

peer-feedback.

3.3 Possible Work forms in a DLE

In this section we will provide an overview of the various forms of

individual and collaborative work in a DLE. These work forms are in most

cases not essentially different than when used in a face-to-face session.

Sometimes an adaptation to make them applicable in a DLE is needed.

Presentation - New learning material is often delivered by means of

presentation. In face to face sessions the instructor generally provides the

material orally with accompanying reading materials and presentation

material like overhead sheets and electronic presentation materials. In an

online course oral presentations could be replaced by audio or video

materials but in most cases the production of these materials is too time

consuming and expensive. Also, the adaptation of these materials is not

an easy task. In online courses, the main presentation sources are

therefore reading materials like articles, papers, summaries, and

(PowerPoint) presentations. These reading materials have to be carefully

introduced to instruct the student how to use these materials.


Apart from the learning materials, also the course objectives, roster,

contact information, assignments etcetera, have to be presented to the

student in written form. Presentation can also include workspaces, where

students can upload and discuss their work with each other and the

instructors, and virtual exhibition spaces, where prepared materials can be

exhibited.

Questioning - Students must be given the opportunity to ask questions to

the instructor and peer students. The necessary information for this must

be provided so that students know whom to ask specific questions. It is

convenient to let students know when instructors are available to answer

questions.

Assignments – They can be used to track the study progress.

Assignments must be clearly described and students have to know in

what format, when, and where to hand in the assignments. The

assignments’ goals must be made more clear than during a face-to-face

session. When goals are not clearly described, the instructor is running

the risk to be overloaded by questions about it. When giving assignments,

it is necessary to describe the type of feedback students can expect from

the instructor. Also an indication of the moment when students can expect

feedback has to be given.

Exploration activities – An online course can include exploration activities,

like examining a software tool. Students can report their experiences and

discuss it with peers and or the instructors. When incorporating

exploration activities it is best to let students individually do the exploration

and report their experiences. In this way students can explore the material

at their own pace, on their own computer. Later on, individual experiences

and opinions are compared and shared in group discussions and related

to relevant literature. Research indicates that individual preparation of a

group discussion leads to more different experiences and ideas compared


to students that start the collaborative activity immediately (Van Boxtel, van

der Linden, and Kanselaar, 2000).

Discussion – A useful part of a DLE is a place or tool where students and

instructors can discuss the course materials and assignments. Most DLE’s

have a discussion board or forum incorporated. A discussion forum can be

used for general discussion considering the training activity, as well as

discussion activities that are specifically designed for the training activity

and initiated, monitored, and moderated by the instructors. Veldhuis-

Diermanse (2002) distinguishes social and critical moderation. Social

moderation is aimed at motivating students to collaborate, participate in

the discussion and promote mutual effort. Critical moderation is aimed at

helping students to keep focus on the task and deepen the discussion.

Veldhuis- Diermanse compared a critically moderated group with a self

regulated group. She found that students that were moderated critically

produced more cognitive learning activities and constructed more

knowledge than their peers in the self regulated group. The knowledge

constructed by the critically moderated group was qualitatively better than

the knowledge constructed in the self-regulated group. Moderation not

always resulted in better learning outcomes. Moderation is a difficult

process for instructors, and according to Veldhuis-Diermanse its success

depends largely on the quality and experience of the instructor. The

instructor must log in on a regularly bases and have enough time to

respond. When the instructor responds on a regularly bases students

don’t feel isolated in the learning environment.

Instructor feedback – When students are given assignments instructors

must give feedback. When instructors have to give individual feedback it is

recommended to use feedback forms. These forms spare instructors the

effort to formulate their answers anew for every student. Feedback forms

give instructors support to formulate their feedback. The feedback form

can be a checklist that supports the instructor to assure that a number of


important aspects have been covered in the assignment and leaves

enough room for comments and suggestions for the receiver.

Peer feedback - Participants can provide feedback on each others’ work.

In order to structure the feedback the instructors provide participants with

a feedback form. Providing feedback forms can stimulate students to take

a critical look at each others work. The feedback form can be a checklist

that asks the student to comment on a number of important aspects that

have to be covered in the assignment and leaves enough room for

comments and suggestions for the receiver. Critiquing the work of a fellow

participant might even stimulate reflection on one’s own task. Filled in

feedback-forms can be sent to the instructor and the receiver of the

feedback or submitted on e.g. the discussion forum of the DLE.

Apart from the possible work forms described above, general

communication is very important. Students must be able to communicate

with the instructors and with each other. Therefore at least an e-mail list

must be available on the DLE.


4. EXAMPLE OF A GENERIC COURSE DESIGN FOR

ATA

Chapter 4 gives an example of a particular course design based on the

guidelines and worksforms presented in Chapter 3, implemented in the

course management system Teletop.

In this Chapter, a number of guidelines and examples are presented on

the design of a DLE. We start with offering an easy but useful tool to make

an inventory of the content, materials and activities that could be used in

the online course. Next, we give an example on how to clearly organize

the course by means of a course management system. We continue with

some pointers on the use of deadlines, both for students and the

instructor. The chapter ends with examples on how to regulate

communication and how to offer feedback.

The design guidelines and its implementation in the course management

system Teletop are clearly examples. They are just one way of

implementing and applying the design guidelines. The use of other

platforms that Teletop and variations in application are of course possible

4.1 Decide about Content, Materials, and Activities

The instructors define the structure and content of the course and decide

“what is to be learned”. For this purpose, instructors write, select, and

assemble materials and assignments, and design learning activities for

the participants. Sometimes the same instructors also have the role of

tutors, who are responsible for the delivery of the training activity through

the Distance Learning Environment (DLE). This includes regular

interaction with the participants.

Designing an online training activity starts with the formulation of clear

learning goals. Especially in an online setting students need to know what


is expected from them. Clear goals help students plan and organize their

activities. In addition to clear and unambiguous goals a well structured

and organized course will help students to benefit from the instructional

activities. Providing participants with a schedule of the course and the

expected actions and activities (including deadlines) will help them to plan

their activities in advance. Structuring the course and providing time

schedules conflicts with the idea of individual constructivist learning, but

certainly will support participants that are new to online learning (Veldhuis-

Diermanse, 2002).

A good starting point when designing an online course is using a table like

Table 1. As a result of using a format like presented in Table 1, the

instructor will have an inventory of modules or course-parts that can be

deployed in the course. Based on the total time that is available for a

certain course, a number of sessions can be chosen from the table. Also,

depending on for example the specific characteristics of the target group,

the order of sessions may be varied. Using this modular inventory

approach as a first step in designing the course provides for flexibility in

finally compiling a course.

Table 1 Example of content, materials, and activities table

Activity

Session Content / Goal Material Student Instructor Time

1

2

3


In the Content / Goal column a short description of the session is given. It

gives an overview of the theme and content of the session. In the

Materials column the materials necessary for the session are described,

which can be articles, books, (PowerPoint) presentations, etcetera. The

activity columns specify the activities of the student and instructor.

Examples of student activities are reading articles, giving feedback to

peers using feedback forms, and handing in assignments. Examples of

instructor activities are providing feedback forms for peer reviews, giving

feedback on assignments, and moderate discussions. In the last column

the time students will spend on the session is estimated.

4.2 Provide for a clear organization

One of the problems with DLE’s is that many instructors make their DLE

‘too rich’. To overcome students to get overwhelmed with information,

especially when students are new to using a DLE, the menu options must

be limited to the most essential ones. Figure 2 shows an example of

categories of menu options that we feel are minimally required for an

effective DLE. The first group of menu options give access to the different

sorts of information about the course. These are News, Course Info, and

the Roster.

Figure 2 Example of the main menu (homepage) of a Distance Learning Environment


The News menu option is indented to inform students, for example, if

there is new information, if there are changes in the course, or to remind

them to hand in an assignment (see Figure 2).

On the Course info page, instructors provide course information, like a

course description, the course goals, the names and e-mail addresses of

the instructors, the availability of the instructors, course organization

etcetera. An example is given in Figure 3.

Figure 3 Example of course information page

The Roster is the main instrument to show students the organization of

the course. It contains the course information per session. Every session

has its own rows and columns in the roster. The roster appears different

for participants and instructors. Participants only see the roster rows that

are of importance to them (rows 00, 10, and 20 in Figure 4). Instructors

have additional rows providing them with hints and additional materials

(rows 15 and 25 in Figure 2). They can also use the cells in these rows for

making notes.


Figure 4 Example of a Roster

Every row in the roster has three columns. In the topics column of the

Roster a short description of the session and the estimated time the

session takes are given. In the roster the topics are described as short

sentences to keep the roster orderly. Participants can click on the text in

the cells to get a more detailed description of the session (see Figure 5).

The materials column of the Roster shows the materials necessary for the

session. Except for articles the materials are provided to the participants

by clicking the cell. All materials are introduced with a short description.

The assignments and deadlines column shows a brief overview of the

assignments. By clicking the cell the complete assignment texts are

shown (see Figure 7). When participants have to submit an assignment to

the instructors, a special icon is shown in the roster (see the far right side

of row 20 in Figure 4) and a submission button is visible in the assignment

screen.


Figure 5 Example of topics description.

Figure 6 Example of materials description


Figure 7 Example of assignment description

The second series of menu options (see Figure 2) represent

communication features, which are Email, Discussion, and Question and

Answer.

The menu option Email / Group shows the names and email addresses of

the instructors and group member. Instructors can create email groups for

sending emails to groups. If groups are made also student can send

emails to these groups (see Figure 8).

The Discussion menu item contains a discussion forum. Instructors can

start several discussions (see Figure 9 for an example). In the KAL ATA

KJA course there is a general discussion forum and a forum for every

session. Students can react on the discussion initiated by the instructor.

The reactions are shown as treads, so students and instructors can easily

see who is reacting on who.

The menu option Question & answer serves as a Frequently asked

questions information source. Students can look at the previously posed


questions first to see if an answer is already available. The teachers’

workload will be diminished by this feature.

The Workspace menu option gives access to a tool in which students can save

and share their work.

Figure 8 Example of email / group

Figure 9 Example of discussions in the discussion forum

The next series of menu options give access to the resources outside the

DLE that will be used in the course, such as Weblinks and Publications.


Instructors and students can place interesting web links under the Web

links menu option. Web links can be categorized in self defined

categories. Students can sort the web links by category, subject, author,

or date. An example is shown in Figure 10.

The Publication menu option section is meant for providing extra reading

(see Figure 11 for an example). The reading material necessary for the

course can better be provided in the roster. By providing these materials

in the roster the students can more easily find the required reading

materials.

Figure 10 Example of web links menu item

Figure 11 Example of publication menu item


Finally, access to a Search menu option will give opportunity to quickly

find information in or outside the DLE. Students can search the course

environment with keywords (see Figure 12).

Figure 12 Search option

4.3 Use Mutual Deadlines

Not being able to have face-to-face or at the least verbal contact with a

teacher has a number of downsides. As mentioned before, the main issue

that needs to be prevented is frustration about when students can expect

things to happen. When using a DLE, students need to be clearly

informed about when to carry out tasks and assignments and when and

how to hand them in. The use of deadlines for keeping a course

manageable is therefore inevitable. And although a teacher should always

be sensitive to individual students and the possible difficulties they may

encounter that prevents timely submission of their work, deadlines should

be respected and kept.

To build such a desired attitude, deadlines should work both ways. With

this, we mean that the teacher should make clear to the students that

there are also deadlines for giving feedback to the students. A time

schedule with mutual deadlines makes sure that both students and the


teacher know when to expect what. For both parties, this helps to keep the

course manageable.

4.4 Choose appropriate forms of Communication

An effective learning community is a pre-requisite to successful online

learning, especially if collaborative work is involved. Communication is an

important aspect of building and maintaining a community. Within the DLE

the instructor as well as the students can use different modes of

communication. Email and discussion forum are available for students and

instructors.

Email - Within the course instructors can send email to all students or to

individual students. Furthermore, Instructors can define groups and can

send a specific message to all group members. Instructors should

carefully consider when to send an email to the all students, a subgroup or

individual students in order to foster the online learning community.

General updates concerning course activities and new interesting

materials and resource can be sent to the entire group. Individual email is

more appropriate in situations where instructors want to provide feedback

or want to discuss a students’ involvement in the course. For example the

instructor can email individual students to invite them to make an input to

the discussion forum. Students can use email to communicate with each

other and the instructor.

Forum - During the course students are encouraged to discuss course

related issues on the discussion forum. The forum enables students to

read each others messages and post reactions. It is used as a platform for

providing peer feedback.

An import consideration is when and how to use email and the forum.

Being an instructor in an online training can become a time consuming

activity. Distance students can generate large numbers of email in the


instructor’s inbox. Based on the number of participants enrolled in the

course the instructors can calculate how much time on a weekly basis

they should commit to moderate the forum and answer student emails.

The instructor must communicate to the participants that he or she will

only be available to answer emails at a fixed moment of the week. The

same holds for giving feedback. If a full response can’t be provided within

the timeframe, at least an acknowledgement should be sent.

Encouraging students to consult their peers trough posting questions on

the forum can deflect the large number of email send to the instructor. On

a successful forum, students send messages to each other. The instructor

can stimulate students to post a question on the discussion forum or

consult fellow students by asking the students if they already posted the

question on the forum.

Messages that are potential interesting for the majority of participants can

be communicated to the whole group. If instructors have answered

questions posed through email that seem to be beneficial to more than

just that individual student, it can be placed in the Questions and Answers

part of the DLE, so that the answer will become available for all students.

Similarly, instructors can identify parts of assignments that were difficult

for the majority of participants, and communicate them to the whole group

trough a message on the discussion forum, or an email to the entire

group. Communicating to the whole group might even increase the feeling

of being part of a community of students.

During the course a discussion forum is used as a communication tool. On

the forum students can discuss the assignments and exchange

experiences with fellow participants. This way, students receive peer

feedback trough the discussion forum. Apart from such assignment driven

and emerging discussions that provide feedback, there can also be

discussions that are initiated by the instructors. These discussions cover

important issues and will be critically moderated by the instructors. The


critical moderation is aimed at deepening the discussion between

participants. The task of the moderator during critical moderation is

checking the discussion threads and inspecting whether students actually

are discussing, provide elaborated explanations and arguments, are clear

in their contributions, or show social desirably behavior (agree with each

other because they want to be nice).

Research (Webb, 1989) indicated that only elaborated responses and

explanations contribute to knowledge construction. Therefore it is

important that the moderators (instructors) intervene when participants for

example provide very brief explanations or copy and paste text from the

internet without actual understanding the material. The moderators can

react by asking students to provide an example or explain what they

mean. When participants don’t provide arguments the moderators can

ask thought provoking questions (King, 1999) like “Why do you think….?”

“What is the source of…..?” and “Please, support your ….”.. These open

ended question starters can also be provided to participants who can use

the questions to help them generate questions related to the learning

material or instructional activity and later on use them to discuss the

material with other participants. Empirical studies by King (1992) and

Coleman (1995) indicate that asking thought provoking questions resulted

in elaborated interaction and learning.

Furthermore, the moderator can ask participants to compare theories or

each others opinion. When the discussion stagnates the moderator can

provide statements or suggestions. Veldhuis- Diermanse (2002) indicates

that it is important to summarize the discussion on regular bases.

Summarization helps students to maintain focus on the learning task.

When using a forum as a communication tool, it is important that students

have a clear overview of all discussion threads on the forum; it is

important maintain a well-organized forum. In the DLE, the forum is used

as a tool for discussing assignments and giving and receiving (peer)


feedback, it is important that instructors carefully delineate where

participants are to carry out specific interactions. Clear discussion threads

help students to keep focused and make it easy to find and compare

specific contributions. It is known that with multiple forums, participants

often become confused about where to post what, and they will tend to

post in the wrong place, especially at first. In the DLE specific forum are

created for specific sessions. Students are expected to post messages

related to a specific session in the forum that is especially created for that

specific session. Within each forum students and instructors can create

threads. For messages that are not directly related to one of the sessions

or the learning task a general discussion forum is created.

Furthermore, the instructors and moderators have to stimulate the

participants to write a clear title for their contributions. A clear title consists

or the type of the message (for example a request for help) and uses key

words to indicate the content. When the moderators identify that a

message is posted in the wrong forum they will move the message to

another forum.

4.5 Choose appropriate forms of Feedback

Much of the interaction with participants will be in response to their work

on assignments and discussion questions. Students often expect a high

level of individual feedback. Meaningful feedback is more than just a

message that tells the students that they are doing well. In order to

benefit from feedback students want substantive comments on their work.

This means the feedback needs to identify the strengths/weaknesses of a

response, questions about assumptions made, or suggestions for further

thought/investigation.

Within the DLE, feedback forms are used to evaluate students work. By

using feedback forms the instructor to some extend standardizes the

feedback. Feedback forms can take on the form of a checklist. The Forms


or checklists are used to record whether students have covered certain

topics and have expressed their understanding in their product. They

provide information about where students have been successful and

where extra instruction or guidance is required.

In the DLE, feedback forms and checklist are also used as a tool in the

process of peer assessment. Another way to involve students in

assessment and feedback procedures is the use of answer models. Small

assignments and assignments that have one correct answer are

particularly suited for this approach. The instructor provides the students

with a model of the correct answer. And the students evaluate their own

answer/ solution based on the model answer.


5. ATA REPOSITORY - KALEIDOSCOPE KNOWLEDGE

POOL

In Chapter 2 we provided the general design of the ATA Learning Content

Management services. The main component for providing these services

will be the ATA Kaleidoscope Knowledge pool including Repository and

TEL Ontology.

Figure 13 ATA Knowledge Pool

Learning Objects are the main ingredients of the ATA Repository.

5.1 Learning Objects

The Learning Technology Standards Committee (LTSC LOM, 2004) of the

IEEE defines a learning object as "any entity, digital or non-digital, which


can be used, re-used or referenced during technology supported

learning." The LTSC provides examples of these objects, including

"multimedia content, instructional content, learning objectives, instructional

software and software tools, and persons, organizations, or events

referenced during technology supported learning."

There are many other definitions of learning objects, and more of them are

following the existent similarities between the domains of software

technologies and curriculum development. A typical example is the

approach implemented by Cisco Learning Institute in developing their

Virtuoso system model. This model is based on the similarity between the

concepts of "reusable information" objects, as derived from the learning

object theory (Merrill 1996) (defined as a concept, fact, process, principle

or procedure corresponding to learning objectives, practice exercises and

feedback), and physical software objects (text, audio and animation,

picture, html page).

A learning object is an object or set of resources that can be used for

facilitating intended learning outcomes, and can be extracted and reused

in other learning environments.

Important definition is given in (L'Allier, 1997): A Learning Object is

defined as the smallest independent structural experience that contains an

objective, a learning activity and an assessment:

1. Objective: an element of a Learning Object structural component

that is a statement describing the intended criterion-based result of a

learning activity.

2. Learning Activity: an element of a Learning Object structural

component that teaches to an objective.

3. Assessment: an element of a Learning Object structural component

that determines if an objective has been met.


We need to separate the object development and instructional usage of

LOs, if we want to be able to re-use them. If we define a strategy as a

ground plan for achieving an overall objective, and tactics as concrete

actions or a series of moves that are required and aid in accomplishing

the strategic goals, LOs can be thought of as a strategic assets that are

deployed and redeployed in carefully designed and specifically executed

instructional situations to facilitate effective learning.

A Learning Object is an independent and self-standing unit of learning

content that is intended to be reused in multiple instructional contexts.

Usually each Learning Object is linked with a given concept from the

corresponding domain, which domain can be modelled with one or more

Ontologies, and is used as a possible learning resource if anybody wants

to become familiar (to learn) that concept. All details regarding how this

Learning Object can be used (its type, length, intended way of use,

pedagogic characteristics, etc.) in the process of learning are represented

by the Learning Objects’ Metadata (LOM). There are detailed

prescriptions (standards) on what information to include into LOM (IEEE

LOM 2002), in what data format, and how to store (package) each LO

together with its metadata. Usually the places in which all the Los and

LOMs are stored are called Digital Repositories.

5.2 TEL Ontology

It is useful to organize content into categories. It is even more powerful to

structure and organize meta-data categories into ordered groups of

relationships known as taxonomies. Taxonomies not only organize the

content but also capture the relationships between categories. In this way

meta-data taxonomies allow different systems and structures to be

recognized, translated, and understood.


If all of the attributes (metadata) about learning content are recorded in a

common structure or taxonomy, both the meta-data AND the learning

content can be integrated into universally searchable and virtually

centralized catalogues and databases which span multiple systems,

audiences, and countries.

Ontologies represent knowledge in taxonomies, where more specific

concepts inherit the properties of those concepts they specialize. This

allows knowledge reuse when an ontology needs to be extended.

The name “ontology” (Stefanov, Todorova, 2003) comes from Greek

philosophy and means “the study of the nature of being”. The term is used

in the domain of Knowledge Representation “to categorize the kinds of

things existing”. The aim is to fix a common vocabulary of terms able to

describe as much knowledge about the world as possible from a given

domain, and to subdivide this knowledge in a coherent class hierarchy, so

as to create a shared knowledge representation language Usually an

Ontology is composed of (some of) the following: classes of objects, a

vocabulary of terms (instances), and various relations between terms and

classes.

Current standards offer only limited support to describe pedagogical

knowledge. To overcome this limitation, ontologies are increasingly used

to organize ID knowledge in current e-learning platforms. In most cases,

they are used to search and retrieve instructional components along

semantically marked-up educational resources. The best case is the

predecessor of the LD specification, the Educational Modelling Language

(Loeffen et al, 2002). It aims to provide a framework for the conceptual

modelling of learning environments and includes four ontologies that

describe:

• theories about learning and instruction

• units of study


• domains of learning

• how learners learn

EML ontologies could be reused in our ATA framework. Our goal is to

combine them into a single Ontology, as the domain of learning is the TEL

itself.

The TEL Ontology is a system of concepts, which acts as a basis of the

ATA. Through analysis of a variety of taxonomies and other resources in

the TEL domain, we will identify the major concepts to represent it. As a

result, we will set up a number of top-level concepts, which will be further

refined and specialised using more sub-concepts.

ATA will create and maintain a common TEL Ontology, in collaboration

with other Kaleidoscope JEIRPs. The TEL Ontology will be used for the

indexing, searching and cataloguing of Learning Objects into the TEL

Knowledge pool. TEL Ontology will be created using the currently

approved standard for ontologies - OWL (W3C OWL, 2004).

5.3 Repositories for Learning Objects

The content repository is a managed collection of digital materials, usually

designed to be externally accessible, searchable, and persistent.

Repositories are generic with respect to content and content

management. They do not provide specific features that treat learning

content in any special way.

A learning repository is seen as the long-term storage space for reusable

learning experiences that can be imported into learning spaces as

needed. Like a library catalogue, the repository should allow introspection

of the learning object by learning facilitators needing to find relevant

content.


Ontologies and Metadata are used to catalogue and index the Learning

Objects stored in the Repository.

Metadata is the information which describes other information and allows

it to be stored, indexed, searched, and retrieved from a database or

repository. Metadata could be the name of the author, the file size, the

location in a database, the learning preference, the learning style of an

individual, the collective opinion of a group, etc.

5.4 Exchange and sharing of Learning Objects

Content interoperability focuses on models to describe content and move

collections between delivery systems, local repositories and delivery

environments. The approach has proven to be cost effective, reducing the

time and effort to integrate content into an organization's delivery

environment, and has shown that content can be effectively uncoupled

from a particular delivery technology.

The TEL community needs to agree on common methods to search and

discover learning objects and make them accessible outside of the

content repositories. Most of these repositories are private and the do not

provide information what learning resources have been produced, where

to find it, or what is needed to get them.

The solution is to make a bridge between learning content management

and delivery, and content repositories and digital libraries.

To achieve this we have to respect the following principles:

• Content has to be made available, following the appropriate rights

of use, through the rights management standards.

• Content can exist outside of any single course, and to be stored in

a course-independent standard format.


• Content has to be easily discovered.

• Content has to be accessible through standard mechanisms and

can be freely exchanged.

• Content to be managed (described, categorized, transported,

shared, etc.) and content developers will be able to adjust it to their

needs.

Implementations of this bridging will be open and flexible and will coexist

and interoperate with existing systems. One general framework for

achieving this solution is given in IMS DRI (2003). For further details on

the usage of Ontologies and Metadata in TEL, see D25.3.1 and D25.4.1.

5.5 ATA content repository

ATA content repository will be developed on the base of the so called

Publishing House service, developed in the frame of the 5 FP Project

DIOGENE (Diogene, 2004). It follows the latest standards for Web

services implementation (W3C, 2004).

The Publishing house enables storing, cataloguing and retrieving learning

objects in a Content Repository. It receives a content package composed

of Learning Objects and Metadata, according to the latest IMS and

SCORM standards (IMS CP 2003, ADL SCORM 2004). For each learning

object, the Publishing house stores content in a LO Content Repository,

stores metadata in a LO Metadata Repository, and updates indexes of LO

Metadata.

The Publishing house is using standard facilities in order to advertise all

the content from the repository to all interested parties. The Publishing

house provides also a search on the stored metadata objects repository,

and retrieval of desired learning objects as a standard content package.


The Publishing house is realised as a Web service, and it provides the

following main services:

• Store content package of learning objects and update of the

metadata indexes

• Search the indexes and Retrieve personalized learning object’s list

matching the search criteria

• Deliver content package of learning objects according to given list


6. ATA PLATFORMS AND TOOLS

In this chapter we provide an overview and analysis of some of the

existing TEL platforms and tools suitable for the ATA.

We will make them freely available for the Kaleidoscope community. ATA

will provide not only access to these tools, but also consultancy services

on what tool best suits the given user needs, as well as how to use each

of these tools in the most efficient and effective way, hiding as much as

possible the technical details from the TEL researchers.

6.1 Analysis of TEL platforms and tools

Several analyses and comparisons of TEL platforms and tools were made

and published recently (Commonwealth of Learnig 2003, SIGOSEE 2004,

JOIN 2004, Edutools 2004).

In order to choose the ATA best suited tools and platforms we will first

define our requirements, based on the results obtained so far in the WP6

(Shared Virtual Lab, Deliverable D6.4.1 “Definition of the requirements for

the VDS platform”), WP7 (Virtual Doctoral School, Deliverable D7.1.1

“”Selection of the Open Source Portal Solution …”) and WP9 (Advanced

Training Activities, Deliverables D9.1.2 “Definition of ATA target groups,

organizational, management and technology infrastructure” and D9.2.1

“Target group needs analysis and ATA training 4+ year plan”).

In the Deliverable D9.1.2 “Definition of ATA target groups, organizational,

management and technology infrastructure” the following was concluded

regarding the choice of the TEL platform and tools in ATA: “After

reviewing current experience and available tools, and best practice open

source systems conforming to the accepted standards will be proposed …

to be further accepted for the ATA Distributed model of technology

infrastructure.” Further on in this Deliverable, several candidate platforms


were identified: ARCADE, TELETOP, DIOGENE, as well as other free and

open platforms, especially those recommended by SVL and VDS.

SVL (WP7) analysed a lot of existing platforms, including TEL platforms,

and here we provide some extracts of Deliverable D7.1.1 “Selection of the

Open Source Portal Solution”, summarizing the main results of the

analysis performed:

• “to use as much as possible existing products and tools they can

provide and to focus the work on integration issues and extensions

to provide a comprehensive set of services”

• “to capitalize and share the results of the JPA projects … we need

tools to advertise these research results and for searching of what

exist … by the use of metadata … and a centralized repository”

In the Deliverable D6.4.1 “Definition of the requirements for the VDS

platform” some general requirements concerning the choice of the VDS

platform were stated: “the platform should be a full-web tool, based on

standard technologies, reuse existing code/tools as much as possible,

facilitate maintenance and evolution, and Open-source”.

On the base of these general requirements, the following more specific

criteria concerning usefuleness of the analysed platforms were stated:

• Already implemented interesting functionalities (document

management, communication tools, etc.).

• Privacy concerns (management of different users’ rights).

• Ease of use, extension and maintenance.

• Diffusion (unused software is subject not to be maintained).

• Free (GPL or other Open Source licences; independence and long-

term use of the platform).

So, we decided to use the following set of criteria in choosing the most

suitable platforms and tools to be used (offered and supported) by ATA:


• based on open standards, to support export and import of different

information and data formats based on open standards. The

minimal requirement is to support IMS/SCORM Content Packaging

specification, and as many of the IMS Specifications as possible.

• user friendly interface, system should support clear navigation and

provide an intuitive user interface;

• support instructional activities in a natural way;

• communication and collaboration between all parties involved in the

learning process;

• evaluation and assessment support;

• providing course management features;

• flexible and easy to be extended and adapted.

We compile our initial list of candidates based on the information available

from European Commission and sources mentioned in the beginning of

this chapter. After excluding all platforms and tools not conforming to the

above mentioned set of main criteria, the final list with open source

platforms and tools to be used and supported in ATA was derived, The

next section will giva a description of these platforms and tools.

6.2 Description of ATA platforms and tools

In this section, we are giving a short description of suitable ATA platforms

and tools. They are: ATutor, Moodle, Ilias, Manhattan, Bodington, Arcade,

Reload, Teletop, Diogene, and Telenet.


6.2.1 ATutor (ATutor 2004)

ATutor is an Open Source Web-based LCMS (Figure 14). This platform

has built-in content authoring, course management and assessment

support, and has strong collaboration features. Educators can quickly

design and develop Web-based instructional materials, store the learning

material in the form of Learning Objects, easily retrieve and import

learning content following the standards, and provide the learning services

online. It is designed for accessibility and multi-lingual use, and has good

online help and self-explanatory tutorials to assist new users. This TEL

platform takes full advantage of the best open source technologies

(Apache, PHP, mySQL) and incorporates an awareness of the evolving

eLearning standards and specifications.

One of the advantages of the system is that it can export and import

different data formats based on IMS Course Packaging Standard (IMS CP

2003).

Figure 14 ATutor


There are a lot of communication tools, providing various collaboration

activities between the parties involved in the learning process. Other

strong features of this platform are the ability to develop reusable learning

materials and the flexible support for different assessment activities.

6.2.2 Moodle (Moodle 2004)

The major advantages of the system are the very rich activity set and

availability of components like: Backup and Restore, Blocks, Blogs,

Calendar, Document Management System, (DMS), Enrolment Plugins,

Gradebook Groups, HTML editor, Instant messaging, Library add-on,

Mathematics Tools, Text Filters and User authentication (Figure 15).

Figure 15 Moodle student management

Moodle has a long list of activity modules: Assignment, Attendance, Book,

Chat, Choice, Dialogue, Exercise, Forum, Glossary, Hotpot, Journal,

Lesson, Questionnaire, Quiz, Resource, SCORM Module, Survey,

WebQuest, Wiki, and Workshop.


Moodle also has an appointment module, supporting various

communication and collaboration activities (Figure 16).

Figure 16 Moodle Calendar-based activities

6.2.3 ILIAS (ILIAS 2004)

ILIAS is a web-based open source TEL platform. It is developed basically

on top of PHP and MySQL. The platform provides the following basic set

of learning services (Figure 17): learning and training management,

communication and collaboration services ( including mail, forums and

chat, group work systems), learning delivery environment (with lecture

notes, assessment tests, glossary, and search engine), course

management, integrated learning materials and course authoring

environment, help and tutorial services.


Figure 17 Ilias

The platform offers rich support for discussion forums. Discussions can be

viewed by thread. Instructors can associate a discussion with any learning

object. Instructors may create separate discussion environments for small

groups. Instructors can allow students to create groups. Groups can be

open to all or closed (open only for a selected group of students).

Students can attach notes to any learning object. Students can compile

their notes together with the selected learning content to create a printable

study guide.

Students can view their completed and pending learning tasks and

activities. All students have a personal home page that lists all courses

and groups in which the student is enrolled. Students can access a

student manual.

Instructors can create self-assessments. The system automatically scores

multiple choice type questions. The ILIAS platform provides support for

template-based learning content creation. Instructors can use templates to

create announcements, calendar entries, course content, course units,

glossaries, syllabus, and course descriptions. For each course specific


content library can be defined and used for the exchange of learning

materials in the form of Learning Objects.

6.2.4 Manhattan (Manhattan 2004)

This platform is a web-based virtual classroom system. It includes a

variety of discussion facilities like groups, web-based email system open

only to students in the class, and live chat. It is offering useful course

management features for the teacher - to post the syllabus and other

handouts and notices, to organize online assignments, to manage grades.

Discussions can be viewed by date, and by thread. Instructors can choose

the level of involvement (read, write, or post anonymously) for students.

Posts can include attachments. Only the instructor may delete posts.

Students can attach and archive files but they can not delete messages.

The Java-based chat tool supports private messages. The system creates

archive logs for all chat rooms.

There is a special administrator who is responsible for the overall

functioning of the system (Figure 18).


Figure 18 Manhattan

Students can submit assignments using drop boxes. Students can view

their grades on completed assignments and can compare their grades

against the overall class performance. Students in the same course can

interact in student lounges, which are automatically provided as part of

each course.

The system includes an online orientation course and an online user

manual.

Instructors can create groups. Each group can have its own group

discussion forum. Groups may be private or instructors can monitor

groups. Instructors can selectively release materials and assessments

based on specific start dates. In addition to multiple choice and fill-in-the-

blank questions, instructors can create crossword and jumbled sentence

questions. Instructors can create automatically scored multiple choice and

short answer questions. Instructors can also create survey questions.

Instructors can provide feedback on all assignments. Instructors can


import a comma-delimited version of the gradebook from an export of an

external spreadsheet program. Instructors can access the online instructor

manual and subscribe to an instructor mailing list. Instructors can get

reports showing the number of times each student accessed course

bookmarks.

6.2.5 Bodington (Bodington 2004)

It uses metaphors of buildings, floors, suites rooms, documents, tools etc.

(Figure 19) which are deliberately general metaphors. No course, module

or programme specific terminology is used in the user interfaces of the

tools so that it can be left to the users to provide the more specific

metaphors or structures that are appropriate for the intended use of the

TEL platform.

Figure 19 Bodington

A bulletin board-style messaging tool is used to present the learning

materials in a way that encourages discourse, but there are other tools as

well to help users publish the content. Each content object is assigned to

a logical web address and MIME type, so that the system can have the


functionality of a conventional web site with a simple user interface. The

platform includes other tools like questionnaires, MCQ papers, pigeon

holes (tutor assessed), short answer papers (tutor assessed) and log

books. The software does not enforce student or teacher roles. Any user

can be granted rights to create and contribute to the learning resources.

Some resources can have date constraints added to the access rights but

generally, sequencing or structure is implemented by the course manager

manually changing access rights to the individual resources when

appropriate. There is a comprehensive universal access control system,

which gives a high level of flexibility in defining groups and access to

functionality and resources. The access control system allows the creation

and population of groups within a hierarchical name space.

The system does not attempt to define learning activities – it provides

tools inspired by past demand for learning activities and these have been

designed to avoid terminology and metaphors that might discourage

innovative usage. The new learning activities can be designed by creating

various combinations of these tools.

The system avoids imposing or even suggesting a specific pedagogical

model. It provides a flexible collaborative working environment that allows

teachers to work according to the learning and teaching strategy of their

department rather than the educational prejudices of the software

designers.

Bodington has a multiple choice question tool which provides students

with instant feedback on self-assessments and which provides statistical

analysis of class performance so that teachers can identify students who

need individual feedback and topics for which the whole class needs

feedback. There are also tools for collecting and collating written work by

students: the short answer paper and the pigeon hole. There is an access

right of “mark” which allows a user to assess work but does not authorise

the user to release the mark and feedback. This allows for a two stage


process which supports quality assurance procedures. Beyond

quantitative assessment Bodington provides a log book tool which can

include the involvement of a tutor who can enter into a dialogue with the

learner about their progress.

6.2.6 ARCADE (Arcade 2004)

ARCADE is Web-based LCMS existing of modules and using Java and

JSP as main implementation technologies (Figure 20).

Figure 20 Arcade

User and System Management provides the system with all functionality

needed to easily administrate the different type of users (Students,

Instructors, Course Administrators, System Administrators, Course

Authors). Course and Curriculum Management gives the possibility to

tailor a Course to different educational needs, developing several Course


Instances. Communication provides internal email, chat, discussion board,

news and virtual disks for all ARCADE users. Assignments and Testing

provides web based assignment and testing facilities, allowing dynamic

generation, assignment, conducting and assessment of students’ tests

and assignments.

All system modules are well integrated using a common data base. The

system is very flexible and easy to be expanded and adapted to further

needs. It is following most of the accepted IMS and SCORM specifications

and standards.

6.2.7 RELOAD (Reload 2004)

RELOAD is a free open source content package and metadata editor. It

also provides the ability to create Learning Designs, following the IMS LD

specification (IMS LD 2003). It supports the latest IMS and SCORM

specifications for Learning Objects, Metadata, Content Packaging, and

others. It is de developed under the project funded by JISC X4L program.

It is engaged in producing tools for the creation, editing and running of

both learning objects and learning activities that implement the

appropriate IMS/SCORM specifications. The project is implementing IMS

content packaging, simple sequencing, and learning design specifications

in a suite of open-source tools including a package editor based on the

existing PackageIt, a SCORM player for running SCORM 1.3 content and

the Colloquia Virtual Learning Environment.

6.2.8 TELETOP (Teletop 2004)

The course management system Teletop is described in detail in Chapter

4.


6.2.9 DIOGENE (Diogene 2004)

The Diogene Training Environment (Figure 21) realises an architecture

based on the Virtual Organisation (VO) paradigm on Web Service

technology. Once inside a Diogene virtual Training Agency, a learner can

select a particular set of topics from an ontology and let the system

arrange a personalised self-adaptive course about chosen topics

(personalisation is based on learner profiling). Apart from this, the system

is able to provide the following features.

− It gives free-lance tutors the possibility to subscribe to a virtual Tutor

Agency and to formally describe their professional competencies. Tutors,

in this way, are considered as “learning resources” able to be exploited (if

requested) by students during their learning process in order to obtain

guidance.

− Individuate learners with similar needs and profiles and provide them a

co-operative virtual environment named Café in order to support social

interactions, mentoring and information exchange. The same environment

is used to interface synchronously and asynchronously free-lance tutors

with their students.

− It defines and applies a learner model able to represent learner

assessed achievements and obtain, for each learner, an electronic (and

automatically updated) Curriculum Vitae (CV). Third parties interested to

find qualified professional can connect to a virtual Skill Agency that, given

a specified profile, is able to search in the Diogene VO compatible CVs.

− It applies a pedagogical strategy based on Felder’s theory to be able to

determine individual learning styles and adapt courses accordingly. The

ability to dynamically improve the system’s representation of an inferred

style is also provided and exploits information gathered during knowledge

assessments.


− It allowa content providers to semantically annotate Learning Objects

(LO) according to an underlying ontology-based knowledge representation

model. A tool named KMS was also realised to annotate content and to

register it inside virtual Publishing Houses where they can be accessed

from anywhere on the Diogene VO. The same tool also provides ontology

editing features and registration capabilities inside Diogene Knowledge

Agencies.

− It draws and uses free content directly from the Web and from the

Semantic Web exploiting Diogene Web Catcher Agencies that are based

on a knowledge extraction methodology able to extract metadata semi-

automatically from text on a knowledge harmonisation methodology to be

able to find correspondences between different ontologies.

Diogene is modelled as a Virtual Organisation (VO) strongly based on the

use of Web Services. The Diogene VO is populated by entities offering

and consuming services. Such entities are grouped in four categories:

users (humans that provide and consume services), organizations

(physical entities that as software components provide and consume

services), utility components (software components embedding the

technology assuring the architecture integrity) and accessor components

(software components providing the access from outside to the Diogene

VO and from the Diogene VO to outside).

Diogene Users can be grouped in the following main categories: Learner,

Tutor, Skill searcher.

Organizations of different types offer services and collaborate for the

realisation of their own services. The organisations supported by Diogene

are Publishing Houses, (store training content and provide remote access

to it), Web Catcher Agencies (able to extract training content directly from

Web and Semantic Web), Tutor Agencies (work as entry point for

tutorsand provide searching facilities), Brokerage Offices (research,

prepare and provide training offers for learners on demand, based on


customisation information - learner model, learning strategies, price,

learning goals), Training Agencies (provide the basic environment for

learning experiences and tutoring activities), Knowledge Agencies

(maintain and manage knowledge structures – concept dictionaries and

ontologies), Café (support social interactions, mentoring and information

exchange by providing users a set of collaborative synchronous and

asynchronous facilities), Skill Agencies (provide search engine capabilities

on Learner Models Databases in order to let third parties interested to hire

certified staff to find qualified professional with respect to privacy

requirements), Bank (a singleton organisation that logs transactions

information occurred inside the Diogene VO).

Figure 21 Diogene

6.2.10 TELENET

The TELENET LMS is designed to support and monitor the learning

process. It is flexible, scalable and easy to use for tutors and learners with


very little knowledge of information technologies. It proposes learning

units based on the learner’s skills, tracks learning progress through

courses, and coordinates the personalized learning experience. It has

powerful tools for creating, structuring and arranging course content to

optimize the work of course authors, data administrators and training

managers.

It is a web based application, easily translatable in any official language,

that provides on-line training/learning activities and it supports the delivery

of e-learning content and services either installed on the LAN or available

on an ASP basis. TELENET LMS presents the following key functional

benefits: Learning, Tutoring, User Community, Content and Users

Administration.

TELENET LMS is a web-based platform that allows managing a training

activity (Learning Management System). A login process restricts access

to the platform. The main features of the environment are:

- Administrator Desktop, which allows training managers and

accountants to access administrative tasks.

- Trainer desktop, which allows tutors/trainers to monitor the progress

of trainees and manage groups. It also integrates a communication

system between the trainee and the training centre, both

synchronous and asynchronous.

- Trainee desktop, from which trainees can access the lessons,

exercises and the history of their progress. All communication tools

are available.

In addition,

- To access the desktops the users are allowed to use, they only need

a personal computer and a standard Internet browser. The access


rights to each of the desktops are determined in the user's ID and

password.

- The system is flexible and open to allow extensions of further

functionality.

TELENET LMS is an environment where end-users (trainees) can follow

the courses in a client / server mode within an Intranet. The server side is

the administration platform. TELENET LMS complies with the IMS content

packaging specification, which provides the functionality to describe and

package learning materials, such as an individual course or a collection of

courses, into interoperable, distributable packages.

TEL Platforms and Tools enable learning providers to implement and

maintain integrated learning services based especially on re-usable

learning objects. They are aimed at developing services needed to build

distributed learning systems in such a way that learning objects (courses,

modules etc.) can be flexibly archived, described and retrieved for re-use.

Resulting platforms and tools support content packaging, the production of

meta-data, learner information profiling, interfacing with enterprise

systems, etc.

In order to be used through ATA, a special set of servers will be installed

and maintained. ATA will inform the Kaleidoscope community about this

possibility through the Kaleidoscope portal, Newsletter and by email.

ATA will also maintain a special Web Forum for providing consultancies

on the use of all of the recommended TEL plarforms and tools, as well as

on other issues regarding all of the stages of the Learning Design.


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D9.2.2 (Final) Description of the ATA Design

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