26-05-2012, 04:51 PM
A system for managing SCORM-compliant learning objects
[attachment=23219]
INTRODUCTION
Those involved in education have recognized the need
and efficacy of using technology for creating educational
resources. This need has been proliferated by the
widespread use of Learning Management Systems (LMS)
as the dominant online mode of interaction between the
teacher and the student. Educational resources take many
forms including slides, notes, documents, quizzes, and so
on. While LMS makes it easy to share any of such
resources with the students, reuse of the same by other
teachers is still an issue. Teachers still have to resort to
copy/paste in case they want reuse any part of an
educational resource that already exists. In this paper, we
describe a standards-compliant platform called LOMS
(Learning Object Management System) that enables
standards-compliant educational resources to be created
and stored in a shareable repository. We also describe an
authoring tool named LOMS-A (LOMS-Assembler),
which helps content authors (say, teachers) search,
retrieve, extract, and assemble new learning objects based
on existing learning objects present in LOMS.
MOTIVATION AND RELATED WORK
There are several standalone tools available for
creating standards-compliant reusable learning objects [3].
For example, eXe [9] is an open source authoring tool for
creating standards-compliant instructional material.
Similarly, there are many web-based frontend tools that
allow sharing of useful educational material over the web.
For example, curriki [10] is a web-based system that
provides education resources for teaching at the high
school level and beyond. What is needed is a system to
manage the learning objects created using standalone
systems in a way that makes sharing and reusing them it
over the web easy.
FUNCTIONAL ARCHITECTURE
LOMS is a platform for managing reusable learning
objects that was developed earlier [7]. It provides a
backend for managing SCORM-compliant reusable
learning objects in a centralized repository. LOMS
provides the basic infrastructure that includes a native
XML database (NXD) for managing the meta-data and a
set of primitive operations to store and retrieve SCORMcompliant
learning objects. LOMS-A is a new assembling
system that has been developed to provide access to the
LOMS repository and helps content consumers such as
teachers to search, retrieve, and assemble their own
learning objects, thus enhancing the reusability of existing
learning objects.
Assembling using LOMS-A
Authoring tools are software packages that enable users
to create professional and interactive training content and
are widely used to create e-learning modules. Authoring
tools are required to make sure that the package follows all
the standards of the authoring language. Authoring tools
make our task easy in creating objects because we don’t
need to have expertise on the authoring language as the
tool itself takes care of it. Authoring tools helps in
creating package by linking objects together such as text,
multimedia application, documents etc. which makes
package user friendly and easy to use.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
With Learning Management Systems gaining a lot of
recognition and importance in educational institutions,
there is a need for making the process of online content
authoring an easy task. Standards such as SCORM help the
various content consumers to reuse content created by
others. However, there are still a lot of impediments to
achieving high level of reuse of RLOs in reality. Higher
levels of granularity (“all or nothing”), inability to mix and
match content from multiple RLOs are two of the most
critical limitations. In this paper, we described how
LOMS-A together with the LOMS platform can greatly
enhance the effective usage of RLOs. In particular, the
three specific features of the system we described that help
address these limitations are: (a) the shared repository, (b)
ability to break-up existing objects into its constituent
assets, and © ability to combine existing objects to create
new ones. As part of future work, LOMS-A and the LOMS
platform need to be enhanced to enable sequencing aspects
to encoded during the process of assembling learning
objects.
[attachment=23219]
INTRODUCTION
Those involved in education have recognized the need
and efficacy of using technology for creating educational
resources. This need has been proliferated by the
widespread use of Learning Management Systems (LMS)
as the dominant online mode of interaction between the
teacher and the student. Educational resources take many
forms including slides, notes, documents, quizzes, and so
on. While LMS makes it easy to share any of such
resources with the students, reuse of the same by other
teachers is still an issue. Teachers still have to resort to
copy/paste in case they want reuse any part of an
educational resource that already exists. In this paper, we
describe a standards-compliant platform called LOMS
(Learning Object Management System) that enables
standards-compliant educational resources to be created
and stored in a shareable repository. We also describe an
authoring tool named LOMS-A (LOMS-Assembler),
which helps content authors (say, teachers) search,
retrieve, extract, and assemble new learning objects based
on existing learning objects present in LOMS.
MOTIVATION AND RELATED WORK
There are several standalone tools available for
creating standards-compliant reusable learning objects [3].
For example, eXe [9] is an open source authoring tool for
creating standards-compliant instructional material.
Similarly, there are many web-based frontend tools that
allow sharing of useful educational material over the web.
For example, curriki [10] is a web-based system that
provides education resources for teaching at the high
school level and beyond. What is needed is a system to
manage the learning objects created using standalone
systems in a way that makes sharing and reusing them it
over the web easy.
FUNCTIONAL ARCHITECTURE
LOMS is a platform for managing reusable learning
objects that was developed earlier [7]. It provides a
backend for managing SCORM-compliant reusable
learning objects in a centralized repository. LOMS
provides the basic infrastructure that includes a native
XML database (NXD) for managing the meta-data and a
set of primitive operations to store and retrieve SCORMcompliant
learning objects. LOMS-A is a new assembling
system that has been developed to provide access to the
LOMS repository and helps content consumers such as
teachers to search, retrieve, and assemble their own
learning objects, thus enhancing the reusability of existing
learning objects.
Assembling using LOMS-A
Authoring tools are software packages that enable users
to create professional and interactive training content and
are widely used to create e-learning modules. Authoring
tools are required to make sure that the package follows all
the standards of the authoring language. Authoring tools
make our task easy in creating objects because we don’t
need to have expertise on the authoring language as the
tool itself takes care of it. Authoring tools helps in
creating package by linking objects together such as text,
multimedia application, documents etc. which makes
package user friendly and easy to use.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
With Learning Management Systems gaining a lot of
recognition and importance in educational institutions,
there is a need for making the process of online content
authoring an easy task. Standards such as SCORM help the
various content consumers to reuse content created by
others. However, there are still a lot of impediments to
achieving high level of reuse of RLOs in reality. Higher
levels of granularity (“all or nothing”), inability to mix and
match content from multiple RLOs are two of the most
critical limitations. In this paper, we described how
LOMS-A together with the LOMS platform can greatly
enhance the effective usage of RLOs. In particular, the
three specific features of the system we described that help
address these limitations are: (a) the shared repository, (b)
ability to break-up existing objects into its constituent
assets, and © ability to combine existing objects to create
new ones. As part of future work, LOMS-A and the LOMS
platform need to be enhanced to enable sequencing aspects
to encoded during the process of assembling learning
objects.