An extensible approach to visually editing adaptive learning activities and designs based on services

Learning management systems (LMS) provide an operational environment in which an online course can be created and later executed. Inter-operation between creators and their authoring facilities, and the LMS execution engine are based on defining standards and specifications, such as the IMS Learning Design (LD). Because an LMS better serves as a course player than as a course creator, a large number of approaches and environments for standards-compliant course authoring have been developed. These approaches and environments propose a number of issues that deal with how adaptations are edited and how to define the connection of learning activities with external learning applications and services. These questions have raised concern, mostly because of the excessive commitment of the creators’ methods and tools used with an educational modeling language, as well as the isolation of the language used to describe the course from the host LMS. This work describes an abstract, extendible language used to specify the learning design of a course, which can be transformed into any LD language as required by the execution environment. The language is used from a generative authoring environment that offers the possibility of editing web services as an additional resource to assess learning activities.     

Constructing collaborative learning activities for distance cal systems

Many existing Computer Assisted Learning (CAL) systems use computer programs to simulate a teacher for individual learning. However, regardless of how good the CAL system is, a student should also interact with learning companions and human teachers. Due to the popularity and ease of access to computer networks and communication tools, network facilities can be incorporated into a CAL system to make it a distance CAL system. To attain an effective learning outcome, a distance CAL system must be able to: define a group learning model; constrain and advise the students to learn according to the model, and have query facilities which provide the teacher with information about what a student has done and learned, and what a student should do next. A rule‐based system that is conventionally used cannot sufficiently provide those required functions. This paper suggests why this is the case and how an active database system can achieve those goals. Distance CAL     

CAL production: Strategies and tactics

There is a world-wide hunger for CAL material. It is born of the same causes as the thirst for open and distance learning. Funding agencies and administrations at all levels from individual institutions to national governments want to believe that these technologies can solve their problems. This is evidenced by reports from and discussions with relevant authorities as far apart as Scandinavia, Central Africa and South East Asia. A worrying feature is the number of occasions when the focus of the discussions is on the translation or conversion of existing CAL or the coordination of CAL production by other agencies. This is understandable in terms of the scale of the need and the limited resources available to education. but who funds the producers?The paper looks at the strategy adopted in Scotland for the production of CAL material for schools. It reports on proposals for the Further Education Sector and takes the Scottish Action Plan for modular courses as a basis for estimating the costs of CAL on a national scale.Individuals and institutions cannot wait for such schemes to be implemented and the contributors to the conference show the breadth and depth of commitment to CAL throughout the world. Even so the investment of effort is such as to demand team activity. For the average teacher, conventional CAL is still too demanding of time, even given the improvements in authoring languages and software tools. The paper suggests that the growing use of commercial packages as content free software allows individuals to make limited but useful contributions within their own cumcular framework, integrating the computer into the learning process.Neither the strategic nor the tactical approaches will solve all our problems, and the extent to which we cooperate is a key factor. Some proposals for improving this sharing are offered.     

ECAL: Bridging the gap between CAL and intelligent tutoring systems

In the traditional CAL system the author generates material to be presented by computer, and the computer simply follows the explicit instructions of the author in interacting with a student. Intelligent tutoring systems rely on abstracting the implicit knowledge of a CAL system into explicit separable representations. There is a large gap between these two approaches which ECAL attempts to bridge by incorporating simple versions of ideas from artificial intelligence as extensions to a traditional CAL tool. It can be regarded as an experiment in minimalism in intelligent tutoring but it is also a practical educational tool. This paper introduces some of the authoring issues raised by ECAL, followed by a general view of the architecture of the system, and a discussion of the educational model which is implicit in ECAL. The final sections discuss the ECAL presentation system and the authoring environment.     

A model for describing CAL authoring systems applied to TAIGA

This paper is divided into two distinct sections: the first sets a groundwork for describing and evaluating CAL authoring systems; the second applies this evaluation framework to a new authoring system that is growing in popularity in the Netherlands, namely TAIGA (Twente Advanced Interactive Graphic Authoring System). The TAIGA system was designed to be transferable and currently runs on the IBM PC and compatibles. Its source language is MS-PASCAL. The CAL Group at the University of Nijmegen is currently acting as a test site for the system and this paper will reflect some of the groups first experiences with this courseware development tool.     

Structuring Knowledge Bases for Designers of Learning Materials

Designers of interactive video training packages need access to multiple sources of information to be able to create exciting materials for learning or training. Hypertext allows dynamic linking of different strands of knowledge in ways which encourage effective elicitation of knowledge from experts, and understandable representation for subsequent users.

This paper describes the knowledge representation aspect of a system which will allow a designer to collect information from clients, from experts, as well as from printed and visual sources — to co-ordinate the information in a single environment, and using the same set of tools, to link the information to learning materials using videodisc and graphics packages.

The total system for a designer consists of an authoring environment, using NoteCards on a Xerox 1186, with a multi-tasking workstation (Amiga) which will bring together output from the knowledge base on the Xerox with information from videodisc. Information about the physical requirements of the authoring environment — constraints, domain limits, financial aspects — can be recorded alongside subject domain knowledge using different ‘modes’ of the Note Cards environment. Modes are a feature of a supplementary package. IDE (Instructional Design Environment), which operates as a ‘shell’ along with Note Cards. Our involvement with the designer's system is in looking at ways in which domain knowledge can be recorded and represented for use interactively with graphics and video materials.     

An investigation into effectiveness of different reflective learning strategies for learning operational software

Skill certification promotion is one of the main policies facilitated by the technological and vocational education, where application software instruction is regarded as the core curriculum to foster skill certification. With its close connection with problem-solving learning, application software instruction relies heavily on hands-on operation incorporating information technology to adequately unravel the challenges where living or working application is simulated as problem situations. According to Dewey (1963) and Edwards (1996), the process of reflection is characterized by the inference course where learners attempt to analyze and solve the problems. However, more evidence is needed to decide what reflective learning strategies are effective for students' learning. Application software operation is categorized as procedural knowledge. Repeated drills are requisite to reach the ultimate goal of spontaneous reaction without thinking. Features of CAL system offer a well-rounded environment to meet the demands. The purposes of this study were 1) to investigate how different reflective learning strategies can affect learning effectiveness of operational application software acquisition, 2) to identify effective learning strategies and to incorporate the CAL approach with instructional practices to foster learning performance. Aiming at characteristics of operational software, this study proposed operational software learning strategy theory model based on reflective learning and Adaptive Character of Thought-Rational (ACT-R) model theories. The proposed model modified the reflective learning theory and added cyclical loop into CAL to fit for operational software instruction. The CAL system is developed and incorporated into learning activities of reflective learning theory strategy model by collecting frequent operation errors made in the first-year experiment as the source drill items. This study is conducted in a two-year sequence. A total of 172 second-grade students was recruited from a vocational high school. Different reflective learning strategies, individual and group reflective learning strategy, are implemented on two experimental groups in the first year. CAL strategy is later added into the experimental groups in the second year. The results suggest that group reflective learning strategy can enhance learning effectiveness of the holistic and medium-score group students. When reflective learning strategy is incorporated with CAL, in addition to maintaining the first-year learning effectiveness, learning effectiveness of the holistic and low-score group students can be benefited by individual reflective learning strategy. Furthermore, reflective learning incorporating with CAL has greater learning effectiveness than the learning without CAL.     

Semi-automatic assembly of learning resources

Technology Enhanced Learning is a research field that has matured considerably over the last decade. Many technical solutions to support design, authoring and use of learning activities and resources have been developed. The first datasets that reflect the tracking of actual use of these tools in real-life settings are beginning to become available. In this article, we present an exploratory study that relies on these datasets to support semi-automatic assembly of learning activities and resources for specific contexts. Starting from learning designs and other online sources that describe well designed learning experiences as they were used in practice, we derive sequencing patterns that capture re-occurring patterns of activities. A semi-automatic assembly framework uses these patterns to support teachers in the design and authoring of course activities. We present a case study that integrates recommendation support for sequencing activities as well as associated resources in the LAMS learning activity environment. Results indicate that the perceived usefulness is high: both teachers with expertise in the use of learning design tools as well as teachers with no background knowledge in the area indicate that the recommendations helped them in the authoring process. In addition, they feel more confident using learning design tools when support is provided that is driven by best practice knowledge.     

The foundations of a theory-aware authoring tool for CSCL design

One of the most useful ways to enhance collaboration is to create scenarios where learners are able to interact more effectively. Nevertheless, the design of pedagogically sound and well-thought-out collaborative learning scenarios is a complex issue. This is due to the context of group learning where the synergy among learners’ interactions affects learning processes and, hence, the learning outcome. Although many advances have been made to support the designing of collaborative learning scenarios through technology, a more systematic approach is lacking. With the limitations of the current designing methods and tools, it is difficult to develop intelligent authoring systems that can guide users in order to produce more effective collaboration. One of the main difficulties with creating a more consistent (computer-understandable) approach to designing collaboration is the necessity of proposing better ways to formalize the group learning processes. In this paper, we present an innovative approach that uses ontologies and concepts from learning theories to create a framework that represents collaborative learning and its processes. Ontologies provide the necessary formalization to represent collaboration, while learning theories provide the concepts to justify and support the development of effective learning scenarios. Such an approach contributes to establish the foundations for the development of the next generation of intelligent authoring systems referred to as theory-aware systems. To verify the viability and usefulness of our proposed ontological framework in the context of systematic design, the development and use of an intelligent authoring tool for CSCL design is presented. This system is able to reason on ontologies to give suggestions that help users to create theory-compliant collaborative learning scenarios. We carried out several experiments with teachers in a geometry drawing course and the results indicate that the system helps teachers to create and interchange their scenarios more easily and facilitates the selection of important pedagogical strategies that influence positively the designing and effectiveness of group activities.     

一个基于XML的教案制作工具的设计

学习资源共享对于电子教案制作有着重要意义。文章给出了一个基于XML的以学习资源共享为核心的教案制作工具的设计。介绍了组成教案的几种学习资源组件,描述了这些学习资源组件之间的关系,以及XML在实现这些学习资源组件上的作用。给出了教案设计制作方式。另外还给出了工具的系统框架。     

Learning support environments: Rationale and evaluation

In this paper we argue that existing understanding of human cognition has much to offer the design of instructional systems and materials, and that new technologies, such as hypertext, in harness with traditional techniques, provide opportunities for extending the mapping of cognitive principles to instructional design. Following a review of types of knowledge, cognitive styles and strategies within a CAL framework, the advantages of learning support environments over other CAL approaches are discussed. Such environments are presented as extensions to hypertext which incorporate various generic features for learning applications. The need for evaluation of learning which is dynamic and internal to the learning tasks is stressed.     

An investigation into the use of CAL and the dialogue strategy in a tutorial context

This article describes the use of CAL and the dialogue strategy as a basis for tutorial work. The sample (11 = 164) consists of staff, teachers and students in a College of Education. It is an attitudinal study and serves to emphasize the importance in certain subject areas of an open-ended approach based on an analysis of the knowledge structure inherent in the discipline itself. It emphasizes the need for models using different levels of teaching, as well as different approaches according to individual learning needs. Such models should be pursued regardless of the constraints imposed by the limitations of computer languages currently available. Reference is made to logic programming (PROLOG) and its relevance for this area of work, as well as the authoring language PLOT for tutorial programs.     

Promoting self-regulated learning in web-based learning environments

Self-regulated learning with the Internet or hypermedia requires not only cognitive learning strategies, but also specific and general meta-cognitive strategies. The purposes of the Study2000 project, carried out at the TU Dresden, were to develop and evaluate authoring tools that support teachers and students in web-based learning and instruction. This paper presents how the authoring tools of the Study2000 project can implement psychologically sound measures to promote (a) active and elaborated learning activities and (b) meta-cognitive activities in a web-based learning environment. Furthermore, it describes a study involving 72 university students in the use of such a web-based learning environment in a self-regulated learning setting at the university level. Results show that students spent almost 70% of their study time with texts, 11% with learning tasks and 12% with the active and elaborated learning tools, whereas meta-cognitive aids where hardly used (<1%).     

The choice of a CAL system

The choice of a computer assisted learning (CAL) system may be considered from several points of view. e.g. the facilities for authors and instructors, the opinion of students and the cost issue. The analysis is even more complex if a system (or a combination of systems) is chosen for wide-scale introduction in an institution of higher education.Based on recent experience at the University of Leyden (The Netherlands), this article provides a procedure for system selection. First the criteria for the choice of system are outlined. Next a method of comparing CAL systems in an exacting setting is discussed. This is a phase in the procedure of system selection which is seldom carried out in practice because of the requirements of time and money. The findings of the assessment by authors and students and the results of the cost comparison are summarized. Finally, the actual decision as to the choice of system is discussed.The conclusions relating to the actual choice of system are based on CAL systems on the market in 1980 and can formally only apply to the University of Leyden. However, the authors believe that the procedure of system selection may be of interest for many other educational institutions.     

Evaluation of student learning in CAL

Computer Assisted Learning, using self-teaching packages in a simulation mode, is a relatively new and interesting medium of teaching. Within the context of the project Computers in the Undergraduate Science Curriculum, part of the aim of the evaluation has been to assess the contribution this kind of CAL can make to the enhancement of student learning. The evaluation techniques used are described, together with some conclusions about the nature of the learning that CAL can provide.     

The evolution and redefining of 'CAL': a reflection on the interplay of theory and practice

This article comments on how the core idea of the computer as an assistant to teaching and learning became reconfigured through changing technologies, pedagogies and educational cultures. Early influential researchers in computer assisted learning (CAL) made strong but differing links to theories and representations of learning, showing a relevance to pedagogy through innovative projects. Amid controversy, the educational potential of CAL became recognized and hardware–software developments stimulated the involvement of teachers in shaping applications and practices within contexts that favoured a constructivist student focus. Further advances in technology gave students greater autonomy in the style and management of learning, and enabled CAL to be redefined as a participative and collaborative enterprise. Institutions responded through supports and structures in ways that suited their wider educational policies. Technological developments (and controversies) continue to extend and reshape the applications of CAL, and this reflection points to the significance of the interplay between theory and practice in this evolving and redefining process.     

Integrating CAL into the organisational context as an instructional design task

Abstract The development of applications for CAL relate to three levels of instructional design: a micro-level , the design of mediacomponents; a meso-level , the choice and formulation of an instructional method and a macro-level , the integration of CAL into the social context of learning. Whereas the first two levels have gained much attention the third aspect has been neglected in research so far. At this level the compatibility of instructional technology and the content and organisational structure of the learning has to be analysed. One aspect refers to the mostly implicit concepts for implementing CAL in organisations: CAL is viewed as either a substitute, an enrichment or as an organisational innovation. Problems contained in each of these concepts in corporate training are discussed.     

HM-Card: A new hypermedia authoring system

HM-Card is a novel hypermedia authoring and presentation system for the development and use of a diverse range of hypermedia applications on PCs/MS-Windows. It is the first tool to implement the HM data model, a recent approach to provide a sound theoretical basis for the sophisticated structuring and navigating of hypermedia databases. However, in this paper we only cover the HM data model as the underlying theoretical foundation for the actual authoring system HM-Card. HM-Card offers an extensive set of functional and structural authoring elements, such as animations, question/answer dialogs, transparent import of external documents, and execution of other MS-Windows applications. The user-interface of HM-Card is intended to support rapid prototyping and authoring of complex hypermedia applications. Finished HM-Card applications can be run as stand-alone systems, used in MS-Windows' OLE (Object Linking and Embedding concept) clients, as well as be integrated as modules into large-scale distributed hypermedia systems.