HSSS 2008 Glezakos Georg Aka Lou System-Driven eLearning eContent Design

8/8/2019 HSSS 2008 Glezakos Georg Aka Lou System-Driven eLearning eContent Design

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System-Driven eLearning eContent Design

Nick. B. GlezakosInfoSociety SA, Ilioupoleos 2-4, Imittos, Athens P.C. 172 37, [email protected]

Maria E. Georgakalou

Halkis Institute of Technology, Psahna Evoias, P.C. 34400, [email protected]

ABSTRACT

The present paper deals with system-driven e-learning content design issues. It is a well

established fact that e-learning content frequently fails to meet minimal user needs such assimplicity in use and navigation, straightforward didactic value, support for social collaboration

activities etc. In order to contribute to the satisfaction of the aforementioned user needs thepresent work is based on the principle that e-learning content design should utilise simple tools

and walkthroughs for individuals and teams that may lack the kind of professional backgroundneeded but are still determined to create eLearning eContent. The tools and walkthroughs

presented in the following sections are knowledge intensive and they aspire to cover for trivialexpertise gaps (of novice eLearning eContent authors) assuring threshold quality. The findings ofthe present work suggest that when designing e-learning content following the proposed systemic

approach it takes eventually much less effort to reach threshold quality than to attempt to apply ametadata schema to given restrictions regarding didactic material and corresponding Human

Recourses a typical approach of novice eLearning eContent developers.

Key words: e-learning content design, Knowledge Management

Introduction and orientation

EContent in the upcoming WEB2.0 era is perceived to be an undistinguishable part of a unifiedweb service and this fact should be well taken into account by e-learning eContent authors.Unfortunately, it is a given fact that elearning eContent frequently fails to meet minimal userneeds. Those needs refer equally and horizontally not only to elearning eContent as an

autonomous entity but also, in a unified fashion, to all modules and services of an e-learning

system. WEB 2.0 sees eContent as an integrated part of a thorough stand-alone web service. Letus first review some basic facts about eLearning systems and (lately) web services before focusing

on eLearning eContent development:

An old hype?In the WEB 1.0 era e-learning systems were perceived to be a hopeful service that envisaged adramatic change in the way we provide (and receive) educational services . Far from that, almost

all WEB 1.0 eLearning efforts, ranging from the micro scale of a school intranet to the macro scale

of a global e-learning web service, did not manage to provide the aforementioned vision at anycircumstance or scale. In most cases, failure to fulfil that vision came even when such services

were supported by prestigious universities or related academia.The new hype?

Now, that technology has advanced and WEB 2.0 is here (with WEB 3.0 round the corner), now

that eLearning platforms are equipped with any functionality imaginable, now that a WEB 1.0eLearning web service (that used to cost several thousands of dollars) is available for literally

peanuts, now that educational material is abundant and little diamonds can be found in theblogsphere, now that MIT offers for free all their knowledge on-line (and according to

interoperable standards), now all bricks will finally drop in place. We are very much afraid: hardlyso! To be frank, we strongly support that eLearning has been following, for quite some time now,


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troubling paths put modestly. An overstatement? Well consider this: During the last two decades

the internet has undoubtedly changed the way we communicate, work, listen to music, watch

films and socialize. It will not be a grand overstatement to say that the internet has ultimatelychanged the way we live. So let us carefully examine this: Has the internet dramatically changed

the way we provide (and receive) educational services? Has it changed our education the way

yahoo, google, youtube, amazon, iPod, blogs, torrent & file sharing engines, myspace & facebookhave changed our lives? Let us face it: NO. And definitely not in the way those applications have

that is overnight. It is more than evident that the simplicityof the aforementioned applicationshas certainly escaped the attention of eLearning champions and innovators.

No Hype?Education must be no hype. It is a serious and often too responsible and tedious business to be

any kind of hype. Educational services aim at providing knowledge to people with a view to better

their lives. Bettering peoples lives is the core vision of any serious educational service. This is agrand responsibility totally foreign to any techno enthusiast fad. It is even more foreign to anyventure capital endeavour such as the likes of elearning WEB 1.0 hopefuls before (and regrettably

even after) the dotcom disaster. ELearning initiatives that strategically first aim at creating moneyhave no place in the virtual class of the 21st century and they will certainly follow the ill fate oftheir predecessors. On the other hand, fulfilling the core vision of education (to better peoples

lives) and doing so by utilising the power of Information Society will surely bring millions to the

pioneers and will start a whole new industry. Since we see that happening elearning success

stories will be evident only to specialised areas targeting specific audiences like people in the ruralareas or people that just cannot make ends meet to proper education.

Educational services in the 21stcentury a wish listSurfing on the net is (and should be) great recreation. Online socialising definitely promoteshuman communication in a democratic fashion further than any ancient Greek would ever dream.

Global search engines have literally established themselves as the 21st century live encyclopaedias

for virtually anything. But education is fundamentally different. Education, at its simplesttraditional version, first and foremost needs educators. That is teachers. Teachers that need nothave more expertise in computers than simple computer literacy. ELearning education clearly

demands more than this. It demands the few of those teachers that perceive the InformationSociety era as a great opportunity to offer additional educational stimuli to their students . At thispoint it is highly important to underline this: It is teachers that should identify educational stimuli

that should deliver added value to an educational web service not the other way round. One

reason, we strongly believe, that elearning initiatives present such a disastrous success rate isthat their creators (sometimes people that are not teachers .) try first to create a digital stimuli for educators and educational processes. The usual result is impressive multimedia

creations destined to bomb (poor) traditional oriented classes in a most aggressive effort to

promote a multi-modal approach to learning. The most recent specimen of these interesting

phenomena is evident to all kinds of on-line tutorials (usually for computer programs andinformation systems). On-line tutorials nowadays have come up to be none other than simple

video presentations. Any video presentation describing software functionality is served as atutorial rather than a video presentation. Surprisingly enough this simple video presentation

works much better than any WEB 1.0 on-line educational equivalent and certainly much betterthan a simple traditional book. To sum up, elearning education must be first and foremost

education. That undeniably entails the following: It must be run by educators (often confused with

academics) and it must provide the right stimuli to the class, traditional or virtual. It mustenvision bettering peoples life rather than making profit. A good practice to avoid the latter is to

forget about money altogether and just keep in mind that a successful elearning initiative, a onethat will fulfil the core vision of education, a one that will change our lives overnight, will not avoid

serious funding. Having said that, we strongly believe that any 21st century elearning initiative,that channels itself as a web service, should be characterised by the following:

i) At the strategic level (shaping the core of the service): a) Vision: To better humanlives by educating them (st1). b) Simple and axiomatic Principles: Education (andtherefore educational systems including educational web services) must be human


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centred (st2), respect traditional educational methods and tools (st3) (that have

proven valuable over the last couple of thousands of years) and not be technology

based (or even worse technology depended) but technology literate (st4). c) Clear exitcriteria (st5) that define the point users exit the system.

ii) At the systemic level (describing the service), an eLearning initiative should be: Metricbased (sy1). We will elaborate on eLearning eContent development in the following

sections. The operational field of an eLearning system should be situated within atriangle orientated by Education, Technology and Sustainability. The Education

dimension should be defined by straightforward didactic value (sy2), technologyshould

provide functionality (sy3) and simplicity in use (sy4). Sustainabilityshould provide theframework for preserving and strengthening the eLearning system (sy5).

iii) At the tactical level (deploying the service) an eLearning initiative clearly needs simpleand careful project management. Any professional elearning initiative unavoidably needs

expertise from the area of web authoring and on-line communication and so it demands

coordinated work by inter-scientific teams that come from totally different background(teachers and web professionals ... to start with). So, in order to keep unavoidable

conflict at the minimum level, project management should strictly focus on resultsoriented approach (ta1). Intensive care must be taken at role allocation (ta2) and

decision making (ta3). The tactical level is not covered in the present paper and ismentioned for reference only to be suggested as further work.

Contribution of the present work

It has become more than obvious that any 21st century eLearning initiative, including thedevelopment of its integral eContent, is nothing but simple. It becomes clear that specific and

specialised skills are definitely needed in order to meet the demands of the aforementionedstrategic, systemic and tactical parameters. Our contribution focuses on delivering simple toolsand walkthroughs to individuals and teams that may lack the kind of professional background

needed but are still determined to create eLearning eContent for the first two of the

aforementioned parameters that play a crucial role to eLearning eContent development. The toolsand walkthroughs presented in the following sections are knowledge intensive and they aspire tocover for trivial expertise gaps (of novice eLearning eContent authors) assuring threshold quality.

Furthermore, the present work aspires to pave the way for the development of equivalent tools

and walkthroughs beyond triviality. The following tools respect all levels of eLearning eContent

development, strategic, systemic and tactical. While getting to the tools it is best to elaborate onthose three levels focusing on eLearning eContent development:

eLearning eContent shaping: The strategy

The strategy of eLearning eContent development should be aligned with the one of the overalleLearning system while focusing on the content dimension. In simple words this means that

eLearning eContent should be made to fulfil the overall systems strategy as described above. Foreach aspect of the aforementioned strategy we present a set of walkthroughs and tools thatcontribute to the four strategy aspects (st1 st5):

Walkthrough 1: Purpose statement(contributes to st1, st2 and st5)A simple statement of the purpose of the eContent is impertinent to constantly remind the

eContent developers of a) the thematic area(s) the eContent refers to and b) the range of the

eContent applicability. A useful pattern for such a statement is this We develop eContent thatteaches / supports / helps / empowers to . are taken fromwalkthrough 2 and is a verbal description of the exit criteria of the system. is


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ideally shaped by putting a simple question to the users such as the typical what would you like

to learn ?. Often this is quite clear and no questionnaire is needed e.g. doctors would like to

learn about the new products of a pharmaceutical company along with their uses and side effects.In this case the eContent purpose statement should be: We develop eContent that helps doctors

to learn about the new products of a pharmaceutical company along with their uses and side

effects. As trivial as this seems it is good practice to communicate the purpose statement with allthe eContent developers and make sure that they have full understanding of its context.

Tool 1: Purpose Orientation (contributes to st1, st2 and st5)In case of wide / generic target audiences and / or unidentified eContent exit criteria a typical

questionnaire is needed to cover for any gaps. An example of such a questionnaire could be assimple as the following: User ID data: Name, Occupation, Job position, etc, Q1: What are your

first three learning priorities? , Q2: Why would you like to use eLearning for those priorities? Users

must be guided to answer in a limited fashion e.g. within a word count limit (less than 50 words)or in 1-2 sentences.Walkthrough 2: Identify the stakeholders (contributes to st4 and st5)

From walkthrough 1.1. and tool 1.1 there can be a picture of the users of the eContent to acertain extent. Other stakeholders are the developers themselves and people that make use of theeContent as mediators. The logic behind stakeholders orientation is that eLearning eContent is

primarily made for the users but it is also made to satisfy all the stakeholders needs. A clear view

of typical eLearning system stakeholders is given in graph 1.1. The stakeholderscategorization is

based on two main dimensions: the demand and the supply. It is clear from the graph thateContent developers should have a clear view of the stakeholders that provide the e-Learning

platforms for eContent compatibility reasons as long as with those who embody the eContent totheir services for eContent usability (and accessibility) reasons.Tool 2: Stakeholders Orientation (contributes to st4 and st5)

The eContent developers should be fully aware of the e-Learning platform providers and the

eContent service provides. graph 1.1. should be communicated with the eContent developersteam and a short description of each stakeholder role should be presented.

Graph 1: eLearning system stakeholders on a supply demand logic

eLearning eContent description: The subsystem


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Generally speaking, a system is an organized set of interrelated ideas or principles, any organized

assembly of resources and procedures united and regulated by interaction or interdependence toaccomplish a set of specific functions [1]. To be more precise, an eLearning web service is a

system that processes information, is based heavily on (users) feedback, has comprehensible

boundaries and the main parameters that govern it are known to a certain extend [1]. At thesame time it has been made clear in the previous sections that a system describing an eLearning

web service embodies inter-scientific knowledge combining educational and technology methodsand tools and, therefore, is quite complex. Similarly, eLearning eContent, as an integral part of an

eLearning web service, presents the same high level of complexity. So, our eLearning eContentsubsystem that processes information, is based heavily on (users) feedback, presents high level of

complexity and its governing parameters and boundaries are fairly comprehensible should better

be described from the Cybernetics point of view. We focus on how our eLearning eContentsubsystem processes information, react to information and changes or can be changed to betteraccomplish the first two tasks. Describing our subsystem from the Cybernetics point of view

requires clear (or at least basic) understanding of our subsystems governing parameters, itsfeedback and the effect of the two in to the subsystems evolution. In our work this understandingshapes the tools and walkthroughs we suggest. The Governing Parameters that contribute to the

shaping of eLearning eContent belong mostly to the Educational and the Sustainability dimension

of the overall eLearning system as described above:

Education: Learning Activity (The main metric of the eContent subsystem)A learning activitycan be defined as an interaction between a learner and an environment, leading

to a planned outcome. It is the planned outcome which makes learning a purposeful activity. [1].It is pertinent for eContent developers to design having the learning activity as their buildingblock. Graph 2 illustrates the essence of a learning activity.

Graph 2: Learning Activity illustration (source [1])

Education: Well established pedagogical theories based on learning activities

Walkthrough 3. (contributes to sy1, sy2 and sy3)


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A simple way to base eContent design on learning activities is to perform a black box analysis of

the learning process having in mind the learning outcomes of each activity. To do that in the

design phase eContent developers could first write a Table of Contents (TOC) of the learningmaterial they wish to develop. Each line of that table of contents should be an autonomous

learning activity. After that learning activities could be assigned to three major categories:

Activities that describe simple facts, Activities that illustrate processes and principles andActivities that lead to high level of thinking and knowledge discovery / creation [1], [8],

[9]. The next step is to decide which form each activity should take shape of as a final(electronic) deliverable (end product) such as presentations, questions (and corresponding

answers), graphs, multimedia material etc. Tool 1 clarifies such correlations

Tool 3(contributes to sy1, sy2 and sy3)

Table 1: Categorizations of learning activities and correlations with end products


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At this point the eContent to be developed is design in a form of a TOC that is based onautonomous learning activities. To further the design analysis of the eLearning-to-be eContent thedevelopers should shape it from the static structure of a TOCto the more dynamic of learningpaths. Put simple, the developers visualise the way the content will interact with the learnerspredicting several routes the learner follows in order to achieve the didactical goals of the unitlesson [5], [6], [7] .Tool 4(contributes to sy1, sy2, sy3 and sy4)

Graph 3: Learning activity tree, source [7]

Sustainability: e-learning metadata schemas (SCORM 2004)

At this stage eContent developers should be able to make use of a SCORM authoring tool that

recognises SCOs. Put simply all aforementioned autonomous learning activities are input as SCOs.In order to fully describe the SCOs according to SCORM specifications the eContent developers

have to assign metadata in each one. A strategic selection of SCORM 2004 metadata is presentedin the following walkthrough covering both SCOs metadata at the SCO level and manifest

metadata at the unit / lesson level [2], [4]:Walkthrough 4 (contributes to sy5)

Fill in SCOs Metadata (in order of Importance)General (Title, Description, Keyword)Life Cycle (Version, Contribute, Role)Educational (Interactivitytype, Learningsourcetype, Interactivitylevel, semanticdensity, difficulty)Relation (Kind)Classification (Purpose, Description, Keyword)Technical (Format, Location)RightsMeta-MetadataAnnotationFill in Manifest fields in order of ImportanceManifest, TitleOrganization


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IdentifierResourcesMetadata

Findings: Better Quality with less effort

The findings of the present work suggest that it takes eventually much less effort when designing

e-learning content following the proposed systemic approach than to simply apply a metadataschema to given restrictions regarding exiting didactic material and corresponding HumanRecourses, specially since the authors are much more aware of an e-Learning system as a whole.Results (the e-Learning eContent) are anticipated to be of a significantly better quality since arefollowing a specific system oriented step by step approach that demands technology literateeducational content designers as opposed to a non systemic analytical approach to fully functionaleLearning eContent that clearly demands a range of eLearning professionals with considerableexpertise on eLearning eContent design.

Further Research

An interesting approach of depicting eContent quality is to measure on a developed eContent (or

on a database that embodies all the assets that are to be formatted as eLearning eContent) a

systemic reaction of core key meanings (or key semantics) that describe our eContent. A simpleapproach to come to these semantics is to represent them as sets of key words that are selectedfrom the TOCdescribed above. These sets of key words could then be input in a local Google

search appliance targeted at the eContent database (or a repository of its assets). The logic ofsuch a test is that the set of key words that result to the minimum Shannon entropy [10] are the

set of key words that best describe (its semantics are best diffused) the database (or repository).

All its left is to critically examine if that set(s) of key words are close to the description of ourpurpose statement described above. The proposed test are as follows:

System reaction: a step based entropy metric

It is well known that philosophers (Dretske, 1981; Dretske, 1971) have used the informationtheory in order to understand knowledge, justification and mental content. We will now try to

introduce a metric for the reaction of the system in a users random query. The main idea was to

combine the quantity of the information retrieved (without considering its quality) with the timespent to it. A potential further step would deal with the quality of the information retrieved.

In order to do so, we have used Shannons (Shannon, 1948) information theory, since theoutcome of each query provides the user with some information.

We assume that the outcome of each query contains some information, which is equally divided

among the instances of the query, while the whole amount of information contained in the queryis given by the following equation:

where: s:= the whole amount of information obtained by each query,

pi:= the amount of information obtained by each of the instances of the

outcome of the query =>pi = 1/n

Assumption: The information obtained by a query depends only in the number of instances the

query would finally end up as a result.This would probably cause no problem at all, in case the query provides results at a high speed.

Hence, the information provided by each query during the first iteration will be calculated by

dividing 1 (the sum of probabilities) by the total amount if instances in which the query resulted


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Taking time under consideration

Still though, time is usually a crucial parametre (accuracy as well, but we have not dealt with it in

the current paper).Assumption: Time is valuable, so the more time is spent by the system in order to reply to a

query, the less information is provided by the specific query.

Hence, the information provided by each query during the first iteration will be calculated bydividing 1 (the sum of probabilities) by the total amount if instances in which the query resulted

and by the total time spent by the query in order to give a result.In order to take under consideration the parametre of time, we have proceeded to the second

iteration, where the time spent for the systems reply to the query is used in order to calculate thepi. Thus, the total information amount provided by the query, is now given by the equation:

where: s:= the whole amount of information obtained by each query,pi:= the amount of information obtained by each of the instances of the

outcome of the query, divided by the time spent for the answer=>

We assume that the each of the instances provided by the query is equally probable to occur as

the rest. Additionally, we assume that the time spent for the query, is equally divided among all

instances. Thus, we have the new[pi] = (1/n)/t

Example:1a. (Wrong spelling capital letters)

Google has found no matching document

1b. (Right spelling- capital letters)Google has found no matching document1c. (Wrong spelling small letters)

Google has found 7 matching documents (0,04 seconds)1d. (Right spelling small letters)Google has found 7 matching documents (0,19 seconds)

2a. Different sequence same overall query (Wrong spelling)

Google has found 7 matching documents (0,26 seconds)2b. Different sequence same overall query (Right spelling)Google has found 3 matching documents (0,30 seconds)

First iteration

The results are shown in the following table:

Instancespi log2pi pi log2pi Entropy

1a 0 0 0 0 0

1b 0 0 0 0 0

1c 7 0.14 -2.807354922 -0.40105 2.8073549

1d 7 0.142857143 -2.807354922 -0.40105 2.8073549

2a 7 0.142857143 -2.807354922 -0.40105 2.8073549

2b 3 0.33 -1.584962501 -0.52832 1.5849625

Second iteration

The results are shown in the following table:

Instances

time (10-2

sec) pi log2p(i) pi log2 pi Entropy

1a 0 0 0 0 0


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1b 0 0 0 0 0

1c 7 4 0.04 -4.80735 -0.171691 1.201839

1d 7 19 0.007518797-7.05528 -0.053047 0.371331

2a 7 26 0.005494505-7.50779 -0.041252 0.288761

2b 3 30 0.01 -6.49185 -0.072132 0.216395

So, we have provided an entropy-based metric for the outcome of queries in any e-content

system, which apart from Shannons entropy, takes under consideration the time the user willconsume on each query.

References

[1] T. Anderson, F. Elloumi, Theory and practice of online learning, Athabaska University, 2004

[2] Mikael Nilsson, Matthias Palmr, Ambjrn Naeve, SemanticWeb Meta-data for e-Learning Some Architectural Guidelines, Proceedings of the 11th World Wide Web Conference(WWW2002), Hawaii, USA

[3] D. Sampson, C. Karagiannidis, A. Schenone, F.Cardinali Knowledge-on-Demand in e-Learning and e-Working Settings, KOD Knowledge on Demand Project (www.kodweb.org,kod.iti.gr)

[4] O. Conlan1, C. Hockemeyer, V. Wade, D. Albert, Metadata Driven Approaches to FacilitateAdaptivity in Personalized eLearning Systems, Conference on Educational Multimedia,Hypermedia & Telecommunications, Denver, Colorado, June 2002.

[5] C. Snae and M.Brueckner Ontology-Driven E-Learning System Based on Roles and Activitiesfor Thai Learning Environment, Interdisciplinary Journal of Knowledge and Learning ObjectsVolume 3, 2007

[6] K. Leyking, P. Chikova, and P. Loos Competency - and Process-Driven e-Learning a Model-Based Approach, Electronic Journal e-Learning Volume 5 Issue 3 2007 (183-194)

[7] ADL, www.adl.org[8] Chikova, P., Leyking, K., and Loos, P. (2006) "Data and Process Integration of e-Learning

Content Development and Product Engineering in SMEs", Reading: ACL.

[9] Martin, G. and Wolpers, M. (2005) "Process-driven Learning- and Knowledge Environments",in M. E. Auer, U. Auer and R. Mittermeir (eds.): Ambient and Mobile Learning. Proceedings ofthe Interactive Computer Aided Learning Conference (ICL) 2005, Carinthia Tech Institute(School of Electronics), Villach

[10] Shannon, C. E., (1948). A Mathematical Theory of Communication, The Bell SystemTechnical Journal, Vol. 27, pp. 379423, 623656, July, October."

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HSSS 2008 Glezakos Georg Aka Lou System-Driven eLearning eContent Design