An Object Oriented Approach to Improve the Precision of Learning Object Retrieval in a Self Learning Environment

Abstract

With the advancements in the WWW and ICT, the e-learning domain has developed very fast. Even many educational institutions these days have shifted their focus towards the e-learning and mobile learning environments. However, from the quality of learning point of view, which is measured in terms of “active learning” taking place, the e-learning environment lags behind the traditional classroom based learning. One of the reasons for that is the availability of large volumes of static and unorganized contents over the e-learning environment which makes it difficult for learners to precisely identify the contents matching with their requirements. With the modern day e-learning environments providing the digital contents to their learners in the form of Learning Objects (LOs), creation of such LOs by proper composition along with meaningful metadata will help the learners to retrieve them precisely. The focus of this work is to address the issues related to imparting active learning over an e-learning environment through LOs. This paper proposes a new method to compose, share, reuse, and manage objects based on the principles of the Object Oriented Paradigm (OOP). The Learning Object Composition and Presentation System (LOCPS) developed as a part of this work has shown better results in precisely retrieving the objects matching with the learner requirements.