Abstract
This paper describes the design and implementation of a flexible architecture that is capable of extending the functions of a learner-adaptive self-learning environment. A “courseware object”, which is a program module that is used to implement various educational functionalities, has been newly introduced to ensure both function extensibility as well as content reusability. A prototype system was designed and implemented to investigate the feasibility of the proposed architecture and to identify the core behavior and interaction schema of courseware objects. The results from this trial indicated that several learner-adaptive functionalities including the SCORM 2004 standard specifications will be able to be successfully implemented into the proposed architecture.
Highlights
It is widely known that the interoperability and reusability of learning content is a critical issue that needs to be addressed to provide high-quality e-learning services with rich learning experiences
It was assumed that the content was structured hierarchically or like a tree. This is because content with a hierarchical structure is widely adopted in learning materials by various standards including AICC Computer Managed Instruction (CMI) (Aviation Industry CBT Committee, 2004), ADL Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) (Advanced Distributed Learning, 2006), and IMS Common Cartridge (CC) (IMS Global Learning Consortium, 2008) as well as various proprietary learning management system (LMS)
Complicated rollup conditions and rollup controls can be implemented within the SCORM 2004 courseware objects by adding a mechanism to interpret the condition part of the rollup rules and rollup controls in addition to the default rollup behavior that has already been implemented
Summary
It is widely known that the interoperability and reusability of learning content is a critical issue that needs to be addressed to provide high-quality e-learning services with rich learning experiences. Enormous amounts of effort have been expended to confront this issue by establishing and disseminating e-learning content specifications (Fallon & Brown, 2003; Nakabayashi, 2004) including the Aviation Industry CBT Committee (AICC) Computer Managed Instruction (CMI) specifications (Aviation Industry CBT Committee, 2004), the Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) (Advanced Distributed Learning, 2006), and the IMS Global Learning Consortium Common Cartridge (CC) (IMS Global Learning Consortium, 2008) Some of these attempts have successfully achieved interoperability between e-learning content and learning-management systems (Kazi, 2004; Nakabayashi et al, 2006; Nakabayashi et al, 2007; Shih et al, 2005; Yang et al, 2004). Most existing learner-adaptive systems have usually been designed to implement a certain single learner-adaptive strategy without any consideration being given to support multiple learner-adaptive strategies or even to extend a single implemented strategy Without such a framework for extending functions, it would be difficult to add new functions that could improve the effectiveness of learning. It is very difficult to achieve both content-system interoperability and system-function extensibility in conventional learner-adaptive systems
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