Tools for Creation and Management of Didactic Resources in EIE

Abstract

Nowadays, the creation and design of didactic resources and tools in the technological context is becoming a challenging task, because of the diversity and complexity of new standards, services and applications. Therefore, collaboration among different working groups from different institutions is needed. This collaboration requires to create conventions and to use standardised formats to allow interoperability and to simplify the tasks to be performed by such groups. In this paper we describe several tools oriented to the management of didactic resources, which have been obtained as a result of the cooperation between two groups, one from the University of Vigo, and another one from the Polytechnic University of Valencia. The first contribution of the paper describes the use of structures, denoted as “Packages” following IMS specifications. These packages are combined with metadata to characterise those resources using a standard format denoted by LOM and proposed by IEEE LSTC. As a complement to those packages, we use LMML (Learning Material Mark-up Language) documents and X-Quest questionnaires to define the contents linked to our courses. The second contribution describes the architecture and features of new tools (Xedu and X-Learn) designed for the creation, edition, management and visualisation of didactic resources. Our final aim is to use both contributions in the European Network THEIERE (Thematic Harmonisation in Electrical and Information Engineering in Europe) oriented to the harmonisation of resources and curricula in the EIE (Electronic and Information Engineering) field.