Heterogeneous E-learning Systems Research Articles

BabeLO—An Extensible Converter of Programming Exercises Formats

In the last two decades, there was a proliferation of programming exercise formats that hinders interoperability in automatic assessment. In the lack of a widely accepted standard, a pragmatic solution is to convert content among the existing formats. BabeLO is a programming exercise converter providing services to a network of heterogeneous e-learning systems such as contest management systems, programming exercise authoring tools, evaluation engines and repositories of learning objects. Its main feature is the use of a pivotal format to achieve greater extensibility. This approach simplifies the extension to other formats, just requiring the conversion to and from the pivotal format. This paper starts with an analysis of programming exercise formats representative of the existing diversity. This analysis sets the context for the proposed approach to exercise conversion and to the description of the pivotal data format. The abstract service definition is the basis for the design of BabeLO, its components and web service interface. This paper includes a report on the use of BabeLO in two concrete scenarios: to relocate exercises to a different repository, and to use an evaluation engine in a network of heterogeneous systems.

Educational metadata and brokerage for learning resources

The learning technology standardization process is one of the key research activities in computer-based education. Institutions like the IEEE, the US Department of Defense and the European Commission have set up committees to deliver recommendations and proposals in this area. The objective is to allow the reuse of learning resources and to offer interoperability among heterogeneous e-learning systems. The first part of this paper is devoted to the presentation of an up-to-date survey on one of the most prolific fields of the learning technology standardization: educational metadata. The second part shows how these data models are applied by actual software systems to facilitate the location of learning resources. Educational brokerage is a promising field that lets learners find those computer-based training resources that best fit their needs. We identify the main actors involved, their roles, and open issues and trends.