Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

This paper presents the database model and the system architecture of a National Learning Objects Repository for Cyprus (NLORC). The NLORC will provide a web-based application allowing indexing, uploading and downloading of e-learning resources, creation and modification of Learning Objects (LOs) and querying. The proposed database model underpins the development of the NLORC. The model caters for the creation, storage and manipulation of LOs. After careful consideration and studying of the existing LOs Metadata Standards, it has been decided that the NLORC application should be developed using a database system supporting object-orientation and temporal database features. Thus, the proposed model suggests an object-oriented database structure as a basis for the application. This structure caters for the property of LOs (defined in most of the LOs Metadata Standards). The proposed structure caters for the storage of these objects, keeping a record of the relations between them and allowing their retrieval and manipulation. The proposed database structure has been designed based on existing LO Metadata Standards and a survey we carried out amongst academicians in Cyprus.

Nowadays, the World Wide Web offers public search services by a number of Internet search engine companies e.g. Google [16], Yahoo! [17], etc. They own their internal ranking algorithms, which may be designed for either general-purpose information and/or specific domains. In order to fight for bigger market share, they have developed advanced tools to facilitate the algorithms through the use of Relevance Feedback (RF) e.g. Google’s Toolbar. Experienced by the black-box tests of the RF toolbar, all in all, they can acquire simple and individual RF contribution. As to this point, in this paper, we have proposed a collaboratively shared Information Retrieval (IR) model to complement the conventional IR approach (i.e. objective) with the collaborative user contribution (i.e. subjective). Not only with RF and group relevance judgments, our proposed architecture and mechanisms provide a unified way to handle general purpose textual information (herein, we consider e-Learning related documents) and provide advanced access control features [15] to the overall system.

<e-QTI> is a highly modular and extensible engine that simplifies the assessment cycle in terms of generation, execution, presentation, grading and archiving. <e-QTI> is based on the IMS QTI specification but it is able to export and import assessments represented in a wide range of formats, and also to maintain a pool of questions that can be reused in a wide variety of authoring situations. The engine is especially suited to be integrated in web-based learning platforms using well-defined interfaces, both Java-oriented and service-oriented. In this paper we describe <e-QTI>, its internal architecture and its most relevant implementation details.

How to make elementary mathematics education vivid and interesting? In this paper, we describe how to use VRML and JAVA to build a virtual game-based learning environment (VGBLE), in which children can learn addition and subtraction operation through games and hence children’s interesting in learning and effects will be improved.

This paper aims to present the development and implementation of a dynamic web authoring system for eLearning, a new type of web authoring system, designed for educational purpose. This system is mainly assisting the educators for creation of online exercises that enables close user interaction and supports frequent change of its content. Combination of the strength of Internet–availability and flexibility–and its nature–a worldwide information provider and a medium communication–achieves creation of such web authoring system. The online exercises are dynamically created by following simple instructions provided by this system. The simple usage of the system benefits educators who are not familiar with creation of web learning materials but wish to create them with complicated functions. Furthermore, the learners can take the advantages of doing the online exercises.

Learning programming is an important part of learning and teaching of computer science. Case-based learning is becoming more and more welcomed by students when learning programming. Since there is no easy-to-use dynamic case generating system, to generate dynamic cases costs a lot of work, and is difficult to be reused. We have developed and implemented a generalized interactive case-based learning system with multimedia support, which is easy to generate and play cases. The cases generated can be played on-line interactively, or taken home to study off-line after learners download the packages. These packages can be transferred to standard eLearning objects and organized to standard content packages with our learning content management system, which greatly enhances the reusability of the learning resources.

We propose a web-based Chinese handwriting system that allows students to learn Chinese handwriting at anytime and anywhere. The system combines technologies such as electronic ink, database, Flash animations, and pattern recognition technique to provide students with an intelligent and effective learning environment. In particular, our system contains an Automatic Feedback and Analysis (AFA) tool that can check multiple kinds of handwriting mistakes and provide useful feedback to the user. Survey results show that most users agreed that our proposed system can help them to learn Chinese handwriting more efficiently as well as reducing teachers’ workload. The user evaluation results suggest that it takes less time for users to learn Chinese handwriting with our system than with traditional teaching method.

Repositories of learning objects have the potential to support teachers’ work and diffuse innovation in the school, nevertheless they did not arouse much interest from the teachers so far. We argue that this problem could be overcome by adding to repositories possibilities of focused interaction and collaboration among teachers, so as to foster reflection and value teachers’ experience. To this end, we modelled the re-use process as a constructive activity. We implemented this view by means of a collaborative environment explicitly oriented to work with learning objects. In this paper, we describe our pedagogical view of re-use and the environment we realized, highlighting the interplay between individual reflection and social dimension. We also summarise the outcomes of the first use of the environment in a teacher training course.

We propose a mechanism, as well as an implemented prototype system, that can be used to support searching and reusing of learning objects. This paper discusses part of the Hard SCORM project developed in Taiwan to support asynchronized distance learning. We developed a SCORM 2004 compliant authoring tool and a LMS. The authoring tool is associated with a metadata wizard to help users to build metadata, which can be used while learning objects are searched and reused. The underlying repository to store learning objects is constructed based on the architecture defined as CORDRA. We integrate the authoring tool, the LMS, and the repository as a total solution to SCORM-based distance learning. The discussion has a focus on the analysis of metadata wizard as well as the analysis of IEEE LOM. The MINE Registry serves as an instance of CORDRA-based repository is also discussed.

The experience record in smart space is an useful service for education activities, either for the purpose of course review or multimedia courseware creation. In this paper, we present the concept of collaborative experience record according to the new feature of pervasive computing paradigm. A supporting platform is implemented to enable the rapid prototyping of experience record applications in smart space. A group of common functions for experience record are contained in the platform and can be directly used in the application. Standard interfaces are also provided to evolve the information sensoring services in smart space so that they can cooperate with experience record application at runtime. We have prototyped an augmented classroom application based on this platform and user study results are also presented in the paper.