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Technical Results
ALFANET has delivered an eLearning system providing
adaptive eLearning capabilities to Learners. The platform supports adaptation
through the eLearning life-cycle (i.e. Design, Administration, Use and
Auditing) and is made of four main subsystems: Authoring (Design phase),
Publication (Administration phase), eLearning Instruction subsystem (Use phase), and Audit
subsystem (Auditing phase).
Authoring Tools
For the Design phase, ALFANET provides authoring tools
that allow to design the course, making use of key eLearning standards,
namely:
- The LD Authoring Tool allows the course authors to
generate eLearning courses based on IMS LD, including metadata IMS
MD / IEEE LOM and generated the whole package as IMS CP.
- The QTI Authoring Tool supports the introduction
of Metadata in the IMS QTI items and the generation of dynamic and adaptive
questionnaires based on the Selection & Ordering specification provided
by IMS QTI. It receives as input QTI items packaged with IMS CP.
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eLearning Instruction Subsystem
For the phases of Administration, Use and Audit, ALFANET
provides an integrated platform designed as a service based architecture
that provides the platform with flexibility, modularity and extensibility
capabilities. The architecture is structured in three layers:
- The Server Layer acts as an integration
platform for all the services providing core functionality for the eLearning
Adaptive Services and for its integration to achieve adaptation. It
has been designed based on a J2EE architecture, and can be
run into any J2EE server, being easily integrable in any existing
system.
- The Service Layer provides the core eLearning
functionality. It is composed of several independent services that have
been integrated in the system. The majority of these services have been
defined as components that based both on technology (EJB, JAXM, XML,
etc) and eLearning standards (IMS-CP, IMS-LD, IMS-QTI, IEEE-LOM, IMS-LIP)
providing core functionality for ALFANET platform, at the same time
offer open interfaces for possible integration with other platforms.
- The Data Layer is the core for all the data
shared by the ALFANET server and the different services. This data is
also stored in a XML database which allows to store directly the information
in the corresponding standard format.
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Service Layer Components
Following, a brief description of the adaptive
and interactive components belonging to the Service layer:
- The Instructional Design (CopperCore) component
provides the eLearning Platform with courses supporting different eLearning
paths corresponding to concrete learner characteristics. It supports
both the course administration (prepares the course to be used by different
learners) and the interpretation of the defined course Instructional
Design at the view of the User Model (IMS-LIP).
- The Evaluation and Assessment component
provide support for the interpretation and presentation of dynamic adaptive
questionnaires defined in IMS-QTI and their evaluation at run-time.
It supports adaptive questionnaires that are generated dynamically at
run-time according to different properties of the User Model (IMS-LIP)
as the evolution of the learner in the course, the learner preferences,
etc, and based on metadata associated to the items (IMS-MD) as Learning
Objective, Knowledge Level, etc.
- The Adaptation component provides recommendations and advises to learners while interacting with a course
based on the experience derived from previous users’ interactions,
on the user model (IMS-LIP), the course structure (IMS-LD), the contents
characterization (IMS-MD/LOM) and the questionnaires results (IMS-QTI).
In addition it supports the adaptive functionality of the Instructional
Design interpreter, the Interaction Services and the Presentation layer.
User Modeling, Machine Learning and Multi-Agent Architecture are the
technological bases of this innovative package.
- The Presentation components provide
a personalised, adaptive interface (e.g: according to learner preferences),
integrated and homogeneous presentation for the different services that
configure an eLearning platform, and also other kind of applications
that integrate one or more services. The adaptive presentation uses
the User Model, based on IMS-LIP.
- The Interaction Services component
supports individual and collaborative users’ tasks in terms of
interactive services (forums, file storage area, agenda, etc) that are
also included in the course definition at design time (IMS-LD). On the
other hand, it provides an explicit representation of components to
support their adaptive presentation. Moreover, it supports the administrative
tasks to manage services and their use by learners and tutors.
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