Collaborative Development of Educational Modules - E-Infrastructures and Technologies for Lifelong Learning - page 182

technologies and tools to be used, the human re-
sources and their roles in the development, as well
as the deliverables (i.e., the precisely described
products of this process). In this perspective, there
is a lack of “(collaborative) processes for instruc-
tional design”, capable of defining a complete and
systematic way to produce personalized, reliable
and quality educational products. This scenario
motivates us to work on the establishment of SP-
DEM, described later in this chapter.

are intended to participate and interact. To allow
this kind of modeling, an EML meta-model uses
an activity scheme involving three main entities:
(1) the Goals that have to be achieved in each
Activity , which are usually related with an Object
to be produced; (2) the Subject(s) that have to
carry out each Activity , who participate playing
specific Roles ; and (3) the Environment where
each Activity has to be carried out.
Following the basic EML activity scheme,
LD (Learning Design) specification (IMS, 2003)
provides a notation to support the description of
instruction in computational environments. Such
notation is expressed using XML tags that must be
arranged in accordance with the LD meta-model.
As pointed by Paquette et al. (2005), the LD speci-
fication leaves open the choice of instructional
models and tools that can support designers in the
development of educational products, especially
for those aiming at distributed, networked or on-
line education.
The main problem related to LD specifications
is the lack of explicit support of the instructional
design rationale. Thus, LD uses low level coordi-
nation mechanisms to describe the coordination
of the learning elements, but it does not explicitly
capture the coordination rationale involved in the
instructional design. Villani (2007) argues that this
problem can be solved considering a similar solu-
tion as in computer programming languages, where
high level languages and assembler languages are
focused on different concerns. EMLs have already
been considered as assembler languages (e.g. LD)
and high level educational modeling languages
remains to be developed yet.
In a related perspective, Rodríguez-Artacho
(2002) introduced the PALO language as a
cognitive-based approach to EMLs. Basically, the
PALO language provides a layer of abstraction
for the description of learning material, including
the description of learning activities, structure
and scheduling. The language is adherent with a
reference framework to describe learning materi-
als (Rodríguez-Artacho & Verdejo Maíllo, 2004).

Content Modeling Initiatives

All models of instructional design point out the
need for structuring and organizing the educational
content. In general, the establishment of models
for representing educational content involves
several different aspects. For instance, we have
to consider the specific characteristics related to
the knowledge domain, to define the practical
tasks and the evaluation mechanisms that will be
applied to learners, and to establish pedagogical
sequences for presenting the information. Besides
that, different levels of abstraction in the content
modeling activity can also be considered.
EMLs (Educational Modeling Languages)
(EML, 2000) have been proposed to support the de-
scription of instruction mechanisms and resources
used during learning. According to Villani (2007),
they provide a meta-model that enables to capture
the resources (e.g. texts, figures and tools) used
during the instruction as well as the instructional
design information that establish in which manner
such resources are intended to be used.
An EML focuses on the coordination of the
entities (e.g. persons, documents, tools) involved
in instruction instead on the pedagogical ap-
proaches or instruction elements. Indeed, the
main goal of EMLs is to support the modeling
of the coordination issues between such entities
(e.g. the documents/tools that can be accessed/
used by a learner) together with the establish-
ment of particular goals responsible for driving
and controlling the way in which such entities