Collaborative Development of Educational Modules - E-Infrastructures and Technologies for Lifelong Learning - page 184

EDUCATIONAL MODULES istic scenarios. This integration fosters training

situations and promotes exchange of technology
between industry and academia, also providing
learners with domain-specific skills. Theoretical
and practical content are integrated in terms of
learning materials.
In order to deliver the learning materials, an
adequate infrastructure is needed. Learning en-
vironments (e.g. Moodle (Moodle, 2006), Sakai
(Sakai, 2006), WebCT (Goldberg et al., 1996),
DotLRN (DotLRN, 2009) as well as techno-
logical and computational resources (e.g. e-Class
(Brotherton & Abowd, 2004), CoWeb (Dieberger
& Guzdial, 2003)), illustrate some of the required
infrastructure related to the educational modules.
Figure 1 shows the main components of an edu-
cational module.
The development of educational modules
should take into account some key characteristics
of knowledge. We have to consider, for instance,
the knowledge structure and organization, i.e.
how the information related to the subject domain
can be integrated and how to establish a well-

The concept of educational modules provides the
foundation for our research line. In a few words,
an educational module corresponds to a concise
unit of study, composed of theoretical and practi-
cal content, which can be delivered to learners by
using technological and computational resources
(Barbosa, 2004; Barbosa & Maldonado, 2006a;
Barbosa & Maldonado, 2006b).
For theoretical content, instructors use topics,
papers, web information, slides, class annota-
tions, audio, video, and so on. Practical content
corresponds to the instructional activities and
associated evaluations, as well as their resulting
artifacts (e.g. executable programs, experimental
studies, collaborative discussions, wikis, and so
on). Domain-specific tools related to the subject
domain to be taught as well as the results ob-
tained from their application can also be seen as
practical content. Such tools can be integrated as
part of an educational module in order to enable
the application of fundamental concepts in real-

Figure 1. Main components of an educational module