Information Technology Reference
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The establishment of adequate media, specially
the continuous ones, is important for developing
interactive educational content, capable of moti-
vating the learners and effectively contributing to
their knowledge construction processes in self-
directed, lifelong learning environments.
ALOCoM also supports the use of XML sche-
mas for importing and exporting the educational
content for different models and specifications.
The standardization obtained by using ALOCoM
can guarantee interoperability, sharing and reuse
of the educational content developed according
to IMA-CID. In the future, we intend to define
an IMA-CID-based language, providing a layer
of abstraction for the description of educational
content, including the description of concepts,
information items and instructional elements, as
well as the whole set of presentation sequences
among them.
Another matter for further investigation is
related with automated learning environments
and their support for content modeling. The fast
evolution of information and communication tech-
nologies has significantly increased the number of
learning environments available; just to cite some
examples: WebCT (Goldberg et al., 1996), Moodle
(Moodle, 2006), Sakai (Sakai, 2006), DotLRN
(DotLRN, 2009), among others. In summary, the
existing learning environments provide: (1) the
required infrastructure for integrating the learning
materials and for delivering/publishing them to
the learners; (2) support to perform practical tasks
and evaluations; and (3) support collaborative
work and augment communication and discussion
among instructors and learners. However, except
for some specific efforts (e.g. ADISA and MOT+,
for MISA's models (Paquete et al., 2005)), no
mechanism for modeling the related knowledge
domain is provided. Indeed, in most of the cases,
the activity of content modeling is left in charge
of the author, without any systematization. At
most, some support for the storage and retrieval
of educational content is provided.
In this perspective, we are working on the
specification and development of a supporting tool
for content modeling, particularly for constructing
the IMA-CID models. Indeed, applying IMA-CID
without an automated support can be an error-
prone activity. Additionally, the lack of automated
tools for content modeling represents a constraint
for the effective adoption of SP-DEM instances.
IMA-Tool is an online tool for helping the “open”
and collaborative construction of the IMA-CID
models (Borges & Barbosa, 2009). Mechanisms
for automatically generating content and for im-
porting ontologies will also be provided. For the
sake of illustration, Figure 10 shows a software
testing ontology being imported as an OWL file;
it plays the role of the conceptual model of IMA-
CID. IMA-Tool has been developed in Java, as a
Web application. It represents an ongoing research;
its main features and scenarios of usage will be
properly discussed in further papers.
In another work, we are investigating the
development of educational modules supported
by innovative technologies (e.g. digital TV, tablets,
and mobile devices) aiming at motivating the
transition from lecture-based to active learning.
Such emerging technologies are especially inter-
esting for promoting e-learning and lifelong
learning opportunities. In short, we intend to in-
vestigate the adequacy of SP-DEM and IMA-CID
in the context of these new technologies as well
as to evaluate the implications of using the result-
ing products in different learning scenarios.
Finally, we are also interested in explore the
input of learners in the very early stages of the
module development, similarly to the participative
approach in software development. Such point is
particularly important to address issues of col-
laborative learning and, also, to foster learning
networks experiences. The establishment of “agile
methodologies” for collaboratively developing
and evolving open educational modules should
also be further considered.
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