Collaborative Learning Design within Open Source E-Learning Systems - E-Infrastructures and Technologies for Lifelong Learning - page 217

but can assist the informed teacher to build up their
own range of tasks, tools or materials that can draw
on a collected body of experience (McAndrew,
Goodyear, & Dalziel, 2006). The key principle in
'learning design' is that it represents the learning
activities that have to be performed by learners and
teachers within the context of a unit of learning.
In the context of “learning design', the role of
collaborative design patterns is to indicate clearly
the flow of collaboration activities using specific
collaboration methods.
The IMS Learning Design (LD) specification
aims to represent the design of units of learning
in a semantic, formal and machine-interpretable
way (LD, 2003). Various examples of e-learning
environments close to the LD specification are
mentioned in the literature. COLLAGE is also
a system close to IMS-LD specification that is
friendly for teachers to use and which supports
collaboration using design patterns (Hernández-
Leo, Villasclaras-Fernández, Asensio-Pérez,
Dimitriadis, Jorrín-Abellán, Ruiz-Requies &
Rubia-Avi, 2006). However, despite the fact that
the IMS-LD specification offers many pedagogical
benefits when compared with earlier open speci-
fications for eLearning, it is not easy for teachers
to understand and work with it (Griffiths, & Blat,
2005). To this end, it seems clear that teachers need
high level tools to understand learning design and
it is likely that tools specialized for a particular
pedagogic context will be easier to use (Griffiths,
& Blat, 2005). To this end, it is worth noting that
the type of editor that classroom teachers usually
need should be similar to the authoring environ-
ment provided by LAMS. Specifically, LAMS
(Dalziel, 2003) is a well known integrated open
source e-learning system that effectively supports
the idea of 'learning design'.
Open source software is software that has been
released under an Open Source Initiative (OSI)
certified license. Each of the licenses approved
by the OSI meets the conditions of the Open
Source Definition (http://www.opensource.org/
docs/definition.html). That definition includes

10 criteria. Perhaps the most important of these
are the free redistribution of the software, access
to the source code, and the permission to allow
modifications to the software and derived works
that may be distributed under the same licensing
conditions. Open source is a development method
for software that harnesses the power of distributed
peer review and transparency of process. The
promise of open source is better quality, higher
reliability, more flexibility, lower cost, and an
end to predatory vendor lock-in (http://www.
opensource.org/).
LAMS (Learning Activity Management Sys-
tem; http://www.lamsfoundation.org/) is an open
source tool for designing, managing and delivering
online collaborative learning activities. In fact,
LAMS offers a set of predefined learning activities,
shown in a comprehensible way for teachers that
can be graphically dragged and dropped in order
to establish a flow chart of sequence of activi-
ties. When using LAMS, teachers gain access to
a highly intuitive visual authoring environment
for the creation of sequential learning activities.
LAMS is based on the belief that learning does
not arise simply from interacting with content
but from interacting with teachers and peers. The
creation of content-based, self-paced learning ob-
jectives for single learners is now well understood
in the field of e-learning. However, the creation
of sequential learning activities which involve
groups of learners interacting within a structured
set of collaborative environments - referred to
as 'learning design' - is less common; LAMS
allows teachers to both create and deliver such
sequences. In essence, LAMS provides a practical
way to describe multi-learner activity sequences
and the tools required to support these. Further-
more, LAMS provides tools that support various
activities such as communication, presentation
of information, writing and sharing resources as
well as posing and answering questions.
Nevertheless, Dalziel (2003) has commented
on the absence of tools supporting broader ranges
of collaborative tasks and also on missing support