Information Technology Reference
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point- relates to the accessibility and adaptiveness
that pervades every service which is to meet us-
ers' evolving needs, and the latter -technological
viewpoint- considers the latest related standards
and specifications as well as semantic web tech-
nologies to make the provided solutions sustain-
able and scalable. Actually, the problem we are
facing is the lack of previous research on having
a general solution based on standards which is
applicable at a large scale in HE to accommodate
the existing software at each institution.
There are several related projects that address
specific issues considered in the general frame-
work we are developing. The GRAPPLE (Grapple,
2009) and FLEXO (Flexo, 2009) projects focus
on adaptive learning. There are other service
oriented architectures, such as the e-Framework
for Education and Research (e-Framework, 2009),
the Open Knowledge Initiative (Oki, 2009), and
the Fluid Project (Fluid, 2009). A wide range of
projects have focused on accessibility and dis-
ability issues, to name but a few The WAB Cluster
(WAB, 2009), Through Assistive Technology to
Employment (TATE, 2008), Benchmarking tools
for the Web (BenToWeb, 2007), Multimodal Col-
laboration Environment for Inclusion of Visually
Impaired Children (MICOLE, 2007), European
Network of Excellence in Information Society
Technologies for Special Educational Needs
(SEN-IST-NET, 2003), etc. In addition there are
several specifications and standards (e.g. the W3C
Web Accessibility Initiative and the IMS family)
that impinge on the different components of the
framework, as it will be discussed below. In this
respect we are coping with the existing gaps,
overlapping and open issues related to the actual
use of those standards.
As for universal access and disability require-
ments, having the focus on user involvement in
technology developments, there have even been
a number of projects which have produced tools
to support the work in this area. For example the
USERfit methodology and manual (Poulson et al.,
1996; Poulson and Richardson, 1998) developed
within the USER Project and further elaborated
within the IRIS Project (IST-2000-26211) (Abas-
cal et al., 2003). The FORTUNE Project focused
as well on providing support for user involve-
ment in R&D projects (Bühler, 1998). Iterative
user design (Carroll, 1991; Norman and Draper
1986) where users are interviewed and participate
evaluating prototypes along the project life cycle
is the advocated approach by the EU4ALL project.
More specifically, for service validation, a Con-
structive Technology Assessment strategy is being
followed, which includes technology users and
other relevant social actors throughout the entire
process of design and redesign (Schot, 2001).
PERSONALIZATION FOR
INCLUSIVE LIFELONG LEARNING
Although personalized e-learning is no longer a
research issue in small-scale settings (Brusilovsky
and Vassileva, 2003), its applicability in LMS is
still limited, and there are concrete challenges
related to the usage of standards to provide adapta-
tions throughout the entire life cycle of e-learning.
People with disabilities face numerous prob-
lems to access HE. Although figures about dis-
ability and HE across different countries differ
because of different legal frameworks or social
degree of development and different official
recognition of some types of disabilities (HEAG,
2009), a common situation in all countries is
that the rate of students with disabilities in HE is
notably lower than the disability rate among the
overall population (e.g. in Spain 3.3% of people
with disabilities have access to HE against 9% in
the general population). Therefore there is a real
need to provide accessible user-centered services
that adapt to the needs and demands of the users.
To address this issue, several European ini-
tiatives have been developed. For instance, the
eLearning Programme states that “it is important
to ensure that e-learning products and methods
are able to take into account individual needs and
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