Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
the educational and technical aspect of a Learning
Object. Although LOM contains a large number
of attributes, Diplek requires only a small set of
basic attributes to be inserted in order to allow a
Learning Object to be catalogued. In this way,
instructors are not obliged to fill in the complete
form and hence can save time. The use of IEEE
LOM makes Diplek Learning Object repository
easy transferable, interoperable and searchable.
The set of metadata used to describe a Learning
Object includes general data (title, description,
language, keywords), life cycle data (creator,
status, version, people contributed), educational
data (level of education, type of learning object,
interaction level, difficulty) and technical data
(type of object, installation instructions, platform
requirements).The more attributes are filled, the
more accurate the result of a search for a Learning
Object will be.
available educational material in order to present
it to the learners. So importing the educational
material is just the first step of creating a course
for learners to use it.
Content Versioning
By using learning object metadata Diplek can
store different versions of a Learning Object.
This is done by entering the version number in
the life-cycle tab. Each version of a learning unit
is stored in Diplek's main repository and can be
accessed at any time. Apart from version infor-
mation, contributors' names and roles are also
provided, along with content status information
(final, draft, revised, approved).
Searching for the Appropriate
Educational Object
Importing Educational
Objects into the Platform
The second step is finding the appropriate mate-
rial that will be presented to learners. To do so, a
search tool is available that queries the platforms
learning object repository using criteria based on
learning object metadata (type, difficulty, level of
education, language, keywords, topic, etc.). All
Learning Objects that match the required criteria
can be selected from the list. When a Learning
Object is selected, it is copied in a new list. This
list contains all the candidate educational material
to be used for the course.
Before creating a course, instructors need to
insert educational material to the learning object
repository. All Learning Objects are catalogued
using the IEEE LOM schema. Diplek provides an
easy to complete wizard for novice users, which is
divided into four steps according to the categories
of metadata schema; general, life cycle, educa-
tional and technical attributes. After completing
the wizard the final step is the insertion of the
Learning Object. Instructors can insert any type
of educational material, like multimedia presenta-
tions, sounds, WebPages, applications, archives,
games, etc. Diplek accepts all file formats. As
mentioned before, one of the main advantages of
the platform is the ability to import any kind of
material, even software, as long as the appropriate
viewer is installed on the client's machine. In this
way, all educational material can be used without
any modifications or limitations.
Diplek is not educational material creation
software; it is a platform that utilizes all the
Educational Material Statistical Data
Even though instructors have access to all educa-
tional material, there are times that an instructor
just wants to have an overall picture of what is
going on in the whole system. Diplek provides
instructors with an easy to use statistics tool.
Learning Objects are grouped according to the
user-selected metadata information. For instance,
one can see the amount of Learning Objects
available for each level of education. All the
educational material stored in the database can be
Search WWH ::
Custom Search