Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
SCORM Engine is implemented in the portal architecture for delivering an interpreter of
the electronic content, developed in accordance with the SCORM 2004 standard. The Test
Engine assists in performing electronic testing using the portal. It processes basically the
meta objects, which describe the questions and the patterns of the tests. The Event Engine
supports a model for event management, enabling the users to see and create events and
also be notified for them in advance. The events in the system reflect important moments
for the users, such as a lecture, examination, test, national holiday, birthday, etc. One
event is characterized by attributes, such as a name, start and end date and time, details,
and information if it is a recurring one, as well as rules for its recurrence. The Event
Engine supports yearly, monthly and weekly recurring. The User Profiling implements
the user model of the portal. The profiles could be classified by roles, user groups,
communities, and organizations. The standard user profile consists of three main groups
of attributes:
Standard attributes - necessary for user identification through username, password, e-
mail, and others;
Extended attributes - addresses, phone numbers, Internet pages, IM, social networks
contacts, and others;
DeLC custom attributes - other user identifications. Thus, for example, for users with
role "student" these can be faculty number, subject, faculty, and course.
The portal gives an opportunity for extending the user profile with some additional
attributes. The users' profiles contain the whole information needed for personalization of
the provided by DeLC portal services, educational content and user interface. The profile is
created automatically during the first user's log in, through a call to the university's
database, filling in the standard and custom attributes. The integration with the university
database and with ?nother external components is supported by the Integration Engine.
Extended attributes are filled by the user. During each next user's log in in the portal the
information in their profile is synchronized, as eventual updates in the university's database
are automatically migrated in the user's profile, for example passage in the upper course or
changing the subject.
Educational services serve all stages in one educational process. Supported by the portal,
services are grouped in three categories:
Services for training, organizing and planning of the educational process;
Services for conduction and management of the education process - examples of these
services are electronic lectures, electronic testing, online and offline consultations;
Services for recording and documenting the educational process - these services
support automated generation of the documents recording the educational process
(examination protocols, student books, teachers' personal notebooks and archives).
The third layer contains electronic content in the form of repositories, known as digital
libraries. In the current version are supported lecture courses digital library, questionary
library, test templates library, course projects library and diploma theses library. The
supported portal services work directly with the digital libraries. The digital libraries
content can be navigated by help of a generalized catalog.
