INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES SUPPORTING LEARNING

Manuel Castro, Rosario Gil, Miguel Latorre

E.T.S.I. Industriales, UNED, Spanish University for Distance Education, Juan del Rosal, 12, 28040 Madrid, Spain

Alfonso Duran

Engineering School, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Avenida de la Universidad, 30, 28911 Leganés, Madrid, Spain

Martin Llamas

Telematic Engineering Department. Vigo University, Spain

Edmundo Tovar

Language and Computer Science Systems and Software Engineering Department. Technical University of Madrid, Spain

Keywords: e-Learning services, Technology enhanced learning, Digital objects and reusability, Digital contents and

repositories, Open courses and open knowledge.

Abstract: The massive, simultaneous redesign of all degrees in European Higher Education Area presents daunting

challenges but also offers unprecedented opportunities. All degrees must be simultaneously redesigned;

synergies among them can be effectively exploited, thus encouraging the re-utilization oriented approaches

discussed in this paper (LCMS, standards like LOM, Dublin Corem QTI, IMS, SCORM, etc.). On the other

hand, shifting the unit of academic measurement to student hours (through the ECTS) facilitates the

seamless combination of face-to-face, distance and blended learning in academic degrees.

1 INTRODUCTION

Higher Education in Europe has been profoundly

modified since the declaration of Bologna (1999)

(European Union, 2008) and their later road to start-

up their implementation before 2010. The

introduction of new technologies have also changed

the methodology and use of technology in education

itself.

The new European Area (Castro, 2007) and its

convergence in education designed a model closer to

what today is conducted in North America and

Japan. In such systems is given greater importance

to the practice load during the conduct of a subject.

By providing an orientation toward more

experimental tasks, and a clear direction to the

working world, students develop a range of skills

than in degrees with less experimentation do not

have.

The idea of creating a common space of

Education across Europe boosts mobility both within

and outside the member countries. Member

countries could move to any other continuing their

studies there, just so uniformity and novelty attract

the interests of other countries outside the European

wishing to study in this new education plan. This

mobility of people has as its immediate translation

increase the economy and generates jobs uniform.

This new model is voluntary and while at first

was accepted by the countries present in Bologna,

there have been countries that have signed up later

and others who for reasons of the countries

themselves have been rejected.

Of course the adoption of this new model brings

a number of negative aspects that is the view of each

of the countries that are trying to adopt if it is greater

than the benefits it can bring.

The clear disadvantages common in most

countries are:

Castro Gil M., Gil R., Latorre M., Duran A., Llamas M. and Tovar E.

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES SUPPORTING LEARNING.

DOI: 10.5220/0006802900010001

In Proceedings of the First International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU 2009), pages 5-17

ISBN: 978-989-8111-82-1

 Economics aspects in the change of the

educational system of each country and their

own interests.

 Academic aspects, this is the part most

important or at least should be. Studies aimed

at the more practical or vocational clashed

with the design of some careers in particular

with the ancient engineering.

More than these commonalities each country

deals with the various obstacles that its educational

system differs from the new European model. In

Spain, the current model had mainly two types of

degrees: “diplomaturas” and technical engineering

(3-year); and “licenciatura” and engineering degree

(5 or 6-year). Degree of 3-year would be a BS/BSc

and degree of 5-year would be a MA/MSc. The

problem these degrees are not exact equivalent. 3-

year degrees are more oriented to vocational and

experimentation tasks while 5-year degrees are more

theoretical knowledge.

But taking a step closer to the problem within the

own country, levels of similarity between

universities in the curriculum of a particular degree

are scarce and each of the universities could give a

different importance on the same subjects, including

subjects exist only in selected universities.

One could imagine that this amount of hegemony

to reach a common consensus within the country

itself is already a first step. However, the process

goes on changing and all the universities and

countries trying to adopt the new model by the

deadline.

In order to understand how this "Bologna

process" (the convergence towards the Common

European Higher Education Area, EHEA) sets the

framework within which the IT-based approaches

analyzed in this paper must operate, as well as the

ultimate goals they must support, it is necessary to

differentiate the two major interrelated sets of

changes it involves (Moon and Duran, 2008).

The most visible set of changes involves the

abovementioned adoption of a US-like unified cycle

structure involving graduate-master-doctoral cycles,

as well as the adoption of a single unit of

measurement, the ECTS (European Credit Transfer

Systems) credit (which refers to 25-30 student hours

of total effort, rather than being measured in hours

of face-to-face lessons as before). In many countries

(such as Spain), this involves the re-design and thus

the (re)accreditation of all the degrees, under the

quality certification system required by the EHEA.

This massive, simultaneous redesign of all

degrees presents daunting challenges but also offers

unprecedented opportunities. On the one hand, since

all degrees must be simultaneously redesigned,

synergies among them can be effectively exploited,

thus encouraging the re-utilization oriented

approaches discussed in this paper (LCMS,

standards like LOM, Dublin Core, QTI, IMS,

SCORM, etc.). On the other hand, shifting the unit

of academic measurement to student hours (through

the ECTS) facilitates the seamless combination of

face-to-face, distance and blended learning in

academic degrees.

The other, maybe even more significant but more

subtle set of changes are those aimed at shifting the

focus from instructor-centered “teaching” to student-

centered “active learning”. It involves

methodological changes such as continuous

evaluation, de-emphasizing theoretical lectures to

focus more on assignments and projects, higher

practical focus, allowing students higher flexibility

to design their own curricula. When combined with

budget limitations, this methodological shift strongly

supports the introduction of effective IT based

approaches to alleviate the burden on the instructor’s

resources. These should facilitate the educational

equivalent of the current manufacturing trend

towards “mass-customization”, thus allowing

individually tailored learning paths with a level of

resources similar to that required by standardized

education.

In addition, several countries are taking this

opportunity to introduce far-reaching modifications

in their educational systems, which further

strengthen the case for the introduction of IT based

educational innovation. For example, in Spain, until

now, all “official” degrees were listed in a catalogue

compiled by the Education ministry (universities

could also grant their own degrees on whatever they

wanted, but those did not have official recognition).

This catalogue included the name and the degree

curriculum (structure), up to certain level of detail.

The new system, however, breaks away from that

closed catalogue approach and just issues some very

generic guidelines to which new degrees should

conform. Within this framework, universities (both

private and public) are free to propose whichever

degree titles and supporting curricula they want.

Once the proposal is cleared from a quality criteria

point of view (general quality criteria, such as the

faculty CVs, cohesiveness of the proposed degree

curriculum and appropriateness of the supporting IT

infrastructure) the new degree is inscribed in a

national registry, and the university is free to offer it

(subject, again, to periodic quality evaluations).

One last aspect worth highlighting regarding the

EHEA is its emphasis on promoting mobility and the

international dimension in education (through joint

international degrees or through mobility in selected

subjects of end term Thesis). Again, achieving this

objective would be assisted by the adoption of

standards-based, location independent IT-based

educational solutions. These should support both

distributed provision of learning services (e.g. in

degrees offered by consortia of universities) and

their consumption by distributed student groups,

facilitating not just the interaction between students

and instructors, but also the increasingly critical

interaction among participants in distributed teams.

2 e-LEARNING EVOLUTION

The task of finding this convergence is present in

every country. There is a clear desire for a common

area of higher education. As well as seeking

solutions and models to conform to European, the

technology also gave a fairly noticeable change in

the methodology on the side of teachers and on the

side of students. Teachers can communicate

synchronously with students and they can have

colaboratives tools, documentation, opinion board,

etc., which are renewed every day.

E-learning (EIfEL, 2008) has changed

considerably during the last 15 years, when it only

offered digital content (in text files, or in the best

cases through hypermedia documents). Nowadays,

the e-learning concept (APEL, 2008) involves an

everyday wider range of technologies, table 1.

Table 1: Different Technologies in nowadays.

Technologies

Wiki &

Blogs

Discussion

boards &

Chats

Educational

animation

e-mail

ePortfolios Games Hypermedia LMS

MP3

Players

Multimedia

CD-ROMs

Screencasts Simulation

Virtual &

knowledge

based

classrooms

Websites &

Web 2.0

Podcast &

videocast

Remote &

vlabs,

Etc.

Obviously, the backbone of this e-learning

evolution is the technological revolution (BECSA,

2007) due to the fact that there is not really a new

pedagogical methodology in the way of teaching.

The real change is based on the new services, and

the new possibilities that they offer to both students

and teachers.

The concept of e-learning was used to define the

online environments where students rarely came to

faculties. Over time the offer distance learning

courses has increased, relieving traditional courses.

These courses also include doctoral programs.

E-learning is naturally suited to distance learning

(Castro, 2003) and flexible learning, but can also be

used in conjunction with face-to-face teaching, in

which case the term Blended learning is commonly

used.

In higher education especially, the increasing

tendency is to create a Virtual Learning

Environment (VLE) (which is sometimes combined

with a Management Information System (MIS) to

create a Managed Learning Environment) in which

all aspects of a course are handled through a

consistent user interface standard throughout the

institution (Castro, 2004).

E-Learning lessons are generally designed to

guide students through information or to help

students perform in specific tasks.

A common standard format for e-learning

content is SCORM whilst other specifications allow

for the transporting of "learning objects" (Schools

Interoperability Framework) or categorizing meta-

data (LOM).

The way to implement the new technological

resources will depend on one's own programmer or

teacher of the course, that it always taking into

account existing technology. So the level of

involvement between student and teacher, even the

content of the course may change depending on the

preferences given. A course of international politics

can be beneficial if there are tools that give the

synchronous communication appear natural and

fluid. On the other hand a course which requires a

more individual study is not necessary to introduce

this kind of tools.

Therefore the communication and the technology

associated with a course will be asynchronous or

synchronous. As asynchronous communication are

blogs, wikis and discussion boards, in addition to the

email for all one known. Participation requires no

interaction with other users or with the programmer

of that course. On the other hand the highly

participatory courses where there is a need for real-

time communications are those who use

synchronous tools such as chat sessions or virtual

classes.

In addition to e-learning that we all know, is the

e-learning 2.0-inspired Web 2.0. As such, it aims to

give greater impetus to all the collaborative tools

and a social aspect, such as virtual communities

where you can get a large amount of documentation

as a live communication with the other participants.

A clear example of these places of learning would be

the Second Life.

So e-learning in itself does not change in this

second generation, just taking the influence of

current interest and try to use all the technology

possible to apply it to education learning. But it is

true that the way to raise learning takes another way.

In e-learning 1.0, the students were taking the

contents of a course and conducting some practical

exercises in order to obtain knowledge. Such

practices were evaluated by the teacher, the current

e-learning gives greater emphasis to communication

and exchange of ideas either synchronous or

asynchronous.

The first e-learning was focused on using the

internet to replicate the instructor-led experience.

Content was designed to lead a learner through the

content, providing a wide and ever-increasing set of

interactions, experiences, assessments, and

simulations. E-learning 2.0, by contrast is built

around collaboration. E-learning 2.0 assumes that

knowledge is socially constructed. Advocates of

social learning claim that one of the best ways to

learn something is to teach it to others.

E-learning can provide for major benefits for the

organizations and individuals involved:

 Virtual environment allows some reduction of

paper usage.

 Reduce the costs of higher education.

 The time to update content as well as their

correction is very low.

 The perception of the learner is a livelier

interaction and a rich of content.

A great part of the Web evolution towards Web

2.0 or “social web” has gone to the idea of sharing

knowledge (e.g. Wikipedia), developing nets which

share ideas, situations, images, knowledge, or any

educational resources and knowledge on an open

way. UNESCO has established some definitions

about open knowledge and knowledge-based society

(UNESCO, 2005) and has adopted in 2002 the

concept “Open Educational Resources” (OER) to

refer to materials and other learning subjects offered

openly through the use of information technologies,

for consulting, use and adjustment to a user’s

community with no commercial purposes.

The OpenCourseWare (OCW) project started at

the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in

the year 2001, with the aim of offering pedagogical

materials in an open and free of charge basis to

society. At present, the MIT provide about 1800

courses freely and universally accessible on the net

(Lerman, 2006). The main objective of this proposal

is to promote and develop higher education sharing,

in a free and consistent way, the teaching resources

with other educators’ students, graduates and anyone

in general who wants to improve its knowledge. This

philosophy is being spread to the world main

universities creating the OCW Consortium

(OCWC), in which more than 200 Universities and

Institutions collaborate.

The initial conditions to include Higher

Educational Institutions in this project regard three

different types: educational, technical and legal

matters. Regarding technical demands a globally and

approachable site via Internet with the right quality

must be maintained. Although it has not been a

requirement, most of participants have used the

technology of content management based on

eduCommons (COSL, 2009), an Open Source

project built on Pone, developed by “The Center for

Open and Sustainable Learning” of Utah State

University specifically for the creation of OCW

projects.

3 BLENDED LEARNING

Blended learning (b-learning) has allowed a new

way of convergence between distance, on-line and

on-class education. The convergence is going

through the mixed model education that has a

different percentage of any kind of methodology

depending on the student or learner approach.

In this case the new approach is learner-centered

instead the previous model of teacher or content

oriented. Learners depending on their availability

on:

 Time,

 Technology and communication, and

 Human resources,

will adopt a mix-approach from pure traditional

education that are including now elements of on-line

and on-class tutoring and collaboration tools

through classic distance education.

This evolution from the post mail and telephone

education in the distance model (1975) to this b-

learning model (1995) is the answer of the large

Universities for Distance Education to the Internet

and the beginning of the learning-centered change.

Then, blended learning is the process of

incorporating many different learning styles that can

be accomplished through the use of 'blended' virtual

and physical resources.

A typical example of the delivery method of

blended learning would be a combination of

technology-based materials and face-to-face sessions

used together to present content. An instructor can

begin a course with a well-structured introductory

lesson in the classroom, and then to proceed follow-

up materials online. The term can also be applied to

the integration of e-learning with a Learning

Management System using computers in a physical

classroom, along with face-to-face instruction.

At first b-learning as we have said is the

combination of e-learning (electronic) or m-learning

(mobile) with other educational resources. But

besides this, the key of b-learning is human

intervention in some form, such as a sense of

monitoring or tutoring.

As e-learning, b-learning also has a number of

obvious advantages over a traditional course. The

costs are quite significant for both the institution and

for the learner; ease of access for people who

already have another degree in addition to their

professional career; flexibility of schedules and of

workload. Of course it does take a few

disadvantages which may be: having limited access

to a computer or Internet, a lack of knowledge of the

use of technology. These disadvantages are also

present in the institutions for traditional course,

because in many cases a course is supplemented by a

volunteer and own use of technology in order to gain

a greater understanding. So then, one could say such

disadvantages are in all kinds of learning today.

4 SOA: SERVICE ORIENTATION

PARADIGM

Being IT-based, e-learning is naturally being

affected by the current IT paradigm shift towards

service orientation. The term Service-oriented

architecture (SOA) has been coined to encapsulate

this trend.

Information Systems (IS) are built to support

business processes (in the case of e-learning

systems, the learning process and all associated sub-

processes). SOA proposes building these systems as

an ad hoc collection of smaller modules called

"services". These “services” can be shared by more

than one IS, and the details of the implementation

are hidden from the IS that use them (even though

their “business behaviour”, and any change in it,

must be explicitly declared). Furthermore, they can

be provided by organizations different from the ones

developing or utilizing the IS that uses the services.

Current SOA implementations are usually based

on Web Services; they are generally built utilizing

one of the existing Web service frameworks, based

on implementation platforms such as .Net or J2E.

According to the W3C Web Services Architecture

Working Group (W3C, 2004), a Web service is a

software system designed to support interoperable

machine-to-machine interaction over a network. It

has an interface described in a machine-process able

format (specifically WSDL). Other systems interact

with the Web service in a manner prescribed by its

description using SOAP-messages, typically

conveyed using HTTP with an XML serialization in

conjunction with other Web-related standards.

SOA is, however, a much broader concept than

Web Services, and as such it provides a general

framework capable of accommodating the

peculiarities and specificities of e-learning. On the

other hand, that broadness has led to the term SOA

being used with differing - sometimes, conflicting -

understandings of implicit terminology and

components. Therefore, OASIS (Organization for

the Advancement of Structured Information

Standards - a not-for-profit consortium founded in

1993) created the Service Oriented Architecture

Reference Model Technical Committee. After

producing several drafts, that OASIS SOA-RM TC

published in 2006 the Official OASIS Standard

“OASIS Reference Model for Service Oriented

Architecture 1.0” (OASIS, 2006), followed in 2008

by an initial draft of the more specific “Reference

Architecture for Service Oriented Architecture”

(OASIS, 2008).

The aim of the Reference Model is to avoid the

proliferation of conflicting definitions of SOA by

defining the essence of service oriented architecture

through an abstract model that can remain relevant,

irrespective of the various and inevitable technology

evolutions that will influence SOA deployment

(Figure 1).

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is defined

as a paradigm for organizing and utilizing

distributed capabilities that may be under the control

of different ownership domains.

People and organizations create capabilities to

solve or support a solution for the problems they

face in the course of their business. However, one

person’s needs might be met by capabilities offered

by someone else (i.e., one computer agent’s

requirements might be met by a computer agent

belonging to a different owner). SOA provides a

powerful framework for matching needs and

capabilities and for combining capabilities to

address those needs.

Figure 1: How a Reference Model relates to other work

(OASIS, 2006).

Visibility, interaction, and effect are key

concepts for describing the SOA paradigm.

Visibility refers to the capacity for those with needs

and those with capabilities to be able to see each

other. This is typically done by providing widely

accessible and understandable descriptions for such

aspects as functions and technical requirements,

related constraints and policies, and mechanisms for

access or response. Interaction is the activity of

using a capability and is typically mediated by the

exchange of messages. The purpose of using a

capability is to realize real world effects. An

interaction is “an act” as opposed to “an object” and

the result of an interaction is an effect.

Regarding the concept of “service”, that term

encompasses several related ideas:

 The performance of work (a function) by one

for another

 The capability to perform work for another

 The specification of the work offered for

another

 The offer to perform work for another

These concepts emphasize a distinction between

a capability and the ability to bring that capability to

bear. While both needs and capabilities exist

independently of SOA, in SOA, services are the

mechanism by which needs and capabilities are

brought together.

SOA is a means of organizing solutions that

promotes reuse, growth and interoperability. It is not

itself a solution to domain problems but rather an

organizing and delivery paradigm that enables one to

get more value from use both of capabilities which

are locally “owned” and those under the control of

others. SOA does not provide any domain elements

of a solution that do not exist without SOA.

Thus, under SOA, people and organizations offer

capabilities and act as service providers. Those with

needs who make use of services are referred to as

service consumers. The service description allows

prospective consumers to decide if the service is

suitable for their current needs.

Although SOA is commonly implemented using

Web services, services can be made visible, support

interaction, and generate effects through other

implementation strategies.

SOA shares many traits with Object Oriented

Programming (OOP) paradigms (Anything can be a

service in the same way anything can be an object).

However, while as the focus of OOP is packaging

data with operations, in SOA the central focus is the

task or business function – getting something done.

This leads to several distinctions:

 OO has intentional melding of methods to a

given data object. The methods can be

thought of as a property of the object. For

SOA, one can think of the services as being

the access to methods but the actual existence

of methods and any connection to objects is

incidental.

 To use an object, it must first be instantiated

while one interacts with a service where it

exists.

 An object exposes structure but there is no way

to express semantics other than what can be

captured as comments in the class definition.

SOA emphasizes the need for clear semantics.

Rather than as a single, complex, monolithic

system, SOA-based systems can be visualized as an

ecosystem comprising people, machines and

services. This leads to a number of ownership,

management and governance issues, since there are

strong limits on the control and authority of any one

party when a system spans multiple ownership

domains. Even when a SOA-based system is

deployed internally within an organization, there are

multiple internal stakeholders involved and there

may not be a simple hierarchy of control and

management.

5 SERVICES IN LEARNING

Learning Management Systems (LMSs), as

eLearning platforms are generally known, provide a

suite of tools which support the creation of, the

maintenance of and the delivery of online courses,

the enrolment and management of students, the

administration of education and the reporting of

student performance (Dagger et al, 2007).

They might be based on e-learning frameworks

that provide specifications for LMS development,

which are increasingly SOA oriented (Alvarez et al,

2008). The IMS Abstract Framework (IMS, 2006)

provides an abstract representation of the set of

services that are used to construct an eLearning

system in its broadest sense (Figures 2 and 3).

Figure 2: IMS Abstract Framework layered model (IMS,

2006).



Figure 3: IMS Abstract Framework services (IMS, 2006).

The Open Knowledge Initiative (OKI, 2001) is

an MIT project that sponsors a SOA-based set of

Open Service Interface Definitions (OSIDs) (current

version is V2, V3 is under development). OSIDs

have been applied to integrate many educational

applications with a variety of content publishers and

have become a widely accepted strategy for

repository integration.

The “e-Framework for Education and Research”

(Olivier, 2007) is another international initiative

(established by the UK's Joint Information Systems

Committee (JISC), Australia's Department of

Education, Employment and Workplace Relations,

the New Zealand Ministry of Education and The

Netherlands SURF Foundation), that advocates

service-oriented approaches to facilitate technical

interoperability of core infrastructure as well as

effective use of available funding. Among their

successful implementations they cite the City

University, London (e-framework, 2008).

LMSs can be grouped into two main categories:

 Open source initiatives such as:

 dotLRN (http://www.dotlearn.org/)

 Moodle (http://www.moodle.org),

 SAKAI (http://sakaiproject.org/),

 ATutor (http://www.atutor.ca/) and

 Whiteboard

(http://whiteboard.sourceforge.net/)

 Proprietary solutions such as:

 WebCT/Blackboard

(http://www.blackboard.com/),

 Gradepoint

(http://www.gradepoint.net/),

 Desire2Learn

(http://www.desire2learn.com/)

 Learn.com (http://learn.com/).

Open source LMSs are typically built upon

extendable frameworks allowing implementers to

adjust and modify the LMS to suit their specific

needs. This approach, although traditionally not

adopted by the proprietary sector, is emerging

through such initiatives as WebCT’s PowerLinks kit

and Blackboard’s Building Blocks. These provide

software developers with “hooks” to tie third-party

software into the LMS. Al-Ajlan and Zedan (Al-

Ajlan, 2007) provide a detailed description of how

using Web services in MOODLE would allow

educators at different institutions to work together

and share material by connecting individual courses

together, which are hosted on different MOODLE's.

Thus, they could teach the same course and share

activities such as assignments or chats. Initiatives

such as the The LearnServe Project (Learn Serve,

2005) at the Münster university make e-learning

offerings available though Web services.

Dagger et al (Dagger, 2007) classify LMSs in

successive generations (Figure 4) according to their

degree of adoption of the SOA approach and the

corresponding supporting standards and

technologies.

Smart (Smart, 2008) summarizes the results or

recent collective experience in the adoption of SOA

approaches in Higher Education institutions

presented at the recent IMS Global Learning

Consortium Summit on Interoperability. She

concludes that SOA has a great deal to offer to these

institutions, but of all the challenges that remain, the

cultural and governance issues seem to me to be the

most difficult to tackle.

Figure 4: Generations of LMSs (Dagger et al, 2007).

This continuous evolution is providing us a

complete word search mixing the learning with

letters (Telefonica, 2007):

 B-learning, E-learning, M-learning.

 U-learning (ubiquitous)

 P-learning (pervasive)

 A-learning (ambience)

 C-learning (capacity)

 T-learning (digital TV)

 V-learning (video or visual)

According with this terminology, the concept of

s-learning (services oriented to e-learning) is

emerging at the same time that organizations create

their own e-learning tools. As a consequence of that

fact, s-learning promulgates a new methodology

based on the creation of e-learning tools

encapsulated in a service-shape. In this way, they

will be easily integrated inside the different e-

learning platforms.

One of the main reasons is to reuse the services

that learning management system (LMS) already

provide, such as identification and authentication

modules; content managers, calendars and agendas;

assessment modules; synchronous and asynchronous

communication methods, etc. Thus, organizations

only must focus on the creation of services to be

integrated in a very rich environment of services,

and not to reinvent the wheel in each development

(Figure 5).

Following this methodology, UNED is

developing several e-learning projects with the

target of the creation of different services that will

improve in some way the learning experience.

Figure 5: Example of integration of new services in a

LMS.

A learning management system (LMS) is

software for delivering, tracking and managing

training. LMSs range from systems for managing

training records to software for distributing courses

over the Internet and offering features for online

collaboration.

Most LMSs are web-based to facilitate access to

learning content and administration. LMSs are used

by regulated industries for compliance training.

LMSs are based on a variety of development

platforms, from Java EE based architectures to

Microsoft .NET, and usually employ the use of a

database back-end. While most systems are

commercially developed and frequently have non-

free software licenses or restrict access to their

source code, free and open-source models do exist as

we have already explained.

The virtual learning environment used by

universities and colleges allow instructors to manage

their courses and exchange information with

students for a course that in most cases will last

several weeks and will meet several times during

those weeks. In the corporate setting a course may

be much shorter, completed in single instructor-led

or online session.

The characteristics shared by both types of LMSs

include:

 Manage users, roles, courses, instructors, and

facilities and generate reports

 Course calendar

 Student messaging and notifications

 Assessment/testing capable of handling student

pre/post testing

 Display scores and transcripts

 Grading of coursework and roster processing,

including wait listing

 Web-based or blended course delivery

From the LMSs it can talk about learning content

management system (LCMS) which are systems that

focus on the development, management and finally

published content in an LMS.

An LCMS is a multi-user system where different

users can develop, create, manage, reuse, store and

send learning content from a central object

repository.

Today LMS is used as a term to encompass the

functionality of the LCMS but this is not entirely

correct, since the LMS can not create or manipulate

courses, even they can not reuse an existing course

to create another. Instead LCMS applications allow

one to create, import, manage, find and reuse units

of learning content, which is known as learning

objects (Kecheng, 2005).

The learning objects can include media files,

assessment, simulations, text, graphics or any other

object that may be part of the contents of a course.

An LCMS provides tools for authoring and re-

using or re-purposing content (mutated learning

objects) MLO as well as virtual spaces for student

interaction (such as discussion forums and live chat

rooms). Despite this distinction, the terms LMS is

often used to refer to both an LMS and an LCMS,

although the LCMS is a further development of the

LMS.

In essence, an LMS is software for planning,

delivering, and managing learning events within an

organization, including online, virtual classroom,

and instructor-led courses. The focus of an LMS is

to manage students, keeping track of their progress

and performance across all types of training

activities. It performs administrative tasks, such as

reporting to instructors but isn’t used to create

course content.

In contrast, an LCMS is software for managing

learning content across an organization's various

training development areas. It provides developers,

authors, instructional designers, and subject matter

experts the means to create and re-use e-learning

content and reduce duplicated development efforts.

Rather than developing entire courses and

adapting them to multiple audiences, an LCMS

provides the ability for single course instances to be

modified and republished for various audiences

maintaining versions and history. The objects stored

in the centralized repository can be made available

to course developers and content experts throughout

an organization for potential reuse and repurpose.

This eliminates duplicate development efforts and

allows for the rapid assembly of customized content.

6 REUSE OF SERVICES

As we have seen around the LMS it created an

action of reuse internally and externally. Internally

through the learning objects that can be changed,

reused content of courses, manage them, and so on.

What received the name of LCMS. In the same way

as it reflected in the above figure (Figure 6) in

addition to reuse content to generate more or less

different courses between them, another thing

different is add additional services to the learning

management system to provide greater robustness of

this system in place where it was implemented.

Figure 6: Diagram of Services in LMS.

The LMSs offer a range of services or packages

that are almost common to all of them. These are

broadly: identification, management groups and

profiles; content (news, surveys, questionnaire,

reviews, forum, calendar, tasks mailbox, etc.);

database; group tools; assessment tools;

communication tools; and security.

Within an LMS can generate different courses

each with a different content, as it was said. Going

up one level, this content could be used within a

single institution or in the case of education in the

same university. The possibility to extrapolate to

other universities will depend on the LMS used. As

seen, there are a lot of LMSs, a commercial and

other free. All use standards but these are not

common among them. So some courses made in a

specific LMS would need to adjust to the new LMS

where one tries to use them.

About services that a LMS offers there is the

same level of reuse. At first a LMS is equipped with

basic packages, standards and databases that handle

the content of the courses developed in the LMS.

But it may be the case that for a specific situation

would be necessary a new service that could be

integrated in some way within the LMS. Also, let the

new service to adapt to the growth of the institution

and the changes of the environment. Thus the work

done in the first instance would be valid for next

situations.

Of course the level of reuse is also limited to the

LMS in use for any new LMS should change the

interface of communication or dialogue with the new

service.

But if we conceive the idea of independent

capsules of LMS and just depending on the

environment. Simply create all possible generic

services for a particular environment and reuse them

in the same environments by changing the interfaces

with the LMS.

Of course this idea suggests a poor design of the

LMS in itself, which is not entirely true. For the vast

majority of current situations an LMS can cover all

points, personnel management, presentation of tasks

of a subject, surveys, etc. An important point,

whatever one wants to refine or strengthen an

existing service which is the election of the

administrator or developer of the LMS, is there are

new virtual environments as a repercussion of the

on-line learning that is using.

For example for virtual laboratories (Lang,

2006), it seems reasonable to introduce a system of

reserve management to monitor the slot of time

during which one can use a remote laboratory

(Dominguez, 2005). These laboratories use real

instrumentation which is limited, so then there must

be a system of reserve them (Figure 7).

7 REUSE OF LEARNING

OBJECTS

E-learning is probably one of the means by which

higher education can reach a greater number of

people. It is the largest growth sector in training and

development. Nowadays a process of

standardization is taking place in learning resources.

Learning object repositories are an effective way of

sharing knowledge within and between academic

institutions. However, simply making resources

available on the network is not enough. An

additional layer of services is necessary (Wilson,

2001).

Figure 7: Example of services needed in vLabs.

A service is a software component supporting

processing behaviour or access to information that is

accessible to other services through a clearly defined

interface (ERL, 2005). An infrastructure service

might be user authentication, as well as a learning

service might be an assessment capability used to

measure student performance. Learning services –

based on web services– enable integration of

learning objects and other learning resources.

Academic institutions offer an environment based on

them. Course management systems, learning

management systems, learning object repositories or

the repositories of student information are some of

its elements.

Users need to get access to educational portals

based on their own personal profile. Students must

identify themselves in this infrastructure to access

their courses. Same way, instructors do it in order to

publish their contents and communicate with their

students or colleagues. Integration of all applications

with a single sign-on for users obviates them to re-

enter identifying information for each application.

SSO systems and Identity federation and privacy

data sharing are spreading slowly, such as Athens,

Shibbolet or OpenID (Powell, 2007), (Tracking,

2009).

Until recent years, we did not have the means to

share our works in different platforms. Learning

objects are the best attempt to solve the

interoperability, reuse, automated updating, and

personalization issues (Hodgins, 2002). Search

engines were not suitable to find digital resources.

The fact is that many results use proprietary formats

or the lack of information about them is usual

pitfalls. Metadata can be used to obtain the

additional information users need. They describe the

nature and purpose of a learning object (i.e. authors,

title, rights, etc.) so that it can be found, managed,

and reused. Instead of searching through lists of

results, we explore collections of LOs about our

topic of interest. This is possible with resources

organized by pedagogical value. Dublin Core or

IEEE LOM are learning standards on this subject.

For interoperability across implementations, the

latter is expressed on XML. Inside most

communities, their characteristics are extended and

adapted to the requirements of their own education

system through application profiles (CanCORE,

LOM-es, etc.), (Duval, 2003).

Courses must also be structured to allow them to

be used in multiple environments, by multiple tools

and systems. SCORM standardizes how Learning

Management Systems (LMS) launch and track

directed learning experiences promoting

interoperability (Reload, 2008). A SCORM package

(a zip file) contains a manifest file that declares its

contents and is set up to describe the order in which

the SCOs –a special kind of LOs– are to be

delivered. SCORM can communicate learner

information with any LMS using a standardized

method based on Javascript. Metadata is stored in

these packages following the LOM standard. In

order to avoid unnecessary work load resulting from

updating and publishing content, authoring tools for

improving document creation and conversion have

been developed.

Generally, we cannot find single LOs. They are

stored in large collections with tools to view, edit

and share their descriptions –and, of course, retrieve

them. Learning object repositories can be accessed

through Web services. Usually these repositories are

programmed as web applications (web server,

database and scripting language). This approach

gives LOs a number of benefits, as expanded

searching capabilities, accurate access or usage

statistics (Sanchez, 2004).

Last but not least important is how to transfer

content of metadata between multiple repositories. A

federated search layer can be used as middle layer in

the architecture without having to modify anything

of the other previous tools. In a federated search

system, queries from users are sent to different

LOR’s. The FS engine then merges the results

received by these LOR’s (Ternier, 2003). Protocols

like OKI or OAI-PMH provide a method to reuse

repository metadata from external applications. This

allows individual institutions to build their own

individual registries. The global network GLOBE

allows sharing of index information of learning

resources available from the five main individual

services around the world (GLOBE, 2004). Users

can search just one service to gain access to all of

the content of all of the repositories.

8 CONCLUSIONS

The convergence towards the Common European

Higher Education Area sets the framework within

which the IT-based approaches analyzed in this

paper must operate.

This massive, simultaneous redesign of all

degrees presents daunting challenges but also offers

unprecedented opportunities. On the one hand, since

all degrees must be simultaneously redesigned,

synergies among them can be effectively exploited,

thus encouraging the re-utilization oriented

approaches discussed in this paper (LCMS,

standards like LOM, Dublin Corem QTI, IMS,

SCORM, etc.). On the other hand, shifting the unit

of academic measurement to student hours (through

the ECTS) facilitates the seamless combination of

face-to-face, distance and blended learning in

academic degrees.

E-learning is naturally suited to distance learning

and flexible learning, but can also be used in

conjunction with face-to-face teaching, in which

case the term Blended learning is commonly used.

E-learning in itself does not change in the second

generation, just taking the influence of current

interest and try to use all the technology possible to

apply it to education learning.

The nature of next generation e-learning

platforms will be based on service-oriented visions.

We have profiled the most prominent initiatives and

actors on the scene of distance education. It is

clearly a step forward in providing a framework that

encourages the reuse and sharing of learning

contents. However, now we must focus more on

pedagogical and didactical issues of eLearning as

well as knowledge management.

A framework built on the aforementioned

protocols and metadata is capable of enabling a first

level of interoperability between institutional

repositories and to improve the discoverability of

resources. Nevertheless, it is not enough for

developing more intelligent, reliable and precise

services or connecting institutional repository

resources with other resources involved in the

research process. If the future versions of SCORM

and LOM want to have success, their specifications

shall become equally easy to understand for

developers and instructors. There are legal questions

in the field of digital content creation. Ensure

interoperability by standardizing the tools and data

management across LMSs is also a matter of utmost

importance. It is here that we get an insight into the

advancements of education.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors would like to acknowledge the Spanish

Ministry of Science and Innovation, the National R

& D Program 2004-2007 and the Latin American

Program of Science and Technology for

Development (CYTED). Their support for this work

through projects TSI2005-08225 - C07-03

"MOSAICLearning: Mobile and electronic learning,

of open code, based on standards, secure, contextual,

personalized and collaborative" and CYTED-

508AC0341 "SOLITE- FREE SOFTWARE IN TV-

EDUCATION”. Also, we would like to grateful to

UNED for the support in the Second Call for

Research Network for Innovation Teaching

(2007/2008) and the complementary action

TSI2007-31091-E "RedOBER - Educational

Reusable Objects (for the EHEA in the fields of IT

information and communications)”.

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BRIEF BIOGRAPHY

Electrical and Computer Engineering educator in the

Spanish University for Distance Education (UNED),

has an industrial engineering degree from the ETSII

(Industrial Engineering School) of the Madrid

Polytechnic University (UPM) and a doctoral

engineering degree from the same University. Has

received the Extraordinary Doctoral Award in the

UPM and the Viesgo 1988 Award to the Doctoral

Thesis improving the Scientific Research about the

Industrial Process Electricity Application. Has

received the 1997 and 1999 years UNED's Social

Council for the Best Didactic Materials in

Experimental Sciences and the 2001 Award for the

Innovative Excellence in Teaching, Learning &

Technology from the Center for the Advancement of

Teaching and Learning. He works as researcher,

coordinator and director in different projects,

ranging from solar system and advanced

microprocessor system simulation to telematics and

distance learning systems, acting now as and senior

technical director. He is now with the UNED

(Spanish University for Distance Education) as

Professor in the Electronics Technology subject

inside the Electrical and Computer Engineering

Department as well as he is Director of the

Department. He was serving as UNED's Vice-Rector

of New Technologies, ETSII's Research and

Doctorate Vicedirector and Academic Affaires

Vicedirector and UNED's Information Services

Center Director. He worked during 5 years in Digital

Equipment Corporation as senior system engineer.

He publishes technical books and articles for

journals and conferences as well as multimedia

materials and radio and TV programas. He belongs

to the organizing committee of IEEE FIE, ISES,

TAEE and SAAEI conferences as well as reviewer

and chairman. He is Fellow member of IEEE as well

as member of the Administration Committee

(AdCOM) of the IEEE Education Society and

Founder and Past-Chairman of the Spanish Chapter

of the IEEE Education Society.