RE-ENGINEERING OF TECHNOLOGY

ENHANCED LEARNING SYSTEMS

The Case of the Apprenticeship Electronic Booklet

Pierre Laforcade, Lahcen Oubahssi and Philippe Cottier

Université du Maine, LIUM (Laboratoire d'Informatique de l'Université du Maine)

IUT de Laval, 52 Rue des drs Calmette et Guérin, F-53020 Laval Cedex 9 France

Keywords: Re-engineering, Technology Enhanced Learning Environments, Software Engineering, Model Driven

Engineering, Adaptability.

Abstract: Maintain and operate TELs systems in real situations generally requires for developers to carry out re-

engineering activities to find some adaptability solutions for TELs' users. In this article we illustrate and

discuss a techno-centric aspect of re-engineering realized on an existent TEL system: the Apprenticeship

Electronic Booklet. The first version had been found too rigid by its end-users in regard to the roles

management and to the underlying academic structures. In order to improve this TEL system, two

approaches of re-engineering have been conducted. The first solution focuses on a more classical internal

modification of the system functionalities. The second re-engineering work follows a Domain-Specific

Modeling approach that led us to propose a graphical editor communicating with the TEL system. This

external component aims to provide end-users with a more user-friendly 'editor' to configure booklets.

1 INTRODUCTION

Maintain and operate Technology-Enhanced-

Learning (further TEL) systems require developers

to carry out re-engineering activities to find

adaptability solutions to end-users. The research

work described in this article is part of a TEL re-

engineering activity conducted within the LIUM

laboratory. We focus on the adaptability of

architectures and functional models (Oubahssi et al.,

07). Our works aim to propose reusable solutions in

order to adapt TEL systems to end-users, both from

functional and techno-centered point-of-views.

In this article, we present and discuss two re-

engineering approaches - re-engineering in the

meaning of (Chikofsky et al., 90) - realized on a

specific case-study, the Apprenticeship Electronic

Booklet system (AEB)(El-Kechaï et al., 06). The

first solution focuses on an internal modification of

the system functionalities and parametrization

facilities. The second re-engineering work follows a

Domain-Specific Modeling (DSM) approach that led

us to propose a graphical editor communicating with

the TEL system. This external component aims to

provide end-users with a more user-friendly facility

to configure booklets.

2 THE APPRENTICESHIP

ELECTRONIC BOOKLET

The AEB is a Web-based Technology Enhanced

Learning environment where informations

concerning the apprentice’s training progression is

consigned. Its goal is to help them in the

appropriation of their training and to give trainers

and employers the possibility to evaluate their

apprentice’s knowledge acquisition, to perceive their

progression in the training and to regulate it.

It was designed in a participatory process

involving many researchers (human science,

computer science), practitioners, and future end-

users (trainers, administrative staff, apprentices).

The AEB was developed as a parametrizable artefact

that offers different functionalities to the various

end-users (El-Kechaï et al., 06). The actors of the

apprentices follow-up, the tutors, can evaluate and

record the apprentice informations, each user

creating a common area of work and communication

with others. But to do this, teachers are required to

design their own upstream booklet. In practice, these

functionalities have been validated, but the whole

system has become too rigid. Some functionalities

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Laforcade P., Oubahssi L. and Cottier P. (2010).

RE-ENGINEERING OF TECHNOLOGY ENHANCED LEARNING SYSTEMS - The Case of the Apprenticeship Electronic Booklet.

In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Computer Supported Education, pages 394-397

 SciTePress

are accessible only to certain actors, in accordance

with the designers recommendations. This AEB

version proposed an internal web page expliciting

the various roles involved in the organization

scheme and their relationships, where administrators

were only allowed to change the terminology for

web pages customization purposes.

Unfortunately, it has been found from the several

apprentices' training center that the AEB was

difficult to be used in new trainings whose general

organization scheme does not conform to the initial

one. It can happen that a same person plays different

roles from those specified in the general scheme or

that some parts/relations of the structure are not

necessary. For examples, a company manager

involved in the students formation and in charge of a

student's training have to handle two roles/logins;

also, it generally happens that the administration of

the booklets is devoted to a teacher of the same

formation. In order to concretely realize tasks

attached to these roles, one have to connect himself

several times to the various profiles.

We had therefore to change the booklet design as

blocks of functionalities to assign to various roles

according to concrete contexts.

3 AEB RE-ENGINEERING

We describe in this section the realized re-

engineering into two parts. In the first one we

present the internal re-engineering approach:

development of the multi-role management service

and realization of an internal configuration editor. In

the second part, we present the external re-

engineering approach: the graphical editor realized

thanks to a Domain-Specific Modeling (Kelly and

Tolvanen, 08) approach, and the import / export

communication API added to the existing AEB

system to ensure communications between the two

computer artefacts (represented in Figure 1).

Figure 1: The communication API between external editor

and internal editor.

3.1 Development of a Multi-role

Management Service and Internal

Configuration

The main objective of this work was to improve and

facilitate the AEB's use, and meet a set of needs

expressed by tool's users. Three steps were

necessary to develop the multi-role management

service and the internal configuration of the AEB

system: extraction of the multi-role management

conceptual model, modification of existing code to

adapt the AEB system to the multi-role

management, and addition of the internal editor and

import/export facility.

To this aim, some specific re-engineering

activities have been realized: the study and the

analysis of both functional and conceptual models of

the existing database, the reorganization of the

system's functions in the form of modules (internal

services), identification of the actors, definition of

the rules and constraints for the multi-role

management (for example the association of one or

more modules of functions to an actor), definition of

a new institutional setting of the AEB system, etc.

This internal re-engineering had implied the

development of many lines of code in accordance to

the current technological languages and choices of

the current AEB version. We obtained as a result of

this step:

 the specification of a new functional meta-model

for the AEB system (represented in Figure 2),

 the development of an internal multi-role

management service,

 a import/export facility to handle XML files

describing AEB configurations.

This re-engineering work had to meet technical

requirements of the database conceptual model of

the original system. The development of the internal

configuration of the AEB system also had the

constraint to revise the design of the functional

model of the system, ie. to define a new system

architecture that takes into account the existing and

the emerging user's needs. Finally, we obtained as a

result of this work an improved version of the AEB

system model and the definition of an “internal

parameters module”. This module allows users to

plays different roles, and for each role, to perform

one or more blocks of functionalities by using drag-

and-drop code techniques on a PHP page (the

existing AEB system was developed using this

technological language).

RE-ENGINEERING OF TECHNOLOGY ENHANCED LEARNING SYSTEMS - The Case of the Apprenticeship

Electronic Booklet

395

Figure 2: The functional meta-model of the multi-role

management service.

3.2 Application of DSM Techniques

To anticipate new uses in the design of the AEB

system and to test the system, an external editor was

also developed. In opposition of the internal editor,

this solution has the advantage to avoid following

the technological constraints and choices from the

existing system.

Similarly to the internal editor, the external one

aims to graphically configure a booklet at the

institutional level and to graphically ease the

specification of roles and functionalities to perform

for these roles. We decided to follow a development

guided by models in the meaning of the DSM

approach (Domain-Specific Modeling), because of

our research results and our experience on the study

and application of their theories and practices for

TEL learning scenarios (Laforcade et al., 08). The

development of the external editor for the

institutional configuration of booklets was also for

us a new opportunity to experiment DSM tools and

techniques.

3.2.1 DSM Domain and Tools

The Domain-Specific Modeling (Kelly and

Tolvanen, 08) is a software engineering

methodology for designing and developing systems,

most often IT systems such as computer software. It

involves the systematic use of a graphic DSM

Language to represent the various facets of a system.

All DSM tools propose meta-modeling

techniques capable of expressing domain-specific

vocabularies (abstract syntaxes), and propose

facilities to construct various notations (concrete

syntaxes). These editing frameworks are supporting

the techniques and many more customizations with

minimal programming effort. As a result, these tools

can generate powerful and user-friendly dedicated

editors for DSM languages. They are kind of meta-

CASE editors capable of generating CASE tools.

The final editors give domain-designers the ability to

graphically specify models from their domain, and

propose some persistence facilities to load and store

these models in a machine-interpreted format.

In our research works we chose to use a unified

set of modeling frameworks and tools from the

Eclipse Modeling Projects (Eclipse EMP, 09): EMF

(main metamodel-oriented framework), GMF

(graphical framework).

3.2.2 Use of the Eclipse EMF/GMF Tooling

From a DSM point-of-view, the graphical

configuration of a booklet can be considered as a

model of the configuration desired by the booklet's

designer; this model being in conformance with a

meta-model specifying the domain terminology in

terms of concepts, relations, properties and

constraints (Figure 2).

To achieve the design and development of this

editor, several studies has been realized within

several iterations and many specifications of models

have been produced in accordance to the DSM

approach when using the EMF/GMF tooling: the

“booklet configuration” domain meta-model (reuse

from the other re-engineering approach: Figure 2 is a

graphical representation of the concrete 'ecore' meta-

model specified with the EMF tooling), the XML

schema describing how AEB configurations will be

serialized, the meta-model for the graphical

formalism, the meta-model for the 'palette' of the

editor (set of basic concepts and relations available

for drawing), the meta-model describing the

mapping between the previous meta-models, etc.

At this point of the iterative process a full-

generated prototype of the booklet configuration

editor was generated by the EMF/GMF frameworks.

When abstract (domain metamodel) and concrete

(notation) syntaxes objectives have been reached, we

realized some extra activities: addition of constraints

to add some semantics on the domain meta-model

(eg. an actor can only be instantiate once, it is not

possible to add the same functionality twice for an

actor, etc.), development of a Rich-Client Platform

version (standalone), addition of support

services/guidances, etc.

Finally, the resulting external editor takes the

form of an application providing a drawing space in

which a graphical configuration can be specified

(see Figure 3). This editor can also be used to

modify existing configurations specified thanks to

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Figure 3: The external graphical editor.

the AEB internal editor (they use the same XML

persistence format). Also, the AEB system can

import or export a XML file configuration created

with the external editor (interoperability between

both internal and external editors).

4 CONCLUSIONS

In this article we discussed the problem of defining

and implementing a TEL re-engineering according

to a techno-centric view. Based on the re-

engineering work done on the AEB system, we

presented and discussed two approaches, internal

and external, promoting the adaptability of

architectures and functional models to facilitate their

use. These two approaches, different from a

development viewpoint, have required a preliminary

common analysis and design to extract the

functional model of the existing system. We also

realized a re-engineering guided by models, in the

way that the functional model identified from the

multi-role system has been crystallized under the

form of a domain meta-model. This functional meta-

model was then used as a basis for the development

of the external editor. The DSM tools that we used

made it possible to exploit this meta-model to guide

and generate most of the final code for the editor.

Concerning the need for the AEB system

booklets configuration, we have proposed two

editors, one internal and another one external to the

system. Future experiments about these two different

editors will compare the ownership and usage of

these tools and confirm the added-value of the

external editor. Indeed, it remains to validate that the

liberation of the technological choices related to the

initial design of the TEL can offer more user-

friendly and soundly computer artefacts.

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Kelly, S, Tolvanen, J.-P., 2008. Domain-Specific

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Electronic Booklet

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