Lasse Lehmann

Capture, Management, and Utilization of Lifecycle Information for Learning Resources

Throughout their lifecycle, learning resources undergo a multitude of processes by being created, used, provided or re-used. However, in order to be reusable, a learning resource often has to be adapted for a new context of use. This in turn implies multiple re-authoring processes being performed on a learning resource. During each of these processes different types of information emerge. When retained, this information can be helpful for the retrieval, authoring, use or re-use of learning resources thereafter. In this paper, the lifecycle of learning resources along with the information generated herein is analyzed and a distributed architecture proposed that allows for the capture, processing, management and utilization of the information mentioned in a generic way. Three steps have been conducted to implement the proposed framework. First evaluation results are promising.

CROKODIL: a platform for collaborative resource-based learning

On-the-job learning is primarily a personal knowledge acquisition process accomplished increasingly based on resources found on the Web. These days, collaboratively learning from and with others on the Web is taking on a very prominent position in this learning process. CROKODIL aims to provide support for collaborative learning based on web resources. In this paper, we introduce our learning scenario and an evaluation of our target group. We describe our pedagogical concepts, and present the results of an evaluation of these concepts. CROKODIL supports the semantic tagging of resources as well as the collaborative use of these resources and their information. Social networking functionalities are integrated in the platform to encourage and support collaborative learning. We also present some extensions to the base functionality of the platform, such as resource recommendations and interfaces for the integration in existing learning management systems.

Automatic detection of local reuse

Local reuse detection is a prerequisite for a multitude of tasks ranging from document management and information retrieval to web search or plagiarism detection. Its results can be used to support authors in creating new learning resources or learners in finding existing ones by providing accurate suggestions for related documents. While the detection of local text reuse, i.e. reuse of parts of documents, is covered by various approaches, reuse detection for object-based documents has been hardly considered yet. In this paper we propose a new fingerprinting technique for local reuse detection for both text-based and object-based documents which is based on the contiguity of documents. This additional information, which is generally disregarded by existing approaches, allows the creation of shorter and more flexible fingerprints. Evaluations performed on different corpora have shown that it performs better than existing approaches while maintaining a significantly lower storage consumption.

Virtual context based services for support of interaction in virtual worlds

A wide variety of virtual worlds exists today. They embed the user into a virtual reality allowing interaction with the virtual environment and, in case of multiplayer worlds, other users. Our goal is to support these interactions. Therefore we are using virtual parameters to describe the users virtual context and provide additional services depending on this context. These services can either be included into the virtual world or can be realized using a community portal. In this paper we will introduce the concept of virtual context based services and its fundamentals like the classification of interaction in virtual worlds, a generic interaction model and an extended model including additional services.

Automatic identification of tag types in a resource-based learning scenario

When users use tags they often have a rich semantic structure in mind, which can not be fully explicated using existing tagging systems. However, a tagging system needs to be simple in order to be successful, otherwise it will not be accepted by users. In our ELWMS.KOM system for the support of self-regulated Resource-Based Learning users can assign specific semantic types to the tags they use in order to manage their web-based learning resources. However studies have shown that most users would appreciate an automatic identification of tag types. In this paper we present a knowledge-based approach for the automatic identification of the tag types used in the ELWMS.KOM system. Evaluations conducted on different corpora show that the algorithm works with an overall accuracy of up to 84%.

Capture of Lifecycle Information to Support Personal Information Management

Re-use is a key aspect of todays Learning Resource creation. Authors often re-use objects, which they had originally created. Additionally organization of documents has become a complex task and users tend to have more and more problems to manage documents stored on their local computers. With our approach we combine these two aspects by supporting users in their Personal Information Management with information, emerging from re-use processes. We propose a framework capable of capture, management and utilization of this so called lifecycle information and present our implementation for PowerPoint presentations. A first evaluation shows promising results and demonstrates the feasibility and validity of our approach.

Capturing, management and utilization of lifecycle information for learning resources

During their lifecycle, Learning Resources undergo a multitude of processes while being created, used, provided or re-used. However, in order to be reusable, a Learning Resource often has to be adapted to a new context of use. This in turn implies multiple Re-Authoring processes being performed on the Learning Resource. During all these processes different types of information emerge. When captured, this information can be helpful for a later on retrieval, use or re-use of the Learning Resources. In this work, the lifecycle of Learning Resources along with the information being generated herein is analyzed and a distributed architecture is proposed, that allows the capturing, processing, management and utilization of the named information in a generic way.

A Content Modeling Approach as Basis for the Support of the Overall Content Creation Process

The conception and production of new e-learning content in a corporate environment is expensive and time-consuming. In this paper we propose a content modeling approach as part of an authoring management platform. This platform aims to make the cooperative process of conception and production of e-learning content faster, easier to manage and equips knowledge domain experts with a tool, which does not demand for media and didactic experience

Capture of lifecycle information in office applications

Due to the continuously growing number of Learning Resources the automatic generation of metadata has become an important research issue. Lifecycle information like, relations resulting from reuse of Learning Resources can be utilised to support users, for example, in retrieving relevant documents. However, this kind of information is neglected by most systems. We show that lifecycle information can be obtained automatically without user interaction. We describe the challenges that have to be faced when capturing lifecycle information in office applications and present how we met them in the implementation of add-ins for our LIS.KOM framework. The results of first evaluations are promising.