Maria Poveda

Designing a learning objects repository -the views of higher education faculty

This paper presents the initial stages of the design of a National Learning Objects Repository for Cyprus (NLORC). It examines the views of the faculty members of Intrecollege, a College of Higher Education in Cyprus, with regards to the need of such a repository. These views were collected through a questionnaire. The NLORC will provide a web-based application allowing indexing, uploading and downloading of e-learning resources in Cyprus and the creation, modification and querying of Learning Objects (LOs). This paper presents a simple model that will underpin the development of the NLORC. After careful consideration and studying of the existing Learning Objects Metadata Standards, it has been decided that the NLORC application should be developed using a database system supporting object-orientation and temporal database features. As a result of this, the model presented herein suggests an object-oriented database structure to form a basis for the application and to cater for the storage of the LOs, keeping a record of the relations between them and allowing their retrieval and manipulation.

Redesigning the User Interface of the InterLearning Software - Graphic Design Meets Computer Science

In this paper we present the redesign of the user interface of the InterLearning software. InterLearning is an in-house developed e-learning software that has been in use for the last 3 years at our College. The software was developed by a team of computer scientists. InterLearning has been evaluated by both students and faculty since its development, in terms of the functionality that it offers. It has subsequently been enhanced based on the feedback of the users. The software has only started to be used by some Design faculty and students this year. Our experience from its use within this Department has revealed the need for redesigning its interface. Both students and faculty have expressed some negative views with regards to the screen layouts, menus, icons, colours, textual representations and fonts used. Based on this feedback, we have redesigned the interface taking also into consideration feedback obtained during the redesign stages from some Design faculty members and Design students. This paper presents the results of the evaluation of the existing interface by faculty members and students and describes the new interface designed by a team of graphic designers based on the feedback obtained