Petra Oberhuemer

The Conceptual Structure of IMS Learning Design Does Not Impede Its Use for Authoring

IMS Learning Design (LD) is the only available interoperability specification in the area of technology enhanced learning that allows the definition and orchestration of complex activity flows and resource environments in a multirole setting. IMS LD has been available since 2003, and yet it has not been widely adopted either by practitioners or by institutions. Much current IMS LD research seems to accept the assumption that a key barrier to adoption is the specifications conceptual complexity impeding the authoring process. This paper presents an empirical study to test this assumption. Study participants were asked to transform a given textual design description into an IMS LD unit of learning using 1) paper snippets representing IMS LD elements and 2) authoring software. The results show that teachers with little or no previous IMS LD knowledge were able to solve a design task that required the use of all IMS LD elements at levels A and B. An additional finding is that the authoring software did not facilitate people in producing better solutions than those who used paper snippets. This evidence suggests that conceptual complexity does not impede effective IMS LD authoring, so the barriers to adoption appear to lie elsewhere.

User Evaluation of a Graphical Modeling Tool for IMS Learning Design

IMS Learning Design is said to be highly technical language that is hard to understand and apply by teaching practitioners. The modeling tool Graphical Learning Modeler was built to bypass this problem for level A and partially level B of the IMS Learning Design specification. Its graphical interface with drag and drop allows easy setup of learning designs that can be made conformant to IMS Learning Design. This article presents the results of an evaluation of the Graphical Learning Modeler performed with instructors at a higher education institution. Results showed that instructors were generally successful in building learning designs, but that they still had problems with transferring concepts from their teaching environment to the concepts of IMS Learning Design. Furthermore, they had trouble grasping the meaning of an editor environment that is outside the runtime environment.

Aligning assessment with learning outcomes in outcome-based education

In outcome based learning, learning outcomes (knowledge, skills and competences) to be achieved by learners are in the focal point of the learning process. All educational activities and resources need to be related to the intended learning outcomes of a learning module or course, in order to assist the learners in successfully achieving the intended learning outcomes at the end of the learning experience. Outcome based assessment means that the assessment process must be aligned with the learning outcomes. This means that it should support the learners in their progress (formative assessment) and validate the achievement of the intended learning outcomes at the end of the process (summative assessment). It also means that the assessment process should be adapted depending on the kind of outcomes that it is aimed to appraise. This paper presents an insight into the current state of outcome based learning within Europe and proposes a unified conceptual model for outcome based assessment, shaping a theoretical framework for the integration of learning outcomes, assessment and units of learning as key concepts. An application scenario is finally described to illustrate the application of the model.

Propelling Standards-based Sharing and Reuse in Instructional Modeling Communities: The Open Graphical Learning Modeler (OpenGLM)

There are several standards and specifications to formally describe instructional models, e.g. IMS LD or SCORM. One promise of using standardized descriptions is to make produced artifacts interoperable. While this works in theory, there are few tools available that support practitioner communities in creating, sharing and reusing instructional models based on existing standards. As a contribution to the authoring perspective, we present in this paper the conceptual underpinning and the implementation of an IMS~LD authoring tool called Open GLM. This tool exploits existing web and learning technology standards to support practitioners in working with instructional models and related educational resources in the context of a large open repository. The paper demonstrates that the use cases relevant to an instructional modeling community-of-practice can be supported by integrating a set of complementary standards and technologies in an instructional modeling tool like Open GLM. The main future challenge to be tackled is to propel the adoption of these technologies.

Making sense of IMS learning design level B: from specification to intuitive modeling software

The IMS Learning Design (IMS LD) specification offers a language for modeling teaching and learning situations and flows. The specification contains great complexity, which represents a high entrance barrier to its use. To lower this entrance barrier to Learning Design, easy-to-handle software is needed that translates from the language used by instructional practitioners to IMS LD. This paper describes an approach for performing this translation. First, an analysis is described that was used for deriving typical uses of IMS LD Level B properties and conditions. Second, the resulting cases and translation transactions are presented. It is hypothesized that a wizard allows practitioners access to Level B functionalities even though the wizard reduces the complexity of the specification.

Opportunities and challenges of formal instructional modeling for web-based learning

In digital repositories around the globe there is an abundance of available resources like learning objects, learning designs, teaching methods, and assessments. Building web-based learning opportunities by exploiting these resources is a complex endeavor with controversial motivational underpinnings. It requires provision of support for accessing, using and packaging the resources with interoperable, usable and user-friendly tools and within a trustworthy environment. In this paper, we address the interoperability issue by implementing tool support for the process of designing learning opportunities based on existing educational resources in a tool called OpenGLM. We conducted a qualitative end-user evaluation based on an instructional design task. Addressing the motivational underpinnings, we identify a number of challenges and opportunities to adoption of formal instructional modeling: on the individual level the main challenge is the lack of motivation to share good-practice examples; on the institutional level the key to harness the opportunities lies in the provision of support measures and quality control.

Visualizing Learning Designs Using IMS Learning Design: The Position of the Graphical Learning Modeller

Two research communities that need to work closer together are the community looking into the depiction or representation of learning designs and the community focusing on IMS Learning Design and its increased accessibility. A synopsis of some findings within these communities is given in order to then evaluate a graphical IMS Learning Design editor, the Graphical Learning Modeller.

Constructing and Evaluating a Description Template for Teaching Methods

There are numerous formats of representing good teaching practice, for instance, case study collections, pattern repositories, and experience reports. Yet, none of these representation formats has found broad acceptance among teaching practitioners. In this paper, a new description template for teaching methods is proposed. The template was constructed based on an analysis of previous formats for describing teaching methods, and by synthesizing findings regarding user requirements during browsing, selecting, developing, and implementing teaching methods. The so attained template was then evaluated. In a first evaluation phase, more than twenty international participants were asked to use the template to describe their teaching methods and to judge the template according to validation criteria. In a second evaluation phase, the teaching method descriptions were exchanged and participants suggested modifications. This paper presents the first version of the description template, the results of the two evaluation phases, and a discussion of the findings.

Interactions for Learning as Expressed in an IMS LD Runtime Environment

The way pedagogical aspects are expressed in the user interface of virtual learning environments greatly impacts the learning process, in particular the interactions between students and other human or non-human actors in the learning environment. This paper presents an evaluation of how the interactions for learning are expressed in the user interface of an IMS Learning Design (LD) runtime environment. Specifically, we selected Reigeluth and Moores set of interactions for learning and tested how these are visually expressed and supported in the user interface of the SLeD Player. The findings show that there are several drawbacks in the current way of visualizing units of learning during runtime: the synchronization of participants in corresponding learning and support activities is not clearly expressed, the current role remains unclear in multi-role settings, and the nested display of unit of learning contents impedes navigation. Drawing from these findings, we provide indications regarding future development of IMS LD runtime user interfaces.

Towards a Unified Format for Describing Teaching Methods

This paper reports developments on a best description template for teaching methods, whose descriptive elements will eventually be mapped to the elements of the IMS Learning Design specification. The template was created based on (a) previous approaches to describing teaching methods devised by various international projects and (b) information requirements of teachers during different phases of understanding and applying teaching methods.