Interoperability and reusability in practice The Dutch Consortium Digital University

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Interoperability and reusability in practiceThe
Dutch Consortium Digital University
4th of March 2002, Manchester Frank Benneker,
Pierre Gorissen Consortium Digital University the
Netherlands
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Dutch Digital University

• A major government funded HE initiative
• Cooperation of 10 institutions of HE
• Started April 2001
• First drafts of work processes and tools2nd
  quarter 2002
• First content online September 2002

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Aims

• Set up educational content repository (economy
  of scales)
• Joint innovation (cost sharing)
• Delivery to HE students through partner
  institutions

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Challenge reusability

• Create Learning Objects that will be
• stored in a repository
• reused across instructional scenarios
• reused across courses, curricula
• easily customised if needed
• easily retrievable, searchable

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Challenge interoperability

• Make sure that the Learning Object
• may be developed with a variety of authoring
  tools
• may be used across delivery platforms(runtime
  systems, players)

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Schematic scenario

Authoring tools
LOMMeta-data
Digital Repository
Run-time
Run-time
Interface
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Current solutions to reuse

• Build repositories of (un-)structured elements
• Add meta-data based on LOM
• Examples
• Ariadne
• Merlot
• SeSDL
• Universal Knowledge Broker

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Current solutions to reuse

• No problem if/when common file formats are used,
  because
• editors do exist already(e.g. MS Word)
• players (browsers) render formats natively or
  through plug ins

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Problems

• DU partners have their own wishes regarding
  layout/design of content
• DU partners have their own educational
  systems/scenarios
• the learning objects often carry no educational
  significance (learning objectives or
  prerequisites) so how to use them?
• the instructional scenario is often implicit,
  hard to discover and hard to extract

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DU solution to reuse

• Use XML and an Educational Modeling Language
  (EML) , so
• Separate layout from content
• Distinguish (reusable) learning objects from
  reusable information objects
• Let the learning objects carry instructional
  information (learning objectives, prerequisites,
  scenario)

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New Challenges DU

• No EML authoring tools except generic (XML)
  editors
• Current runtime environments cant interpret
  handle EMLs
• SCORM IMS not mature yet
• No DU-taxonomies for Meta data yet
• Setup Educational Service Provider (learning to
  work together)

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Even more challenges

• Organise copy use rights, through licences?
• Develop a business model
• Create incentives for authors, their departments,
  subject fields
• Workflow of content production
• Set up training / Help desk groups
• Quality assurance, review process

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DU road ahead

• Create DU educational content in
• Law
• Business Finance
• Arts
• Education
• E-Learning projects
• Bring experts from partners together
• Cooperate with others

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More information

• Digital University (in Dutch)http//www.digiuni.
  nl/
• More on EML (Dutch and English)http//eml.ou.nl/
  
• Other informationW.F.M.Benneker_at_uva.nl
  (Frank)P.Gorissen_at_fontys.nl (Pierre)
• Thank you for your attention ...