Yet Another Approach to Support the Design Process of Educational Adaptive Hypermedia Applications

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Yet Another Approach to Support the Design
Process of Educational Adaptive Hypermedia
Applications

• Symeon Retalis Andreas Papasalouros
• University of Piraeus
• Department of Technology Education and Digital
  Systems
• retal_at_unipi.gr

The ELEN project http//www.tisip.no/E-LEN
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The paper in brief

• Educational Adaptive Hypermedia Applications
  (EAHA) are gaining the focus of the research
  community as a means of alleviating a number of
  learners problems related to hypermedia.
• However, the difficulty and complexity of
  developing such applications and systems have
  been identified as possible reasons for the low
  diffusion of Adaptive Hypermedia in web-based
  education.
• Experience from traditional Software Engineering
  as well as Hypermedia Engineering suggests that a
  model-driven design approach is appropriate for
  developing such complex applications.
• This paper presents on a model-driven
  design/authoring process of EAHA, called
  CADMOS-D.
• This process accords to the principles of
  hypermedia engineering and its innovation is the
  use of a formally specified object oriented
  design model.

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A design process according to Hypermedia
Engineering
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Why a model driven approach?

• The design process should be driven by a design
  model. A Design Model should meet the following
  requirements Koper 2000
• Formalism its notation system must describe a
  WbEA and its constituents in a formal manner
• Completeness its notation system must be able to
  fully describe a WbEA, including all types of its
  constituents, the relationships among them and
  their behavior
• Reproducibility its notation system must
  describe a WbEA and its constituents in an
  abstract level so that repeated
  execution/adoption is possible for specific
  subject domains
• Compatibility its notation system must fit in
  with the available standards and specifications
  (IMS, IEEE LTSC, SCORM, etc.)
• Reusability its notation system must make it
  possible to identify, isolate, decontextualize,
  exchange and re-use constituents of a WbEA.
• Traceability of the design decisions
• Automatic synthesis of EAHA from its constituents

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CADMOS-D design model

• The foci of the model
• The structure of the learning activities and the
  resources that will be used
• Interaction of the learner with the application
• Navigational aspects
• User interface issues
• Utilisation of the Unified Modeling Language
  (UML) for standardised notation

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Think of learning activities to start designing
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A Schema of learning activities (1)

• The Activity Model defines the learning
  activities that will happen during the
  instructional process of a specific subject with
  their semantic interrelationships.
• The learning activities (read, solve, study, get
  informed, etc.) are applied to the various
  thematic concepts -topics of the domain.
• Each learning activity is related to particular
  learning objectives, notions and topics to be
  taught,according to the syllabus.
• The hierarchy of activities corresponds to the
  hierarchy of learning objectives, that the
  learner has to meet via her/his interaction with
  an educational application under design.

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A Schema of learning activities (2)

• The learning activities can be associated with
  each other with specific interrelationships thus
  forming a semantic network that provides an
  abstract representation of the solution of the
  problem of instruction of a specific topic.
• This particular view can be reused per se, thus
  promoting the reusability of educational
  applications at an abstract level, apart from
  navigation and presentation issues.
• This way, the proposed method incorporates the
  principle of separation of concerns and promotes
  reusability.
• The activities are associated with specific
  learning resources.
• The resources align with the notion of Learning
  Object. These resources are physical, reusable,
  binary entities, either static fragments of
  digital content, e.g. hypertext, images, videos,
  simulations, applets, etc,

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A Schema of learning activities (3)
- Courseware. This is the top-level element in
the hierarchy of activities that compose the
conceptual view of the application. - Activity.
This defines a simple activity which is an atomic
one. This activity may contain specific
attributes. Predefined attributes are the title
and the type of the activity (information,
assessment, etc). - CompositeActivity. This
element defines a composite activity, which
contains others, either atomic or concept, thus
forming a hierarchy of activities into the
educational application. - Relationship. This
refers to the association between two activities,
atomic or composite.
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CADMOS-D Navigational schema

• The Navigation Model captures the decisions about
  how Concepts, Relationships and Resources of the
  Activity Model are mapped to actual hypertext
  elements Pages and Links, and how the conceptual
  relationships defined in the Conceptual Model are
  driving the structuring of the learning content.
• It consists of 2 (sub)models
• The Navigation Structure Model. This model
  defines the structure of the EAHA and defines the
  actual web pages and the resources contained in
  these pages.
• The Navigation Behavior Model. This model defines
  the runtime behavior of the EAHA in terms of
  navigation.

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CADMOS-D Navigational Structure model (1)

• - Content, which is the top-level container in
  the hierarchy of an electronic content
  organization.
• - Composite Node entities that are used as
  containers, thus composing the hierarchical
  structure of learning content. The chapters and
  subtopics in which an electronic tutorial or book
  are organized are examples of composite entities.
• ContentNodes, which are the actual pages of the
  learning content.
• -Access structure elements, namely indexes and
  guided tours, which are related to Content or
  Composite components

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CADMOS-D Navigational Structure model (2)
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CADMOS-D Navigational Behavior model
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CADMOS-D Presentation - user interface design (1)

• each Node in the Navigation Model and its
  resources are associated with a presentation
  model element.
• Note that a multitude of navigation elements can
  be associated with the same presentation
  specification, thus promoting uniformity and ease
  of maintenance of the user interface.
• The Presentation Model elements have their
  counterparts in corresponding web technology
  specifications elements such as HTML and CSS

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CADMOS-D From the design models to automated
generation of courseware
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CADMOS-D From the design models to automated
generation of courseware
ltimsmanifest version"1.3" identifier"TEST"gt ltor
ganizations default"TOC1"gt ltorganization
identifier"TOC1"gt lttitlegtDSP
Coursewarelt/titlegt ltitem identifier"S.10269"
identifierref"S.10269_RES"gt lttitlegtElements
of Discrete Systemslt/titlegt lt/itemgt ltitem
identifier"S.10271" identifierref"S.10271_RES"gt
lttitlegtProperties of Discrete
Systemslt/titlegt lt/itemgt ltitem
identifier"S.10273" identifierref"S.10273_RES"gt
lttitlegtSampling of Analog Systemslt/titlegt lt/i
temgt ltitem identifier"S.10275"
identifierref"S.10275_RES"gt lttitlegtSampling
of Sinusiodal Systemslt/titlegt lt/itemgt lt!-- .
. .--gt lt/organizationgt lt/organizationsgt ltresource
sgt ltresource identifier"S.10269_RES"
href"units/intro_1.html"gt lttitlegtElements of
Discrete Systemslt/titlegt lt/resourcegt ltresource
identifier"S.10271_RES" href"units/intro_2.html"
gt lttitlegtProperties of Discrete
Systemslt/titlegt lt/resourcegt lt!-- . . .
--gt lt/resourcesgt lt/imsmanifestgt
The IMS content packaging manifest
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CADMOS-D The output A prototype of AEHA
The SCORM ADL Run-time environment (RTE) v1.3,
http//www.adlnet.org/.
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CADMOSs Advantages

• This work aspires the bridging of the gap between
  the conceptual description and the implementation
  of web applications.
• Like approaches such as WebML, WCML, UWE, etc. it
  maintains the classical, in hypermedia
  engineering, discrimination of the design of web
  applications into structure, navigation and
  presentation design, and uses XML as the product
  model for the implementation of actual
  applications.
• The use of XMI and the focus of the current
  method on the specific domain of education, which
  sets certain constraints in the structure of
  applications makes it different from the
  aforementioned methods.
• The current work has also close similarities to
  Dolog et al 2004, which also uses the same
  model representation, XMI, and the same method
  for application generation, XSLT for adaptive
  applications.
• The main difference with this method is the
  provision for navigation and presentation issues,
  which is not covered in that work, and the
  support for Learning Technology Standards.

?
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Methods Disadvantages

• It does not conform to Simple Sequencing standard
  as yet.
• It supports specific aspects of adaptation.
• The author can create IMS CPs per learner type
• These CPs can vary
• in the arrangement/structure of learning
  activities
• in the resources associated with each learning
  activity
• In the navigational structure (and behaviour) and
  the association of nodes to learning activities
• In the presentation styles of the nodes

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Future plans

• To use it in more evaluation studies.
• The used is quite extensive. More than 100
  resources, and it covers a whole semester course
• To automatically support the IMS SS as an outcome
  of the navigational behavior model
• To create the v2.0 of the CGE tool, as stand
  alone
• To make a more user friendly interface for the
  CGE tool incorporating stencils for the UML
  diagrams
• To integrate the CGE functionality into IBM
  Rational Rose
• To check if CADMOS-D can be the basis for
  designing AEHA based on design patterns.
• With prof. Franca Garzotto Hypermedia Open
  Center, Politecnico di Milano we are creating a
  set of design patterns for authoring EAHA
  customised to learners styles.

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Conclusion

• building adaptive educational hypermedia
  applications will always be hard. There is
  inherently no silver bullet
• as Brooks (1987) said for software

Time for discussion ?
The ELEN project http//www.tisip.no/E-LEN, is
supported by the EU Minerva programme
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What is a design pattern?
A Solution to a Problem in a Context
Alexander defines a pattern as follows "....
Each pattern describes a problem which occurs
over and over again in our environment, and then
describes the core of the solution to that
problem, in such a way that you can use this
solution a million times over, without ever doing
it the same way twice" Alexander, C.,
Ishikawa, S., Silverstein, M., Jacobson, M.,
Fiksdahl-King, I., Angel, S. (1977). A Pattern
Language. Oxford University Press, New York.
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Alexandrian form of pattern formation
If you find yourself in CONTEXT For
example EXAMPLE, with PROBLEM,
entailing FORCES Then For some REASONS,
apply DESIGN FORM and/or RULE to
construct SOLUTION leading to NEW
CONTEXT and OTHER PATTERNS
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• Visit the web site of the ELEN project and
  register as an interested person
• http//www.tisip.no/E-LEN
• Time for discussion ?