A Web-Application for building Common Cartridge ...

A Web-Application for building Common Cartridge Learning Objects Bernhard Standl University of Vienna, Austria Computer Science Didactics and Learning Research Center [email protected]

Abstract: Research in the field of education frequently aims at improving practices in classroom settings. The bridge between well-researched lesson scenarios and the application of them in practice cannot always be established. Both, research and practice can benefit from each other if bidirectional information transfer between research and practice is possible. During research activities for a PhD thesis in the field of computer science education at secondary school level, the idea emerged to develop a web application to establish such a connection. Therefore, lesson scenarios were developed and refined in an interaction of practice and research with multiple case studies. Each of these scenarios was subsequently modified along the Common Cartridge standard. This paper describes the specification of this course format for online learning platforms and the web application, which was developed for the flexibility to use and modify these scenarios for an individual implementation.

Introduction When assuming that the design of a school lesson has basically a pedagogical and a content part, the lessons as designed for this paper are based on the pedagogical background of the person-centered approach combined with selected topics of computer science. The person-centered approach was initially introduced by Carl Rogers (Rogers, 1983) and is based on the hypothesis that students who are given the freedom to explore areas based on their personal interests, and who are accompanied in their striving for solutions by a supportive, understanding facilitator not only achieve higher academic results but also grow with respect to their personal values, such as flexibility and self confidence (Motschnig & Standl, 2012). The corresponding subject related content for computer science lessons is oriented on the ACM Computer Science Teachers Association Curriculum (Stephenson, Cooper, Owens, & GalEzer, 2012) and the Austrian standards for computer science at 9th grade (Federal Ministry for Education, 2010). Considering this, lesson scenarios for five topics of computer science were designed and subsequently refined with case study research along design-based research principles (Collective, 2003). For this work, each scenario was made available electronically for other teachers on the learning management system (LMS) Moodle for an easy reuse and to fill the gap between well researched learning scenarios and the further reuse of them. The teachers’ requirement to modify scenarios individually was the motivation to develop an online tool, which allows the modification of scenarios while keeping the initial idea for the pedagogical intentions and content standards. A LMS as Moodle has the advantage that learning resources and tools for examination and communication are available centrally in one system on-line accessible from anywhere. In the first part of the paper the Common Cartridge standard as a uniform description of learning objects is outlined and how such cartridges can be defined. In the second part, the developed web application is presented which allows creating and modifying common cartridges based on person-centered lesson scenarios.

Common Cartridge The Common Cartridge standard describes a structure how learning objects and learning content can be uniformly organized and was developed by IMS Global Learning Consortium. This organization is a non-profit organization with a focus on virtual learning environments. The idea is to provide a LMS-independent format, which describes learning objects. A learning object in a virtual learning platform is a set of content and tools aimed at guiding the learning process along a certain topic. In contrast to the well-known SCORM (Shareable Content Object Reference Mode), the Common Cartridge standard is not designed for computer-based training but rather for the support of all forms of teaching and learning. Further, Common Cartridge allows the embedding of Web 2.0 standards as well as the application of assessment tools. These are represented natively with the corresponding technology of a LMS where the cartridge is imported in. However, Common Cartridge is still compatible with SCORM as both standards are based on the IMS Content Packaging and can be seen as enhancement of the SCORM standard (GonzalezBarbone & Anido-Rifon, 2010). In figure 1 the structure of the Common Cartridge system in relation to a LMS is depicted. The Common Cartridge on left hand side is independently from the learning platform. After the cartridge is imported, the system provides the technology for creating authentic runtime tools as for example a discussion forum. If the platform accesses external services as authorization service or grade book, the imported cartridge can access it as well.

Figure 1. Common Cartridge System (IMS GLC, 2011) As Common Cartridge is at an early development stage in version 1.2, not all functionalities of a LMS are provided yet but still the most important are. These are assessment filled with test items, discussion forum, digital content or feedbacks (IMS GLC, 2011). In the following an overview shows the packages, which can be described by Common Cartridge. •

Web Content: Providing well-sorted information is an important aspect in designing learning courses. This functionality provides the provision of web content through HTML files, images, audio, video, MS Office, PDF or Flash files. It is also possible to refer HTML files to other web content files within or outside the Common Cartridge.

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Web Link: When information for students is available outside the learning environment, a web link can connect this information with the LMS. A standard HTTP link refers to other websites or files, which are available outside the LMS. It also includes attributes that describe in which window the resource should be opened.

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Discussion Topic: A forum on a LMS can be applied in different ways for learning. Students can talk to a certain topic, write comments to existing entries or give feedback to any topic as single entry. The LMS generates it based on the settings of the Common Cartridge using its internal tools.

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Assessment: Assessment is an important part of a learning process and gives the student the possibility to get feedback on performance. An assessment represents an instance of a QTI (IMS Question & Test Interoperability) and question types as multiple choice, single answer, question/answer assignment and other as supported by QTI can be embedded. Further test parameters as number of attempts, time limit and whether late submission can be configured. The assessment is also represented with the VLE internal tools.

Inside a common cartridge the XML file imsmanifest.xml holds the overall structure of the cartridge. It describes how the elements of the scenario are arranged and in which subfolders corresponding information for the course is stored. Beside imsmanifest.xml these subfolders contain data for the elements as for instance forum discussion or web content. The folder for a web content part contains for instance a HTML file and subfolders with resources as images. The folder of the discussion forum contains a further XML file, which describes the forum as the name and further parameters. For importing the cartridge into the LMS the structure must be compressed as ZIP archive. Considering the Common Cartridge standard as framework for learning environment independent course descriptions, the question is how to build such a structure without advanced technical knowledge. Authoring tools as eXe learning designer (http://exelearning.org) can assist to create learning scenarios for SCORM and the Common Cartridge standard. As standalone tool it however cannot provide the required collaborative advantage what an online application can provide. At this point it was decided to develop a web application for building learning objects for secondary school computer science lessons. This online application offers well-researched prebuild learning scenarios with the possibility of individualization by the teacher. The web application as it will be presented in the next section assists the teacher in creating LMS learning objects along the person-centered approach and automatically provides a ZIP archives file, which can be imported into a Common Cartridge supported VLE such as Moodle.

Web-Application This section describes how a Common Cartridge can be created upon existing lesson scenarios in a few steps with a specially developed web application. Further, the technical background of the web application is briefly explained. Basically, a requirement for this web application was to provide the user an easy to use website. This means, that beyond the technical background the screen design emphasizes on easy usability, easy accessibility and flexibility. Easy accessibility involves that everyone can straightforward start with building learning scenarios without any registration needed. These scenarios can be retrieved later with a unique web link, which the user gets after downloading the Common Cartridge. The application allows creating learning objects in only three steps from the front page to the final ZIP archive including the possibility to modify scenarios. The workflow of creating such a common cartridge is depicted in figure 2 on the next page. After the welcome page the teacher selects one of the following subject area: Introduction, Web design, Networks, Problem solving and Programming. In a next step, the teacher adapts the predefined scenarios according to his ideas along the person-centered approach. Each part of the scenario as content, activity or discussion forum is represented as moveable bar that can be rearranged. This means, that each bar can be dragged to another position, renamed and deleted. This key functionality of the web tool provides the required flexibility for the teacher to modify the scenario individually. On the right hand side the teacher gets information about the current selected part and about the intentions and objectives. Hence, the teacher gets advice what the impact of deleting or moving parts of the scenario is for keeping the person-centered style of the scenario. In the final step the user is asked if the scenario should be exported as ZIP archive in common cartridge format. If the teacher prefers to save

the scenario in the database for later modifications, the system provides a web-link to the scenario for a later access. The figure on the next page shows this workflow of four steps as screenshots of the web application.

Figure 2. Four steps for the building of a Common Cartridge archive

Technical Background The technology behind the web application is HTML, JavaScript and PHP connected with a MySQL database. The diagram in figure 3 shows the structure and the flow of the system. It can be seen that the application is mainly made of an entry HTML page and the two scripts scenario.php and export.php, which are connected to a MySQL database. This means in detail, that the user first lands on the entry page start.html and subsequently gets forwarded to the site choose.html. On this page the user decides for one computer science subtopic as for example Problem Solving. This leads the user to the next page scenario.php and the system transfers the associated ID, which is important for the database identification. At scenario.php the central application of the web tool for displaying and rearranging learning scenarios is organized. Based on the assigned ID, scenarios are dynamically retrieved from the MySQL database. Next, the modified structure of the scenario is saved in another table of the database with a new ID. This is necessary in order to build the Common Cartridge ZIP archive and for providing the possibility to edit the scenario later. On the page export.php the user gets the link to the common cartridge ZIP archive and the link to the scenario site for coming back later.

Figure 3. Simple website system structure and workflow

Implications and Future Work During the development of the web tool, computer science teachers from a secondary school in Austria were involved in testing it. Modifications in making the interface user-friendlier were made based on feedback in informal experience exchange. As the tool is only limited public available at this time and at beta stage (Standl, 2012) and it was not yet promoted to other schools yet. In July 2013 the tool will be available in public and promoted for further application by other teachers. Community connections as the ACM Computer Science Teacher association (CSTA) can help to provide a way to spread the tool. This would allow refine the lesson scenarios further by computer science teachers collaboratively. This requires that the scenarios are modifiable and extensible and hence the next development step of the tool will be the creation of a community-building tool with user login based on openID via Google or Yahoo (Fitzpatrick & Recordon, 2006). Such community enhancement will allow connecting users their modified scenarios with each other and to share experiences and new insights in different settings. Finally, the whole project is aimed to make it available as OpenSource project hosted on Google Code Project to get the most out of it in the future.

Acknowledgements This work was financially supported by the European Union’s territorial cooperation program “European Territorial Co-Operation Austria-Czech Republic 2007-2013” under the EFRE grant M00171, project “iCom” (Constructive International Communication in the Context of ICT).

References Collective, T. D.-B. R. (2003). Design-Based Research: An Emerging Paradigm for Educational Inquiry. Educational Researcher, 32(1), 5–8.

Federal Ministry for Education, A. Lehrplan Informatik (Austrian Computer Science Curriculum for 9th Grade) (2010). Retrieved from http://www.bmukk.gv.at/medienpool/11866/lp_neu_ahs_14.pdf Fitzpatrick, B., & Recordon, D. (2006). OpenID Authentication 1.1. Gonzalez-Barbone, V., & Anido-Rifon, L. (2010). From SCORM to Common Cartridge: A step forward. Computers & Education, 54(1), 88–102. IMS GLC. (2011). Common Cartridge. IMS global learning consortium. Retrieved May 1, 2013, from http://www.imsglobal.org/cc/ccv1p1/imscc_profilev1p1-Implementation.html Motschnig, R., & Standl, B. (2012). Person-centered technology enhanced learning: Dimensions of added value. Computers in Human Behavior, 28. Rogers, C. (1983). Freedom to Learn for the 80’s. Columbus, Ohio: Charles E. Merrill Publishing Company. Standl, B. (2012). Lesson Builder (under development). Retrieved May 1, 2013, from http://homepage.univie.ac.at/bernhard.standl/php/webtool/ Stephenson, C., Cooper, S., Owens, B. B., & Gal-Ezer, J. (2012). The new CSTA K--12 computer science standards. 17th ACM annual conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education.