Creating and Deploying Effective eLearning ... - Semantic Scholar

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON EDUCATION, VOL. 50, NO. 4, NOVEMBER 2007

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Creating and Deploying Effective eLearning Experiences Using .LRN Rocael Hernández, Abelardo Pardo, and Carlos Delgado Kloos, Senior Member, IEEE

Abstract—The significant quality increase in open-source e-learning platforms allows for large-scale e-learning courses with significantly reduced costs. This document describes a pedagogical model enhanced for effectively providing courses to a large number of students and producing media-rich content suitable to be managed by the open-source e-learning platform .LRN. Two case studies are presented: 1) a course for high school students to increase the popularity of engineering degrees; and 2) a regular engineering course with a blended learning approach. In both cases the proposed paradigm allowed the creation of successful learning experiences impossible with conventional teaching methodologies and tools. Index Terms—Authoring systems, learning systems.

This document presents a comprehensive paradigm, including a pedagogical model, content production, and deployment workflow used within the E-LANE project [11]. The educational model follows a constructivist approach based on three stages: conceptualization, construction, and dialog. Content development was enhanced by providing authoring tools to simplify and streamline the creating process. Two case studies are shown to illustrate the capabilities of the described paradigm: a fully online nationwide initiative, oriented toward promoting engineering studies, and a second conventional course, enhanced by including a blended learning scenario. Results show how to apply this paradigm to these two scenarios and its effectiveness.

I. INTRODUCTION

II. RELATED WORK

HE evolution of online education (courses with at least 80% of the content being offered online) in recent years has been closely followed by an equally significant increase in the quality of e-learning platforms. In [4], Allen et al. show that online enrollment in the U.S. for the 2005–2006 course had its largest percentage increase of 35%. Learning management systems (LMSs) are at the technological core supporting this type of education. A few years back, the available platforms were mainly commercial with a few opensource prototypes with limited functionality. But the landscape has changed significantly [1]. A growing market is in demand for open-source LMSs which are being considered as viable alternatives to commercial tools. This demand stems not only from the increasing number of online students but also from the need for sustained innovation in the functionality offered by these platforms. The open-source paradigm is known to fit nicely into this type of environment. Once the major open-source LMSs included the main features found in their commercial counterparts, they started to include innovative functionality to enhance the learning experience. The LMS .LRN [5] is an enterprise-class, open-source platform for supporting e-learning and digital communities. The platform is tightly coupled with the open architecture community system (OACS) [6], an open-source toolkit to build community-oriented scalable, Web applications. These tools are sustained by a large and active community of developers and users continuously adding new features and improving current ones.

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Manuscript received December 29, 2006; revised August 3, 2007. This work was supported in part by the E-LANE Project and Grant UC3M-TEC-05-056-1/2. R. Hernández is with Galileo University, 01010 Guatemala City, Guatemala. A. Pardo and C. D. Kloos are with Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, E-2911 Leganés Madrid, Spain (e-mail: [email protected]). Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TE.2007.906895

Open-source platforms for educational purposes appeared more than 15 years ago. But only recently they started to be seen as a viable alternative to proprietary software. There are several reasons behind this change of tendency. The requirements for technology-enhanced learning platforms are not fixed nor static. Rather, these platforms are frequently being modified by new demands in both technical and pedagogical aspects. Institutions that had chosen a homemade solution soon found out that their approach was not sustainable on the long run. Commercial vendors also saw this pressure, which translated into a significant increase in license prices. Open-source solutions, on the other hand, offer a reasonable tradeoff between cost and maintenance effort and usually offer faster reaction when adopting new requirements (if the community behind the tool is well organized). As Von Hippel points out [9], open source is a paradigm that promotes innovation driven by the user. Quoting [7], clearly “The information asymmetry between user and manufacturer provides the user with an inherent advantage in developing certain types of innovation. If a particular product lends itself to modification, a user is more likely to devise a solution that meets just their particular circumstance. By drawing on their own need and context of use, users are more likely as a group to overcome the gap between what a product provides and what the user needs.” Also, opensource platforms usually offer a lower barrier for adoption, thus, are more adequate for deployment in developing countries.” The landscape of available open-source LMS platforms is changing rapidly. There are several websites that offer detailed comparison among the most important (i.e., www.edutools.info), thus, for the sake of brevity, only the most significant ones will be mentioned.

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Moodle [12] is a system simple to install and administer. The tool requires an interpreter of the scripting language PHP and a relational database such as MySQL or postgreSQL. A constructive pedagogical underpinning and very large base of developers and consultant companies are its additional advantages. Also requiring PHP and MySQL is Claroline [10], a tool developed “from teachers to teachers” and built over sound pedagogic principles. Claroline has an intuitive user interface and is currently deployed in more than 500 institutions worldwide. Sakai [8] is a collaboration system that supports teaching, learning, and ad hoc collaboration. The tool was created as an initiative by several highly-ranked universities in the U.S., is based on Java/ Tomcat, and currently supports MySQL and Oracle databases. An exhaustive comparison among these platforms is a complex task and is beyond the scope of this paper. None of them would cover a hypothetical list of desirable features and each of them would be best in class in any of these features. The platform considered in this document is .LRN, a community-oriented educational platform that puts its emphasis in offering enterprise-class scalability. But the main differentiating feature of .LRN is that it is communication rather than content oriented. Almost all the current LMSs were initially oriented to cover the content management part of the learning process, that is, easy access to material and efficient administrative tasks. However, .LRN was conceived to facilitate the communication and exchange of material among all persons participating in a learning experience. This feature proved to be essential to deploy the pedagogical model chosen for the presented experiences. A brief description of the structure and functionality of .LRN is described in greater detail in Section IV.

III. THE PEDAGOGICAL MODEL The model used in the described experiences is based on the pedagogical methodologies to deploy e-learning courses presented in [2] and [3]. This model uses a three-stage environment. • Conceptualization: In this stage, content containing objectives, theory concepts, strategies, etc., are presented to the students. • Construction: Resources are given to the students to perform the tasks required in the material. This state includes all the activities such as assignments, projects, laboratories, etc. • Dialog: Communication among all participants in the experience is included and purposely motivated. This model, which follows a constructivist approach, is based on activities in which the student becomes the center of the learning process, the communication among peers is favored, and the teacher becomes a tutor or a supervisor of such communication. Nowadays, with all the information available to students, a significant amount of collaborative knowledge construction is possible with tools such as wikis, knowledge sharing through blogs, and several other tools to create online communities. In this new environment, the role of the tutor is centered on shaping the knowledge process through tasks such as creating, investigating, and helping to assemble a set of online activities to allow critical thinking, greater levels of engagement,

Fig. 1. Conceptualization, construction, and dialog model.

and more effective learning. Fig. 1 depicts the proposed model with its three stages. Each course is contextualized using instructional design principles and best distant education practices developed with the target audience in mind. The content is divided into didactic units of an appropriate length, based on students estimated time per learning session. A general introduction is included in each course in which the method for interacting is described. Furthermore, each unit contains its own introduction section in which the content to be covered is summarized. Rich multimedia material such as graphics, animations and videos, are frequently used for the most relevant sections. Course content is packaged as shareable content object reference model (SCORM) modules, using the content packaging scheme from the IMS Global Consortium for its organization. The deployment of this model into real-life courses can be seen from two complementary perspectives: 1) the teaching staff and 2) the students. A. The Teacher Perspective Teachers needed to adapt to the special requirements of this model. First, adequate material had to be produced for the courses. The construction stage in the previously described model requires an unusually varied number of activities including a rich set of resources. In other words, rather than providing an extremely exhaustive set of theoretical material, a rich set of activities was proposed to motivate students for the understanding of such concepts. Second, since the courses followed an e-learning paradigm, activities were released gradually to the students throughout the course to maintain a high motivation, requiring teachers to be proficient in the use of the platform. Finally, since communication between students and teaching staff is an important part of this methodology, effective e-tutoring was an additional requirement. To facilitate the adaptation of the teaching staff to this method, several measures were taken prior to its deployment. Teachers attended a practical training module on the use of the

HERNÁNDEZ et al.: CREATING AND DEPLOYING EFFECTIVE eLEARNING EXPERIENCES USING .LRN

e-learning platform. A seminar on generic e-learning teaching and e-moderation techniques, following the model proposed by Salmon [13], was also organized. Since some teachers already had course material from their regular courses, a set of guidelines on how to transform this material to the online context were given. Finally, a short module covering practical knowledge on the type of graphical assets that can be used for online courses was also offered. This teacher-training scheme proved to be essential to guarantee a successful deployment of the courses. While the course is being taught, the teaching staff has two responsibilities: 1) gradual deployment of new material and 2) activities of the course and e-moderation. Follow-up sessions with the teaching staff were regularly scheduled where the overall progress of the course was reviewed. B. The Student Perspective From the student’s point of view, the proposed model translates into a learning environment with a low barrier to the communication and exchange of information with both tutors and peers. Courses may include an initial module to familiarize students with the communication features offered by the platform and to indicate how are they expected to use such features. This module is suppressed if students have already used the platform. At regular intervals, new additional material accompanied by a set of activities is published. Each student is given a private and a public virtual folder to store documents related to the course. During the time allotted to the activities, tutors and students exchange information through several communication techniques (forums, blogs, wikis, etc). The teaching staff maintains this constant evaluation throughout the course. IV. COURSE CREATION AND DEPLOYMENT The enterprise-class, open-source platform .LRN supports e-learning and digital communities. The tool was originally developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, as a virtual learning environment and then evolved into a comprehensive platform including not only e-learning support but also generic Web resources. The platform is based in the OACS [6], a toolkit for building scalable, communication-oriented Web communities and applications. The toolkit structure is highly modular, and .LRN is a set of modules providing the additional features to deploy an e-learning platform. The virtual community around .LRN/OACS currently involves nearly 11 000 registered users. The community portal is based on this platform and coordinates the interaction between developers, users, technology personnel employed by higher education institutions, or anybody interested on exchanging ideas, solutions, and information. The platform is in production in several educational institutions such as MIT Sloan School of Management, with over 11 000 users; Harvard University E-Government Executive Education Project, which needed an effective platform to handle communication and information management for company executives; Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration, which gives support to 20 000 users and contains around 26 000 learning resources; and Universidad de Valencia,

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Spain, with a community of 40 000 users. See [5] for a more detailed list, including case studies. A. The Functionality of .LRN Several features make .LRN a powerful e-learning platform. Its modular structure allows for very fast customization and prototyping of new applications. The user space is organized through a customizable set of portlets, each of them offering access to one of the various services available. The underlying OACS toolkit provides an ever increasing set of basic Web functions, most of them suitable to be adopted by the e-learning platform. Because OACS is a community-oriented toolkit, it has influenced and shaped .LRN into a “communication oriented LMS.” Most of the current LMSs focused at the beginning of their existence in providing content management for teaching staff and learners. However, .LRN was conceived as a platform to facilitate communication among all the different actors in a learning experience. For example, each user in .LRN has a Web folder shown in the login page to include both private and publicly accessible files. Each community of users also has its own public and private areas to exchange documents. A significant part of the pedagogical model used for the courses presented in this document requires information exchange with tutors and peers and, therefore, makes extensive use of this feature. Support is offered by .LRN for several common e-learning specifications. Course material can be uploaded as a SCORM package. The administrator uploads a zip file, and the system installs its content in the common file storage area of a class or a community. A portlet in the student area shows the links to enter a special screen to visualize the course content. Tests and quizzes are supported through the IMS Global Consortium Question and Test Interoperability format. Examination questions may be either uploaded embedded in a SCORM package as standalone files or created and manipulated through the editing capabilities of the platform. Teaching staff may manipulate both examination content and results and statistics within the platform. B. Content Production Workflow Although the functionality of e-learning platforms is increasing rapidly, content production is a problem largely unsolved. The notion of reusable, adaptable learning content is perfectly understood, but the inherent complexity of the production process is not properly addressed by the current state-of-the-art authoring tools. This problem is worsened when authoring is extended to a larger community of users that are only familiar with a conventional set of basic editing tools. A hypothetical scenario, consisting of a powerful e-learning platform offering a wide range of services and a community of authors incapable of using them, should be avoided. In this experience, almost all users had previous experience with LMSs, but only to publish course material. The objective then was to propose a course creation methodology with a minimal adoption barrier but oriented toward obtaining learning resources packaged in SCORM as efficiently as possible. Following a pragmatic approach, the proposed solution aimed at maintaining the same editing platform (Microsoft

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Word Editor) while at the same time using multimedia documents in HTML format packaged in SCORM. A set of basic style definitions was created, and authors were trained to use them when producing learning material. The editing platform was then enhanced to store documents automatically in Docbook [14] format. Docbook is a publicly available XML-based markup language allowing a detailed marking of document parts. Also, a comprehensive set of highly customizable formatting templates is available to translate Docbook to both HTML and PDF formats. Although significantly improved with this approach, the content production cycle still required manual intervention. When all documents were obtained from authors in Docbook format, they needed to be reviewed and packed in SCORM format. Even though several open-source tools offer this functionality, they are not tightly integrated with the rest of the authoring environment; therefore, authors need guidance, at least in the first stages, by the support staff. This aspect of the overall e-learning paradigm is one that requires much more effort. Increasingly, powerful e-learning platforms will not be fully utilized unless a low-complexity content production flow is made available to the average author. If multimedia content production requires teams of experts and sophisticated production processes, the level of adoption of this paradigm will be significantly reduced. The described pedagogical model and course deployment scheme are being applied in online courses in Guatemala. A description of two case studies is presented in the next sections. The first is a nationwide initiative, and the second is within the academic context of the Galileo University, Guatemala City, Guatemala. They were both organized and supervised by Galileo University in collaboration with other national entities and used .LRN as an LMS.

V. THE EnRED PROJECT The EnRED course is a nationwide, ten-week online course for high school students in Guatemala, oriented toward gaining familiarity with basic Web publishing tools and Internet usage. Since engineering enrollment figures are declining, EnRED, hosted and supervised by Galileo University, is also an effective introductory course for prospective computer engineering students. The course has had two editions to date in 2005 and 2006, and a third edition is scheduled for 2007. The two course objectives are for students to learn how to use the Internet as an effective information source and how to design and deploy innovative high quality multimedia websites. The course is free of charge, and the enrollment period was preceded by a nationwide marketing campaign in a national newspaper (collaborating in the experience), radio broadcasts, The Internet, posters, and a promotional bus tour through several high schools. Also, five university scholarships were offered for the top-graded students. Since the course was not part of any degree, the challenge was to provide a formal and, at the same time, attractive learning setting to maintain student motivation. Enrollment figures were 860 and 1024 students, respectively, for the first and second editions. In both of them, the percentage

of students actively participating in the course (that is, participating regularly in forum discussions, assessments, feedback, etc.) was 68%. Upon closer inspection, a large number of persons of the remaining 32% not engaging in the course were not in high school but in lower levels. This anomaly is being addressed in the promotional material for the new edition. The course was created for a distant learning scenario with special emphasis on maintaining a sustained set of motivating activities. The decision was made to divide the material into ten modules with one-week duration each and clearly stated objectives. A two-week introductory module was added to remove potential difficulties when using the distant learning scenario for the first time. Following the adopted e-moderation model, this module included interaction between students and tutors about the functionality available in the platform. Activities are organized around the idea of a global project that consists of creating a website and publishing content on a topic selected by each of the students with some minimal restrictions. The activities are designed to provide techniques and resources gradually and directly applicable to the development of this website. The course is divided into the following units: • Internet history; • Effective browsing; • Website content; • Web photography and video; • Online content sharing; • Beyond e-mail; • My cool page; • Letting the world know about your page; • Security and privacy on the Web; • The project. Each module had a similar structure consisting of a small welcome message, usually a video uploaded on the www.youtube.com website, a set of topics, self-learning assessment, an assignment with a set of activities requiring interaction with the rest of the students, and a final set of recommendations oriented toward the course project. Instead of making all modules available to students from the beginning of the course, each week they were given access to a new one. This decision was made largely because of the large number of students in the course and in order to maintain focus on the activities of one module and a higher student motivation. Past modules were always available. The content for course modules was created following the pedagogical model previously described in Section III. More precisely, modules were oriented toward motivating and engaging students with online activities such as forum discussions, self assessments, photo publications, blogs, etc. Also, tools for Web publishing were made available throughout the duration of the course. Two forums were available to the students: the first was for generic questions and the second was used only by members of previously created student groups and their designated tutor (a total of 22 groups formed in the second edition). The role of this tutor was identified as essential. In the conducted course evaluations, 91% of the students rated the tutor role as “good” or “excellent.” As a consequence, the number of tutors in the second edition was increased from 3


TABLE I GENERAL FORUM PARTICIPATION STATISTICS

TABLE II LEARNING MATERIAL

to 20, thus reducing the ratio student–tutor and increasing the motivating factor. Table I shows the participation statistics in the forums. As the data in this table shows, participation was primarily a result of student messages (more than the 80%), which supports the effectiveness of the used e-moderation model. The lower numbers seen in the second edition were a result of private forums for student subgroup discussion, deployed only in this edition. Communication progressed through this private forum with more focused students; therefore, questions were answered more effectively; and the overall number of messages was reduced. The appearance of subgroups also diverted a significant part of this interaction to regular e-mail (60% of students reported using e-mail) not monitored. In the first edition, e-mail questions were not allowed, and all this interaction was directed to the forum. In the second edition, the global forum was replaced by one forum per module. A significant number of activities were performed outside of the LMS. Students were asked to maintain a personal blog with their comments, a photo album, and their own website. These activities were gradually introduced to the students to achieve the objectives using these type of tools on a regular basis. Both editions included 11 activities that were performed with this type of resource. Course assessment was completed through the .LRN platform. Surveys and quizzes were produced and uploaded as a part of the SCORM modules. The experience derived from the first edition prompted the course material to be significantly revamped for the second edition. Table II shows the figures of this change. The reason for this increase in the number of resources came after evaluating surveys for the first edition. Students were asked for the type of material that they considered more attractive and effective. As a consequence, the number of flash animations and images was significantly increased (six-fold). These resources had the highest acceptance among students. This trend is consistent with the observed tendencies in generic Internet culture. The appearance of pod casting, vod casting (video broadcasting), and sites such as YouTube clearly pointed in this direction. Table III shows the detailed results obtained in the course evaluation from the students through an online questionnaire.

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TABLE III PERCENTAGE OF AFFIRMATIVE ANSWERS IN COURSE EVALUATION

The average level of satisfaction is, in general, very high and increased in the second edition of the course. During the first edition of this course, the LMS registered more than 880 000 hits. This figure shows the extensive use of the platform by the students. Although desirable from the point of view of soundness, a comparison between this course and its hypothetical equivalent version in an offline environment is impossible because of its nationwide scope. Targeting such a wide audience could not be feasible without the use of an LMS. The course topic and the hands-on approach (i.e., students publishing their own Web page) could simply not be achieved without the use of this platform. From the enrollment numbers and the student satisfaction, the effectiveness of the proposed paradigm is demonstrated. VI. PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE THEORY The second case study is a mandatory course for the Engineering, Electronic, and Telecommunications Programs of Galileo University. The experience is based on a group of 42 students exposed to a blended learning environment. Regular lectures were combined with online content, interactions, and self assessment. The course covers mathematical and logic fundamentals in computer science, including but not limited to induction and recursion, languages, automaton, regular expressions, grammars, context free languages, and Turing machines. The objective is to increase the student ability to analyze and comprehend rigorous and formal problems in computer science with the use of a blended learning environment. The evaluation is based on weekly assignments and a course project. This course relies completely on the LMS to distribute course material, exercises, video and text presentations, examination resolutions, project descriptions, grades and activities including discussion forums, self-assessments, and learning object browsing. The content was also conceived following the pedagogical model described on Section III. The blended nature of the adopted environment meant that the set of learning objects available to students were used to complement the course textbook and auxiliary references, but at the same time, this environment was enriched with the communication features contained in the platform. Student participation in the online activities was encouraged by including project discussions and self-assessment as part of the course grade computation. Table IV shows the course forum statistics. Results show an intensive use of forums, mostly during the project phase of the course. As in the previous case study, student messages and communication helped to achieve a higher student satisfaction with the course.

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TABLE IV COURSE FORUMS STATISTICS

TABLE V PERCENTAGE OF GOOD OR EXCELLENT ANSWERS IN STUDENT COURSE EVALUATION

To increase the interaction through the activities, students were advised to ask any type of question in the forums and were given an unlimited number of attempts when answering assessments. These measures reduced the pressure to obtain a high grade at the first attempt. The course included a total of six online assessment activities. Self-assessment during the first half of the course increased the confidence in the online communication. During the project phase of the course, students were asked to participate in online question and answers sessions to clarify project issues. Forums were not moderated, although teaching assistants usually participated in most of the discussions. The main effect of these discussions was to create a sense of community that was not present in regular editions of this course. Facilitating the exchange of questions, answers, and information about the activities in the course clearly enhanced the overall learning experience. The creation of this virtual community, even as a complement of a course that meets regularly in face-to-face sessions, provided a more secure environment for interaction. Table V shows the percentage of student answers that rated “good” or “excellent” on several aspects of the course. These results demonstrate that even on regular courses, and with a reduced number of students, a communication and information, exchange-based blended learning environment is perceived as a clear course improvement by the students. Although in different environments, comparing the two described experiences prompts two observations. First, an online environment with content that captivates students, activities that keep a high motivation, sustained tutoring activity, and a platform where communication is easily achieved can be even more effective than traditional learning scenarios (having such a large geographically dispersed number of students in face-to-face classes would not be feasible). Second, very often teaching staff is searching for course adjustments to enhance the overall learning experience. A blended learning approach such as the one described here can be deployed and could provide a safer context in which communication can take place.

VII. CONCLUSION The pedagogical model, creation, deployment, and management of online and blended learning courses using the .LRN platform has been presented. The use of this paradigm was illustrated with two study cases. The first is a fully online, nationwide course to familiarize high school students with technology and engineering studies. The second is a blended learning course embedded in a regular engineering degree. The pedagogical model includes a dialog phase where all the stakeholders exchange information about a course. The material for these courses included a significant number of activities where communication among students was required. The used open-source platform was .LRN which offered the required functionality and the intuitive environment for both teachers and students. The difference in scope of the case studies shows how .LRN offers a versatile environment capable of hosting learning experiences ranging from a fully online course deployment with a significant number of students, to a more reduced blended learning scenario. Additionally, a modified content production flow was proposed to authors to reduce content management complexity while complying with current models such as SCORM. When applied to the context of electrical/computer engineering education, the presented approach has several advantages. The pedagogical model accommodates the ever-increasing forms of interaction among students and teaching staff. The authoring environment reduces the cost of including new media resources such as audio, video, animations, simulations, etc. Finally, .LRN is an enterprise-class, open-source platform that offers the required functionality for the successful exploitation of the learning experiences present in engineering education.

REFERENCES [1] S. Adkins, “Wake-up call: Open source LMS,” in Learning Circuits. Atlanta, GA: American Society for Training & Development, 2005. [2] V. S. Alexandrov, N. S. Alexandrov, and R. Ramírez-Velarde, “Educational meta-model for e-learning,” presented at the Int. Conf. Interactive Computer Aided Learning, Villach, Austria, 2006. [3] V. S. Alexandrov, N. S. Alexandrov, and R. Ramírez-Velarde, “Novel pedagogical paradigms facilitating mixed mode and collaborative learning using open source software,” presented at the Int. Conf. Interactive Computer Aided Learning, Villach, Austria, 2006. [4] I. E. Allen and J. Seaman, Making The Grade. Online Education in the United States, 2006. Needham, MA: Sloan Consortium, 2006. [5] R. A. Calvo, E. Ghiglione, and R. A. Ellis, “The openACS e-learning infrastructure,” presented at the 9th Australian World Wide Web Conf., Gold Coast, Australia, Jul. 2003. [6] N. Demetriou, S. Koch, and G. Neumann, Open Source for Knowledge and Learning Management: Strategies Beyond Tools. Hershey, PA: Idea Group Publishing, Oct 2006, ch. The Development of the OpenACS Community. [7] A. Essa, “Innovation and strategic advantage: Lessons from open source,” Int. J. Contin. Eng. Educ. Lifelong Learn., Dec. 2006. [8] J. Farmer and I. Dolphin, “Sakai: E-Learning and more,” presented at the European University Information Systems Conf., Manchester, U.K., Jun. 2005. [9] E. Von Hippel, Democratizing Innovation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005. [10] N. Karlovcec, S. Saina, and T. Skala, “Computer networks course: Claroline-based E-learning model,” in Proc. World Conf. E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education, G. Richards, Ed., Vancouver, BC, Canada, 2005, pp. 794–799.


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[11] C. D. Kloos, A. Pardo, M. Muñoz, and L. de la Fuente Valentín, “E-LANE: An e-learning initiative based on open source as a basis for sustainability,” Int. J. Contin. Eng. Educ. Lifelong Learn., vol. 17, no. 1, pp. 57–66, 2007. [12] W. H. Rice, Moodle. E-learning Course Development. Birmingham, U.K.: Packt, 2006. [13] G. Salmon, E-Moderating: The Key to Teaching and Learning Online. London, U.K.: Routledge Falmer, 2002. [14] N. Walsh and L. Muellner, DocBook: The Definitive Guide. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media, 1999.

Abelardo Pardo received the Ph.D. degree in computer science from the University of Colorado, Boulder. He is an Associate Professor of Telematics Engineering at Carlos III University of Madrid, Spain. His research interests are in the area of computer-supported learning, adaptive hypermedia, and multimedia content creation. He is a Member of the .LRN community, where he participated in the implementation of the learning design support within the platform. He has also participated in several international research projects and is the Principal Investigator of the mosaicLearning-2 project on e-learning platforms, tutoring systems, user modeling, and adaptive hypermedia.

Rocael Hernández received the B.S. degree in computer science from Francisco Marroquin University, Guatemala, in 2000. He is Director of Development in the Research and Development Department and Director of the eLearning Department, Galileo University, Guatemala City, Guatemala. His research interests are in e-learning, Web content development technologies, collaborative websites, online communities, and Web development frameworks. He also leads the Tools Integration subproject in the E-LANE project and coordinates all its deployment in Guatemala. He has served for more than two years as part of the OpenACS Core Team, the Web framework behind .LRN, and now serves as a Member of the Board of Directors of the .LRN Consortium.

Carlos Delgado Kloos (M’05–SM’06) received the Ph.D. degree in computer science from the Technical University of Munich, Germany, and the Ph.D. degree in telecommunication engineering from the Technical University of Madrid, Spain. He is a Full Professor of Telematics Engineering at Carlos III University of Madrid, Spain, where he is the Founding Director of the Department of Telematics Engineering. He is Associate Vice-Chancellor, Director of two Master’s programs (one on e-learning), and Director of the Nokia Chair. His main current interest is educational technologies. He has been involved in more than 20 projects with European (Esprit, IST, @LIS), national (Spanish Ministry) and bilateral (Spanish–German and Spanish–French) funding. He has authored over 160 articles in national and international conferences and journals. He has authored one book, coauthored one, and coedited five. He is the Coordinator of the European-funded E-LANE project and a Member of the Board of Directors of the .LRN Consortium.