Authoring tools allow teachers who lack of programming skills to develop digital contents .... It is a leap from the interaction with desktop applications (installed.
IADIS International Conference e-Learning 2007
REFLECTIONS ON THE NEXT GENERATION OF AUTHORING TOOLS Javier Portillo, Jesus Romo, Manuel Benito, Oskar Casquero University of the Basque Country ETS Ingenieros Bilbao, 48013 Bilbao
ABSTRACT Authoring tools allow teachers who lack of programming skills to develop digital contents for elearning. This paper describes the vision authors have about what authoring tools should be for the so-called elearning 2.0 (elearning + Web 2.0) and how they should put all the power of Web 2.0 within teachers’ reach and make easier and richer the generation of digital learning units. This vision supposes the adoption of new and more collaborative roles for teachers and students. KEYWORDS Elearning 2.0, authoring tool, folksonomy, syndication, web services
1. INTRODUCTION An authoring tool (AT) is a software package which developers use to edit and package content deliverable to end users. ATs make easy the integration of video, audio, images and text for non-technically skilled people. They are commonly used to create e-learning modules, which conform to some international standard for Reusable Learning Objects (SCORM, LOM or IMS). Despite distribution of content created with authoring tools include web, interactive CD-Rom and executable files, LMS (Learning Management Systems) have traditionally served this purpose. ATs have historically been influenced by the possibilities and limitations derived from computers, software as well as hardware (Locatis et al 1999). In this sense, the first prototypes (i.e. PLATO, Programmed Logic for Automated Teaching Operations) needed great resources of hardware and a remarkable amount of programming. Personal Computers made easier the use of this kind of tools and CD-ROM devices solved the problem of storage for great amounts of information, but the WWW was the real impeller for the distributed use of multimedia contents. In this sense, the reinvention of internet, thanks to all the concepts Web 2.0 is introducing, should have an impact in new ATs. This paper tries to identify the new challenges for ATs in the innovative web 2.0 environment and the role to play in the so-called elearning 2.0.
2. FROM WEB 1.0 TO ELEARNING 2.0 O'Reilly (2005) coined the term Web 2.0 to denote a perceived second generation of internet (social networking, wikis, communication tools and folksonomies) that emphasizes online collaboration and sharing. In the Web 1.0 paradigm, people basically get information from the web, which is seen as a collection of static pages which can be read. The well-known model of the book is followed: a few people, with sufficient economic backing, can publish books from time to time which many people will read. In the same sense, a few people, with sufficient technical skills and economic backing, can publish a web page from time to time which again many people will read. The web is perceived as a huge library where standard users read static information. The user’s main role is that of "passive reader" where information only flows in one direction. Thanks to new technologies (or perhaps, because of new technologies), the way in which we access and use internet has changed radically and we adopt new attitudes:
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Read/Write web. We read, as well as write information in the web and the model of a read-only web is disappearing. Tim Berners-Lee had envisioned this read/write web that we are starting to experience. More frequently. Both, read and write operations are much more frequent. It is not only 'what for', but 'how often' we access the Internet that has changed. Smaller amounts of data. The amount of information we read or write is smaller (micro-contents) than it was before. As result, this operation is more dynamic and less time-consuming. From anywhere. Our information is stored in remote servers, this allows us to access information from anywhere and use a wider variety of devices (web browser in desktop or laptop, cellular-phone, PDA,...). For anyone we want. We can control the scope in which we want to share data, so it is possible to manage public as well as private and group shared information. Newer and richer content publication/consumption models have arisen thanks to new technologies. The user adopts new roles on the basis of new content publication/consumption models: Publisher. Today, virtually everyone can publish information as neither proprietary server nor specific technical skills are needed. Moreover, the previous web publication model can be enhanced through the feedback a publisher gets from readers (a blog is published by one person but everybody can comment on it). There is an evolution to a wider range of web pages (blogs). Reader/Writer of private information. Users 'write' in the web information for private consumption (agenda, notes, personal documents, files, images,...) in order to achieve ubiquitous access to personal data from different devices. Obviously, privacy is an issue and it must be assured. Co-Reader/Co-Writer of information. When information is shared within a closed group of persons, all of them can collaborate as co-readers and co-writers. Information management is one of the benefits of remote server storage and new web page models appear (blogs, wikis,...). Remote application user. Web 2.0 offers an improved concept: the execution of remote applications through web browsers as user interfaces. It is a leap from the interaction with desktop applications (installed in the local computer) to the interaction with remote applications running in a server and accessed by many other users. The web becomes the way to work with a wide range of remote applications.
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Figure 1. a) Web 1.0 as a huge library accessible to many passive readers. New roles: b) Publisher who receives feedback c) Co-reader and co-writer d) User of remote applications
The common denominator of all service and application denoted as "Web 2.0" is the nature, classification and propagation of contents, because it differs from those models of Web 1.0. Nature of the information, micro-contents. Information is structured as contents that transmit a primary idea or concept, are accessible trough a permanent URL and are properly written and formatted to be merged and readable in different contexts and devices (web browser, PDA,…). Their size and format are ideal to be consumed, published, shared, enhanced, merged and re-published by different persons or applications. Classification of the information, tagging versus taxonomies. The classic widely adopted model of taxonomies or hierarchical classifications lacks of the flexibility needed for micro-contents: “many” are forced to use the categories defined by one or few; default categories constitute a closed and static structure; it is mandatory to link each item to a single category, etc. Tagging is a radically different approach more flexible and appropriated. Users are free to use any set of keywords they consider more suitable to describe a certain item. This favours an intuitive and non-formal classification of the information and powers the creation, and continuous renovation, of suitable vocabularies (folksonomies) for different knowledge areas. Information propagation, syndication. "Publishers" can format their contents according to standards like RSS or ATOM and publish them through syndication channels in order to enable all “interested subscribers” to receive updated information. In the other end, a user can subscribe to as many information sources as wishes and access to the set of micro-contents from an aggregator (a client-software that retrieves syndicated content). This propagation model updates information automatically in fully customized contexts. Internet is used as a platform for collaboration and the protection of author rights becomes an issue.
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IADIS International Conference e-Learning 2007
Copyright is an scheme that does not fit the new models of Web 2.0 and Creative Commons licenses fill this gap. User experience of Web 2.0 applications has also been improved thanks to the use of web services and some new programming techniques. Web Services. The conception of new software developments based on Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) makes us perceive sets of services instead of closed applications. The publication of the API (Application Programming Interface) of these Web Services enables its invocation from other applications and their use in forms that their own creators would not have imagined. As well as micro-contents and syndication power the information re-usability, Web Services and public APIs push the re-usability and reinvention of applications and give birth to "mash-ups" or new web applications based on the merging of pre-existing services. AJAX and XML. XML is the format in which micro-contents are written, sent and managed. AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript and XML) is a programming technique for the development of interactive web applications.
3. AUTHORING TOOLS 2.0 The cocktail of new attitudes, roles and technologies described earlier has been denoted as Web 2.0, but some authors (Jennings 2005) have coined the term elearning 2.0 to describe the shift that the application of Web 2.0 concepts is generating in elearning. There is a breaking up of an Internet made of “web pages” into an Internet made up of small pieces of data, micro-contents, which users can combine or even write by themselves. This context has two major effects in the field of learning. On the one hand, the openness that defines these new technologies has taken online communities beyond the boundaries of the LMS (Learning Management Systems). The settings of the communities based on social software are no longer classes and subjects; they are based on a network of informal interactions. On the other hand, content is not just delivered, but shared and created. Online learning “is more likely to resemble to a language or a conversation rather than a book or manual” (Downes 2006). Previous ATs have followed a closed model for content generation and distribution (book model) using the web (1.0) as a fast and rich (audio and video) diffusion channel that overcame the limits of paper. The 2.0 version of ATs should adopt new models for content generation and distribution where Internet is the playground where teachers conceive and develop learning contents and the place where these creatures live: they interact with surrounding web resources; they are distributed and hopefully reused and changed by other developers. The next paragraphs try to sketch the desirable features in Authoring Tools 2.0. Online. The AT should be taken from the desktop to the web because this is the common place in which authors will look for resources to assemble in a learning unit, the place where these units will be consumed by students or reused by other authors. Specific search services. Searching digital resources to be used in learning unit development is quite an specific task with particular requirements and not perfectly solved by Google. A set of particular search services should suit the need of fine-grained (text, images, photographs, videos, audio, applets, quotes,…) or coarse-grained (learning objects, units) learning resources. These services could limit the search to those websites indexed by the AT and according to criteria like key words or creative common licences. Additional information like “related searches” could be offered as well. Google-coop platform (www.google.com/coop/) is a good starting point to customize Google services in such ways. Own repositories. AT’s own repository would be the common place where all the materials are stored/published, in order to promote the diffusion and reuse. Mashup. There are myriads of web services (google.maps, google.books, delicious, flickr, youtube) suitable to be used, linked, referenced or embedded in learning units. The concept of a closed and packaged learning unit should evolve to a more flexible model where external resources (information as well as services or tools) can be linked or even used online. Accordingly, the resulting learning unit could be linked from external services and be consumed in different environments from the one it was created for. Tagging and folksonomies. Classification structures should not be static and the use of tagging could make them evolve driven by users needs. Apart from keyword driven searching, navigation through tag clouds (own or somebody else’s) will make easier the finding of interesting resources. Whole life-cycle. AT should have the ability to assist the user along the whole life-cycle of the learning unit (conception, creation, improvement, evaluation, distribution and reuse). The same environment should
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allow the author to generate learning units from previously created resources by him or others, search needed resources and integrate them in the targeted unit, publish or share the result within the desired group of people, obtain statistics and receive feedback (comments, time needed for each module, evaluation,...) from the students that consume it and the authors than reuse it and modify the unit based on this feedback. The whole life-cycle coverage makes possible a continuous improvement of the service if the system can collect information from users and make proper use of it. Use of syndication. Plenty of resources and interesting information for authors is constantly coming up, but it is difficult to track. Syndication is a powerful technology for the management of this kind of dynamic information because syndication channels perform the automatic distribution of information. An author can subscribe to tags that describe the resources of interest, to all the materials generated by authors working in a similar knowledge area or even to the authors who reuse any of his learning units. Collaborative working. Online tools enhance the collaborative working within a known group of people. Several persons can work simultaneously on the same material without the need of continuous exchange of new versions. Furthermore, there are new chances to meet people who share our same interests. Once an author with similar interests is identified, syndication allows us to maintain a link with them and receive notification each time they create new materials. Open contents. A learning unit has not necessarily to package a closed content, syndication permits to show fresh contents automatically and periodically updated within a learning unit. So, a learning unit can act as an aggregator which collects dynamic information related to the concepts to be explained.
4. BEST PRACTICES Our experience includes the development and exploitation of a Learning Management System (Benito et al 2005), a repository of Reusable Learning Objects based on folksonomies (Portillo et al 2006) and an Authoring Tool (Romo et al 2005) for the University of the Basque Country. From this starting point we pretend to work in a prototype developing the ideas previously explained for a new AT. We think it is a viable project and we will try to develop it following some guidelines our experience has helped us to identify: use of W3C standards and FLOSS (Free/Libre/Open-Source Software) in a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) based on REST. There is usually a gap between the real technological knowledge, the ability of users when using software and the assumptions made by designers. In order to reduce that gap the following aspects should be considered: feedback (new tools have to take into account two-way interaction between teachers and students), evangelization about the benefits of using creative commons licences (but clear distinction of private, group or public spheres for material sharing) and easy reutilization of previously prepared materials (PDF, power point, word, latex, html, flash,…).
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT This work has been supported by the University of the Basque Country and the Government of the Basque Country under projects EHU06/86 and EJIE06/05.
REFERENCES Benito M. et al, 2005. Reflections about the construction of a platform LCMS in open code. WSEAS Transactions on Advances in Engineering Education. Athens, Greece. Downes, Stephen (2005) E-learning 2.0 – Elearn Magazine Retrieved 6, 2006 from http://www.elearnmag.org/subpage.cfm?section=articles&article=29-1 Jennings, D. (2005). E-learning 2.0, http://alchemi.co.uk/archives/ele/elearning_20_wh.html Locatis C, Nuaim H, 1999. Interactive Tecnology and Authoring Tools. ETR&D, Vol. 47, No 3, pp 63-75. Romo J. et al, 2005. AUTORe: herramienta de autor para la generación de OAs. Proceedings del II Simposio Pluridisciplinar sobre Diseño, Evaluación y Descripción de Contenidos Educativos Reutilizables. Barcelona, Spain. Portillo J. et al, 2006. GOXO: Repositorio de recursos de aprendizaje basado en folksonomías. Proceedings III Simposio Pluridisciplinar sobre Diseño, Evaluación y Descripción de Contenidos Educativos Reutilizables. Oviedo, Spain. O’Reilly, T (2005). What Is Web 2.0: Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation, http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html
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