Workflow Support for Multimedia Learning Objects Thomas Kleinberger tecmath AG, CMS Kaiserslautern, Germany Email:
[email protected] Andreas Holzinger Institute of Medical Informatics, Statistics and Documentation (IMI) Graz University, Austria Email:
[email protected] Klaus Tochtermann Know-Center Graz, Austria Email:
[email protected] Paul Müller Department of Computer Science, ICSY University of Kaiserslautern, Germany Email:
[email protected] Abstract: Workflow services can support learning with multimedia objects in eLearning environments. to the innovation of our approach is to embed intra multimedia object navigation into the workflow. As a result, it is possible to define an overall learning workflow based on interpretation and interactions of learners and tutors with multimedia objects. A learning process can now be defined as a flow of instructions using interpretation of multimedia objects and interactivity by navigation within the multimedia learning objects.
1. Multimedia Content Management Nowadays, when an eLearning environment makes use of multimedia objects to enhance the knowledge transfer to the learner, we talk about using new learning technologies with multimedia. (Guttormsen-Schär and Krueger 2000) give an overview of five possible definitions of multimedia as an informal explanation of what multimedia objects are: • Medium as representation: image, movie, sound, text • Medium as context of a representation: diagrams, text, graphs, animation, video • Modality of communication or multisensory interaction: visual (eyes), auditory (hearing), haptic (touch), olfactory (smell), gustatory (taste) • Static or dynamic (time varying) representations • Physical medium for storing information: CD-ROM, hard drive, DVD formats for storing information It is commonly accepted that using various multimedia objects in computer based eLearning environments can have many advantages compared to the traditional learning styles, e.g. face-to-face learning. However, traditional learning styles cover some (traditional) values, which computer aided learning will possibly never achieve, e.g. carrying a book wherever you go and reading it without additional tools or devices. Still, we recognize an increasing use of multimedia objects in computer aided eLearning and therefore some questions arise such as how to cope with the growing amount of multimedia objects or how to integrate them more efficiently into the learning workflow.
The management of multimedia objects, especially digitally represented multimedia objects, can be supported by a vast amount of tools including multimedia presentation software, graphic editors, digital audio or video production systems, audio/video servers or digital broadcast systems. Multimedia Content Management Systems (Kleinberger and Müller 2000) can be used to manage large amounts of multimedia objects to facilitate the reuse by content related documentation, automatic content analysis and to support the acquisition, archiving and production workflow for distribution. These systems provide a logically centralized storage and access in multimedia repositories (Kleinberger, Schrepfer et al. 2001). The repositories comprise appropriate search and retrieval functionalities and define interfaces to other systems within the entire eLearning environment, e.g. automation systems for acquisition and broadcast, audio/video servers, newsroom systems and digital production systems. It is widely recognized, that the production and management process of multimedia objects is highly sophisticated and properly integrated in the content value chain for collection and provision of multimedia. What we recognize as an aspect that can be improved is the usage of multimedia objects and their embedding in the usage workflow. Multimedia objects are mostly accessed as BLOBs (binary large objects) which are transferred, accessed or presented by downloading, streaming or executing in an appropriate player. They provide integrated navigation facilities like jumping along a timeline or backwards and forward playing, A common drawback, however, is that they are embedded in the learning workflow as elementary objects in a probably more or less higher instruction flow. To overcome this shortcoming, we describe the educational workflow and multimedia objects in eLearning in a little bit more detail in the next chapters. We then define a workflow support that makes a more extensive use of multimedia learning objects.
2. Educational Workflow Educational workflow support learners and tutors in their activity to transfer information to the learner and to let the learner learn this information, which in the end generates new knowledge. The guideline how this is processed has to be defined within the context of an overall learning strategy (such as behaviouristic, cognitivistic or constructivistic) and will be executed and controlled by instruction flow models that implement learning protocols. This is referred to as instructional design. Various methods and concepts support this workflow such as a predefined course design, cooperation tools, adaptive responses to learner requests or interaction facilities that allow learners to get in contact with other learners or tutors. The current trend is to replace the tutor more and more by a system component, which allows the learner to learn on his own. The general point to transfer information and to turn it into knowledge is nevertheless still the same. 2.1 Course design: Instruction flow The first steps in modeling instructional design were based on behaviourist psychology, e.g. on the famous work of Skinner (Skinner 1958). This was followed in the sixties and seventies by cognitive psychology mostly leaded by Gagné. He summarized his instructional design in nine instructional events holding that by analyzing the goals of education the teachers can devise how the achievement of those goals can be met (Gagne 1965). Roger Schank goes a step further and said: „Every aspect of human behavior involves the pursuit of a(?) goal” (Schank 1993). These theories assume that one can describe a subject matter domain in terms of learning goals, and then can develop an instruction for each of the learning goals taking the optimal conditions of learning for each goal into account. This may work well for domains characterized by independent learning goals, but certainly not for developing competencies that are characterized by highly integrated, complex sets of learning goals. From this viewpoint of constructivism processes of learning are individually and non-predictable. Thus, it is impossible to find a way to guarantee “an optimal learning process”, as aimed by the “task analysis” approach. That is why constructivists are very critical about using computers in education at all; they see more chances in influences such as motivation and arousal (Holzinger 2000). 2.2 Cooperation The L3 project (L3 stands for Live Long Learning, cf. (L3 1999)), has the objective to create a technical and organizational infrastructure for a lifelong further education. One emphasis of this project lies in the support of
cooperative learning by converging generic cooperation, integrated cooperation and method based cooperation (Wessner, Pfister et al. 1999). The solution approach emphasizes two different aspects: On the one hand the creation of an educational infrastructure which uses new media efficiently and can be used by all interested people, independently of their education or social position. On the other hand the development of organizational structured and economic business models with which the developed infrastructure can be operated in a medium term. One core component in the L3 learning environment therefore is a cooperation platform, which provides various forms of cooperative learning , e.g. chats, video conferences and e-mail, and additionally uses learning protocols as integral and didactical founded parts of learning courses. The L3 courses combine multimedia learning objects with two different types of cooperation forms: Spontaneous Points of Cooperation (SpoCs) and intentional points of cooperation (IpoCs). As a result, they enhance learning with traditional multimedia objects in that they support of cooperative educational workflow. 2.3 Adaptivity According to (Brusilovski 1996) adaptation techniques refer to methods of providing adaptation in existing adaptive hypermedia systems (AHS). These techniques are a part of the implementation level of an AHS. Each technique can be characterized by a specific kind of knowledge representation and by a specific adaptation algorithm. Adaptive hypermedia is a new area of research and most of the adaptation techniques are still unique in the sense that each was suggested in conjunction with the development of an AHS. Some techniques were already implemented with minor variants in some earlier systems. Adaptation methods are defined as generalizations of existing adaptation techniques, and each method is based on a clear adaptation idea which can be presented at the conceptual level. Brusilovsky is giving an example, "...insert the comparison of the current concept with another concept if this other concept is already known to the user", or "...hide the links to the concepts which are not yet ready to be learned". The same conceptual method can be implemented by different techniques. At the same time, some techniques are used to implement several methods using the same knowledge representation (Brusilovski 1996). 2.4 Interactivity Interactivity is of paramount importance for learning purposes. Usually “interaction” is social interaction and is the relationship between two or more individuals who, in a given situation, mutually adapt their behavior and actions to each other. Limited, distinct social systems and specific situations are involved, where the partners in the interaction are located in the same time and space (are close-by) also “symbolic interaction” is involved. That is, a mutual exchange and negotiation regarding meaning takes place between partners who find themselves in the same social context (Holzinger 2000). 2.5 Standard for workflow interoperability According to (Hayes, Peyrovian et al. 2000) efforts toward defining a standard for workflow interoperability has begun in 1994 with the Workflow Reference Model from the Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC 1995). From that model other standardization efforts have been developed from e.g. OMG’s joint Flow specification to the Simple Workflow Access Protocol (SWAP). The WfMC’s Wf-XML focuses on a simple subset of SWAP for a first version of a standard, with the aim of future extension (Hayes, Peyrovian et al. 2000).
3. Workflow Support for Multimedia Learning Objects There exist very advanced solutions for interactive multimedia presentations such as Quicktime, Hyper Quicktime (Ma, Lee et al. 1998) or SMIL which allow synchronization, annotations, user interactions, cross referencing objects and controlling presentations. Unfortunately, none of these solutions can combine the characteristics of multimedia objects with the needs of educational workflow support. There also are some proposals available for general workflow architectures (cf. (WfMC 1995), jointFlow from OMG (jointFlow 2000)) or commercial products like Oracle Interoffice, IBM Flowmark or HP AdminFlow that commonly do not take care of the need to incorporate multimedia objects into the educational workflow. So, the basic idea of a workflow support for multimedia objects in learning is to look at the segments of multimedia objects as elementary steps of an instruction flow in eLearning and to integrate interactions with multimedia
learning objects into the process definitions that make up an instruction flow in eLearning. We call this the embedding of intra multimedia object navigation into workflow process definitions for eLearning. The segments of multimedia objects, mentioned above, represent the smallest units a multimedia object consists of. For example, in a video segments are frames, which are sequenced in a timeline, and in audio segments are audio samples defined by the scan frequency. Other examples include presentations, which consist of slides or even more detailed elements like the object presentation sequence steps a slide is build up from. To integrate interactions with multimedia learning objects an eLearning environment has to support a bi-directional communication with the applications that interpret the multimedia learning objects. In one direction the applications have to inform a service component about events while interpreting multimedia learning objects. In the other direction a service component controls the interpretation of multimedia learning objects by the applications depending on the processing of the incoming events. The instance for processing of events is a service at the backend of the eLearning environment. It can be compared with the workflow enactment service defined by the WfMC enhanced by the possibility to process events generated by the interpretation of multimedia learning objects and the modification of interpretation of multimedia learning objects consisting of essence and metadata in a multimedia repository. We define the following types of events for supporting multimedia learning objects in the eLearning workflow: • Application Events: These are events generated by user applications, e.g. by pressing buttons, selecting objects or using navigation functions for multimedia objects. • State Events: These are events generated by the repository part of a multimedia repository, where the essence and the metadata of the multimedia objects are stored (Kleinberger, Schrepfer et al. 2001) depending on the achievement of a defined metadata state in the repository, e.g. the presence or absence of a certain multimedia learning object. • Time Events: Events generated by a common system clock or by reaching timecodes in multimedia object interpretation. • Multimedia Object Events: These are events generated by the media server part of a multimedia repository (Kleinberger, Schrepfer et al. 2001) depending on the interpretation of the essence of multimedia learning objects, e.g. reaching a certain timecode on a timeline or passing segment borders generated by content descriptions or automatic content analysis (cf. the concept of stratified documentation in (Sarnowski and Kleinberger 2001)). Figure 1 shows the concept of stratified documentation in conjunction with some time and multimedia object events in an example. Keywords Begin Segment Event
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Figure 1: Stratified Documentation and Events
A workflow component within the system design can use these events in preconditions of process definitions to trigger actions which influence interactions with the user by modifying multimedia object interpretation or simply modifying the metadata of multimedia objects in the multimedia repository. Modifying the interpretation of multimedia objects includes especially instantaneous changes of interpretation of those multimedia objects which are currently processed. These changes are carried out by the media server in the multimedia repository controlled by workflow process execution. This causes other events to be generated, which trigger other processes and so on. A simple example would be a synchronized multiple playback of a multimedia object, for example a video clip for a group of users. More advanced examples include a synchronized navigation through multimedia objects by multiple users on a segment level of a documentation stratum under consideration of individual users navigation actions, e.g. pausing, rewinding or replaying from the beginning of a segment. As a result embedding intra multimedia object based navigation into the workflow model as elementary steps of an instruction flow allows to define learning workflows based on interpretation of multimedia objects and navigation in multimedia objects. A very brief overview of a system design which integrates a workflow system with the components for processing application events, state events, time events and multimedia object events consists of the following main components: • Multimedia Repository: The multimedia repository consists of a repository part, managing the metadata part of multimedia objects (e.g. LOM metadata (Holzinger, Kleinberger et al. 2001)), and the media server part responsible for managing the essences of multimedia objects (e.g. storage management and streaming of audio/video objects). The system design for this is based on the solution developed in the Live Long Learning project (L3 1999). • Content Management System: The multimedia repository is embedded in a multimedia content management system (Kleinberger and Müller 2000), which provides the environment for acquisition, analysis, documentation, archiving, searching and retrieval of multimedia objects for an efficient reuse in production and broadcast. • Workflow Enactment Service: The workflow enactment service consists of a workflow engine, a control data component, a process work list and a process handler which provides the runtime environment for an eLearning workflow according to the definitions of the Workflow Management Coalition. • Workflow process definition: The workflow process definition defines the preconditions and actions of processes by rules, triggers and actions that modify data in the multimedia repository and control multimedia object interpretation through the media server and applications. • Event Handler: The event handler collects the application, state, time and multimedia object events, matches them with the process definitions and instantiates processes that match their preconditions in the workflow engine. • Applications: They include browsers or players, which interpret the multimedia objects, e.g. by playing back, streaming or displaying.
4. Summary Workflow services support multimedia learning objects in eLearning environments by embedding intra multimedia object navigation into workflow process definitions. Multimedia object navigation is now integrated into learning workflow definitions. Multimedia object interpretation triggers process definitions by generating events based on stratified documentation. Processes themselves modify the interpretation of multimedia objects. This allows to define an overall learning workflow based on interpretation of multimedia objects and interactions of learners and tutors with multimedia objects by navigation.
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Acknowledgements The Know-Center is a Competence Center funded within the Austrian Competence Center program K plus under the auspices of the Austrian Ministry of Transport, Innovation and Technology (http://www.kplus.at).
