22. oktober: Modularization of the Learning Architecture

Abstract:

During the twentieth century, the focus of pedagogical research and practice has gone from behaviourism, via cognitivism, to learning theory based on constructivism. Changes in learning objectives and an increasing cognitive complexity of learning tasks are likely to have contributed to this evolvement. This puts new requirements on the design and implementation of pedagogical instruction (instructional design) and its application to learning technology. Using instructional design together with technology requires the pedagogical process to be predetermined, which is partly contradicted by the nature of constructivism. Many constructivist approaches require social interaction and dynamic learning environments that can adapt to changes that are required by different pedagogical approaches. Those requirements have been met using modular approaches for content, i.e., learning objects, implemented in non-modular web-based virtual learning environments (VLE), like learning management systems (LMS).

Modularity promotes adaptability and adaptivity, but the current practice of using learning objects and LMSes is too restricted to fulfill the increasing needs for flexibility. The reasons are that the learning object concept is still too ill-defined to function as a component framework, and there are complex and unsolved issues regarding the representation of pedagogical instructions. This is especially complicated from a constructivist perspective where pedagogical instructions cannot always be assumed to be predetermined, which needs to be encountered for by technology.

Using an abstract model that supports a modular approach, addresses both functional and technical properties, and includes both digital learning content and VLEs, the software architecture of learning objects can be addressed in order to separate data, logics and presentation – including the separation of the representation of pedagogical process from the components that implement it. This facilitates the combination of modularity and representation of pedagogical instruction that utilizes machine-processable semantics, enabling the utilization of modularity at composition time as well as at run-time. This approach resulted in a SOA-based architecture framework that was used as blueprint for implementing a prototype for a modular VLE. This research has shown that it is possible to incorporate learning content and the VLE into the same modular framework in order to provide the flexibility needed for learning technology to better adapt to changing pedagogical requirements.

It was also shown how pedagogical processes benefit from being represented using machine-processable semantics in being able to better utilize the flexibility offered by modularity in keeping the components of the VLE together by representing context and structure. This was illustrated by adding semantic annotations that were used to dynamically connect pedagogical instruction to annotated learning objects, using machine-processable semantics.