Application of scorm standard for e-learning in the secondary school

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  Reusability – Content is independent of learning content. The reusability gives possibilities for using of learning materials many times, in numerous training situations, from different group of learners with any number of development tools or delivery platforms;
  
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  Durability – The content does not require modification to operate as software system and platforms are changed or upgraded;
  
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  Accessibility –The created learning content could be identified and located when it is needed;
  
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  Interpretability- Learning content will function in multiple applications, hardware and software configurations regardless of the tools used to create it and the platform on which it is delivered. It could be located and used according training aims. One content item could used on a different complicated level in different classes and student groups;
  

SCORM includes the next models:

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  SCORM CAM (Content Aggregation Model) for description of separate components and information’s items, manners of binding to bigger structures; how the created materials are shared between two or more LMS; the method for creation of packages and sending to LMS for execution;
  
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  SCORM RTE (Run-time Environment). The model decrypts the requirements to LMS for dynamic management of run-time environment – methods for publication, sharing and using of learning materials and resources.
  
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  SCORM SN (Sequencing and Navigation) – for descriptions of sequencing activities of LMS during personal training process, according to appearing events and student’s behaviors. The activities are depended from sequencing of rules, that LMS executes and delivers initiatives between separated learning objects.
  

SCOs (Sharable Content Object) contain fixed number learning content. They build structure of e-lessons. The connection between them is only by LMS. The standard doesn’t permit directly access from SCO to other SCO. A SCO is a collection of Assets that are electronic representation of media, text, images and sounds. One Asset could be used from different SCOs. One SCO could be part of different e-lessons. SCOs are independent defined piece of instructional materials. They are smallest logical unit of instruction you can deliver and track via a LMS. SCOs are main build-units of SCORM-based e-lessons, modules, courses and etc. They are independent from school subject’s domains and this is main reason for creation of many different learning materials for different classes and school subjects. For example the SCO “Thracian Orphism” could be used for structure of e-learning lesson “The religion and believes of Thracians”, that is part of e-learning course “Thracian culture and history” into domain “Bulgarian history”. This SCO could be part of e-lesson “History of the old Bulgarian Religions” from course “The Religion” into domain “Philosophy”

Root Aggregation

Post-test

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  Transformation of SCOs from old non-SCORM based e-learning resources. The easiest way to do this is through a process of content “reverse engineering”. It includes the next steps:
  

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  Step 1. Evaluate the existing content. If the author’s aims are unrelated with existing e-content, he can remove, change or re-design the organization of the old content. The team creates plan of the future activities.
  
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  Step 2. Analyze of potential users. This is very important process, because one of main aims of SCORM is to create reusable content. Conduct a short brainstorm session with developers and teachers fro different school subjects; we could determine some types of users who will use these learning materials. We make list of potential users, that we will use for creation Metadata information of the information objects.
  
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  Step 3. Determine SCO’s content and structure according to the requirement for context independent.
  
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  Step 4. Description of created learning recourses into Metsdata. If we use some authoring system, it will give us mechanism for easier filling of this information. It is necessary every created SCO to be registered into metadata for its using and what information it contains. The fields Descriptions and Keywords will be use for resources searching from on-line Content Repositories.
  

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  Design of new SCOs : When we use existing learning content, we must only restructured it, but when we create new learning materials our first task will be to determine what type of instructional strategy we plan to implement before to design the SCOs. The creation process includes two main steps:
  

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  Step 1: Determine of main educational goals and tasks, according to Bloom taxonomy.
  
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  Step 2: Determine of theSCOs- how many, with what information and structure, the level of generalization of training information and etc.
  

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  Structuring tests in SCORM – the current version of SCORM does not address how to build, structure and share tests or how other specifications and standards as the IMS Question and Test Interpretability (QTI) could be used to represent test items and result in SCORM. But standard allow us to store and use on the LMS any combination of passed/failed states, time spend on each tasks for each SCO. The team must determine witch Objective-variables the SCO will report to the LMS and how the SCO will compute the values of those variables. Like the SCOs, tests could be structured in a variety of ways to achieve a number of different outcomes:
  

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  As single SCOs with multiple test items;
  
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  As many SCOs – one for every test-item. The SCOs must be structured to common Aggregation;
  

Creating a test as a single SCO is the easiest way to test in a SCORM - compliant system, because there are many authoring or testing software to design and develop the tests. The SCO, containing the test will be delivered directly to the student via the LMS. If we want to link individual test-items to learning objectives, we can use the Objectives mechanism of the SCORM. This variant limits the set of information that can be sent back to the LMS. As a result, ability of LMS to collect information about the student’s knowledge and skills is limited. The second variant allows us more flexible and powerful testing.

The realization of completely standard-based system for e-learning in the secondary school requires developing a learning portal [6], [Glushkova05], that allow integration and dynamic interaction between follow models:

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  Domain models of different school subjects, by develop of domain ontology [Hermelen00];
  
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  Model of using, and shearing of e-learning materials according to requirements of SCORM standard.
  
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  Pedagogical model that will be realized by creation of specific patterns and etalons. This model must guarantee reaching of pedagogical aims and tasks, according to Government educational requirements [5] and Bloom’s taxonomy [3];
  
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  User model, by supply and manage of profile information – for users, devices, software and hardware platforms; user sessions and etc. According to CC/PP protocol [2]. CC/PP determine whether user-agents (or WEB-browsers) are suitable for working in the net and allow intelligent agreements between WEB-server and clients in the informational process..
  
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  Model of e-learning services in the educational portal. [Stojanov03], [Glushkova04a,b], Infrastructure model of the educational net;
  

E-lesson, as main educational unit is projection and cross point for all of this models. For example lesson “The Solar system” uses concept structure of domain “Physics and Astronomy” and it is created by requirements of The Best Practice Guide for Content developers from ten informational SCOs, managed from SCORM LMS of the educational portal. According to didactics aims lesson will be used for independent training of students from eleven graduated class. The Content Structure Diagram determines the sequencing of steps for teaching of new knowledge and training test at the end of lesson. The user model includes profiles of the student (individual profile), user learning session, his WEB Browser(IE), Hardware platform (Home Desktop PC), Software platform (Windows XP, Jetspeed portal, SCORM RTE, WEB server…) and etc. The learning portal offer suitable services, according user-profile of the student as “Test system”, “Virtual excursion” into the cosmos, “Question game”, possibilities to get additional information of “Virtual School Library” and etc. [Glushkova05] (Fig. 3.)

Динамичното предоставяне на услуги от системата е от особено значение за ефективността на индивидуалния учебен процес. Услугата „Автоматично генериране на маршрути за виртуални екскурзии” цели подпомагане процеса на обучение като генерирането на маршрути става на базата на критерии, подадени към модул за търсене на подходящи решения CBR (Case Base Reasoning) [Lenz98], [Aamodt94], в голям обем бази данни. Информацията за обектите се разработва и поддържа в Лабораторията по електронна търговия към ПУ “Паисий Хилендарски” и съдържа повече от две хиляди обекта с фундаментално значение за нашето културно-историческо наследство. [Stojanov03b]Теоретично методът за търсене на решения по аналогия предполага, че съществува база със случаи (готови решения), които са били създадени в миналото по някакъв критерий. За тази цел една от предвидените възможности на услугата е по зададено минимално множество от изисквания на потребителя да се предоставят за използване стандартни виртуални екскурзии. Тази идея наподобява широко използваните атласи по география и история на хартиен носител в средните училища. На учениците се предоставят стандартни множества от обекти с техните характеристики, подпомагащи конкретния урок . На практика не се извършва търсене в базата данни. Стандартните ученически екскурзии могат да се съхраняват в XML формат или някакво негово подмножество (XML – базиран език). Наред със стандартните виртуални екскурзии потребителят може да стартира търсене в мрежата с обекти по зададени от него критерии. Новосъздадените нестандартни екскурзии ще се подават като XML файл с възможност за съхранение за бъдещо използване или обмен на информация между учебни заведения.

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  TA (Tourist Agent) – представя клиент-турист със своите предпочитания за маршрут;
  
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  RA (Routes Agent) – комуникира с TA и подготвя подходящ маршрут за неговите предпочитания. За генерация на маршрут използва методи от Изкуствения интелект, за да допълни информацията, която е придобил от ECA във вид на каталожни обекти;
  
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  ECA (Electronic Catalog Agent) – контролира цялата система, наблюдава комуникацията между агентите, съхранява каталожни обекти, които предоставя на RA. RA трансформира каталожните обекти в маршрутни обекти. Всички RA се регистрират при ECA като услуги;
  

Routes Agents

e-Teaching facility available at any place and at any time to individuals and groups of students/lecturers both in synchronous mode (off - line).

The main goal of DeLC is the creating of infrastructure, who will be part of build – up European area for e-learning and distance teaching. This will be possible by insurance of interoperativeness of different levels as:

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  Main organization forms in the center will be virtual lecturer's team – thereby will be overcome the geographic borders, as will be possible the work in team (virtual), and each member work on individual desktop;
  
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  In the center will be pay attention to e-learning and distance forms teaching;
  
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  Using ratification international standards for referent models and e-learning content (SCORM, IEEE LOM, IMS) - possibilitis for supporting of the necessary flexibility and interoperativeness of the center;
  
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  Using the best practices for organization of e-learning and distance teaching;
  
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  Using technological and development environments and tools with open architecture.
  

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  SQT nodes – the main function on the nodes is to deliver entirely environment for education of users of DeLC, which ensures share used the information resource of the center. The nodes can be two kinds:
  

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  Client Nodes – provides individual desktop of users, includes personal assistants (intelligent agents) for help using necessary e-services;
  
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  Server Nodes – thoroughly for supply of e-services for Client Nodes, includes server agents, shared DBs, knowledge bases, information repositoris, ontologies, gateways.
  

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  Clusters – virtual dynamic changed at time organizations, provided together using of e-services included in them nodes;
  
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  Edges – specify some collaborative and cooperative relationships between elements of the infrastructure. They can be bearers of the desired semantics, provided in the infrastructure.
  

Based on different researches and experiments in SCORM based school content we can see many advantages faced on non-standard based learning recourses.

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  Application of the Individual method of teaching– this is one of the most important priority of nowadays in education – education accorded to individual characteristics, abilities, knowledge, likes and habits of one separate student. All of this is guaranteed SN Model of SCORM. The individual behavior of each one concrete student determines the way of the training process as LMS follows and stores individual achievements of each one student. Collaborating with the user model, the LMS describes the standard and specific values of the variables in the individual profile information.
  
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  Team work. Realization of project and team learning as new didactic technology in the schoolwork is very important for reaching of skills for teamwork and collaborative work. SCORM guarantees realization of this form of teaching by specific rules. According to this sequencing of rules LMS manages group and teamwork and observes activities of each team-member by Objectives mechanism. The different objectives variables receive their values according to current state of project work, the timetable and performance level of global aims and tasks. Collaborating with the user model the system manages tasks dynamically according to user profile information.
  
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  Multiple using of one and the some learning resources (SCOs) and creation of e-lessons for different users, classes, forms of teaching, school subjects and etc. All of this is guaranteed from Reusability of SCORM. The completed SCOs we can store into on-line Content Repository and share for using from many authors of e-content. The distributed structure of e-lessons and possibilities for easy and comfortable adaptation and variation is one of the most important advantages of SCORM.
  
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  Interaction of training process. The process of teaching is more effective when the students accomplish different kinds of activities as reading, writing, listening, painting, filling some words, testing, sharing the ideas, team and project-working and etc. All of these activities create more steady cognitive connections and skills. The authors of e-learning content are designed and included all of these activities; they included them to the sequencing from rules when they structured e-lessons. LMS starts, observes, evaluates and managed the execution process.
  
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  Creation of varies from e-lessons for one and the some learning content. Every e-lesson is created on base of determinate learning aims, for fixed group of students, concrete school subject, form of teaching and etc. In accordance with these characteristics of the learning environment the lesson’s structure could be very various. For example according to form of teaching (regular, independent) the lesson “The verb’s tenses in Bulgarian language” is designed from one and the some SCOs, but in different organization structures. Than we reach different didactic aims.[Sarafov05 ]
  
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  Complex learning. Creation of e- learning packages and e-lessons for classroom-training, independent self preparation at home and informal teaching gives the possibilities for complex teaching and completely acquire of learning information. For example the package “Bulgarian folklore” includes some lessons “National instruments and folklore songs” for regular classroom teaching in subject domain “Music”, information for architecture peculiarities of the renaissance houses for home self preparation in subject domain “Art and crafts” and lessons for peculiarities, style of living, the ethnography and national costumes from the seventh folklore regions in Bulgaria for informal learning in subject domain “Folklore”. (Fig.5. )
  

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  Application of lessons from two or more educational subjects in classroom teaching. The organization of these lessons in traditional form of teaching is very difficult, because two or more teachers must to be together in one and same moment and classroom. The necessary training time always is any longer from forty five minutes. However, all of these organization problems aren’t obstacle for teachers, who want to experiment with this interesting and very effective form of teaching. [Sarafov04]. SCORM eliminate all of these problems as allows creation of common e-learning packages in two ore more educational subjects. The students consider one and the same events and concepts from different point of view. For example the students can consider the lesson “The life of the Bulgarian people in XIX century” from point of view from subject domain “Art” by pictures of Stojan Venev and “Literature” by Elin Pelin stories.
  
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  Application of SCORM to teaching of students with specific educational necessities and disabled students. The effective learning of these students is one of main tasks for Bulgarian educational system. SCORM gives us ideas for effective realization of this goal by the sequencing model and mechanism of interactive individual training with appropriate activities for every separate student.
  
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  Testing and individual observation of individual progress of the students. The individual advance of each one student is a basic task of the learning, but it is not easy and the teachers observe the collective class-development. SCORM supports the comparison of separate results and achievements of every student and store the all information for individual learning progress to data base. The teachers can receive this information and to choose more appropriate e-learning methods and materials. Than the learning process will be more effective.
  
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  Long life teaching. The contemporary informational society requires skills for self training, receiving and processing in enormous set of knowledge and information. The learning during the life is necessities for every of us. This learning is individual and its organization is very difficult for traditional educational system. SCORM suggests individual manner of learning to every separate learner.
  
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  Dynamic interaction with the domain model and giving of appropriate services according to specific characteristics of educational subjects. The distributed structure of the e-learning system guarantees these interactions like the automatic generation of routes for virtual excursions (history, geography, ecology and etc.), automatic test generations and etc. The services are realized by different technologies – the first by CBR model, the second by parameterization of the environment. SCORM RTE successful starts and manages each one of them.
  
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  Sharing and using of common training resources by clustering according to infrastructure model of the educational net. The infrastructure model of the Distributed e-learning centre ensures structuring of clusters between two or more educational portals and mechanism for sharing and using of common training materials. The access to common on-line content repositories is main principle of the standard.
  

The new Informational and communication technologies give us the possibilities for realization of more flexible, interactive and effective systems for the computer based training. There are many interesting and good structured multimedia lessons and appropriate training resources, but for a real using of these lessons it is necessary these lessons to be transformed to an e-learning standard. Our team from of e-commerce laboratory of Plovdiv University, made researches and experiments based on application of standard-based learning as using the prototype educational portal in Secondary school “Hristo Smirnensky”, Brezovo. We considered that e-learning standard SCORM is appropriate and could be applied in the school training process. It gives us more advantages and possibilities for realization of the main educational aims.

[Ankolekar02] A.Ankolekar et al., DAML-S: Web Service Description for Semantic Web, The Semantic Web-ISWC 2002, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 2002, 348-363

[Aamodt94] Aamodt, A., Plaza, E., Case-base reasoning: Foundational issues, methodological variations, and system approaches, AI Communications, 7(1), 1994, 39-59

[Bloom56] Bloom B. S. (1956). Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, Handbook I: The Cognitive Domain. New York: David McKay Co Inc.

[Bijkov92] Бижков, Методология на иновациите в образованието, иновационни стратегии. – Отворено образование, кн.3, 1992.

[Glushkova04a] Glushkova T., Framework for eLearning in Secondary school by application of DeLC system, 2^nd International Workshop on eServices and eLearning, Smolian, Bulgaria, 2004,page 93, ISBN-3929757761

[Glushkova04b] Глушкова Т, Ст. Стоянов, Адаптиране на архитектурната рамка на системата DeLC за средното училище, Новите технологии в образованието и професионалното обучние, научно-практическа конференция, Пловдив, 2004, стр. 195, ISBN- 9549155110

[Glushkova05a] T. Glushkova, Концептуален модел за разработка на система за електронно обучение в средното училище Международна конференция “DeLC: решения и проблеми (DeLC: Solutions & Problems)”, Пампорово, 2-4 Декември 2005

[Glushkova05b] T. Glushkova, М. Василева, Модел на услугите в образователен портал „School Brezovo”, Международна конференция “DeLC: решения и проблеми (DeLC: Solutions & Problems)”, Пампорово, 2-4 Декември 2005

[Harmelen00]Van Harmelen, F., and Horrocks, I., FAQs on OIL: The Ontology Inference Layer, IEEE Intelligent Systems 15(6), 2000, 69-72

[Lenz98] Lenz, M., Bartsch-Sporl, B., Burkhard, H., and Wess, S. Case-Based Reasoning Technology – From Foundation to Applications. Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence 1400, Springer Verlag, 1998

[Stojanov03a] S. Stojanov, I. Ganchev, M. O’Droma, A Model for Integration of Services in a Distributed eLearning Center. In Proceedings of 14th Annual EAEEIE Conference, Gdansk, Poland , June 2003

[Stojanov03b] Stojanov, S., M. Trendafilova. Electronic Catalog BULCHINO, Scientific and practical conference “The new education technologies”, May, 16-17, 2003, Sofia

[Stojanov05a] S. Stojanov, I. Ganchev, I. Popchev, M. O’Droma, From CBT to e-Learning, Information Technologues and control, 4/2005, ISSN 1312-2622.

[Stojanov05b] S.Stojanov, Iv. Gancev, M. O’Droma, E. Dojchev, G. Cholakov, Agent-oriented Distributed E-learning Center,

[Stojanov06] С. Стоянов, Н. Узунова, SQT-Grid, Международна конференция “DeLC: решения и проблеми (DeLC: Solutions & Problems)”, Пампорово, 2-4 Декември 2005

[Sarafov04] Работа в малки групи в условията на бинарен урок, сп. Образование и квалификация, бр.6./2004, София, стр. 83

[Sarafov05] Приложение на стандарта SCORM при създаване на варианти от уроци по български език в средното училище, Международна конференция “DeLC: решения и проблеми (DeLC: Solutions & Problems)”, Пампорово, 2-4 Декември 2005

[Woodridge97] Wooldridge, M., Agent-based software engineering, IEEE Proc of Software Engineering 144(1) 1997, 26-37.

[1] SCORM 2004, http://www.adlnet.gov/downloads/233.cfm

[2] CC/PP - www.w3.org/TR/CCPP-struct-vocab/

[3]Taxonomy of Bloom - http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/bloom.html

[4] Best Practices Guide for Content Developers, LSAL, Carnegie Mellon University - www.lsal.cmu.edu/lsal/expertise/projects/developersguide/

[5] Държавни образователни изисквания - www.paideiafoundation.org/norma

[6] Архитектурен модел на образователен портал, http://www.delphigroup.com/research/articles.htm

[7] Joint US/EU ad hoc Agent Markup Language Committee. Reference description of the DAML+OIL (March 2001) ontology markup language

e-mail: todorka.glushkova@ecl.pu.acad.bg

tel. 0899212950
Nevena Uzunova, University of Plovdiv

e-mail: nevena_uzunova@yahoo.com

tel. 0886472424
Malina Trendafilova, University of Plovdiv,

e-mail: malina.trendafilova@ecl.pu.acad.bg