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ABSTRACT

Developing high quality learning content material is expensive and time-consuming. Nowadays, in order to reduce costs and development time, there is an emphasis on reuse. The approach of object orientation has been used for promoting reuse. When this approach is applied to the development of learning content, it results in learning objects. However, there isn't a well-accepted and used methodology for the development of such objects and usually the reuse is based on the multimedia files that are referenced through metadata. In this paper we describe three levels of information that should be considered when dealing with e-learning content. An analogy to Data Warehouse architectures is proposed. Our approach allows keeping the already existing LO repositories and their autonomy, while the semantics of the content is structured to be reused in a personalized way. In addition, the mature of Data Warehousing technologies enhances the implementation of the 3-level information architecture for e-learning, which leads to a richer scenario for content reuse. Finally, the Data Warehouse idea of navigating (i.e., exploring content) can also stimulate students to go further on the quest for knowledge. We present how existing standard proposals can be used through the three levels and describe a case study.

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INDEX TERMS

Keywords:
data warehouse, e-learning architecture, e-learning content, learning objects