Implementation and design of a service-based framework to integrate personal and institutional learning environments

Abstract

h i g h l i g h t s• LMS and PLE are going to coexist and they should interact.• Existing initiatives don't support a complete interoperability among these contexts.• A service-based framework to facilitate this interoperability is defined.• It includes several interoperability scenarios that are tested in the university.• Interoperability between PLE and LMS is possible. a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t The landscape of teaching and learning has changed in recent years because of the application of Information and Communications technology. Among the most representative innovations in this regard are Learning Management Systems. Despite of their popularity in institutional contexts and the wide set of tools and services that they provide to learners and teachers, they present several issues. Learning Management Systems are linked to an institution and a period of time, and are not adapted to learners' needs. In order to address these problems Personal Learning Environments are defined, but it is clear that these will not replace Learning Management Systems and other institutional contexts. Both types of environment should therefore coexist and interact. This paper presents a servicebased framework to facilitate such interoperability. It supports the export of functionalities from the institutional to the personal environment and also the integration within the institution of learning outcomes from personal activities. In order to achieve this in a flexible, extensible and open way, web services and interoperability specifications are used. In addition some interoperability scenarios are posed. The framework has been tested in real learning contexts and the results show that interoperability is possible, and that it benefits learners, teachers and institutions.

Using virtual learning environments in bricolage mode for orchestrating learning situations across physical and virtual spaces

“…On the contrary, the learning buckets showed to be an effective and flexible solution that can be embedded in widespread VLEs such as Moodle, transforming them in across spaces learning environments integrated with multiple common Web 2.0 tools and mobile AR clients. Other approaches in the literature also propose solutions for combining existing VLEs and activities in other physical and virtual spaces (e.g., Conde et al, 2014;León Font, 2014;Santamarina et al, 2010;Zhang et al, 2010), but do not include context-awareness features, which limits the alignment orchestration aspect (see Section 2). As an alternative for overcoming such limitation, the evaluation showed that the learning buckets can be a simple instrument to connect the different physical and virtual spaces, by enabling the access from a space to contextualized artifacts created in another space.…”

“…Their approach enables the integration of mobile games as any other activity in a course within the VLE. Another interesting approach is the architecture proposed by Conde, García-Peñalvo, Alier, Mayol, and Fernández-Llamas (2014) for integrating Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) with VLEs, enabling also the access to different activities and tools from mobile devices. A slightly different approach is the work carried out by Hernández-Leo et al (2012) integrating their Signal Orchestration System (SOS) with Moodle (León Font, 2014).…”

Customized learning environment: A new approach

“…In an attempt to give the student the total control of his / her learning space, while allowing the registration of all learning activities, [29] suggest a possible solution to integrate the static nature of Learning Management Systems in the dynamic notion of a Personal Learning Environment. The author designates it a service-based framework.…”

Study on a Dynamic E-business Application Framework Based on Web Service-Based SOA

“…With the continuous development of E-business, the focus of E-business is gradually moved from the initial B2C to more challenging B2B [1]. In order to let enterprises to obtain highly efficient business, increase the income and reduce costs for getting greater business and competitive returns, the designers of E-business solution scheme need consider crossing different network configuration from the various private internal network of enterprises to Extranet of sharing information data among them [2].…”