HOW TO SUPPORT SCENARIOS-BASED

INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN

A Domain-Specific-Modeling Approach

Pierre Laforcade, Boubekeur Zendagui and Vincent Barré

LIUM / IUT de Laval, 52 rue des Docteurs Calmette et Guérin,53020 Laval Cedex 9, France

Keywords: Instructional Design, Learning Scenario, Educational Modeling Language, Model Driven Engineering,

Domain Specific Modeling, Visual Instructional Design Language.

Abstract: Over recent years, Model-Driven-Engineering has attracted growing interest as much as a research domain

as an industrial process that can be applied to various educational domains. This article aims to discuss and

propose such an application for learning-scenario-centered instructional design processes. Our proposition is

based on a 3-domain categorization for learning scenarios. We also discuss and explain why we think

Domain-Specific Modeling techniques are the future new trend in order to support the emergence of

communities of practices for scenario-based instructional design. The originality resides in the support we

propose to help communities of practitioners in building specific Visual Instructional Design Languages

with dedicated editors instead of providing them with yet another language or editor.

1 INTRODUCTION

Over recent years, the Model-Driven Engineering

(MDE) principles

(Schmidt, 06) have been frequently

applied and acclaimed as of great interest within

various educational disciplinary fields. In this paper,

we are particularly concerned with the application of

MDE principles for instructional design processes,

mainly the ones dealing with learning scenarios.

Current context analysis about languages, tools

and techniques for learning scenarios

(Kinshuk et al.,

06)

highlights the need for user-friendly languages or

tools to help designers in setting up Learning

Management Systems (LMS). We are interested in

providing end-users, acting as both teachers and

designers (sometimes mentioned as 'practitioners'),

with dedicated Educational Modeling Languages

(EML) or Visual Instructional Design Languages

(VIDL)

(Botturi et al., 07), and tools to help them

specify learning scenarios with their own

terminology, graphical formalism, and editing

preferences, without leaving aside computerizing

trends concerning the produced scenarios (reuse,

interoperability, etc.).

Our experiences about graphical representations

of learning scenario and transformations between

EMLs

(Laforcade et al., 07), lead us to deal with MDE

techniques and to a new promising orientation we

are currently exploring: Domain-Specific Modeling

(DSM) as a new way for modeling and formally

specifying learning scenarios. We discuss interest of

DSM techniques and tools applied to our context

(instructional design). The conceptual framework

underlying our approach is a categorization based on

a domain-oriented separation of concerns.

We first present the MDE and discuss its

application to the context of learning-scenario

centered instructional processes. We also discuss our

3-domain categorization for learning scenarios and

our orientation towards DSM. We illustrate and

discuss our first results about the use of DSM tools

to specify VIDL and to build dedicated editors.

2 MDE BACKGROUND

The Model Driven Architecture (MDA) is a

framework for software development adopted by the

Object Management Group in 2001

(OMG, 01). It

aims to provide a solution to the problem of software

technologies continual emergence that forces

companies to adapt their software systems every

time a new ‘hot’ technology appears. The solution

327

Laforcade P., Zendagui B. and Barré V. (2008).

HOW TO SUPPORT SCENARIOS-BASED INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN - A Domain-Speciﬁc-Modeling Approach.

In Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Software and Data Technologies - PL/DPS/KE, pages 327-332

DOI: 10.5220/0001889203270332

 SciTePress

proposed consists of separating the enterprise

functionalities of an information system from the

implementation of those functionalities on specific

technological platforms, and also by using an

intensive model-based design and development.

MDA approach sorts models into three classes:

the Computation Independent Model (CIM) view of

a system where the used vocabulary is the business

one. A CIM helps to specify exactly what the system

is expected to do. The Platform Independent Model

(PIM) view leads to independence from specific

platforms but should be expressed in a

computational way, so as to be suitable for use with

a number of different platforms of similar type.

Finally, the Platform Specific Model (PSM) view

links the specifications in the PIM with details that

specify how this system will be implemented on a

specific platform. Mappings between PIM and PSM

can be done by means of model transformations.

Finally, code can be generated from the PSM.

The Model Driven Engineering (MDE) is a more

general and global approach than the MDA aiming

to apply and generalize its principles for every

technological space (object-oriented space, XML

documents, etc.). The MDE is founded on: i/

capitalization: models are to be reusable, ii/

abstraction: domain models have to be independent

from technologies used to implement them, iii/

modeling: models are no longer contemplative (used

to document, communicate, etc.) but used in a

productive way (they are machine-interpretable), iv/

separation of concerns: usually between domain and

technology but other separations are possible.

In order to dispose of productive models, they

must be well-defined, i.e. linked to a specific meta-

model. Productive models can be handled,

interpreted with MDE tools

(Bézivin et al., 03): meta-

model/language definition tools, transformation

tools, code generation tools, weaving tools,

generation of domain-specific model editors, etc.

3 MDE APPLIED TO

INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN

3.1 Past and In-progress Research

Many research works focus on the definition of

EML and also discuss the IMS-LD language (IMS,

03)

considered as the current standard for specifying

scenarios. Some of the following works explicitly

claim their MDE positioning.

The CPM Language

(Laforcade, 05) is a UML-

based (UML profile) visual language dedicated to

the definition of Problem Based Learning situations

by specific designers. CPM models act as a support

for thinking and communicating within a

multidisciplinary design team. Model transformation

from CPM activity diagrams to IMS-LD-compliant

scenarios have also been studied.

Research works from the Bricole project

(Caron,

07) propose a transformation model application to set

up an LMS from any IMS-LD-compliant scenario.

They transform the IMS-LD source scenario

(graphically modeled with the ModX tool) into

another graphical LMS specific scenario (Gendep

tool) that is interpreted to automatically configure

the LMS via a specific service web based API.

The LDL Language

is a CSCW domain-specific

language aiming to specify such dedicated scenarios.

This language is concretely proposed as a specific

XML binding but recent works aim to provide it

with a visual formalism

(Martel et al., 07).

(Paquette et al., 06) propose an extension of their

MOT notation and dedicated edition tool to conform

to the IMS-LD standard for defining learning

scenarios: the MOT+LD formalism.

Other works aim to automatically provide

teacher-designers with a graphical representation of

IMS-LD scenario (XML document). The concrete

technique uses imperative transformations from

XML to a UML4LD representation (UML profile

dedicated to IMS-LD)

(Laforcade, 06).

Recent works

(Dodero et al., 07) also proposed a

graphical environment, called MDLD (Model-driven

Learning Design Environment), in order to help

learning designers to generate units of learning

(XML) conformed to IMS-LD by graphically

specifying BPEL-oriented modeling (an abstract

language for modeling business process execution).

3.2 Discussions

Models produced/transformed into MDE processes

correspond to the learning scenarios in instructional

design processes. These scenarios are generally

defined/specified with an EML. Whatever the

formalism used (graphic, textual, etc.) we can

consider that every EML can describe its underlying

terminology as a meta-model. The final system, in

a MDE process, corresponds to the learning situation

aimed in an instructional design process. The

difference is that this learning situation relies on

both human and system artifacts, not only code.

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328

Indeed, instructional design processes aim to

produce units of learning that can be deployed or

configured into LMS that pre-exist them. All EML

or VIDL languages can be compared from many

point of views or separations of concerns.

We also want to highlight the omnipresence of

the business learning domain: whatever the

EML/VIDL used to express a learning scenario

(from very specific domain scenarios to standards

based or LMS specific ones) they all are expressed

with a more or less abstract/specific learning syntax

and semantics. All these business domains reflect

some specific particularities (pedagogical theories,

didactical domains, etc.) shared by pluridisciplinary

design teams. Another key point concerns the visual

representation of learning scenarios. It appears to be

as equally important for domain-specific learning

scenarios, as for understanding shared scenarios

which comply to standards, or for helping the

manual configuration of LMS.

Finally, all those points led us to the idea that a

simple CIM/PIM/PSM application is not relevant

because of business omnipresence and overall visual

interest for representing scenarios. This is why we

propose the following domain-specific approach.

4 A DOMAIN-SPECIFIC

APPROACH

4.1 The 3-leaf Domain-clover

Proposition

We propose three categories for learning scenarios

and languages from a separation of concerns

reflecting different communities of practices sharing

a comparable business learning domain towards

specific objectives.

Practitioners-centered Scenario (PS). The

vocabulary is the one shared by a pluridisciplinary

design team; it expresses their common vocabulary

(for example in relation to some pedagogical

theories, didactical fields as well as specific

references to the LMS they use). The objectives of

such scenarios are to ease the definition of the

learning scenario, to act as a design guide, and a

support to thinking/communicating.

Abstract Scenario (AS). The vocabulary aims to be

independent from any LMS in order to support the

interoperability of scenarios. This abstraction also

usually reflects a high-level abstraction of the

vocabulary used from pedagogical theories and

didactical fields. The objectives aim at supporting

pedagogical diversity and innovation, while

promoting the exchange and interoperability of e-

learning scenarios.

LMS-centered Scenarios (LS). The vocabulary is

specific to a dedicated LMS or other e-learning

platforms. The objectives are to act as a guide for the

manual or semi-automatic configuration of the

technical dispositive by humans as well as for

automatic configuration by machines when possible.

We also propose to split each categorization into

two parts corresponding to the targeted public: one

part for human-directed interpretation, and

dedicated visual formalism (human-readable

textual/graphical notation); and the other one for

machine-directed interpretation (machine-

interpretable formal notation, i.e. no ambiguous

semantics).

Although these two parts can be used as a new

feature to compare VIDLs/EMLs, we think that they

are both useful and have to be both provided by any

instructional design language. This approach is

conformed to the MDE paradigm where models

have now to be productive. For us, learning

scenarios have to be both contemplative (for human

interpretation objectives) and productive (for

machine execution in order to realize simulations,

predictions, transformations, exchanges, etc.).

In our thinking the three categorizations

(PS/AS/LS) share fuzzy frontiers between each

other. Also, we do not think instructional design

processes handling learning scenarios must

systematically follow all these categorizations. We

do not propose a systematic way to transform

scenarios from one to another. On the contrary we

think that designers must be free to decide which

EML/VIDL is useful according to their objectives

and target public (human or machine interpretation).

One key point concerns the transformation from

one type of scenario to another. When source and

target scenarios are from different EMLs, the

transformation is extra-domain; it necessary happens

from one category to another but also between

different EMLs from the same category. Interest of

such transformations is to gain the objectives of the

targeted categorization, when changed, or to

exchange and reuse scenarios with other

communities of practices that do not share the same

business learning domain. On the contrary, when

source and target scenarios share the same abstract

syntax (metamodel) but differ from the used

concrete syntax (notation), the transformation is

intra-domain. This kind of transformation is useful

to adapt to a different target public and objectives by

only changing the format of the learning scenarios.

HOW TO SUPPORT SCENARIOS-BASED INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN - A Domain-Specific-Modeling Approach

329

4.2 Illustration

We illustrate our proposition into the figure 1.

Figure 1: The three-leaf domain-clover annotated with a

projection of current research works.

CPM and LDL are practitioners-centered langua-

ges; CPM being more a VIDL because of its human-

directed notation than LDL which only offers a

machine-interpretable formalism for now

(Martel et

al., 07). Also, the CPM tooling proposes a service

transforming CPM diagrams into IMS-LD scenarios.

The abstract category with a machine-oriented

formalism suits the IMS-LD standard well. We

position the MOT+LD proposition in the same

category but with a human-directed notation (the

MOT+ formalism has been extended to include the

IMS-LD vocabulary). UML4LD is both a visual

formalism for IMS-LD (abstract category with

human notation) and a transformation mechanism

from IMS-LD scenarios to UML4LD ones. MDLD

is also position in this category since it offers an

abstract language (but not dedicated to learning

scenarios) to model chunks of learning processes

that are then transformed into IMS-LD code.

Finally, the Bricole Project propose ModX tool

to model scenarios in both abstract and LMS-

centered visual notations, and GenDep tool to ensure

transformations between these two formalisms. Note

that CPM and ModX tools can save the produced

scenarios in a machine-interpretable formalism

(XMI serialization).

4.3 How to Support our Proposition?

The 3-leaf domain clover we propose can be

considered as, and used as, a theoretical tool for

classifying given VIDL/EML or tools. It also

materialize our vision of current communities of

practices about learning scenarios. The 3-leaf

domain clover is then a model of this vision.

Our works aim at supporting the emergence of

communities of practices from this model. In order

to do that, we need concrete tools and techniques to

support and ease emergence of such communities:

1. tools for defining domain-oriented VIDL /

EML (concepts/relations specification plus

techniques to define both machine-interpre-

table and human-readable formalisms).

2. tools/techniques for defining learning

scenarios corresponding to existing domain-

oriented VIDL/EML (eg. graphic editors).

3. tools/techniques for intra & extra

transformations of learning scenarios

(bridges between these emergent

communities are very important).

Although current instructional design research

proposes some VIDL and various kind of user-

friendly editors

(Botturi et al., 07), there is no work

that proposes the tooling we have highlighted,

technically addressing support of emergent VIDL-

based communities of practices. We think that the

Domain-Specific Modeling (DSM) provides tools

and techniques supporting most of these needs.

5 DOMAIN-SPECIFIC

MODELING AND

INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN

5.1 DSM Domain and Tools

DSM (Kelly et al., 08) is a software engineering

methodology for designing and developing systems,

mostly IT systems such as computer software. It

involves the systematic use of a graphic Domain-

Specific Programming Language (DSL) to represent

the various facets of a system

. We are particularly

interested by these graphical DSL, also called

Domain-Specific Modeling Languages (DSML).

Several technical approaches coexist to support

DSML specification: commercial products

(MetaCase/MetaEdit+), the Microsoft DSL tools,

academic or open-source projects (VMTS, TIGER,

EMF, GMF, etc.). All these DSM tools propose

metamodeling techniques capable of expressing

domain-specific vocabularies (abstract syntaxes),

and propose facilities to construct various notations

(concrete syntaxes). These editing frameworks are

ICSOFT 2008 - International Conference on Software and Data Technologies

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supporting the techniques and many more

customizations with minimal programming effort.

As a result, these tools can generate powerful and

user-friendly dedicated editors for DSM languages.

They are kind of meta-CASE editors capable of

generating CASE tools. The final editors give

domain-designers the ability to graphically specify

models from their domain, and propose some

persistence facilities to load and store these models

in a machine-interpreted format.

5.2 Using DSM Tools

These DSM tools meet most of the needs we need in

order to support our domain-oriented proposition for

the EML and learning scenarios. Concretely, needs

previously numbered 1/, 2/ and 3/a (intra-

transformations) are supported (cf. §4.3). DSM

principles are also convenient with our 3-leaf

domain-clover and more generally seem able to

support the emergence of VIDL/EML communities

of practices as well as providing practitioners with

user-friendly visual editors for specifying scenarios.

Although DSM tools support most of the needs

we mentioned, we also need tools for supporting

some bridges between the future communities.

These tools would have to transform learning

scenarios produced by a DSM-based instructional

design editor (conforming to a dedicated VIDL) to

another format compatible with another DSM-based

editor (dedicated to another VIDL). Such

transformations tools exist from the MDE domain.

(Abdallah et al., 2008) have already experimented

some of these tools: the ATL tooling has been used

to transform learning scenarios conformed to a

Project-based and collaborative pedagogy, towards

Moodle-specific scenarios. We plan to experiment

more with these transformation tools.

5.3 Illustration and First Results

We are currently experimenting an Eclipse project,

the Graphical Modeling Framework (GMF) (Eclipse,

08), to support the DSM approach for learning

scenarios. Its goal is to form a generative bridge

between EMF and GEF, two other Eclipse meta-

modeling projects, whereby a diagram definition is

linked to a domain model as an input to the

generation of a visual editor.

Among the various case studies we have

experimented with GMF, we sketch the following

one. Some practitioners have expressed these

pedagogical expressiveness and notation needs: a

UML' UseCase-like diagram that permits to express

performing relations between roles and learning

activities at a high-level of abstraction. Also, the

practitioners would like to express precedence /

following relationships between the learning

activities. Because the UML UseCase diagram is not

able to express time-related relationships between

usecases, our work consisted in providing these

practitioners with a dedicated visual editor, built

using GMF, able to express such scenario

representation. Also, we decided to provide them

with a specific VIDL guarantying that the produced

models will be both human-readable for them but

also machine-interpretable for further usages.

Figure 2: The 'Learning-UseCase' meta-model (or domain

model) experimentation.

A basic domain model for the « Learning Design

Use Case » view has been defined. It is illustrated

into figure 2 (a diagrammatic view of the concrete

domain model whose native format is XML).

Figure 3: Example of model designed with a specific

editor generated with the GMF DSM meta-tool.

According to the GMF engineering process, we

have successively designed a graphical definition

model, a tooling definition model, and a mapping

definition model. Finally, after a code generation

step, a specific editor (embedding the VIDL

dedicated to the practitioners' requirements) is

HOW TO SUPPORT SCENARIOS-BASED INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN - A Domain-Specific-Modeling Approach

331

generated. Figure 3 shows a scenario graphically

realized with this editor (the human-readable

« view » ; because the scenario is concretely

serialized in a machine-interpretable format (XMI)).

6 CONCLUSIONS

We have presented and discussed a specific MDE

application for scenario-based instructional design.

The originality of our proposition resides in the three

categories for learning scenarios and languages: they

reflect different communities of practices sharing a

same business learning domain towards specific

objectives. We also propose a two-part division for

each category to distinguish the targeted public:

human or machines.

We have then argued our current orientation

about DSM techniques and tools. DSM is a model-

based approach giving domain experts the freedom

to use structures and logic that are specific to their

learning domain. Another originality of our position

is that we do not aim to provide practitioners with

yet another VIDL with its dedicated editor but we

aim to provide them with techniques and tools that

help and support them in specifying and building the

VIDL and editors they need.

We have also illustrated our first results about

the use of the GMF from the Eclipse project. These

first results have proved the ability of such DSM

tools to build specific VIDL and to generate user-

friendly dedicated editors. We are currently

improving our experiments of the DSM tools. We

are also experimenting model transformations tools

in order to support the design of 'bridges' between

different learning scenario communities of practices.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

These works are funded by the French MILES project and

the ANR LEA project.

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