OPERATIONALIZATION OF LEARNING SCENARIOS ON

EXISTENT LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

The Moodle Case-study

Aymen Abedmouleh, Pierre Laforcade, Lahcen Oubahssi and Christophe Choquet

LIUM, IUT de Laval, 52 Rue des drs Calmette et Guérin, F-53020 Laval Cedex 9, France

Keywords: Learning Management System, Moodle, Learning Scenario, Visual Instructional Design Language,

Operationalization, Domain Specific Modeling, Model Driven Engineering.

Abstract: Despite the increasing number of Technology Enhanced Learning platforms (eg. MOODLE) and their wide

spreading, the operationalization of learning scenarios is still a problem for teachers. We aim to facilitate

their implementation on existent platforms. We propose an approach based on the formalization of the

implicit instructional design domain language embedded by these Learning Management Systems. It

consists to identify and formalize this specific language in order to use it as a mean of communication with

external design tools without losing the semantic of the designed scenarios. The originality of our approach

relies in performing the scenarios operationalization by the development of a communication API based on

the formalized language of the platform. Our proposal is also based on the application of theories and

practices from the Domain Specific Modeling domain in order to formalize the domain language, to specify

some graphical languages on top of it, and to help in the development of dedicated graphical editors. This

paper details the implementation of our proposal (API and first editor) on the MOODLE platform.

1 INTRODUCTION

Most of academic organizations provide teachers

with some Learning Management Systems (LMS)

for improving or completing their face-to-face

courses by some additional activities from simple

resources access to scheduled communication or

online assessments. However, the management and

the appropriation of theses platforms by practitioners

are complex tasks (Al-Ajlan and Zedan, 2007).

Some LMSs, such as MOODLE, do not hide this

complexity and struggle to provide assistance and

appropriate means despite their numerous and active

communities. Also, each platform embeds both a

specific instructional design paradigm and a specific

pedagogy. However, practitioners are not familiar

with this implicit instructional design domain

(Martinez-Ortiz et al., 2009). They are not able to

implement scripts required by these platforms

(Mekpiroona et al., 2008) or to adjust the many

parameters of the form-based interfaces. The

teachers-designers could be disappointed by the

semantic distance between Educational Modeling

Languages (EML) and the LMS because they cannot

implement their scenarios specified by these EMLs.

Several technical approaches provide design tools

which do not instrument the operationalization. As a

result, the practitioners are still looking for design

and implementation approaches more appropriated

to their practices and expertise.

We discuss in this paper the issue of the learning

scenarios design for educational platforms. We

present a new approach that facilitates the

implementation of learning scenarios on these

platforms. This approach consists (1) in identifying

and expliciting the instructional design languages of

platforms and (2) exploiting them by providing

practitioners with some new tools based on these

external languages in order to facilitate the design of

learning scenarios.

Next section presents the operationalization

activity and an overview of the current approaches

for automating this activity.

2 EXISTING APPROACHES

The operationalization of learning scenarios consists

in implementing teachers-intended scenarios on one

TEL (Technology Enhanced Learning) environment.

It resumes some manipulations as creation of

activities, selection of participants, allocation of

143

Abedmouleh A., Laforcade P., Oubahssi L. and Choquet C..

OPERATIONALIZATION OF LEARNING SCENARIOS ON EXISTENT LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS - The Moodle Case-study.

DOI: 10.5220/0003486001430148

In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Software and Database Technologies (ICSOFT-2011), pages 143-148

ISBN: 978-989-8425-77-5

 2011 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

roles and selection of required services and content

for scenarios (e.g. pedagogical resources). However,

the operationalization of learning scenarios is not

only an engineer activity. It aims to translate

teacher’s intention and relative pedagogical

semantics on a TEL system. Two approaches can be

followed: manual or automatic ones.

Most of learning scenarios are manually

implemented. It consists firstly in choosing the

participants, then attributing roles foreseen by the

scenario to the proper participants, and finally

selecting the services and contents required by the

scenario. This approach requires the intervention of

a pedagogical engineer or an expert to make the

necessary manipulations in the target platform.

In contrast, the other approach aims to

implement automatically learning scenarios on TEL

environments. The intervention of LMS experts or

engineers is not necessary. Nevertheless, this

approach requires an infrastructure for interacting

with the LMS and taking in charge the creation and

configuration of the working spaces, as well as the

activity performance, starting from a formalized

description of the task. To this end, such approaches

require a 'language' for specifying the learning

scenario, and a binding technique (or a formal

language mixing both) for allowing the machine-

readability of scenarios.

We are focused on this last approach. Relevant

works fall into four categories: standard oriented

approach (as IMS-LD (De Vries et al., 2006) or

CopperCore (Berggren et al., 2005), practitioners

oriented approaches (as COLLAGE (Hernández et

al., 2006) or LDL (Martel et al. 2007)), approaches

proposed for specific platforms (as LAMS (Delziel

et al., 2006)) and the hybrid approaches based on

Model Driven Engineering techniques (as Bricoles

(Caron et al., 2005)). The analysis of these

approaches leads us to observe that:

 The different proposed solutions do not fit with

the teachers-designers needs we mentioned,

excepting the LAMS one which partially satisfies

them with its user-friendly interface.

Nevertheless, LAMS editor integration into

existent LMSs does not take advantage of the

potential internal semantics embedded in the

platform: it requires to add to LMSs a new

runtime engine with its dedicated course format.

 The COLLAGE proposition is interesting

because the collaborative design patterns

proposed to practitioners have been specified and

developed on top of the IMS-LD standard:

semantics about concepts/relations transfor-

mations have been taken into account when

building the patterns; these patterns are this fully-

compatible with IMS-LD. In the other hand,

operationalizing COLLAGE models relies on

operationalizing IMS-LD ones. Unfortunately,

most of existing platforms are still not compatible

with this standard (Berggren et al., 2005)(Burgos

et al., 2007).

Research works dealing with exportation or

transcription of learning scenarios have highlighted

the semantic learning design gap that appears when

considering learning scenarios concepts and

platforms features (Caron et al., 2005). Such

scenarios transcriptions lead to lose some

informations when binding the source scenario on an

LMS. This conceptual gap is inherent to the

transformation process when both languages have

been elaborated with no reciprocal relations.

Teachers naturally decline any tools or

approaches that are not able to facilitate the course

design on their platform. It seems that current

research propositions have not yet reached a level of

maturity for allowing teachers-designers to

implement theirs scenarios.

3 OUR APPROACH

Current propositions rely on a same underlying idea

about evolving existent Learning Management

Systems by large add-ons (editors or runtime

engines) and new semantics in order to integrate

learning design standards or to improve the design.

We do not aim to add new semantics to LMSs.

In contrast, we assume that each LMS is not

pedagogically neutral and that it embeds an implicit

language for describing the process of designing a

learning activity. Thus, our proposition is based on

the idea that this language can be identified and

explicitly formalized in a computer-readable format.

We propose in addition to use this formalization as a

binding format for various external tools which will

focus on different designing facets as well as

interoperability purposes between various LMSs

expliciting their instructional design semantics.

Nevertheless, LMSs have to be able to

import/export learning scenarios in conformance

with their own language: current platforms have

notwithstanding to evolve in order to offer this new

functionality. From an LMS viewpoint, our

proposition is to add a similar 'import/export'

functionality like the SCORM (Gonzalez and Anido,

2010) one but with the LMS language itself (as it is

already proposed for specific sub-domains like the

quiz one for MOODLE). We propose so a kind of

self-compliance format specific to each LMS. This

will warrant e-learning tools developers that they

could exploit this explicit language (that will have to

ICSOFT 2011 - 6th International Conference on Software and Data Technologies

144

be accessible through an XML schema for example)

for communicating with the LMS.

Operationalizing a learning scenario from this

LMS-centered viewpoint will consist then in the

importation of a learning scenario formalized in

conformance to this explicit LMS language. It will

not require the addition of a new runtime-engine like

the SCORM/LAMS or other approaches.

Figure 1: Our external approach for improving learning

designs on existent Learning Management Systems.

We also propose an original TEL-centered

Model-Driven Engineering and Domain-Specific-

Modeling (DSM) (Kelly et al., 2008) approach both

to identify/formalize the LMS language and to use it

as a basis for the elaboration of LMS-centered

Visual Instructional Design Languages and their

dedicated graphical authoring-tools. From a

metamodeling viewpoint, every LMS language can

be considered as composed of an abstract syntax

(formalized as a metamodel and additional well-

formed rules), a concrete syntax (the machine-

readable textual notation that will be used for the

binding of learning scenarios), and some semantics

for both syntaxes.

The explicitation of LMSs languages allows the

specification of VIDLs/EMLs on top of them. This

approach will propose also a new opportunity to

design and operationalize learning scenarios. A first

step for this approach is to provide practitioners with

some external learning design editors based on the

LMSs languages. It is also important to provide

practitioners with some learning design editors

dedicated to the VIDLs built on top of the LMS

language. Many VIDLs can be proposed for a same

LMS language according to the LMS semantics they

will include (whole or part). These LMS- centered

VIDLs have to be composed of the same abstract

syntax than the LMS language (same domain meta-

model), but have to propose a visual notation (e.g. a

concrete syntax) in order to facilitate thinking and

communication for practitioners (human-interpre-

table formalism). In contrast, the dedicated editors of

these VIDLs have to manage the persistence of

produced learning scenarios in the machine-

readable format of the considered LMS (binding).

Our proposition is focusing on a DSM approach

that aims to offer a practical solution to produce

scenarios according to the semantics of the LMS

language. DSM tools will manage the binding to the

LMS machine-readable format. We propose to use

these DSM tooling in order to elaborate some LMS-

centered VIDLs and dedicated user-friendly editors

based on the meta-model of the identified LMS

language. We experimented such DSM tools, the

ones from (Eclipse Project, 2011). They are able to

specify all these artifacts (domain meta-models,

graphical and textual notations, generation of

dedicated editors, etc.). These tools have been

experimented within several projects of different

scopes and following practitioners centered

viewpoints as well as TEL-centered ones (Laforcade

et al., 2008; Laforcade, 2010).

Our LMS-centered solution guarantees that

future produced scenarios will be implemented on

the concerned LMS taking account the probability

that this solution may restrict the pedagogical

expressiveness of learning scenarios. But we assume

that the explicitation of the internal LMS language

will create the opportunity to build more

practitioners-directed but LMS-centered on top of

the initial LMS language. This external approach

can also exceed the technological constraints and

limits of existing TEL systems and offer more user-

friendly computer artefacts to work with. Figure 1

illustrates our proposal detailed within this section.

4 THE MOODLE CASE- STUDY

We have chosen to apply our proposal on the

MOODLE LMS. It is a distance learning platform

based on a socio-constructivist pedagogy (Cocea,

2006). Our choice is motivated by: its open source

code and its modular and extensible architecture, its

large community of users and developers, and its use

in our university.

4.1 Internal Language Identification

First of all, we had to identify concepts, attributes

and relationships composing the abstract syntax of

the MOODLE language. The relevant instructional

design facet relies on the teacher’s course space

functionalities. We have performed an analysis work

by combining three viewpoints: user interfaces

analysis (what the designer sees), MOODLE

database analysis (persistent objects and data

associated to courses), and functional and technical

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The Moodle Case-study

145

analysis of the platform specific mechanisms linking

human machine interfaces (HMI) and database (e.g.

backup techniques, etc.).

By analysing the user interfaces, we have

identified a set of challenges faced by teachers when

using platforms. For example, changing informa-

tions in a Moodle course requires to fill a long list of

operationalization-oriented parameters: full name,

short name, identification number, course format,

number of topics, etc. Some parameters are required

and mandatory (full name and short name) for the

creation of courses but others are optional or too

technical (course registration parameters, file size,

etc.). We have set up concepts used in space courses

and also links or relations between them according

to screens sequences. Briefly, a course is a set of

editable sections that serve as structural components

for defining and positioning activities and resources.

By analysing the MOODLE database, we have

identified the system data organization. We have

analysed about 266 tables of MOODLE 2.0. This

has highlighted relationships between different data,

in particular those used by many types of activities

and resources available in a course. Crossed with

HMI analysis, data analysis let us to identify

properties, attributes, concepts (linked to some

portions of screen-forms), and to verify and validate

relationships between concepts. We have also

checked off required data and optional ones (i.e. can

be omitted without making database inconsistent or

incoherent).

By analysing the platform functionalities, which

has consisted to successively test all possible

handling of the identified objects, attributes and

relationships, we have characterized the MOODLE

provided backup functionality for saving existing

courses into an external format (here an archive

containing many XML files and course resources,

organized in folders). MOODLE also provides a

restore functionality to import courses from external

packages previously saved.

4.2 Language Explicitation

The explicitation of the specific MOODLE

instructional design domain requires the choice of a

concrete syntax for the representation of the

language vocabulary and grammar.

Its widely use in interoperability standards and

its use by the backup/restore functionality of

MOODLE has oriented us to choose XML. Firstly,

we have chosen to develop an instance of an XML

document representing a complete course in order to

help us to set representation choices (tags for

concepts, sub-tags for attributes, etc.). Then, we

have specified an XML schema that have been

completed and refined in order to clarify all possible

semantics (limited to the XML Schema expressive-

ness) that was not explicit in the previous XML

instance: multiplicities of relationships, enumerated

types, etc. These two steps have been primarily

directed by the analysis of the package contents

generated by the pedagogical course backup. We

have proceeded by successive refinements:

modifying/adding/deleting data in order to observe

the generated course package files and to isolate the

XML fragments to deduce the concrete syntax of our

XML document. We have also taken into account

the results of our previous analysis to specify

relationships between different concepts. Finally,

our XML instance which specify a full course, has a

different structure and formalization in comparison

to the numerous XML files generated by the

backup/restore functionality.

The associated XML schema has been specified

by using the more relevant Russian dolls design

pattern. This schema formally represents the

MOODLE domain language we propose as a

communication format between external tools and

this LMS. It may also be used to validate XML

documents that will be imported or exported.

4.3 Import/Export Communication

API

In order to import (and to export) learning scenarios

into (from) the MOODLE platform, it is necessary

both to develop and to integrate a new

communication module (IN/OUT Course) in its

design space. This new module provides an API

between the external design tools and the LMS. It

ensures the operationalization of learning scenarios.

We have taken into account the possibility to

successively perform import/export operations in

order to adapt a course with external design tools.

Therefore, we also took into account that external

tools could only be compliant with all or part of the

formalized language (to focus on specific design

facets for example).

The communication module integrates two

processes: an export process to generate an XML

instance which specifies all course details and an

import process able to operationalize scenarios

specified in conformance with the platform

language. In order to ensure the cooperation of these

two processes in terms of first creation (first import

into an empty course) and adaptations (by addition

and deletion of concepts), we have initially tested it

on the basis of two concepts (forum and label).

Then, in a second step, we have extended the

development throughout the whole language.

ICSOFT 2011 - 6th International Conference on Software and Data Technologies

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The first process has to deal with the course

backup and its formalization in the specified

platform language. Concretely, it relies on the

backup functionality to generate the MOODLE

course in an external package. Considering the XML

format of the data package, we have developed an

XSLT transformation using the XML schema we

defined, in order to generate and to apply the

necessary transformations rules on the different

XML files. This process leads to generate an XML

document instance conformed to our XML schema

and handleable by the specific external design tools.

The second process leads to import scenarios in

the platform. We have chosen to use the existing

restore function of MOODLE to operationalize the

scenarios. The general idea of the transformation

algorithm we specified is to: (1) perform a course

backup, (2) complete and modify this package with

information specified within the XML scenario

instance (with XSLT transformations), then (3)

achieve the restore of this modified package. This

process takes into account some constraints when

the API is used to adapt an existing course.

Concretely, the XSLT transformations take into

account four possible cases: (a) modification of

some informations from an existing course concept;

(b) creation of a new scenario concept not already

present in the course (c) deletion of a course concept

(i.e. concept appearing in the backup but not in the

scenario to import with the additional information

that the external tool was able to handle this

element); (d) omission of a concept (i.e. concept

only appearing in the backup files while knowing

that the external tool was not able to deal with it).

External tools that do not support all the LMS

language have then to precise their "domain

language perimeter of understanding", an imposed

constraint for future external tools, by providing a

subset of the XML schema we defined.

4.4 A First DSM-based Editor

From the XML schema dedicated to the MOODLE

learning management system, we automatically

generated an equivalent metamodel (figure 5) thanks

to the EMF tooling. This metamodel can then be

used as a basis for the development of Visual

Instructional Design Languages, and their dedicated

graphical editors, according to the DSM approach.

We have developed a first visual editor. It aims

to graphically ease the specification of a course

structure for MOODLE. We used the EMF DSM

tool already used to formalize the MOODLE

metamodel. EMF is a Java framework and code

generation facility for building tools and other

applications based on a structured model. Once you

specify an EMF model (or metamodel), the EMF

generator can create a corresponding set of Java

implementation classes. In addition to simply

increasing your productivity, building your

application using EMF provides several other

benefits like model change notification, persistence

support including default XMI and schema-based

XML serialization (the feature that interests us in

order to offer a binding towards the platform XML

schema), a framework for model validation, and a

very efficient reflective API for manipulating EMF

objects generically. Most important of all, given an

EMF model definition, the EMF code generator can

produce a fully functional editor tool with a tree-

based interface that will allow to view instances of

the model using several common viewers and to add,

remove, cut, copy, and paste model objects, or

modify the objects into property sheets.

Although we also plan to use GMF (Graphical

Modeling Framework) as a complementary

framework to EMF in order to generate user-friendly

and graphical editors, we decided at first to focus on

the EMF preliminary editor. By so, a full- generated

prototype, as a plug-in for Eclipse, has then been

generated by the EMF tooling in accordance with

the MOODLE domain model. This editor does not

require some computer skills but a graphical version

with GMF will be more adapted for

teachers/designers. From this EMF-based editor,

visual scenarios are automatically serialized in an

XML machine-readable format in compliance with

the XML schema we propose (ie. the tree-based

view is synchronized with the XML-formatted

scenario; no other binding functions or services have

to be performed).

We have experimented and tested this editor in

relation to the previous communication API. We

verified the efficiency of the four manipulations of

MOODLE course scenarios (creation, deletion,

omission, modification) and succeeded in

operationalizing the successive models. Its is quite

important to notice that appearing named resources

have to be concretely added manually: only their

labeled name is set. We planed others experiments

with best-practices MOODLE courses as well as

direct use with teachers-designers.

5 CONCLUSIONS

Increasing the spreading and the using of computer-

based learning is a crucial issue of this decade.

Nowadays, the supply of TEL environments as

LMSs is effective and the technology is mature for

their use. But most of teachers do not effectively use

OPERATIONALIZATION OF LEARNING SCENARIOS ON EXISTENT LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS -

The Moodle Case-study

147

these new artifacts and claim for more suitable and

easy-to-use tools. We do not think the solution to

this problem only relies on teachers’ training or on

institutional initiatives and supports. Our proposal is

(1) to simplify the authoring tasks and (2) to take

more into account the teachers’ requirements by the

automation of the operationalization process of a

course on a given platform. The idea that underpins

our work is the explicitation of the domain specific

language of a platform in order to emphasize the

underlying pedagogical approach embedded in the

platform while allowing the courses designers to

focus, at the knowledge level, on pedagogical

concepts rather than technical ones.

To reach this goal, we have decided to explore

the potential of Domain Specific Modeling techni-

ques. Our proposal is to externalize the design of a

learning scenario by the mean of editors, reifying a

Visual Instructional Design Language based on the

instructional design language of the targeted

platform, and to develop a bridge between this editor

and the platform for ensuring the operationalization

of the scenario. This paper details the architecture

and the functionalities of this kind of bridge, an API

for a platform based on its implicit language. We

have tested this approach with MOODLE. This API,

is able to both import and export learning scenarios.

For going farther this first result, we actually

work on two directions. One is to define a visual

instructional design for MOODLE and to develop its

dedicated graphical editor. To this aim we are

working on exploiting the Graphical Modeling

Framework tool in order to specify a graphical

notation and a mapping model with the existent

domain model. We also plan to evaluate the usability

of the editors by teachers-designers and to

experiment them on concrete learning situations case

studies. The second direction is to study at least one

another LMS, to repeat the same approach (ie.

identifying and formalizing the internal instructional

design language, develoment of communication

API, defining of VIDLs and externals editors) in

order to evaluate the possibilities of interoperability

between two different technical frameworks, helped

by Model Driven Engineering techniques of models

transformations.

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