A Hybrid Content-learning Management System for Education and
Access to Intangible Cultural Heritage
A. Glushkova, E. Katsouli, G. Kourvoulis, A. Manitsaris and C. Volioti
Laboratory of Multimedia and Computer Graphics, Department of Applied Informatics,
University of Macedonia, Egnatia Str.156, Thessaloniki, Greece
Keywords: Learning and Content Management System, Access to Intangible Cultural Heritage, Semantic Browsing,
Ontological Concepts, Multisensory Technologies.
Abstract: This paper presents an open and extendable platform that provides access to ICH resources, enables
knowledge exchange between researchers and contributes to the transmission of rare know-how from their
holders to the next generations. The platform is a hybrid Content-Learning Management system that permits
the creation of new content of cultural heritage. It supports different user profiles for access, learning and
analysis of the ICH, such as experts, learners, researchers as well as the large public. It is also supports the
outcomes of sensorimotor learning functionalities of a game-based learning module. The platform integrates
different modules based on multi-sensory technologies into an operating open-source content management
system, which is enriched with a significant number of functionalities.
1 INTRODUCTION
The Intangible Cultural Heritage goes beyond the
collection of monuments and objects that we
inherited from our ancestors. It is related to
knowledge and skills incorporated in human
gestures that determine the identity of local
communities and are expressed interalia through
performing arts, traditional craftsmanship, rituals
etc. The ICH doesn't only refer to the past, but also
to the present and the future since it represents
inherited expressions together with contemporary
practices. ICH is inclusive since it characterizes the
continuity of a knowledge whether it is practised, in
the original community or in a different rural or
urban region. It is also representative of the identity
of the local community since it is recognized as
heritage if it is considered as such by people that
maintain it. Consequently, the preservation and
transmission of the ICH is a worldwide challenge
that is supported from the UNESCO, different Non-
Governmental Organizations (NGO), experts,
centres of expertise and research institutes.
However, this knowledge has never been precisely
identified in a way to be transmitted to next
generations since it was extremely difficult to
"capture the intangible".
2 STATE OF THE ART
During the last decade countries, cities, museums
and cultural organisations in general, use digital
technologies to provide access to cultural resources
mostly through multimedia material such as videos,
images, documents etc. The main goal of these
initiatives is the digitization of tangible or intangible
heritage and consequently its’ collection and
preservation. But in addition to the aggregation of
cultural resources they aim to reinforce the
accessibility to large public, stakeholders’
engagement and sensitisation.
Important projects have been launched to
propose digital platforms and provide access to this
material such as Athena (Athena, 2011), ECHO -
European Cultural Heritage Online Initiative (Echo-
Cultural Heritage Online, 2014) , CAN (Collections
Australia Network, 2011), and some private projects
such as the Google Art Project (Google Art Project,
2013). These web portals provide access to
paintings, music, museum objects, archives that have
been digitized with the use of new technologies.
Other platforms like the Cultural Heritage
Connections Platform (Cultural Heritage Connection
Platform, 2011) aim to connect experts and
organisations in the field of international heritage
cooperation and they serve as an interface for
202
Glushkova A., Katsouli E., Kourvoulis G., Manitsaris A. and Volioti C..
A Hybrid Content-learning Management System for Education and Access to Intangible Cultural Heritage.
DOI: 10.5220/0005409302020207
In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU-2015), pages 202-207
ISBN: 978-989-758-107-6
Copyright
c
2015 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)
information exchange and a documentation centre
for projects.
One of the most important EU-funded project is
Europeana (Europeana.eu, 2009), which is the most
well-known portal for exploring the digital resources
of Europe’s museums, libraries, archives and audio-
visual collections, thus offering direct access to
millions of books, manuscripts, paintings, films,
museum objects and archival records that have been
digitised throughout Europe. From an architectural
point of view, Europeana.eu constitutes a search
engine and a database. It contains metadata
integrated by providers and uses that database to
allow users to search for cultural heritage objects,
and to find links to those objects (Dekkers, 2011).
To browse and search the objects and their links,
different methods are used such as a timeline, a map
Search, an openSearch API. The data is also made
available as Linked Open Data, it is represented in
the European Data Model (EDM) and the described
resources are addressable and dereferencable by
their URIs (Halshofer, Isaac 2011).
The goal of our hybrid content-learning
management system is to go beyond the hosting of
mere digitized heritage content and to propose an
innovative platform for know-how preservation and
transmission. The platform will permit the
integration of heterogeneous resources of ICH into a
single web based system, will give the possibility to
all users profiles to realise a semantic browsing and
searching exploiting ontological concepts. But it will
also incorporate novel capabilities integrating
multisensory technologies (motion capture,
electroencephalograms etc.) in combination with
enhanced viewing and playing possibilities, such as
3d visualisation and singing voice synthesis. I-
treasures platform is not limited to one use case but
it covers four different case studies such as a) rare
singing knowledge, b) rare dancing knowledge, c)
traditional craftsmanship, d) contemporary music
composition. It will also permit a flexible integration
of new form of ICH incorporated through pluggable
modules. In the following section we present the
architecture of i-treasures platform and the
integration of the Content Learning Management
System.
3 SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE
This hybrid system is being developed in the context
of the i-Treasures FP7 European funded, research
project. The aim of the project is to help preserve
and spread intangible cultural heritage and rare
know how. It is a part of a larger system that entails
data capture, feature extraction, semantic analysis,
sensorimotor learning and finally training &
education. Being a part of an ongoing research
project only some components of the system have
been implemented so far. The overall system
architecture is shown in Figure 1.
The system consists of two main components
with their subsystems. The first component is the
Client Side Component (CSC). CSC can be the 3D
Visualization module for Sensorimotor Learning
desktop application, which is used for the capturing
of the expert performances and the sensorimotor
learning of the non-expert users or it can be the
user’s web browser which is used to navigate to the
i-Treasures Web Platform. The CSC is a desktop
application that integrates a set of modules that are
responsible for the sensorimotor learning of musical,
dance, singing and craftsmanship knowledge based
on various types of sensors. Medium level features
as well as high level metadata are stored in the
digital repository that resides on the SSC.
The second component is the Server Side
Component (SSC) which consists of the subsystems
of the subsystems that reside on the i-Treasures
server(s).The SSC is the web server that hosts the
different subsystems such as the Content
Management System, the Learning Management
System, the Text to Song module and the Digital
Repository which will be described in detail later on.
Figure 1: The overall architecture.
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Additionally, it hosts the Data Fusion and Semantic
Analysis module which extract high level metadata
from the medium level features. We will focus on
the SCS and especially the Content Management
System (CMS) and the Learning Management
System (LMS).
3.1 Server Side Component
Subsystems - Content Management
Subsystem & User Interaction
The Content Management Subsystem (CMS) is
software written mainly in PHP that acts as the
engine for generating dynamic web page content. It
is also responsible for the management of users and
their permissions. There are many CMS
implementations, free and non-free. In this project is
selected to use Drupal which is free and open
source. Inside the CMS environment the user will be
able to use the navigation menu in order to transit
between the rich content (informative &
educational) and the innovative tools that will be
built for the needs of the project. Since the users will
use the CMS as the gateway to all system features,
this is the User Interaction subsystem. From the
navigation menu the user will be able to choose to
find out general/background information about
various types of ICH, to explore the educational
material stored in the Learning Management System
and even download and practice the techniques of
various ICH case studies through the 3D
Visualization for Sensorimotor Learning module.
All the features of the CMS can be parameterized
either from the preinstalled functions that are
provided by Drupal or by the community contributed
modules that extend functionality and
parameterization and even the custom modules that
will be built for the specific needs of Project.
3.2 Learning Management System
The Learning Management Subsystem (LMS) will
facilitate along with 3D Visualization module for
Sensorimotor Learning, the educational processes of
the platform. It will be used to realize the
Pedagogical Plans (that were developed for the
purposes of i-Treasures) into Educational Scenarios.
It is a system similar to the CMS but with an
educational purpose. It provides the ability to a
teacher to create online courses and enrich them
with all sorts of educational material such as
documents, pictures, videos and event quizzes that
can be used for assessing the learner’s progress.
A very useful education tool, is the learning path.
The learning path is a series of chapters which can
contain any kind of resources (html pages,
multimedia content, text, image etc.) but additionally
has the option to enable requirements. The learner
that engages with a learning path, must complete
successfully each step of the path, before advancing
to the next one. At the same time, his progress on the
path is monitored (time taken to complete the path,
quiz scores etc.). This path can be exported to
SCORM format and can be implement in different
LM Systems. The LMS that is used in this project is
Chamilo, an open source solution that is a fork of the
source code tree of Dokeos which in turn is a
descendant of Claroline, an LMS that’s been around
for over 14 years. One of the reasons for the
selection of Chamilo is the simple user interface that
incorporates yet not lacking at all in features against
other popular LMS solutions and because it is based
on a very mature source code tree that was originally
built with a focus on stability.
3.3 CMS - LMS Integration
Because of the fact that the i-Treasures integrated
platform relies on free and open source solutions to
realize its web components that are independent of
each other and designed to be standalone, there is a
need to tweak them and build custom code in order
to interoperate and provide to the user a seamless
transition from one component to another. Towards
this step, the first step is to develop a mechanism
that will keep the user accounts, their details and
their permissions in sync between the CMS and the
LMS (through SOAP web services). Additionally,
the user must be able to transit from the one system
to the other without having to enter his/her account
credentials more than once, in other words we
developed an account synchronization (Figure 2)
and single sign on mechanism (Figure 4).
Figure 2: User Synchronization Process.
Also, there is the need for the user to be able to
browse between the CMS and the LMS without
needing to enter any credentials more than once.
This is achieved by the Single Sign On module
which is a Drupal module that implements a special
code that is called by the hook_init() Drupal hook.
This hook executes the code it contains every time a
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page is rendered in the CMS. This code checks
whether a user is logged in or not in the CMS. If yes,
then a special cookie (SSO cookie) is crafted that
contains the current user’s email and Drupal Session
ID. The contents of this cookie are encrypted in with
shared key (shared between the CMS and the LMS)
and the Session ID so as to prevent a malicious user
from crafting this kind of cookie and gain
unauthorized access to the LMS. In order for the
LMS to know about this cookie and use it for
authentication and authorization of the user that is
already logged in the CMS, a special block of code
was added to the appropriate default authorization
function of Chamilo. This code checks for the
existence of the SSO cookie and if found, it decrypts
it to retrieve the contained user email and the
Session ID. The session ID is used to verify that the
decryption was successful and that this Session ID is
indeed valid in the database of the CMS. After this
verification, the user details corresponding to the
decrypted email, are fetched from the LMS user
database and the user is also logged in the LMS.
Figure 3: LMS Search Box.
Figure 4: Single Sign on Mechanism.
Additionally a search module is implemented on
the CMS that will provide the ability to the user for a
unified content search functionality. This module
searches the content of both the CMS (nodes) and
the LMS (learning path titles, learning path
documents such as HTML or text files, course titles,
course, descriptions/ objectives/ topics/
methodologies/resources) (Figure 3). Furthermore,
there is the ability to display a “My Courses” block
inside the CMS, where the user can see and directly
navigate to the LMS courses that he/she is
subscribed to. This happens with another custom
made module that also uses SOAP web services for
the communication between CMS & LMS. This
process is show in Figure 5.
Figure 5: My Courses.
3.4 Sensorimotor Learning and LMS
Since the LMS is not aware of the Sensorimotor
Learning (SML) process that will take place through
the 3D Visualization module for Sensorimotor
Learning, certain functions will be implemented that
will read information about the users’ performance
during their SML sessions. After the user finishes
playing the sensorimotor games the results of his
session can be uploaded to the Web Platform and
stored in the user’s gaming profile. This
communication will be done via RESTful web
services and with the exchange of XML files
containing the required data. The information will be
stored at the platform and added to their profile so
the teacher can have a detailed view of the learners’
acquired skills during these sessions. More
specifically and for this purpose we designed
additional tables in the database schema that will be
used to store the users Sensorimotor Learning
performance such as remarks and comments about
his performance as well as his/her final score.
Furthermore, we have designed the implementation
workflow of the LMS module that will present these
results to the teacher. Another important point is that
a common learning path for the sensorimotor game
and the LMS activities will be proposed, accessible
through the platform. Concretely it means that the
learner can access the platform, do different learning
activities and then pass through the same learning
Figure 6: Sensorimotor Learning and learning paths.
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path to the practical part with the use of sensors.
This Sensorimotor Learning and LMS
communication part is currently under development.
4 USER PROFILES
As mentioned the goal of i-treasures platform is to
provide access to ICH resources and to contribute to
the transmission and knowledge exchange of the rare
know-how among different types of users.
Therefore, three main types of user profiles are
identified: teacher/expert, student and researcher.
4.1 Teacher/Expert’s Profile
More specifically, teacher/expert has the ability to
design and create educational learning scenarios, by
using appropriate tools (i.e. online course creation,
quiz creation, discussion forums, educational content
creation, etc.) that the Learning Management System
(LMS) provides.
4.2 Learner’s Profile
The learner has the ability to attend the courses that
have been uploaded to the platform by the
teacher/expert. Apart from the use of LMS, the
student can use the 3D Visualization for
Sensorimotor Learning module, which will support
him/her to learn, practice and master the different
types of ICH. Finally, the purpose of the researcher
to use this platform is mainly the semantic search
capabilities that are provided.
4.3 Researcher’s Profile
The researcher can use the digital repository in order
to retrieve more accurate and relevant results to their
queries. The semantic search is performed over ICH
artifacts indexed according to metadata schemata.
5 EVALUATION
5.1 The Evaluation Framework
Figure 7 depicts an operational model hypothesising
that the ICH platform design positively mediates the
relationship between information provided by the
ICH platform and its performance. The information
construct in this pilot evaluating exercise comprised
two subscales (i.e., purpose of website and quality of
the informational content); the design construct
comprised three subscales (i.e., accessibility,
navigation, and interaction); and the performance
construct comprised two scales (i.e., effectiveness
and efficiency). Considering that the model refers to
perceived constructs, it is further assumed that
controls (e.g., users’ gender, age, and level of
education) may influence the information –
performance relationship.
Figure 7: The Evaluation Framework.
5.2 Methods
Data for this evaluation exercise was collected in
November 2014 by help of an e-questionnaire,
which was completed by 54 students at the
University of Macedonia – Greece, after having used
the ICH platform. All items were measured on a
scale ranging from 1 = not at all/very bad to 5 = very
much/very good. Example of the items included:
Purpose, ‘How clearly the scope of the website is
stated?’; Content, ‘How accurate is the information
provided?’; Accessibility, ‘How easy is access to
information?’; Navigation, ‘How consistent is the
appearance of the site between its parts?’;
Interaction, ‘Does the website provide potential
alternative content presentation to users?’;
Effectiveness, ‘Does the website meet its
objectives?’; and Efficiency, ‘Does the website use
the fewest possible resources to meet its
objectives?’.
5.3 Estimation
Before estimation the survey instrument was
examined with respect to construct internal
consistency, construct validity, construct composite
reliability, construct discriminant validity, and
common method bias (Hair et al., 2008). To test the
proposed framework the methodology of structural
equations models, or latent variable models, was
used via the estimating package of SPSS-AMOS.
The estimated path diagram for the proposed
framework is presented in Figure 8. The circles
represent the related latent variables and the bold
arrows indicate the structural relationships between
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the corresponding variables. The numbers that are
assigned to each arrow show the estimated
standardized coefficients. All coefficients are
significant, except those referring to the controls.
The goodness-of-fit indexes confirmed the validity
of the operational model (Chi-Square = 37.530, df =
32, p-value = 0.230, Normed-Chi-Square = 1.173,
RMSEA = 0.058, NFI = 0.838, CFI = 0.970, GFI =
0.881) ( Bollen, 1989).
Figure 8: Evaluating Performance.
5.4 Findings
There are five major findings of this evaluation
exercise. First, the purpose and content of the
information provided by the ICH platform, as
perceived by users, strongly influence performance.
Second, the design of the platform, in terms of
accessibility, navigation, and interaction, ‘partially
mediates’ the information – performance
relationship. Third, the ‘unmediated path’ that
directly links information with performance has a
low value, indicating that the design of the platform
constitutes a correct and indispensable part of the
platform. Fourth, considering that all structural
coefficients (except those of the controls) are
positive and have high values, it reflects the high
quality of the ICH platform. Fifth, the personal
characteristics of the users do not influence their
perceptions about the performance of the platform.
6 CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE
WORK
Some limitations of the current version of the
platform can be identified. For example a visitor
without profile can not have access to the LMS and
to certain functions such as the Text to Song or the
advanced research. A key feature that is under
investigation, is the ability for the SML sessions’
results to be directly “injected” in a learning path
session of the LMS. This will be useful in cases
where we would like to create a mixed learning path
in the LMS, where the steps embedded in it, could
contain both theory lessons and SML sessions. This
means that a learner could be prevented from
progressing through the learning path unless he/she
successfully completes an SML session that is
dictated by the learning path designer
7 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The research leading to these results has received
funding from the European Union, Seventh
Framework Programme (FP7-ICT-2011-9) under
grant agreement n° 600676.
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