Concept-Based System Design to Personalize E-learning Chao Boon Teo, Robert Kheng Leng Gay Information Communication Institute of Singapore School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering Nanyang Technological University Singapore 639798 Abstract: - E-learning aims to foster significant learning improvements through the use of advanced and proven educational techniques. It encompasses the vision of achieving the essential educational goal of lifelong learning. However, literature reviews on the current e- learning system identified some significant shortcomings. Among these shortcomings, we single out the lack of personalization, collaborations and the failure to adopt technological advancements to enhance learning as the key impediments to successful adoption of e-learning. Integrating our understanding across the surveyed literature, we proposed a concept-based knowledge environment that is based on modern technologies like Semantic Web, Grid Computing and Web Services. Key-words: - e-learning, concept map, distance learning, instructional design, learning objects Existing research tends to emphasize on the 1. Introduction standardization of metadata standards and the structure of learning resources. Although these are E-learning aims to foster significant learning challenging intentions to enable widespread improvements using the most advanced and adoption, these challenges are not the only proven educational techniques. The advancement important aspect within the comprehensive vision. of technology and the advent of the information This paper identified the lack of highway coupled with e-learning have eliminated personalization, collaborations and adoption of barriers of time, distance and socioeconomic technological advancements for learning as the status, creating a whole new dimension to key impediments to the successful adoption of e- learning. The dramatic opening of access to the learning. Therefore, to address these limitations, a ever burgeoning deposit of knowledge has concept-based knowledge environment for increased the need for collaborative learning. interactive e-learning was designed to exploit However, despite its ambitious vision, modern technologies to provide the literature reviews unveiled major concerns personalization of learning experiences. This regarding its effectiveness and appropriateness [1, environment employs concept map educational 2]. Although there are many strands of research, advantages to build up knowledge in our no person or organization is solely responsible for collaborative e-learning system. Each concept will its development or standardization. With no function as digital objects to serve as the most validating guidelines, organizations are jumping basic form of learning. into the arena and proclaiming their products as This paper is organized as follows: Section 2 ‘e-learning compliant’. However, what they are presents the skeleton system architecture and key doing is just purely automating their services design issues. Section 3 discusses the high level online. Except for the elimination of time and system modules. Lastly, this paper will be space barrier, this online content provides no concluded in section 4 and some future research enhancement to the learning experiences. work is suggested. 2. Architectural Considerations 2.1 Framework Design The knowledge environment will be This section presents the skeleton document developed using the layered architecture as shown that span the entire design process of the in Fig. 1. The layered architecture is chosen over environment. Although this research addresses other architectural patterns such as client/server, problems only in the domain of e-learning, the three-tier or peer-to-peer pattern as it aids in system must be modeled with an architecture that organizing the systems into layers of subsystem. is flexible enough to be independent on any This is extremely important as organizing the infrastructure. Considerations must be taken to design model in layers aids reuse, one of the most avoid the pitfalls of CASE where a thousand important aspects of object oriented design (and different modeling languages are conjured, e-learning). Besides reusability, portability is also causing the problem to be escalated. enhanced as changes are isolated only to one layer. To cater for e-learning, the system must be Each layer in the layered architecture is a set open in its architecture and supports a large and of subsystems that share the same degree of extensible class of distributed digital information generality and interface volatility. services. The basic entities to be stored, retrieved Application-specific and managed will be information stored in the layer form of learning objects. In the system’s context, these learning objects will be seen technically as a Application-general form of digital objects to be stored, accessed and layer managed. Thus, the basic function is to provide a Middleware access protocol service for locating and layer disseminating these digital objects. System-software This basic function will constitute a minimal layer set of requirements for the system to be fully Fig. 1 functional. While it is not the research’s intent to build a universal, wide-area digital information 2.2 Functional Layers infrastructure, considerable design efforts are The knowledge framework will exploit the employed to ensure that the infrastructure, at its capabilities of open-standard Web technologies very least, must be interoperable, robust, and such as XML and Web Services to construct a flexible enough to support other advanced Grid infrastructure that will harness the Semantic services and elaborations that will come into Web advantages. The Knowledge Framework existence as the system matures. Thus, the system encompasses three functional layers, namely, wire, will be built upon an interoperable layer that will description and discovery layer. not restraint the higher level user and service level choices such that it will become inappropriate to Discover y WSIL UDDI OWL+OWL Schema/DAML+OIL add in new features at any point of time. GSDL With the primarily aim set at creating a Description WSDL RDF + RDF Schema platform for supporting social, intellectual, and technological innovation, the knowledge system will harness the capabilities of Grid Computing, SOAP / XML Protocol Semantic Web and Web Services. These three Wire Protocol technologies are seen as the future IT XML technologies that will spearhead the knowledge revolution. Applications will be developed to Fig. 2 illustrate the environment’s generality and efficiency in the sharing of resources. A 2.2.1 Wire Protocol Layer collaborative workspace for supporting diversified This layer forms the platform and specifies the virtual, Grid computing and e-learning wire protocol for supporting the client and server applications will also be provided. running on different machines in the distributed network. Among the numerous wire protocols, Description Framework (RDF) and Resource Simple Object Application Protocol (SOAP) is Description Framework Schema (RDFS) to chosen as it is seen as the technology that will be achieve “machine understandable” information. deeply embedded in the future of distributed Although RDF is used as the ‘descriptive computing. Besides, SOAP offers ease of language’ for resources, it is a further W3C interoperability and scalability when used with initiative, building upon earlier developments Web Services, one of the future IT revolutions. such as Dublin Core and the Platform for Internet Thus, with the ease of coupling with other Content Selectivity (PICS) content rating technologies such as the Universal Discovery, initiative. Thus, while RDF is used to empower Description, and Integration (UDDI) and Web creation, exchange and the use of metadata, the Services Description Language (WSDL), SOAP is framework will use the Dublin Core Element Set chosen as the wire protocol to transform the to capture a representation of essential aspects knowledge applications and aids communication related to the description of resources. over the Web with the concept of Web Services. This layer also includes XML Namespace However, as SOAP is merely a wire protocol, it (XML-NS), a construct which is adopted in RDF does not implement security. Thus, we are to provide a comprehensive system describing all proposing the use of SOAP with Extensible resources’ aspects. XML-NS provides a simple Markup Language (XML) protocol to allow the method for qualifying elements and attribute employment of application-level security. names by associating them with namespaces As SOAP is a text-based protocol that uses identified by URI references. It harnesses the XML for data encoding, XML will be employed great power of XML and RDF to declare their at the base of the framework. XML is a cross- own modes of expression for resources platform, extensible, and text-based standard for description and yet allows 'authorship' sharing. representing data. It is also a key technology in Thus, the framework will employ Dublin Core the development of Web Services. Element Set when possible and use XML/RDF to The following standards are employed: XML allow terms in a metadata vocabulary to be treated Version 1.3, and SOAP Version 1.2. as reliably, unambiguous, describable objects. Besides providing description, this layer also 2.2.2 Description Layer looks into describing the communication of The Description Layer lies directly above the protocols and message formats. To provide a Wire Protocol