This section is devoted to present a case study of BEAT at work, in the context of offering didactical activities to support the learning and the teaching of Resilience Management-related topics. The case has been developed on the basis of the BEAT version we have personalized for the RESINT project. LF and LG have been involved in the design of the authoring tool from a pedagogical point of view, SM and PS have designed the platform and the personalization from a technical point of view, and SO has made the development and the personalization on the open source code of AContent. The case here presented is based on the creation of two different kind of digital content: textual and multimedia ones.
The presented authoring tool is an open source software, licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). It is a free software, based on an AMP (Apache MySQL PHP) architecture, which can be freely modified and made available to the community.
A BEAT use case
Here we describe how a learning object author can create a learning object by means of BEAT, with the aim of providing learners with textual and video content. The learning object the author is going to create is simple and does not require interaction among learners and teachers. The author is a BEAT user and is already logged to the BEAT platform. First of all, it is necessary to separate the learning object creation in two parts:
-
1.
Defining the learning object structure (which is composed by folders and pages).
-
2.
Filling all the created pages with the content, by means of the proper templates and the themes.
Figure 1 shows the home page of BEAT for the RESINT project. Once the author is logged, in order to create a new learning object, he/she can click on the “Create Learning Object” link.
The “Create Learning Object” tool is activated and the author can import an already existing learning object by uploading it from his/her PC or by typing the corresponding URL (see Fig. 2). The import will be successful if the learning object is compliant with the most common e-learning standards Content Package (IMS Content Packaging Specification 2007) or Common Cartridge (IMS Common Cartridge Specification 2013).
Once the author has defined the learning object title and description (as a summary of its content), it is possible to manually create a specific structure, or to exploit the already existing ones: the knowledge-based model structure and the meta-competency-based model structure (as described in the previous subsection). Our author aims to create a simple learning object, which involves remembering, classifying, listing, executing and retrieving as cognitive processes, hence the knowledge-based model structure is the most suitable one. The author can choose “Structure” and then “Select one structure” and finally “Knowledge based” (as shown in Fig. 3).
The learning object structure has been automatically created by BEAT and it is navigable and visible on the learning object outline menu (on the left side of the BEAT interface, as shown in Fig. 4). It is now necessary to add goals, content and activities pages in the folders “Learning objectives”, “Activity” and “Self-Assessment”.
Since the author aims to create a learning object which offers learners textual and video content, he/she should add two new pages in the “Activity folder”: “Read text” and “Watch Video”. It is possible to complete this task by clicking on the “Activity” link in the Outline menu, and then by clicking on the “New page” icon in the toolbar menu (see Figs. 4, 5, “f” icon). Hence it is necessary to add the page title (“Read Text”) and then to save the page (as shown in Fig. 6). The actual page content will be created in a second phase as detailed in the following.
In a similar way, the author can create two new pages in the “Learning Objectives” folder (entitled “ObjectiveA” and “ObjectiveB”) and a new “Questions” page in the “Self-assessment” folder. The resulting learning object outline is depicted in Fig. 7.
By means of BEAT, the e-learning content authors can add, modify and delete content pages and/or folders by using the toolbar menu functionalities. Different tools can be found in such a menu, since it is related to the context, hence available tools are different according to the specific selected page or folder. The main available tools are those ones which can be activated by means of the toolbar icons depicted in Fig. 5:
-
(a)
Exporting the related learning object as an IMS Content Package compliant packet.
-
(b)
Exporting the related learning object as an IMS Common Cartridge compliant packet.
-
(c)
Creating a new folder, with the same level of the element selected in the outline menu.
-
(d)
Creating a new sub-folder, with a lower level of the element selected in the outline menu.
-
(e)
Creating a new page, with the same level of the element selected in the outline menu.
-
(f)
Creating a new page, with a lower level of the element selected in the outline menu.
-
(g)
Deleting the page or folder selected in the outline menu.
-
(h)
Deleting the whole learning object.
-
(i)
Editing and modifying the selected page.
Once the author has created the learning object structure, it is possible to complete it, by filling the pages with the proper content. Our author aim to create a page with the textual content which should be composed by a header (with the RESINT project logo), a textual content composed by a list and some paragraphs enriched by a digital image. Hence, after selecting the “Read Text” page on the outline menu on the left, the author can choose the “Editing” tool (the “i” item on the previous list, shown in Fig. 5). Then, by means of the editing window (similar to the one depicted in Fig. 6), the author can edit the content, by inserting the new textual list and paragraphs. Thanks to the layout and the page template, the author can set how the page will be structured and shown to learners. Such templates can be set by clicking on the “Template” link and the Template System will be shown to the author (see Fig. 8). Such a functionality lets the author choose the page template. Once a layout template has been set, then it will be applied to the page content (see Fig. 9).
Now the author can edit and complete the content page, by creating the page the learner will exploit by means of the Learning Content Management System with the related learning activity.
By selecting the “Theme” functionality, the author can apply a layout template to the page (by clicking on the “Apply theme to page” button) or to the whole learning object (by clicking on the “Apply theme to learning object”). The default layout template is the RESINT project one, but the author’s creativity is not limited in this sense, in fact he/she can choose among different ones (as shown in Fig. 10) or can create a new layout template.
The same page with the same content is shown in Figs. 11 and 12. Figure 11 depicts the page content without any layout template, while Fig. 12 depicts the same page where the RESINT project layout template has been applied. In this last part of the content page creation, it is really useful to assign some keywords to the page, related to its content, with the aim of facilitate the learning object research within RESINT BEAT. In the Meta-data functionality, it is possible to set and save such an information. Finally, Fig. 13 shows a page with a video content.