On supporting e-learning in the field of resilience management with an open source authoring tool

Today more than ever, many pedagogical and technological features could be exploited with the aim of improving and making more effective the opportunities of distance learning. Among them we can identify the use of virtual and augmented reality-based technologies, but also the possibility of creating and distributing digital open resources. Both of them characterize the increasing scenarios of Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs). In this context, a key role is played by all the tools that support authors in editing and managing e-learning content and activities. Such authoring tools can be online or offline, and should offer an adequate support to the design and the creation of open (digital) educational resources, which should be compliant with the most common and well-known international e-learning standards (Mirri et al. 2011).

Several works have been done with the aim of exploiting virtual and augmented reality technologies in the context of e-learning and distance education. From medicine, to astronomy, from engineering to geometry, from anatomy to chemistry, several disciplines and topics can take advantages by exploiting interactive technologies: ranging from 3D objects reconstruction to Second Life environments, from immersive virtual reality to remote collaborative augmented reality (Lucke and Zender 2011; Trelease and Nieder 2013; Hesse and Gumhold 2011). Such a plethora of technologies are not yet taken into account by e-learning standards and by the most commonly used Learning Content Management Systems (LCMSs) and e-learning authoring tools, even if they are at the basis of several prototypes which have been studied with the aim of improving e-learning effectiveness. Some prototypes have been designed and are still under development in the context of resilience management-related topics too. For instance, within the RESINT project, an augmented reality model has been defined. But there is still the need of standardized online platforms which can support on the one hand authors in creating such kind of content in an open way and on the other hand learners in exploiting them while they are acquiring related skills and competencies.

The term Open Educational Resources (OER), coined at UNESCO’s 2002 Forum on the Impact of Open Courseware for Higher Education in Developing Countries, labels teaching, learning and research materials in any medium (digital or not) which is available, released under an open license that permits free access or use. Since the establishment of the European Higher Education Area, European Universities have expanded their activities within different areas of collaboration and cooperation around course provision and joint degrees. Furthermore, according to Miller (2011), the opportunity for faculty members and institutions to openly share content beyond traditional institutional boundaries has also grown into an international movement. Nowadays, the European Union governments are fostering awareness of OER though the promotion and use of these resources to widen access to education, whether formal, informal or non-formal, with an emphasis on lifelong learning, to contribute to social inclusion, gender equity and special needs education. If we accept to face the challenge of OER in Higher Education, it is essential to change or modify our educational perspective, including finding creative solutions to shift from prescriptive educational methods towards open learning formats (Ferrari and Traina 2013).

A relevant topic of the above-mentioned scenario concerns, for instance, the mismatch between free access to the so called Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and the level of openness and reuse of its digital contents. Clearly, the free access in a massive course does not usually match with the gratuity (Chiappe et al. 2015). By taking in account this example, we can underline that while access to massive online open course is free, the opportunity to access content without costs does not imply, in some cases, the possibility to re-use content in other contexts, to edit or to combine them into other digital products to create new educational resources. This is one of the RESINT project challenges. Unfortunately, in most of the cases, both contents and platforms are characterized by closed policies of copyright, which prohibits for instance, the use, re-use and distribution of digital learning contents. While the European Union invests (from economic and cultural points of view) to promote politics and practices related to the diffusion of Open Educational Resources (OERs), we can notice that most of the eLearning/MOOCs experiences are “closed”. Taking into account this issue, one of the expected results of the RESINT project is the development and the distribution of an open source authoring tool (with a clear pedagogical and technological foundation) to equip e-learning authors with the creation of OERs, which would be accessible—and reusable—through Learning Content Management Systems (LCMSs).

In this scenario, we have designed, developed and customized an e-learning authoring tool, called BEAT (Bologna E-learning Authoring Tool) and based on the open source AContent. The main goal of BEAT is to support authors in creating and editing open didactical materials and online and interactive activities. Currently, functionalities devoted to let the author create interactive activities and virtual and augmented reality-based learning objects are still under development, while we have completed the mechanisms to create open content and activities. This paper presents main design issues and the customization of BEAT dedicated to the RESINT project and shows a use case in the context of resilience management-related topics.

The remainder of the paper is organized as follows: “Background” presents the background and the concepts at the basis of BEAT. “BEAT: design issues and implementation” describes main design issues and BEAT implementation. “Case description” shows a BEAT use case, while “Discussion and evaluation” concludes the paper.

In order to produce effective e-learning materials and activities based on the open resources, which are interoperable, re-usable, compliant with the most common e-learning standards (Mirri et al. 2011) and which exploit interactive and innovative technologies, it is fundamental to equip e-learning authors with an adequate and complete authoring tool. Such a tool should support authors both in the content design and content creation phases (Boni et al. 2006). The choice of a specific authoring tool has a significant impact on the final quality of e-learning products (Di Iorio et al. 2006) and this is particularly true whenever it is used by large organizations to produce content on a wide scale or when Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are offered. An effective e-learning authoring tool should provide an adequate support to (Guralnick and Levy 2009): (1) the compliance to e-learning formats and standards, to ensure the content portability through different e-learning platforms/systems, so as to make it interoperable and re-usable (Ferretti et al. 2008); (2) the creation of new content as well as editing of existing ones, without forcing the author to acquire specific technological skills (Di Iorio et al. 2008); (3) reduce the learning curve to learn how to be used by authors. A mechanism which can be exploited with the aim of supporting authors in designing effective e-learning content and activities (both in terms of educational aspects and technological issues) is based on the use of templates, which can be provided to the author by means of wizard or interactive Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs). Such a mechanism is usually implemented by means of a specific engine which can be embedded in the platform that delivers and manages the content, but templates in the e-learning context have to deal with e-learning standards. This means that they have to be compliant with the mechanism of packaging standard content, making them self-contained and platform independent. Hence, templates in the e-learning context have to be autonomous and not linked to specific template engines provided by some Learning Content Management Systems or by some repositories: they have to be exploited in the design and editing phase to create the content (Hui and Liu 2005) and they have to be included in the content package.

We can observe several advantages derived by the templates introduction in e-learning authoring tools; among the main ones there are the support to authors in designing and creating a learning object (template mechanism augments the usability of the authoring tools and can provide a more effective way to create learning objects) and the availability of a set of rules to be followed. This latter one is generally useful, but it is actually necessary whenever content are produced on a large scale and some qualitative/quantitative standards have to be met by all authors. Again, simple characteristics can be in charge of the graphical aspects of content, others, more complex, to didactical proprieties of the content itself (e.g. methodology, goals description, assessment). E-learning activities which require different sets of given standards could be easily and effectively created by providing authors with several templates (Aust and Meyen 2005).

In this context, after having taken into account different authoring tools (such as EXelearning http://exelearning.org/, MyUDUTU http://www.myudutu.com/; HTMLArea (http://moodle.org/plugins/view.php?id=9 and MS LCDS http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/training/lcds.aspx) we have chosen to work on AContent (http://atutor.ca/acontent/) and to design and developed an extension we have called BEAT (Bologna E-learning Authoring Tool), to support authors in creating open, interoperable, standard and interactive learning object. The choice of AContent has been driven by different reasons: it is open source; it is Web-based; it produces content compliant with the most common e-learning standards.

The main aim of BEAT (Bologna E-learning Authoring Tool) is to support authors in creating e-learning content, by ensuring pre-defined level of technical and didactical quality and by providing a certain level of standardization among all the created learning objects (in the context of the same class or of the same course). In this context, the use of templates is the solution that better answered these needs. In fact, templates are at a same time a support to a flexible and easy content creation and a tool to provide authors with suggestions, supports and methodologies in designing and producing e-learning content.

We decided to exploit a problematic didactic model in e-learning training paths, echoing the topic of pedagogical problematicism and defining a complex hypothesis which can emphasize the integrated coexistence of different didactic strategies referring back to a problematicist matrix (Bertin 1968, Guerra 2010). The theoretical foundation of this model explicitly recalls the main learning theories and their critical interaction.

Hence, in this paper we propose a model we have applied in BEAT, which is based on the possibility of defining three main learning paths, by focusing, respectively, on the object, the process and the subject of learning (Guerra et al. 2008). In order to support didactical material authors in creating e-learning content by means of the BEAT authoring tool, we proposed a structure template which equipped authors with a predefined organization of the learning objects as for goals, content, assessments, tools, references, etc. The proposed approach is suitable in supporting authors, let them create content taking into account pedagogical and didactical aspects, not only technical point of views. At the same time, such an approach does not constrain the author, letting him/her freely choose a specific methodology, in particular the most feasible and suitable one, according to his/her didactical needs.

The following subsections detail about the BEAT characteristics which we have exploited with the aim of providing a customization tailored for the RESINT project, in the context of creating and offering didactical content and activities related to the topic of the resilience management. In particular, the three-layer templates architecture, with specific attention to the learning objects template structures. A more detailed description of the wizards can be found in “BEAT: design issues and implementation”, where a case study is illustrated together with a learning object step-by-step creation.

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. 1.

   Defining the learning object structure (which is composed by folders and pages).

    
2. 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:

1. (a)

   Exporting the related learning object as an IMS Content Package compliant packet.

    
2. (b)

   Exporting the related learning object as an IMS Common Cartridge compliant packet.

    
3. (c)

   Creating a new folder, with the same level of the element selected in the outline menu.

    
4. (d)

   Creating a new sub-folder, with a lower level of the element selected in the outline menu.

    
5. (e)

   Creating a new page, with the same level of the element selected in the outline menu.

    
6. (f)

   Creating a new page, with a lower level of the element selected in the outline menu.

    
7. (g)

   Deleting the page or folder selected in the outline menu.

    
8. (h)

   Deleting the whole learning object.

    
9. (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.

The use of e-learning is common and successful in several contexts and institutions all over the world. Benefits (both in terms of costs and effectiveness) of e-learning are well known and confirmed by several works (Fenu and Picconi 2010; Pittard 2004; Wilson and Wilson 2007). Starting from 2008, the increasing of online presence and open learning opportunities have create the basis of the new e-learning phenomenon: the development and diffusion of MOOCs (Guerra and Ferrari 2015). Customized and adequate tools are needed so as to support the e-learning authors in creating didactical and open materials and to support tutors in involving learners in interactive activities.

In our case study, we have customized and developed a specific authoring tool to create open and standardized didactical materials. We have exploited an already existing open source software, by adapting and improving it, according to the needs of the RESINT project. Our aim is to offer an adequate tool to the project partners, so as to support them in creating e-learning content and activities related to resilience management topics.

On the one hand, the use of a unique tool for all these authors, can be intended as a limitation of their creativity, forcing them in using a tool which is different from the one they traditionally exploit. On the other hand, the customization we have applied aims to overcome these limitations, since different learning object structures (supporting the author’s creativity) and templates (mimicking the most commonly used personal productivity software) are provided. Moreover, BEAT has been designed and developed to be cross-browsed: this means that any content authors can fully exploit it by means of any browser (Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, etc.).

In the RESINT project, an initial and short training for e-learning authors (coming from the different partners) is expected, as well as an online support whenever necessary. These, together with the adapted interface and the wizard features, would support the authors in acquiring the related skills to exploit BEAT.

From a technical point of view, the technologies at the basis of BEAT are open source and well known. Any institution could adopt it: the requirements are a Web server compliant with the AMP architecture and a system administrator confident with such an architecture.

This paper present the customization of an e-learning authoring tool, made within the RESINT project, with the aim of supporting learning objects authors while they create, edit and manage interactive and open e-learning content and activities. Such a tool, called BEAT, is still under development. In particular, the mechanisms which enable the creation and the distribution of Open Educational Resources (based on a three-layer template architecture and on some wizards) are completed and a use case is shown in the paper. Those functionalities devoted to let the authors exploit virtual and augmented reality technologies in the e-learning content and activities creation and management are still under development. We have also customized a Moodle instance for the RESINT project and we are currently including and extending augment and virtual reality-based functionalities so as to equip learners with more interactive content and activities in the context of resilience management-related topics.