SEAMAN

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Author(s): Gennaro Costagliola (University of Salerno, Italy), Filomena Ferrucci (University of Salerno, Italy), Giuseppe Polese (University of Salerno, Italy)and Giuseppe Scanniello (University of Basilicata, Italy)
Copyright: 2011
Pages: 16
Source title: Instructional Design: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools and Applications
Source Author(s)/Editor(s): Information Resources Management Association (USA)
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60960-503-2.ch314

Keywords: Education / Educational Technologies / Information Science Reference / Instructional Design

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Abstract

One of the crucial activities in the development of e-learning courses concerns the design phase. In this phase, instructional designers define the e-learning processes by specifying the activities students should carry out (knowledge objects, assessment, practice, etc.) and their temporal sequence. This phase is usually performed using an iterative process, with step-by-step refinements. Thus, it can greatly benefit of the availability of tools that assist instruction designers to carry out their work. In particular, a rapid prototyping approach could be effectively supported if the tool is also able to automatically generate the courses starting from the supplied specification. Moreover, such a tool should also provide support for reuse. To fulfil these requirements, in this chapter we present a tool based on a suite of visual languages, which has been specifically conceived to support instructional designers in the definition and creation of learning processes. The use of visual languages is motivated by the success they have achieved in other contexts (e.g., software engineering) for the construction of suitable models that allows to focus only on the features of interest and to provide more effective descriptions and reasoning. The proposed suite of visual languages includes the learning activity diagram, which extends UML activity diagrams to make them suitable for modelling e-learning processes, the Self-Consistent Learning Object language used to define knowledge contents, and the Test Maker Language for specifying assessment and self-assessment tests. The visual languages have been then implemented in SEAMAN (System for E-Learning Activity MANagement), a system prototype conceived to support instructional designers in the design, the generation, and the deployment of e-learning processes.

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