Publications

The importance of a distance learning program heavily depends on the type and quality of the provided digital content. The Hellenic Open University (HOU) offers distance learning courses and therefore the volume of the provided digital learning content is significantly large. This fact establishes essential the need for an efficient and effective mechanism for searching, managing and retrieving the educational content. A modern approach for the organization of the digital learning material is the Learning Objects (LOs) paradigm, the use of which is adopted by many e-learning systems and applications nowadays. In this work we try to take advantage of all of the good characteristics of LOs and propose an instructional design methodology that builds courses based on these particular chunks of educational material. The aim of the proposed methodology is exactly to provide guidelines for the design and creation of courses based on LOs. Secondly, it intends to exploit semantic technologies in order to capture and represent the knowledge that is produced during each step. This semantically enriched information, regarding a course, is could be ideally utilized during the creation of LOs.

Learning outcomes are statements that should accompany any type of educational material intended for lifelong learning. These statements deliver important information, which works as an indicator for students in the process of learning. However, in order for this information to be further utilizable within the context of intelligent e-learning applications, a more fine-grained definition and structure should be adopted. Having these in mind, we initially assign a strict and rather technical definition for the notion of learning outcomes, which is fully aligned, though, with their educational purpose. We then propose an ontological model for their representation and classification, which fully adheres to this definition. Our ultimate goal is to provide the mean for exploiting all aspects of knowledge implied by such statements within intelligent applications. To bear out this possibility, we apply our model to a selected piece of educational material provided by the Hellenic Open University.

In this paper, we shall discuss the role of Cultural Mediators and their qualifications and training needs, and then we shall present the a distant training course that we developed as part of the LdV TIPS project. The course employed the T-learning methodology and involved three technological platforms, namely Internet, mobile phones and IPTV, in order to ensure continuous availability and timely deployment of the course content. Finally, we shall present an assessment of the course based on the personal testimonies and the evaluation results of the TIPS Greek Class.