<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"><title>IMS Learning Design (short introduction)</title><link rel="stylesheet" href="./mystyle.css" type="text/css"><meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets V1.68.1"><link rel="home" href="index.html" title="IMS-LD: Integration with .LRN Specification (v 1.1)"><link rel="up" href="ar01.html" title="Before Starting: IMS Learning Design"><link rel="previous" href="ar01.html" title="Before Starting: IMS Learning Design"><link rel="next" href="ar01s02.html" title="Levels A, B and C"><script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">
var win=null;
function NewWindow(mypage,myname,w,h,scroll,pos){
if(pos=="random"){LeftPosition=(screen.width)?Math.floor(Math.random()*(screen.width-w)):100;TopPosition=(screen.height)?Math.floor(Math.random()*((screen.height-h)-75)):100;}
if(pos=="center"){LeftPosition=(screen.width)?(screen.width-w)/2:100;TopPosition=(screen.height)?(screen.height-h)/2:100;}
settings='width='+w+',height='+h+',top='+TopPosition+',left='+LeftPosition+',scrollbars='+scroll+',location=no,directories=no,status=no,menubar=no,toolbar=no,resizable=no';
win=window.open(mypage,myname,settings);}
</script></head><body bgcolor="white" text="black" link="#0000FF" vlink="#840084" alink="#0000FF"><div class="navheader"><table width="100%" summary="Navigation header"><tr><th colspan="3" align="center">IMS Learning Design (short introduction)</th></tr><tr><td width="20%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="ar01.html">Prev</a>�</td><th width="60%" align="center">Before Starting: IMS Learning Design</th><td width="20%" align="right">�<a accesskey="n" href="ar01s02.html">Next</a></td></tr></table><hr></div><div class="section" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="id2592665"></a>IMS Learning Design (short introduction)</h2></div></div></div><p><span class="emphasis"><em>We recommend to read the <a href="http://www.imsglobal.org/learningdesign/" target="_top">IMS-LD
specification</a> before reading this document. We made a introduction
aout it here that will give you the required information in order to
understand better the rest of this document. Skip this section if you are
already familiarized with the IMS-LD spec. </em></span></p><p>IMS Learning Design (from now on referred as IMS-LD) is a
specification done by the IMS Global Learning Consortium. It is an
XML-based description for e-learning. It provides a global framework for
including the description of different pedagogical and methodological
learning models. Therefore IMS-LD is independent from a concrete pedagogy
or methodology.</p><p>The XML file that is compliant with IMS-LD specifies a set of
learning activities (which are usually related to a set of resources and
services) and who and when can do these activities and with which
conditions. Therefore, it establishes a sequencing of activities for each
role. IMS-LD is in principle independent from <a href="http://www.imsglobal.org/content/packagin/" target="_top">IMS Content
Packaging</a> (IMS CP), so it can be used without IMS CP.
Nevertheless, the most common case is to insert the IMS-LD file inside the
organizations element of an IMS CP and the result is called "unit of
learning". A unit of learning, as defined in the IMS-LD specification, is
an abstract term used to refer to any delimited piece of education or
training, such as a course, a module, a lesson, etc. In this
specification, the terms unit of learning and course are used to represent
the same thing: a collection of ordered activities which has associated
resources and services to learn that are going to be delivered to
different defined roles and the workflow of the activities.</p><p>Unit of learning and IMS Learning Design are not the same thing. A
learning design is a description of a learning method used to achieve
certain goals (learning objectives), and a unit of learning is the result
of packaging a learning design (for example using IMS CP). There are some
other terms introduced by IMS-LD that need to be defined, which are
briefly explained below:</p><div class="itemizedlist"><ul type="disc"><li><p><span class="bold"><strong>Prerequisites</strong></span>. The previous
requirements for learners for doing the unit of learning.</p></li><li><p><span class="bold"><strong>Objectives</strong></span>: They are the goals
to obtain in a unit of learning. Also it is possible to write
objectives for each particular activity.</p></li><li><p><span class="bold"><strong>Components.</strong></span> It defines
statically the following elements of a unit of learning: roles,
activities, environments and properties</p></li><li><p><span class="bold"><strong>Roles.</strong></span> It defines the different
types of users in a unit of learning. There are two basic types of
roles: Learner and Staff. But additional roles can be defined. The
roles form a hierarchical graph where the root roles are the basic
ones. For example inside Learner role we can have additional roles
depending on the students level or inside the staff role we can have
professors, teaching assisstants, tutors, etc. .LRN. in fact, has
defined predefined roles, so the sutdent role will be linked to the
Learner one and the proffessor, teaching assisstant, etc. can be
mapped to the IMS-LD corresponding ones. When there is no an exact
correspondence, then we will create new .LRN subgroups that match with
the IMS-LD roles.</p></li><li><p><span class="bold"><strong>Properties</strong></span>. This is something
that defines a concrete feature. There are local properties ,
local-person properties, local-role properties, global-personal
properties and global properties. They are used depending on the scope
of the property.</p></li><li><p><span class="bold"><strong>Activities</strong></span>. An activity is
something to be done, that usually has a description and an
environment. There are two types of activities: learning activities
(activities that are done by students in order to learn) and support
activities (activities to support or help students, usually done by
professors). Also there are structure activities which are an union of
several activities that can be presented to the student either in a
sequencial mode or for the user to select. The activities are the core
of the workflow of the learning design.</p></li><li><p><span class="bold"><strong>Environment</strong></span>. Collection of
learning objects (for example files to be viewed by the student),
services (like foros, chat, etc.) and sub-environments, in which
activities take place. When a student has to complete an activity that
have a concrete environment, then he/she can do whichever of the
learning objects and services that are defined inside this
environment</p></li><li><p><span class="bold"><strong>Service</strong></span>. For instance, a
discussion forum, email, conference service and monitor service (to
look at the properties).</p></li><li><p><span class="bold"><strong>Method</strong></span>. It defines the dinamic
part of learning design. It consists of several plays and contitions.
If a method has several plays then each play is executed in parallel
for all the roles. Therefore, for example a Learner can select in an
instant of time between the different parallel activities (one
activity for each play)</p></li><li><p><span class="bold"><strong>Play</strong></span> A play has a set of acts.
Each act is not executed until the previous one has been executed.
Therefore, it can be viewed as a sequence of acts. A play finishes
when all its acts has finished</p></li><li><p><span class="bold"><strong>Act</strong></span> It defines what activity to
do for each of role. Each role make the activity in parallel respect
to the rest of roles. An act is finished when all the roles have
finished its activity. This provides a synchronization point.</p></li><li><p><span class="bold"><strong>Conditions</strong></span>. They are used in
conjunction with properties to further refinement and to add
personalization facilities in the learning design. By these way, for
example is possible to take decissions taken into account the user
profile, assessments done by the student, selections of the students
during the course, etc.</p></li><li><p><span class="bold"><strong>Notification</strong></span>. Allows to send
messages between roles or to assign new learning or support activities
to roles based on certain events. When integrating IMS-LD with .LRN,
we take advantage of this capability in order to send messages between
the system's components. This can only be done if .LRN is fully aware
of the learner status inside the course.</p></li><li><p><span class="bold"><strong>Item</strong></span>. When a component, a
learning objective, or a prerequisite needs a resource, an item
element is used. The learning design provides a semantic context for
these items, so that runtime systems can know what to do with the
resource.</p></li></ul></div></div><div class="navfooter"><hr><table width="100%" summary="Navigation footer"><tr><td width="40%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="ar01.html">Prev</a>�</td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="u" href="ar01.html">Up</a></td><td width="40%" align="right">�<a accesskey="n" href="ar01s02.html">Next</a></td></tr><tr><td width="40%" align="left" valign="top">Before Starting: IMS Learning Design�</td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="h" href="index.html">Home</a></td><td width="40%" align="right" valign="top">�Levels A, B and C</td></tr></table></div></body></html>