Widgets and IMS Learning Design CETIS Conference, 2008 Dai Griffiths The Institute for Educational Cybernetics, The University of Bolton

Way back in 1992 Hypercard sank WWW emerged There is balance between interoperability / usability / functionality which is still with us 2

IMS-LD and widgets Proposes a language which seeks –an improved balance –a better total performance It is a model of the wider problem (to the extent that LD is a good model, and the underlying technology is satisfactory) Widgets also look at the balance of interoperability and functionality 3

TENCompetence Wookie server (architecture by Scott Wilson, developed by Paul Sharples) Wookie manages the widgets available, and handles the multiple user functionality A widget world to be integrated into LD and others Can be used for LD, and for others 4

Ask not what widgets can do for LD… What can LD do for widgets? LD provides a way of defining and running flows of tools, to be made available to different sets of learners, in their roles as they relate to particular activities 5

Representation of services in LD The actual services for use in a learning context (e.g. wiki or forum) are not specified in IMS-LD. Only four generic service are available: –Conference –Monitor –Send Mail –Index Search What happens when you run the UOL? 6

Previous approaches (1) SCORM integration 7 LD engine SCO 1.2 engine Coppercore Service Integration (CCSI) LD Player servlet Browser SCO object Client API adapter

Problems with integrating specific services Each new service needs a new adaptor Creating the adaptors for a service is hard work When the service changes, the adaptors need to be re-written 8

Previous approaches (2) Integrate the player into a specific Virtual Learning Environment The.LRN platform has implemented a player which has access to all the services available in.LRN This provides a rich set of services, but is not portable to other platforms. 9

Previous approaches (3) Independent systems inspired by IMS-LD focused on providing services Ambition to export to IMS-LD at a later date e.g. –LAMS has a rich set of services, but the IMS- LD export cannot represent them –“Learning Design Language” provides an independent specification for services 10

Previous approaches (4) None of these approaches provides both –a rich set of services –a reasonable degree of portability across different LD-compliant platforms 11

The solution proposed: The Wookie widget server In TENCompetence we have developed a widget server (Wookie) Supports multi-user widgets Uses W3 draft specification Current widgets include forum, chat, vote Built in order to resolve the IMS-LD issue, but can be used independently 12

A wookie widget in WordPress 13

Wookie widgets in Moodle 14

IMS-LD and Widgets is a powerful combination A UOL can specify –which widgets to make available –when they should be made available –which users should see them in which contexts You can define a complex reusable flow –Give learners the right tools in context –Provision them simply by assigning a role to a learner 15

A generic solution The SCORM integration was a single service Wookie integration provides a framework for the provision of services Widgets are simple to develop (javascript and HTML) The complexity of multiple users is handled on the server side 16

Integration with the CopperCore IMS-LD Engine 17

Authoring A Wookie server advertises the widgets which it offers The author of a UOL can choose which widgets to include a parameter is added to the service element in an environment widget= Authoring handled transparently by TENCompetence authoring tool ReCourse 18

Authoring in ReCourse 19

Extensible, but also portable New widgets can be made, or adapted from existing widgets and imported Each server may have different widgets –Default set of widgets provided with Wookie –Administrator can set a particular widget as default for any widget type –Users can expect to find, for example, a forum on any runtime system, in the flavour determined by the administrator 20

Please make use of Wookie and the IMS-LD toolkit Open Source Available at More widgets to come soon –RSS reader –Wiki –… 21