A Material-Framework-Object Model for Learning Material Management
Following problems have been found in traditional learning material management model based on courseware: common redundancy, the overlapped and desultory construction of the learning materials, and hardly adaptive to the diversity of the learning objectives and teaching methodologies. In the paper, a material-framework-objective model was proposed to improve the efficiency and quality of learning material management in the distance education by separating and recombining the basic materials, courseware, knowledge-points and learning goals. The model can also achieve the unification of the reuse, mobility and pertinence of the learning materials. A prototyping based on this model has been developed and taken into practice in Dongbei University of Financial and Economics.
Making flexible learning more flexible
As a response to the changing environment in which the educational sector operates today and, in particular, the increasingly diverse student population, many universities opt for flexible delivery of their courses. However, there is a tendency to focus too much on technology per se and not on the learning process. At the same time educational technology itself which still is lingering behind current developments in the information technology (IT) industry. We argue that educational technologies are still task-oriented rather than process-oriented and as such not capable of effectively supporting an integrated study process. We present a concept of Flex-eL-a flexible, fully integrated, workflow enabled, learning environment. We argue that flexible learning should be even more flexible and based on that premise, we critically evaluate the existing technologies for flexible delivery. Furthermore, we describe the main features of Flex-eL and discuss some important issues that we have come across during its pilot implementation.
On Capturing Process Requirements of Workflow Based Business Information Systems
The workflow technology manages the execution of business activities and coordinates the flow of information throughout the enterprise. It is emerging as one of the fastest growing disciplines in information technology. It is essential to correctly and effectively capture the workflow specific requirements of business information systems before their deployment through workflow management systems. In this paper, we look at different issues in capturing such requirements and propose a systematic layered modeling approach. We split the workflow specification requirements into five basic dimensions: structure, data, execution, temporal, and transactional. The concepts introduced in this paper have been applied as a foundation to the development of a workflows modeling and verification tool, FlowMake.