This presentation shows the philosophy of the CADMOS learning desing tool which has a graphical user interface and exports designs in IMS LD format.It This presentation was made at Iadis2011 conference in Rome.

1. MAKING LEARNING DESIGNS
IN LAYERS: THE CADMOS
APPROACH
Mary Katsamani (marykatsamani@gmail.com)
Symeon Retalis (retal@unipi.gr)
University of Piraeus
Department of Digital Systems
Computer Supported Learning Engineering Laboratory
http://cosy.ds.unipi.gr

2. The presentation in brief …
 This presentation is about a model-driven learning design
process, called CADMOS-D(esign) supported by a
graphical LD editor.
 Ambition: CADMOS-D should be simple enough to be used
by practitioners
 Innovation: This process accords to the principles of
software/web engineering
 It is model driven
 It advocates the notion of “separation of concerns” in learning
design
 Technological support: It is being supported by a graphical
design tool
 It tries to produce reusable learning designs (forward & backward
engineering) that conform to the IMS LD specification

3. Learning Design (LD)
 LD is a planning and ordering of learning activities that take place in
a unit of learning (Current research in learning design, Rob Kopper)
 A “digital lesson plan”
 But not simply a narrative description – rather, it can “do” something
 A teacher may create a learning design for a simple activity, for a
course lasting one or a few hours, for a course lasting a few weeks
or even months or for a curriculum, meaning a whole year teaching
programme [Britain, 2004; Goodyear, 2005]
 A teacher has to specify for the LD:
 Learning Activities
 Orchestration of these activities (order, conditions, rules)
 Learning Objects related to these activities

4. The learning design challenge
 Teachers as designers do not have to be
experts in technical skills
 Teachers as designers want to use tools that
would guide them and will be error prone
 A Learning Design should be shared and re-
used
 It must be used a common, formal and “rich”
design language

5. Learning Design Languages vs Visual Learning
Design Tools
 Learning design languages and visual learning
design tools have been proposed to aid teachers
during the learning design task
 Both languages and tools have advantages and
disadvantages
 We have studied LD tools and languages and
drew some conclusions about their
characteristics
 These design characteristics had been followed
when creating the CADMOS LD tool

6. Learning Design Languages
 A design language:
 is a mental tool,
 offers a specific notation style for creating a design
without the support of a specialized learning design tool
 So….often teachers face problems
 We studied 4 popular languages according the following
criteria suggested by Luca Botturi et al. (A Classification
Framework for Educational Modeling Languages in
Instructional Design, 2006)

7. Classifying Learning Design Languages
 User Skills: novice, medium, expertise
 Stratification: flat or layered. Is there unique representation or are
there several "tools" to describe various objects like in coUML ?
 Formalization: between formal or informal. E.g. UML and XML-
based vocabularies are both formal languages.
 Elaboration: conceptual, specification or implementation. These
levels are based on the UML model (Fowler, 2003): the conceptual
level allows to gain a global view of a design and its rationale, the
specification includes all the details, and the implementation level
includes sufficient precision to create executive code.
 Perspective: singular or multiple. Is there a same view or different
views to describe different entities? E2ML for instance allows to
model both structural and temporal relations between activities.
 Notation system: none, textual, visual. If there is a notation system,
it can be either visual or textual.
Botturi, Derntl,Boot & Figl (2006)

8. Learning Design Languages
User Formaliz Stratifica Elaborati Perspecti Notation
skills ation tion on ve
E2ML Novice Semi- Flat Conceptu Multiple Visual
formal al
PCeL Medium Semi- Layered Conceptu Single Visual
formal al
coUML Medium Semi- Layered Conceptu Multiple Visual
formal al
POEML Expertise Formal Layered Implemen Multiple Visual
tation
8

9. Visual Learning Design Tools
 Visual learning design tools offer a structured
environment that teachers may use to design
 There is a graphical interface that facilitates teachers to
create their lessons
 We compared COMPENDIUM, MOT+, LAMS,
OPENGLM and COLLAGE, according to the following
criteria:

10. Visual Learning Design Tools
Exports
Templates/De Edits IMS-LD
User skills Guidance IMS-LD
sign Patterns A,B,C
A,B,C
Complendium medium - + - -
IMS-LD
MOT+ expertise - - -
level A
IMS-LD
Collage medium + + -
level A
IMS-LD
Lams medium - - -
level A
Openglm medium + + + +
10

11. CADMOS-D: A blend…
Separation of
concerns
LD
Tools
LD
Languages
CADMOS-D method & tool

12. Main Idea of CADMOS
 Is the Separation of Concerns (SoC), an
Established Concept in
Architecture/Software/Web Engineering
 Objectives of SoC
 Use of Divide-and-Conquer Approach for addressing
complexity of a problem
 Ease of handling these smaller problems in relative
isolation
 Ease of solving these relatively isolated simpler
problems
The term separation of concerns was probably coined by Edsger W. Dijkstra in
his 1974 paper "On the role of scientific thought"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_concerns

13. Separation of Concerns in CADMOS
 Two design views /models:
 Conceptual Model or learning activity design view
 Flow Model or learning activity flow design view.
 The Learning Activity Design View defines the
learning activities and the resources/services
that correspond to these activities.
 The Learning Activity Flow Design View
captures the orchestration of the learning
activities

14. Conceptual Model - Learning Activity design view

15. Flow Model/Learning Activity Flow Design View
without rules

16. Flow Model/Learning Activity Flow Design View
with rules

17. CADMOS-D: Advantages
 One can change a resource in the conceptual
model without changing anything else at the flow
model
 One can create several flow views keeping the
same learning activities in the conceptual model
 The Learning Design can be opened and edited
again
 The Learning Design may be exported to IMS-
LD (A/B) xml manifest
 An IMS-LD may be imported into the tool

18. CADMOS: Interoperability
CADMOS
Conceptual
CADMOS models Model CADMOS models
IMS LD models IMS LD models
Flow Model
Moodle
Currently, CADMOS-D conforms to IMS LD Level A/B, LD player

19. Case Study 1/2
 36 MSc students in the Department of Digital
Systems
 25 of them were teachers (20 of them were
high school teachers and 5 of them were
elementary school teachers)
 5 of them did not have experience in learning
design and the rest of them had used at least
one Learning Design Tool

20. Case Study 2/2
 Was completed in two phases:
 Phase 1: presentation of the tool in the laboratory,
the students made in CADMOS a prescribed
learning design  3 hours
 Phase 2: the students made in CADMOS a
prescribed learning design that were given from
us and a learning design from their own teaching
practice  1 week
 Finally they completed an on-line questionnaire of
25 questions

21. Case Study – Evaluation of CADMOS 1/2
 70% claimed that were satisfied from both the
approach and the tool
 69% of them stated that were highly satisfied
with the guidance that was provided to them
 All of them said that the design approach via the
two models was very helpful
 All of them said that the use of CADMOS was
simple and that were able to complete the
learning design easily and quickly

22. Case Study – Evaluation of CADMOS 2/2
 All of the participants mentioned that any
teacher, with no specific knowledge in learning
design and with basic computer skills, can apply
it
 The 86% of the participants claimed that the
presence of ready-to-use design templates
would have helped them
 83% of them stated that they appreciated the
fact that they could reuse existing learning
designs

23. In conclusion CADMOS:
 Can be used by practitioners with basic technical
skills
 It has a visual notation
 It offers guidance to the designer
 It is layered  it describes different objects (such as
activities, resources, rules)
 It is multiple-perspective  activities are described
from different views (conceptual/flow model)
 It can convert its own learning design, to an IMS-LD
level A/B manifest file
 It can import an IMS-LD level A manifest file and
convert it to its own notation system

24. Future plans
 CADMOS version 1.6
 http://cosy.ds.unipi.gr/cadmos/
 To distribute CADMOS tool version 1.7
 To enrich the conditions in the flow model
 Compatibility with IMS LD Level C
 To add in CADMOS tool design patterns as templates
 To interoperate with Moodle

25. Questions?
Thank you!