Collaborative Development of a PLE for Language Learning

Abstract

Abstract-This paper provides a report on the experimental collaborative and distributed development of a prototypic Widget-based PLE. The development process is described and detailed taking into account the requirements of a language learning scenario. First results are presented, and developer experiences are discussed critically with a focus on the development process as well as problems with current Widget technologies and interoperability. I.INTRODUCTION Current en deavors i n t he domain of Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) exhibit the need for increased openness and r esponsiveness of cur rent learning environments. W hile older learning technology generations were often central and closed systems, often merely focusing on the management of learning processes, the next generation of Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) tackled by the ROLE project 1 concent rates on a hi ghly di stributed approach d rawing o n t he com bination of est ablished o penstandard Web technologies in order to enable the learnerside i ntegration o f servi ces a nd t ools fr om a pl ethora o f heterogeneous sources i nto c ustomized l earning en vironments. One of t he major goa ls of R OLE i s t o del iver an appropriate techni cal i nfrastructure for the establishment of such resp onsive open l earning envi ronments. Anot her goal of t he project i s t o est ablish a co mmunity of ope n source a nd e xternal devel opers out side t he conso rtium contributing further tools and services based on this infrastructure. D uring t he fi rst pr oject devel oper m eeting, w e thus agreed to work in parallel to the standard project plan towards a comm on goal , cal led the "C hristmas Project" with the following objectives in mind: Create a first de monstrator of ROLE to visualize the potential of the project  Enable the consortium to better define needs and derive technical specifications

ICT training of university teachers in a Personal Learning Environment. Project DIPRO 2.0.

“…This University 2.0 must try to overcome these barriers that Renzel et al (2010) note in their research, related to the difficulties, both technical as well as of lack of knowledge, of what it means to work in a collaborative and/or cooperative way.…”

Towards Responsive Open Learning Environments: The ROLE Interoperability Framework

“…There are two major widget specifications with very similar functionalities [26]: the OpenSocial [21] and the W3C widget 1.0 specification [3]. OpenSocial also provides a social API [21] to access social data from multiple web applications.…”

“…OpenSocial also provides a social API [21] to access social data from multiple web applications. Because of the higher availability of OpenSocial widgets, we currently employ OpenSocial compliant widgets, which run on major widget containers such as iGoogle 3 and Shindig 4 (for more info see [26]). We plan to also incorporate W3C widgets by using Wookie 5 .…”

“…Many widgets have been developed that are compliant with ROLE technology, including language learning [26], self-reflection [12] and chat widgets [8].…”

A Classification Framework for Web Browser Cross-Context Communication

“…Where early Web applications were simple interlinked documents, recent Web applications, known as Rich Internet Applications (RIA) [2], show an increase in functionality, user-friendliness and responsiveness, and therefore in complexity. One recent trend is seen in mashups [3,4], Web application portletization [5], personal learning environments [6] and complex widget-based applications, such as Geppeto [7], in which the client-side of the Web application is designed and executed as a composition of semi-isolated Web browser contexts, such as frames. This trend is emphasized even more with the recent introduction of Web workers [8] through which browsers provide Web applications with GUI-less background processing contexts similar to threads in operating systems.…”