Scaleable Integration of Educational Software: Exploring The Promise of Component Architectures

Abstract

Abstract:Technology-rich learning environments can accelerate and enhance core curriculum reform in science and mathematics by enabling more diverse students to learn more complex concepts with deeper understanding at a younger age. Unfortunately, today's technology research and development efforts result not in an richly integrated environment, but rather with a fragmentary collection of incompatible software application islands. In this article we ask: how can the best innovations in technology-rich learning integrate and scale up to the level of major curricular reforms? A potential solution is component software architecture, which provides open standards that enable plug and play composition of software tools produced by many different projects and vendors. We describe an exploratory effort in which four research groups produced software components for the mathematics of motion. The resulting prototypes support (a) integration of the separately produced tools into the same windows, files, and interfaces, (b) dynamic linking across multiple representations and (c) drag and drop activity authoring without programming. We also summarize an extended Internet discussion which raised critical issues regarding the future of component software architecture in education, and speculate on the future need for components for devices other than the desktop computer and for virtual communities that coordinate design teams.

Development of a web‐based mass transfer processes laboratory: System development and implementation

“…Intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) use artificial intelligence techniques to formulate models of an expert's knowledge and that of a student's knowledge, and then intervenes with tutorial advice when differences between the two models become evident [27]. ITS can alter instruction content and rate based on real-time tracking and evaluation of students' needs and knowledge levels, which often need to be fulfilled by employing advanced artificial intelligence techniques.…”

“…ITS can alter instruction content and rate based on real-time tracking and evaluation of students' needs and knowledge levels, which often need to be fulfilled by employing advanced artificial intelligence techniques. Most web-based ITS utilize short questionnaires or quizzes implemented with HTML forms and common gateway interface (CGI) programs to determine a student's knowledge level [16,27]. One such system is designed to assign students knowledge-level appropriate chemical engineering laboratory sessions based on the record of student performances in prior laboratories and exams [16].…”

“…Virtual laboratories emphasize the creation of an interactive, multi-dimensional visualization of a laboratory environment, with some possessing the ability to remotely control actual instruments [27,29].…”

Cognitive Tutors as Research Platforms: Extending an Established Tutoring System for Collaborative and Metacognitive Experimentation

“…Component-based architectures have been proposed as a way to enhance the effectiveness of intelligent tutoring systems, but it is often difficult to integrate components created for different purposes [10]. Standards for curriculum representation like the Scaleable Content Object Reference Model have been proposed to resolve this problem [11], and distributed architectures like KnowledgeTree [12] and multi-agent approaches such as I-help [13] have been developed to integrate individual web-based services more effectively.…”

Uma linha de produto de software para módulos de aprendizagem interativa

“…Problemas sobre dificuldades de desenvolvimento específi-cos em aplicativos educacionais começaram a ser publicados por Nicolson e Scott (1986). Com o passar do tempo, artigos apresentam soluções de Engenharia de Software, como arquiteturas de componentes (Roschelle et al, 1998), reengenharia (Choquet e Corbière, 2006), entre outras técni-cas (Conlan et al, 2002;Dodero et al, 2007;Oberweis et al, 2007). O problema tratado por esta pesquisa é próximo aos abordados por esses artigos.…”