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Introduction to the IMS-LD specification
From an Instructional Engineering Perspective[1]
Author:
Gilbert Paquette, CiCE, LICEF Research Center, Télé-Université,
This document is a simple introduction to IMS-LD. It describes the role of this specification in the general process of building on-line learning system. The accelerating evolution of learning technologies has multiplied the number of decisions one must take to create on-line learning system (DLS). While it is true that a majority of the first Web-based applications have been mostly ways to distribute information, more and more educators have become aware of the need to go beyond these simple uses of information and communication technologies. This context has created a much-needed interest in pedagogical methods and, more generally, the field of instructional design (ID). We will show here some of the relations between the IMS-LD specification and instructional design methodology.
1. From Instructional Design to Educational Modeling
In American literature, this discipline is known as "instructional design (ID)", "Instructional System Design (ISD)" or "Instructional Science" (Reigeluth, 1983; Merrill, 1994). In Europe, one of the pioneers in the field used the term "Scientific Pedagogy" [Montessori, 1958]. The origin of ID goes back to John Dewey, who, a century ago, claimed the development of an "interlinked science" between learning theories and educational practices (Dewey 1900). His demand was heard at the beginning of the 1960s, when we can speak of the beginning of a new discipline. In the 1970s and the 1980s, instructional theories have blossomed, but today, it seems necessary to renew the ID methodology to support the creation of distributed learning systems in order to operationalize the theoretical foundation.
Previously, our group has proposed a new approach to ID (Paquette, 2001). This approach, instructional engineering (IE), is defined as a method that supports the planning, analysis, design and the delivery of a learning system, integrating the concepts, the processes and the principles of ID, software engineering, and cognitive engineering.
Software engineering, brings some interesting solutions to this goal. From a technical point of view, an online learning environment is an information system, a complex array of software tools, digitized documents and communication services. By adapting software engineering principles to ID, IE proposes well-defined processes and principles that help produce "deliveries", precisely describing the products of these processes. Multi-agent systems offer a good way to represent a learning environment at delivery time as a set of agents, persons and computerized objects, interacting together to facilitate learning.
Knowledge engineering is a methodology, developed in the field of expert systems and artificial intelligence over the last thirty years. It helps identify and structure knowledge, to explain it, to represent it in a symbolic or graphic language, facilitating its subsequent use by persons and computer systems. Knowledge engineering has been applied in education to build intelligent tutoring systems (Wenger, 1987) and also support systems for designers (Merrill, 1994; Spector et al., 1993). In an IE method, the knowledge engineering processes can help designers define content and objectives, instructional scenarios, instructional materials, as well as the delivery processes of a learning system by means of knowledge models
Targeting the reuse of knowledge resources and the interoperability of e-learning systems a vast movement towards international standards for learning objects (LOs) has been initiated. (Duval & Robson 2001).The work on Educational Modeling Languages (Koper 2002), and the subsequent integration of a subset in the IMS Learning Design Specification (IMS 2003), is the most important initiative to date to integrate ID into the standards movement. In particular, it describes a formal way to represent the structure of a Unit of Learning and the concept of a pedagogical method, specifying roles and activities that learners and support persons can play using LOs. Instructional Engineering, as defined above, provides a methodology to build learning designs in a standard way so it can be delivered on many delivery systems.
2. EML and the IMS Learning Design Specification
The approach in IMS-LD has been to define a complete core that is as simple as possible, with some extensions.The Level A specification contains all the core vocabulary needed to support diversified pedagogical models[2]. Level B adds properties and conditions enabling personalization. And Level C adds notification between actors involved in the learning unit to support collaboration and tutoring. Figure 1 (IMS – LD, 2003, p.10) presents a conceptual model of these three levels.
Figure 1 – The IMS Learning Design Conceptual Model
This static model of a learning design centers on three entities, roles, activities and environments. Basically:
- Roles, such a learner of staff (facilitator, professor, tutor) are played by persons described by their properties;
- Activities, performed by roles are organizes in a tree structure called a method, decomposed into alternative plays, themselves decomposed into a sequence of acts; each act is further decomposed into activity structures, which contain other activity structures down to terminal learning or support activities;
- Environments group all kinds of learning objects (or resources) or services used by roles in activities, and also outcomes produced by roles in activities.
When activating a unit of learning, the method element is central. This unique element and its sub-elements describe the learning process and control the behavior of the unit of learning as a whole, coordinating the activities of the players in their various roles and their use of resources. The Method, Plays, Acts and Role-parts (role-activity couples) are all nested within each other, as displayed in Figure 2 (IMS – LD 2003, p.73).
There are three levels in a Method. At the first level, we find two elements, a list of plays and a complete-method object. The latter holds both the condition for completion of the unit-of-learning and optional actions to be taken when it is. The plays represent logically independent parts of the learning design as they are always run concurrently. They can be used to provide alternative scenarios for the same unit of study for different target populations or for different delivery models (e. g. classroom-based vs distance learning).
Figure 2. Structured Method in a Learning Design
An act brings together one or more role-parts to allow more than one role to perform at the same time or asynchronously in a certain time period. Therefore, role-parts within an act always run in parallel. Each role-part associates exactly one role with exactly one activity or environment. The same role can be associated with different activities in different role-parts and conversely. However the same role may only be referenced once in the same act.
3- IMS-LD, as a bridge between Design and Delivery
Figure 3shows the relationship between instructional engineering methods and tools, the EML/IMS-LD specification and delivery systems. An IMS learning design is produced using an instructional method and delivered through a delivery system (a platform, an LCMS or an LMS)
Figure 3. IMS-LD bridging design and delivery of learning environment
The learning design is an abstract model of a unit-of-learning that can be instantiated before a delivery session or during delivery. Instantiation means that a concrete person, learning object or service is put at the place of a role or an environment in the LD model. For example, the participants in a forum are variables in the model. They can be specified by concrete persons (giving their email) when a delivery starts or at runtime (during delivery). In the same way, a concrete document can be embedded in the design or kept open as a variable in the LD model. In this caseits address then can be specified later at instantiation time or during the delivery.
Concretely, a unit of learning is described as an XML file called a content package. Figure 4 shows its structure, the central part of which is themanifest.- The manifest contains the metadata of the UoL, in particular a fixed, pre-defined name to help find it,and possibly other properties.
- The organization part is the learning design structure described above, with role-part associated to environments grouping the resources.
- The resources part list all the resources (roles, activities, learning objects, services, prerequisite and learning objectives) included in the design with their addresses if they are specified at design time.It can also contain sub-manifests if other UoL are embedded in the design
Figure 4 – Structure of an IMS-LD
XML package
These content packages contain all the necessary information on a unit of learning,in an XML format that can be read by any compliant delivery systemor platform. In principle, a learning design built in the IMS-LD format can be reused on any machine properly equipped. This is the goal of the specification, to bridge the gap between the process of designing a course and that of delivering it.
4- Instructional Engineering of a Learning Design
Work on EML and instructional engineering has started at the LICEF research center in 1992 with the design of an instructional design system called AGD. From it, graphic modeling tools have evolved, recently to the MOT+LD specialized graphic language.In parallel, an instructional design methodology was developed and embedded in new Web-based tools such as ADISA. The method is now being adapted to a new version called MISA-LD. During the last year, we have started to build the IDLD resource center that you are using now. / Figure 5 – EML work at LICEF
The IMS-LD specification leaves open the choice of instructional methods and modeling tools that can support designers in the process of building learning designs, especially for collaborative scenarios. Extensive research and development in the last thirty years have has led host of ID methods.
The quality of a course depends for the most part on the quality of the learning scenarios produced by the design process. Basically, instructional engineering methods like MISA, and tools like MOT+LD guide and support course designer(s) through the process of designing high quality learning systems and scenarios, in particular, by ensuring coherence through systematic documentation of all aspects of the design process and products, automatic propagation of many pieces of information as well as a systemic view of the process.
Figure 6 – Basic IMS-LD graphic symbols
Using a graphical representation technique that was developed in MISA and a modeling tool like MOT+LD, concepts, procedures and principles are used to describe all IMS-LD level-A components (figure 6) as well as their relationships.
We have experimented such a graphical language and found it closer to instructional designers, than software engineering graphical languages like UML or text-based editors like RELOAD, while still enabling an automatic translation from graphical designs into machine-readable IMS-LD XML files.
5- TheIDLDResourceCenter
The IDLDResourceCenterwhere you are now offers a repository of learning designs, a suite of tools to support the implementation of IMS-LD, methodological aids to help in its deployment to institutions and organisations, and a number of background documents and related sites.
It has been built by the CICE team at Télé-université in Montreal. Other researchers at ConcordiaUniversity in Montreal, SimonFraserUniversity in Vancouver and the University of Waterloo in Ontario have provided inputs for the repository, as well as using and validating the tools. All the resources included are in the public domain using Creative Commons licenses and can be freely reused. Télé-université is committed to sustaining the portal, hoping that new partners will make contributions or link with it, at the same conditions as the initial partners.
The central resource of the portal is the LD repository. It contains actually a limited number of entries, but it gives access to different kinds of products of the learning design implementation process: initial narratives of learning scenarios, complete course plans, hierarchical trees or graphic models of learning designs, IMS-LD compliant XML manifests, and finally learning designs embedded in complete on-line courses. The graphical models and their corresponding XML manifests are either LD examples, where the content resources are specified, or LD patterns that are design flows without specific content.
Presently, the IDLD portal offers four open source tools:
- the MOT+LD graphic editor (Paquette, Léonard et al, 2006) that supports an interactive design process more friendly to designers than text-based editors, but limited to level A of the IMS-LD specification;
- the RELOAD editor (RELOAD 2006) supporting all levels, but in a hierarchical form-based format;
- the RELOAD player, embedding the COPPERCORE (Martens & Vogten 2005) engine, that reads IMS-LD manifests and offers a Web based interface to deliver and execute a LD run;
- PALOMA[3], a learning object repository management system that supports the LOM and the IMS-DRI standard for federated search.
These tools are sufficient to support a complete implementation process presented above. We aim to extend this tool set with other open source tools that are being developed by other groups (Griffith et al 2005) or by partners of the LORNET research network hosted at LICEF-CIRTA.
Besides basic IMS-LD documentation, the IDLD portal offers a set of new methodological aids to instructional designers and educators involved in the implementation and deployment of IMS-LD
- A methodological guide to supportIMS-LD authoring, validation and execution using the above tools or other alternative tools (it includes some of the operation of the MISA instructional engineering method);
- A graphic modeling technique to help build IMS-LD graphic models using MOT+LD editor;
- A PALOM@ guide to help reference, find and reuse learning designs in the IDLD repository
- A definition of the terms in the classifications used to provide metadata descriptors for learning designs; these classifications are embedded in the PALOMA tool.
- A set of best practices experienced by users in implementing the IMS LD specification and the use of the learning design repository.
6- Metadata forLearning Designs
Figure 7 shows one classification embedded in the PALOMA learning object repositories manager. The left part presents a list of available repositories, including the IDLD repository; the center part shows a list of designs grouped in the selected folder of that repository and the right part is the metatagging tool that enables creating and editing a standard LOM record for the selected object, here a learning design for a collaborative activity pattern entitled “FORUM SYNTHÈSE”.
For this LD, the user has selected metadata from the learning design classification: the delivery model is “A140-Asynchronous Online Training”, the pedagogical strategy is “A293-Debate/Discussion”, and the evaluation model is summative (A315), based on learner productions (A332) that are mostly individual (A342). These three top level categories of the learning design classification are derived directly from the MISA method (De la Teja, Lundgren-Cayrol et al 2006; Paquette, De la Teja et al. 2005;Paquette, G. 2003)
Figure 7 – Learning design classification and metadata association to learning designs
Category A400 on the level of reusability of learning designs extends previous work supported by JISC (Currier & Campbell, 2002). Since the selected LD on the figure is a pattern, it is technology independent, content generic, context of use independent and adaptable to certain disabilities. Finally, category A500 describes the type of LD product, in this case a standard IMS-LD Graphical Model.
In the list of classification descriptors in Figure 7, we see that the last entry shows metadata from another classification scheme on Skills and cognitive strategies (Paquette, Léonard et al, 2006;Paquette 1999).This indicates that the LD proposes to have learners build a synthesis.Using various types of metadata enables many diverse ways to search for LD patterns and examples.
Other LOM entries are useful to provide some semantic structure (an ontology) to the set of LD products in the IDLD repository. The 1.8 section of the LOM defines four aggregation levels: 1-raw media data or fragments; 2- lesson (collection of level 1 objects); 3- course (collection of level 2 objects); and 4– program (collection of level 3 objects).
Section 7 of the LOM provides a limited set of choice for relations between objects and their LOM entry. We used them as follows:
- “is based on/is basis for” indicates the relationship between a narrative or a textual course outline and a graphical model;
- “has format/is format of” indicates the relationship between a graphic model, an IMS-LD manifest or an executable Web version of the same UoL;
- “has part/is part of” will indicate the relationship between a LD product and its components, for example, between a level 3 (course) and a level 2 (lesson) object;
- “has version” is re-interpreted as the relationship between a pattern and its examples obtained by associating precise items to the abstract objects (environment, activity,…) in a LD pattern.
To our knowledge, this IDLD resource center is the first one to embed a LD repository where learning designs are referenced using the LOM in this way. We do not pretend the process to be completely user-friendly. There are still researches and development issues to solve but we feel that if the user is patient enough, he will gain new knowledge and competencies.
We are interested in having your comments, by using the address on the Web site. We will also welcome knowledgeable individuals or teams that would like to extend or improve this IDLD resource center.
References
(Currier S., & Campbell, L. (2002 ) Evaluating Learning Resources for Reusability: The “Dner & Learning Objects” Study. Last retrieved February 6, 2006, from
(De la Teja, Lundgren-Cayrol et al 2006) De la Teja, I., Lundgren-Cayrol, K. & Paquette, G. (2005). Transposing MISA Learning Scenarios into IMS Units of Learning. In Colin Tattersall and Rob Koper (2005). Advances in Learning Design (Special Issue). Journal of Educational Technology and Society (in press)
(Dewey 1900) Dewey J. Psychology and social practice. The psychological Review. 1900, 7, pp 105-124
(Duval and Robson 2001) Duval, E. and Robson. R. Guest Editorial on Metadata. Interactive Learning Environments, Special issue: Metadata, Volume 9-3, December 2001, pp. 201-206