Guenter Hilmer - Phd Thesis - Glamorgan Dspace - University of ...

3.2 EFTECS at EM-Layer 3 EFTECS
3.2 EFTECS at EM-Layer
The first layer of the EFTECS, the Educational Module Layer, is aiming at com-
plete educational modules, e.g. complete courses. Several other projects are also
working at this level, for example the IMS [12] or the ARIADNE [174] project.
From the student’s point of view the EM-Layer of the EFTECS is his main in-
terface. The student does not need to know anything about the EFTECS or its
implementation. It is just the educational module that is delivered to the student,
whereas the underlying framework is not noticeable for the student.
The first step at this layer of the EFTECS is to separate the educational informa-
tion about the complete educational module from the technical information. The
educational module is considered to be a big, tightly woven together piece of ed-
ucational and technical material. To simplify the authoring of the material, the
EFTECS is aiming at the educational information about the complete educational
module. After reviewing existing projects (cf. section 2.7) the following items of
educational information about complete educational modules were identified and
added to the XEML (cf. section 3.9):
• Author
• Authoring date
• Domain area
• Difficulty
• Target audience
• Language
This list does not cover all possible educational information about an educational
module, however, the EFTECS as well as the XEML are generic frameworks
which can be extended quite easily.
At this point, the educational information about a complete educational module
can easily be described and authored. However, the bigger part of the educational
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