Recueil <strong>de</strong>s résumés <strong>de</strong> communications Thème 1 : Les Sciences <strong>de</strong> <strong>l'information</strong> à l'ère du <strong>numérique</strong> TOWARDS NORMALIZATION IN E-LEARNING FOR COLLABORATIVE WORK ENVIRONMENTS The advent of structured digital documents and recommendations for its treatment, such as m<strong>et</strong>adata and standardization, have inevitably come to the education filed. We have been confronted with an everchanging domain that needs enormous consi<strong>de</strong>ration for granting best practices and results to acquire, to share and to produce knowledge in the digital age. Taking into account the works lead by W3C, IEEE, IMS Global, SCORM, ARIADNE, AICC, among others, our research aims to link the robustness of XML technologies with the support of col<strong>la</strong>borative work strategies in distance learning environments where Learning Objects and Content Packages seem to become the common currency b<strong>et</strong>ween universities and educational institutions. In the beginning, lectures and <strong>les</strong>sons in digital format where introduced with support for the Web. Later on, we witnessed its evolution to what is call today Learning Objects, whose main advantage was the <strong>de</strong>composition into small data chunks that can be used or reused in different educational contexts. Today, it seems necessary to r<strong>et</strong>hink these concepts consi<strong>de</strong>ring m<strong>et</strong>adata and information <strong>de</strong>finition to arrive to Content Packages, which are fi<strong>les</strong> containing not only those digestible chunks, but also an xml manifest file d<strong>et</strong>ailing how, when and by whom the resource should be employed. The panorama conceived by Tim Berners-Lee about a semantic web is not y<strong>et</strong> well <strong>de</strong>veloped, moreover, users and authors still find trouble when using educational resources, among the most common are: a) confusion in the <strong>de</strong>finition of the term "learning object", b) Weakness of the IEEE LOM learning perspective, c) Incompatibility b<strong>et</strong>ween learning <strong>de</strong>sign princip<strong>les</strong> and learning technology specifications, d) Lack of userfriendly tools that fully comply learning technology standards, e) Unclear cooperation b<strong>et</strong>ween the agents involved in the learning technology specifications process and on how standards re<strong>la</strong>te to each other. This article also presents the integration of two software applications <strong>de</strong>veloped at the Paragraphe Laboratory of the University of Paris VIII: ICRS and HTT Online. The first one, is a col<strong>la</strong>borative system for information r<strong>et</strong>rieval that allows various users to work tog<strong>et</strong>her in their researches. It offers community assistance in or<strong>de</strong>r to add aggregated value to the documents found by Everardo REYES Ab<strong>de</strong>rrazak MKADMI means of evaluations, comments and annotations. The second software is an authoring online system for creating Learning Objects and for dynamically transforming them into Content Packages. ICRS propose a col<strong>la</strong>borative workspace for gathering and creating XML mo<strong>de</strong>ls through the Web and it presents the information according to that selected mo<strong>de</strong>l. Then, the author is able to inclu<strong>de</strong> format sty<strong>les</strong> and media clips through the HTT Online's transparent GUI, which allows the insertion of m<strong>et</strong>adata and inclu<strong>de</strong>s export capabilities in XML format complying with IEEE LOM. The importance of such integration is reflected on, in one hand, authors focused on the content and, in the other hand, the addition of resources and format that would enhance the learning experience in stu<strong>de</strong>nts. Keywords: e-learning, m<strong>et</strong>adata, standards, col<strong>la</strong>borative work, semantic web. 91
Colloque international:L'information <strong>numérique</strong> <strong>et</strong> <strong>les</strong> <strong>enjeux</strong> <strong>de</strong> <strong>la</strong> société d'information 92 ISD, Tunis 14-16 avril <strong>2005</strong>