This article was downloaded by: [46.177.21.

184] On: 07 January 2013, At: 06:36 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Educational Media International

Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/remi20

Designing a Moodle course with the CADMOS learning design tool

Maria Katsamani , Symeon Retalis & Michail Boloudakis
a a a a

Department of Digital Systems, University of Piraeus, Athens, Greece Version of record first published: 04 Dec 2012.

To cite this article: Maria Katsamani , Symeon Retalis & Michail Boloudakis (2012): Designing a Moodle course with the CADMOS learning design tool, Educational Media International, 49:4, 317-331 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09523987.2012.745771

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-andconditions This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.

Educational Media International Vol. 49, No. 4, December 2012, 317331

Designing a Moodle course with the CADMOS learning design tool

Maria Katsamani*, Symeon Retalis and Michail Boloudakis
Department of Digital Systems, University of Piraeus, Athens, Greece (Received 26 September 2012; nal version received 27 October 2012) CADMOS is a graphical learning design (LD) authoring tool that helps a teacher design a unit of learning in two layers: (i) the conceptual layer, which seems like a concept map and contains the learning activities with their associated learning resources and (ii) the ow layer, which contains the orchestration of these activities. One of CADMOS main innovative features is that it can bridge the gap between the design of a unit of learning and its enactment into Moodle. This paper presents how one can create a LD using CADMOS and deploy it into Moodle. Also, the paper shows the ndings from a case study which was organized in order to evaluate the usability of the tool, its pedagogical exibility and the usefulness of its innovative feature of deploying a LD into Moodle. CADMOS seems to be an easy-to-use tool, which offers guidance and exibility during the design process. Keywords: CADMOS; LD tool; Moodle

Downloaded by [46.177.21.184] at 06:36 07 January 2013

Motivation The learning design (LD) process, normally, involves a number of steps such as: the specication of the learning activities needs to be performed by human actors (e.g. learners and tutors) in order to achieve the learning objectives, the orchestration of the learning activities, i.e. the sequence of the specied learning activities as well as the identication of the learning resources and services that need to be used in order to support the learning activities (Koper, 2005). The output of this process can be called LD or design of a unit of learning or lesson plan or learning script. Since this process is iterative, learning designers, mostly teachers, need to easily modify, update or enhance their designs in order to achieve the required level of learning effectiveness (Tattersall et al., 2005). Teachers are used to create LDs in a narrative format, but such designs do not use a standard template and so is difcult to be disseminated and reused. As Koper says, (Koper, 2005), to enable learning designers to search for, share and reuse LD methods, a standard notation must be available and used. This is why IMS-LD specication (IMS Global Consortium, 2003) appeared and became the common language among the designers (Specht & Burgos, 2007). However, since it was difcult for the teachers to write XML les from scratch, the rst generation of formbased LD authoring tools had been proposed. The next generation of LD authoring
*Corresponding author. Email: mkatsam@webmail.unipi.gr
ISSN 0952-3987 print/ISSN 1469-5790 online 2012 International Council for Educational Media http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09523987.2012.745771 http://www.tandfonline.com

318

M. Katsamani et al.

tools simplied the learning designer s tasks by providing drag and drop features for specifying and orchestrating LD components, i.e. activities and resources (Grifths, Blat, Garcia, Vogten, & Kwong, 2005). Teachers, however, not only want to be able to design a unit of learning, but also to run it in a real environment. Thus, apart from the LD editors that help in the creation of the design of a unit of learning, LD players had emerged that offer a simulation environment for the execution of a LD as well as LD engines that are real learning environments where a LD can be deployed and enacted (Berggren et al., 2005). Reload and Recourse (Milligan, Beauvoir, & Sharples, 2005) are both formbased editors and LD players that fully comply with the IMS-LD standard. Nevertheless, the designer must be an expert in the specication in order to succeed in creating a LD. Neumann and Oberhuemer (2009) found that these tools are not popular among teachers who tend to prefer LD tools with a simple and graphical interface. MOT+ (Paquette, Lonard, & Lundgren-Cayrol, 2011) is a graphical LD editor that conforms to the IMS-LD specication, thus allowing the teachers to export their designs as IMS-LD packages and then enact them in any IMS-LD player (e.g. Recourse and Reload). However, it is based on a complex underlying graphical knowledge modelling language which makes it inappropriate for novice learning designers and teachers. OpenGlm (Derntl, Neumann, & Oberhuemer, 2011), ASK-LDT (Sampson, Karampiperis, & Zervas, 2005), Collage (HernandezLeo et al., 2006) and its successor WebCollage follow the IMS-LD specication, provide guidance via the concept of templates and/or LD patterns, but still for adding complex rules they use forms. On the contrary, Compendium (Conole, 2008b) and LAMS (Dalziel, 2007) that use a visual interface and sequences of chronologically ordered activities, linked to corresponding resources, are not IMS-LD compliant. Furthermore, LAMS, which is the most popular LD tool at the moment, provides an execution environment apart from a design environment. Thus, teachers with basic computing skills and no knowledge of the IMS-LD specication can quickly create their own designs and easily enact them using a proprietary learning platform. In fact, nowadays the majority of the teachers use learning management systems (LMS) like Moodle and Blackboard in order to manage and run their online courses. Until now none of the above mentioned LD authoring tools allow teachers to design their course and automatically create it as a Moodle course. The GSIC research group having this in mind proposed the Glue-PS (Prieto et al., 2011), a tool that can take a design that has been generated in WebCollage and enact it into Moodle. But Glue-Ps is not a LD authoring tool. Thus, the goal of this paper is to show how the CADMOS LD authoring tool can aid in bridging the gap between the creation of a LD and its deployment in Moodle LMS. Bridging the gap between design and enactment of an online course is very important (Prieto, Asensio-Prez, Dimitriadis, Gmez-Snchez, & MuozCristbal, 2011) and CADMOS is the only LD authoring tool that does so at the moment. CADMOS is based on specic design principles: (i) it should be a simple tool with graphical notation that should offer guidance to a teacher through the whole design process, (ii) it should allow teachers to design in layers thus giving them the possibility to focus on the appropriate specicities of a lesson plan e.g. orchestration of learning activities, addition of rules, linking learning activities and learning resources and to view a LD from different perspectives, (iii) embody

Downloaded by [46.177.21.184] at 06:36 07 January 2013

Educational Media International

319

design patterns in order to facilitate the easy construction of a LD based on good learning practices and (iv) give teachers the possibility to enact a design in an LMS like Moodle (Katsamani & Retalis, 2011). In the following sections of the paper, rst we present the philosophy of the tool through an example and then we discuss the ndings from an evaluation study. Finally we close with some conclusions and the future work.

CADMOS design method via an example Overview CADMOS is an IMS-LD level A & B compliant graphical LD tool addressed to novice learning designers, i.e. practitioners/teachers with basic computer skills and knowledge of learning standards (Katsamani & Retalis, 2011). CADMOS guides a practitioner to design a learning script in layers (see Figure 1): rst by specifying the learners and teachers activities and the associated learning resources and services required thus creating a learning activity conceptual model, and then by orchestrating the activities per human actor and adding rules and constraints using the metaphor of swim lanes which are all depicted in the learning activity ow model. Thus, not only can a practitioner determine in which order the students should perform the activities but also to specify conditions, preconditions or rules that will be associated to these activities, e.g. a student must score at least 60% in a test activity before proceeding to the following activity. The output of the LD process using CADMOS can have three forms: (i) a LD codied in its own format in order to be reused and modied at some point later on; (ii) a LD package that conforms to the IMS-LD level A & B specication; and (iii) a package for Moodle which could be uploaded onto a Moodle server and used for restoring it as a Moodle course. CADMOS also allows a designer to reuse existing LDs that conform to IMSLD level A & B specication. However, the most innovative feature of CADMOS is that it tries to bridge the gap between the design of a learning script and its deployment into Moodle. It enables a learning designer to export the learning script as a Moodle package thus allowing its enactment in the Moodle learning platform. Thus, it can become a user-friendly LD tool for Moodle courses.

Downloaded by [46.177.21.184] at 06:36 07 January 2013

Figure 1. CADMOS learning design process.

320

M. Katsamani et al.

Downloaded by [46.177.21.184] at 06:36 07 January 2013

Creating a learning script for Moodle with CADMOS Starting the design of a course, the practitioner chooses if s/he wants to create a new design from the beginning or to use one of the available and predened learning strategies i.e. TPS, Jigsaw, Pyramid and POE. If s/he decides to use a learning strategy then the tool loads automatically the conceptual and the ow model of the specic strategy and the practitioner can edit the models e.g. change the names and edit the metadata of the activities and the resources, add rules and comments. If s/ he decides to create a new design then s/he must dene the title, the description, the goals, any prerequisites and the roles of the course before getting into the design area. Then the practitioner creates the conceptual model by dragging and dropping activities and resources into the canvas. The designer creates a concept map, by connecting each activity with the corresponding resource/s and s/he denes the metadata of the activities and the resources. When the conceptual model is ready, the practitioner chooses to move to the ow model which is created automatically by the tool. CADMOS creates different swim lanes, each one for every role of the course and puts the activities in each lane the one after the other in a vertical axis, as these have been put in the conceptual model from left to the right. Then the designer has to move the activities in the vertical axis in order to show their chronological sequence and s/he may add rules and comments in the ow model. Finally, the designer may choose to save the design as a .cdm le or create a Moodle preview of the scenario. CADMOS shows in a different screen how the course will be build in Moodle if the designer chooses to create the export package. If s/he wants s/he can go back in CADMOS models and edit them in order to create a different Moodle course. Finally s/he can choose to export the Moodle package, which in the following can be restored in the LMS.

Figure 2. The conceptual model of the Filling Out Income Tax Forms course.

Educational Media International

321

An example Figures 24 show screenshots of CADMOS learning activity conceptual model, learning activity ow model and the Moodle preview of a learning script entitled

Downloaded by [46.177.21.184] at 06:36 07 January 2013

Figure 3. The ow model of the Filling Out Income Tax Forms course.

322

M. Katsamani et al.

Downloaded by [46.177.21.184] at 06:36 07 January 2013

Figure 4. Preview of the Filling Out Income Tax Forms course as it will be deployed into Moodle.

Filling Out Income Tax Forms. This course teaches adults how to ll out their own tax forms in order to arrange their own nancial matters. At rst, the teacher explains to the students the advantages of lling out their own tax forms and presents some theory about tax terminology. Then the learners study the instructional guide, given by the Ministry of Finance, and watch videos about lling out tax forms. In the following, each learner does an exercise in googledocs, practising with tax forms. The teacher corrects the exercises giving feedback to the learners. If each learner has a score at least 60% in the exercise, watches a video-tutorial about a tax software and practises with it. Finally, the teacher evaluates this practice and gives some feedback through a forum. We created two composite learning activities and ve simple learning activities in this scenario: Composite activity 1
Learning Activity 1: The teacher explains to the learners the advantages of calculating their own taxes. (type theory) Learning Activity 2: The teacher reviews tax terminology with learners. (type theory)

Composite activity 2
Learning Activity 3: Each learner studies the rst part of the instructional guide given by the Ministry of Finance. (type theory)

Educational Media International

Learning Activity 4: Each learner studies videos with examples. (type example) Learning Activity 5: Each learner does an exercise in googledocs. (type assessment)

323

Learning Activity 6: The teacher corrects the exercises and sends feedback. (type feedback) Learning Activity 7: Each learner studies a tax software. (type theory) Learning Activity 8: Each learner practices with the tax software with specic examples. (type simulation-modeling) Learning Activity 9: The teacher evaluates and sends feedback in a forum. (type assessment)

Figure 2 shows the conceptual model of the learning scenario Filling Out Income Tax Forms. For each simple activity, we dene metadata (title, description, learning goal, prerequisite, type and role), which are not shown in the gures. Specifying the types of the activities, gives the opportunity to the designer to get an overall idea of the nature of the LD (e.g. more emphasis is given on theory or students have to do a lot of assessment and no collaboration, and so on) by clicking on the Statistics button of the tool. As we can see in Figure 2, every simple activity is linked to a resource. For every resource we also dene metadata (title, author, description, type, copyright and resource le), which are not shown in the gures. In the suggested scenario we dene the following type of resources, as shown in Table 1. Figure 3 shows the ow model of the scenario. In this model, we see two different swim lanes, one for each role i.e. student and teacher. The activities are set in the vertical axis, according to their chronological order. The model is divided into three different phases: Phase 1: The scope of the lesson, Phase 2: Study and exercise Phase and Phase 3: Familiarize with tax software. The activities that are grouped inside a rectangular show that they belong in the same composite activity, as it was described in the conceptual model. Also the Study the instructional guide activity has a user-choice rule, which species that each student decides when this activity is completed and the Do an exercise in googledocs activity has a time-limit rule which species that this activity will end after 1 h and 30 min.
Table 1. Mapping between activities and resources types in the scenario. Activity 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. Type of resource Hypertext Hypertext Hypertext Video Hypertext Hypertext Video Hypertext Forum

Downloaded by [46.177.21.184] at 06:36 07 January 2013

324

M. Katsamani et al.

After the Do an exercise in googledocs activity there is a condition rule. The teacher corrects the exercise of each student and if the score is less than 60%, the student must study the theory and the examples again otherwise s/he goes on with the following activity. Figure 4 shows the Moodle preview function of CADMOS tool. With this function CADMOS converts the learning script into a Moodle course ready to be deployed by converting CADMOS tasks/activities to Moodle resources/activities, CADMOS phases to Moodle topics etc. according to a mapping schema that is explained in Figure 5. The mapping schema between the CADMOS resources types and the Moodle courses resources/activities is shown in Figure 6.

Downloaded by [46.177.21.184] at 06:36 07 January 2013

Figure 5. CADMOS to Moodle structural model.

Figure 6. Mapping between CADMOS resources and Moodle resources/activities.

Educational Media International

Table 2. Mapping between resources types in CADMOS and in Moodle. Activity 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. Type of resource Hypertext Hypertext Hypertext Video Hypertext Hypertext Video Hypertext Forum

325

Moodle resource File resource Url resource File resource Url resource Url resource Url resource Url resource Url resource Forum

Downloaded by [46.177.21.184] at 06:36 07 January 2013

The learning script is now ready to be exported as a Moodle course and be deployed in a Moodle platform for enactment. The exported le is Moodle course backup le (.mbz) and can be imported in Moodle through the course restoration process. The deployed Moodle course will allow teachers to evaluate their learning scripts during the educational process and make adjustments if needed directly in Moodle or in CADMOS (Table 2).

CADMOS evaluation Evaluation goals In order to test CADMOS tool, we organized an evaluation case study focusing on the following main issues: Is it possible for practitioners with basic computer skills and who are not experts in LD, to learn quickly and with no much effort how to use CADMOS tool? Is CADMOS interface attractive with simple notation? Do practitioners think that the CADMOS supported design method gives them pedagogical exibility? Is it possible to change only the learning resources and leaving intact the learning activities or change only the learning ow of the activities without changing the group of the activities/resources or even create several ows of learning activities from a specic set of them? Does CADMOS guide practitioners through the whole design process? Can they edit the LD from different perspectives? Do practitioners believe that CADMOS is suitable for designing a unit of learning and enacting it into Moodle LMS? These issues have been investigated by using qualitative and quantitative data. Specically the research group presented during a laboratory hands-on session the use of CADMOS tool to teachers who were novice in LD and received rst impressions and feedback comments. Then teachers were asked to voluntarily create with CADMOS a design of a unit of learning, submit it within a week and nally answer an online questionnaire. Below, the outcomes from analyzing data from the hands-on session, the submitted LDs and the answers to the questionnaire are presented.

326

M. Katsamani et al.

Participants The participants involved in this study, were students of M.Sc. programme, which is being organized by the Faculty of Primary Education of the University of Athens in collaboration with the Department of Mathematics of the Technical Institute of Piraeus in Greece, during the spring semester of 2012. Thirty MSc students all of them are teachers in public or private schools attended a hands-on session about CADMOS tool and afterwards were asked to participate voluntarily in the following phase of the study which required the submission of a LD for the needs of this case study. Seventeen of them submitted LDs and answered to an online questionnaire. All students had basic computer skills and little or no knowledge in LD. Students who did not complete the second phase claimed that they had heavy workload. Nine of students didnot have any experience in LD, while the rest of them (i.e. six students) had used some knowledge of course authoring tools like LCDS, CourseLab and QuickLesson.
Downloaded by [46.177.21.184] at 06:36 07 January 2013

Evaluation process Both qualitative and quantitative data were gathered during an evaluation process that was organized in two phases: Phase 1: During this phase, the philosophy of the CADMOS design method, as well as the functionality of the tool were explained during a hands-on session. Thirty students were called to create a lesson plan using CADMOS which was given in a narrative format. The lesson plan was about a topic of environmental education in high school and it is suggested by the Greek Pedagogical Institute. This phase lasted almost three hours and the research group made observations about the students usage of the tool and wrote down the students questions and their rst reactions. Phase 2: During this phase which was not compulsory, students were given the CADMOS tool v.1.9 and another prescribed lesson plan in a narrative format taken from the curriculum of history of the last grade of primary school (also a suggestion by the Greek Pedagogical Institute). They were asked to submit the graphical version of the lesson plan as well as its deployment as a Moodle course. The lesson plan concerned the historic facts about Alexander the Great which was familiar to all participants. Participants were asked to design this lesson plan using CADMOS and deploy it as a Moodle course. The duration of this phase was one week. During this week participants could pose questions or make comments about the software via a web forum. The research group examined the submitted lesson plans created with CADMOS and analyzed their answers to an online questionnaire. The online questionnaire contained closed-type questions that were related to (i) the usability of the CADMOS tool, (ii) the pedagogical exibility of CADMOS design method and (iii) the suitability of CADMOS to enact a LD as a Moodle course. Also, it contained opened-type questions that allowed participants to express themselves about the CADMOS tool, and the easiness of deploying a LD into Moodle

Results The rst goal of the study was to evaluate the usability of CADMOS as a LD authoring tool. Questions 315 of the questionnaire aimed to record if the participants were

Educational Media International

327

satised by the tool in general, if they had difculties in learning how to use the tool, if the notation of the tool was simple to understand and if the interface of the tool was friendly enough to help them represent easily their lesson plans in a graphical format. The results were positive. About 52.94% of the participants seemed to be highly satised from the tool, while 94.12% of them declared that CADMOS is very simple to use. The observations of the research group during the laboratory Phase 1, veried the users answers as they had been able to design without having signicant difculties after a rst quick demonstration of the tool. Also, 76.47% claimed that the graphical representation of a LD in CADMOS is more illustrative, easy to create and to understand than the usual narrative format and 82.36% of them said that they could represent the prescribed LD in CADMOS easily. These answers are conrmed by the fact that the participants succeeded in creating and delivering well-structured designs, within only one week, although they had no or few experience in LD. About 88.24% of the participants found the notation of the tool adequate and 64.7% of them mentioned that the user interface was friendly. In the opened-type questions, the majority of them said that they would prefer a bigger design area in order to have a better representation of learning scripts with a lot of activities. Questions 1628 aimed to evaluate the pedagogical exibility of the CADMOS design method and the layered design approach that CADMOS supports. The majority of the students (76.47%) argued that splitting the LD process into the creation of the conceptual and the ow model helped them design in a methodical and structured way and 58.82% of them said that CADMOS method helps a teacher to design a complete lesson. The evaluation of the delivered LDs, proves this fact, as most of the scenarios were fully described regarding the metadata i.e. title, description, learning goals, prerequisites, actors, resources and rules. Both the creation of a conceptual and a ow model was simple according to the participants opinions (88.24%). Also, 70.59% of the participants said that this method offers guidance in LD, while all of them argued that the two models give exibility to the designer who can focus in each view. The majority of the students appreciated the fact that they could edit each of the models separately and specically found useful the ability to use the same group of learning activities in the conceptual model in order to produce different ow models (88.24%) and the ability to use the same group of activities in the conceptual model, but connecting them with different learning resources (94.12%). These characteristics seem to be very important because they will allow reusability in the LDs. Regarding the conceptual model, the students commented that they wanted to be able to match an activity with more than one learning goals and they criticized the limited number of different types of tasks and resources. On the other hand, they seemed to be satised from the ow model. Questions 2934 evaluated the main innovative feature of CADMOS, i.e. the deployment of a LD in Moodle. The majority of the participants (58.82%) said that with CADMOS they could easily design a course for Moodle and 64.70% of them stated that they could easily understand how to design a Moodle online course using CADMOS. Also 64.71% of the participants agreed with the way the Moodle elements had been mapped to CADMOS conceptual elements. Very important remark is that 58.82% of the participants claimed that the representation of the course in Moodle was in full accordance with the two models. The participants made useful comments in the opened-type questions 3437, as well. They appreciated the fact that a non-expert in LD can learn easily how to use the tool and that the two different views (conceptual and ow model) of the design

Downloaded by [46.177.21.184] at 06:36 07 January 2013

328

M. Katsamani et al.

enable reusability of the scenarios. However, they noted some software bugs and the lack of software features like undo, copy & paste. These remarks will be taken into consideration for the next version of the tool. Conclusions and future plans This paper presents CADMOS which in its current version (version 1.9) is a stable, user-friendly LD tool with a simple notation and an intuitive user-interface that does not demand specic computer skills. Sodhi, Miao, Brouns, and Koper (2007) argue that:
the emphasis should be on enabling the non-expert authors to express the LD in concepts presented in non-colloquial terms distant from the spec and closer to their working vocabulary. (representation)

Downloaded by [46.177.21.184] at 06:36 07 January 2013

In order to bridge the gap between the technologies for learning and their actual use in practice (Conole, 2008a). CADMOS seems to support this idea. It is an easy-to-use tool that offers guidance and this feature makes it attractive even to teachers who are not experts in LD. As several researchers note (Conole, Mundin, & Galley, 2012; Laurillard, 2008; Sodhi et al., 2007) guidance is needed in order to streamline the authoring process. Also with CADMOS, the design is created in two different layers, while the practitioners have the possibility to examine tasks from different perspectives; at rst they describe the tasks and the corresponding resources and then they think about their orchestration (Katsamani & Retalis, 2011). The idea of designing in layers has been proposed before (Caeiro-Rodrguez, 2008) and it was used in the implementation of PoEML LD language. However, CADMOS approach is much simpler. It proposes only two layers in contrast to the PoEML which proposes six. Furthermore, the idea of creating a concept map for specifying the learning activities at the conceptual model was appreciated by the teachers. Concept mapping graphical representation is popular among teachers and helps in teachers mental modelling of internal representations and their possible evolutions (Cabellero, Moreira, & Rodriguez, 2008). CADMOS also supports the concept of swim lanes for the orchestration of the learning activities at the ow model. This is a wellaccepted notation by the teachers that Compendium uses it as well (Conole, 2012). CADMOS is also based on a formal metamodel. This allows it to be compatible to the IMS-LD specication, i.e. produces designs compatible to IMS-LD level A & B. So designs can be imported in tools like Reload or Recourse for being enacted. It further allows a teacher to import IMS-LD level A LDs and change them using CADMOS graphical representation. These are important features as sharing and reusing seem to be very important issues among the teachers community (Koper, 2005; Sodhi et al., 2007). Last but not least, a design of a unit of learning created by CADMOS can be enacted simply and quickly in Moodle, which is the most popular learning management system. CADMOS is the only LD authoring tool that does so. However, there are several issues that need to be further explored when using CADMOS as a LD authoring tool. The experience of the case study in the laboratory showed that although the users seemed to familiarize very quickly with the tool, they made some remarks mostly about the metadata schemata embedded in

Educational Media International

329

Downloaded by [46.177.21.184] at 06:36 07 January 2013

the tool, since they did not seem to cover all their needs even for simple and shortterm units of learning. For example, although in its current implementation CADMOS offers a specic taxonomy for describing the learning and support activities, it is denitely smaller than other taxonomies such as the DialogPlus (Bailey, Zalfan, Davis, Fill, & Conole, 2006). Still, validation by teachers and experienced designers is needed in order to make sure that all activities can be appropriately characterized keeping CADMOS taxonomy rather small. The nal version of CADMOS taxonomy for characterizing learning activities will try to consider all aspects and factors involved in developing a learning activity, from the pedagogical context in which the activity occurs through to the nature and types of tasks undertaken by the learner as suggested in (Bailey et al., 2006). The same concern applied to the metadata description of a learning resource or service. Moreover, using CADMOS as a LD authoring tool for Moodle courses is quite challenging. A teacher might create a LD in CADMOS that might have adaptation rules which Moodle cannot support such as the option to change the order of execution of the learning activities in a composite activity from sequence to free selection. Additionally, CADMOS should make sure that the mappings between its LD elements and the Moodles elements are correct and comprehensible from both semantic and functionality point of view. Such case is the phases element. In its current implementation, CADMOS suggests that each phase is mapped to a topic element in Moodle. However, Moodle offers another way of structuring an online course which is the weekly structure. Mapping a phase to a week is feasible but also a bit tricky since CADMOS allows a designer to assign time limits to each learning task. So, weekly structure by default imposes a time limit to each learning activity, which might not be what a designer had originally in mind. Concluding, further experimentation with teachers, learning designers and design experts is needed in order to make CADMOS a very usable LD authoring tool that meets their needs. The immediate plan is to release the revised version of the CADMOS tool to the Moodle community and ask users to give feedback. Acknowledgements
Special thanks to the ITisART.com.gr ofcial Moodle partner company for the valuable technical advices and support as well as to Mr Aris Polyzos and the MSc students from the department of TEI Piraeus and the University of Piraeus who participated to this evaluation case study as well as to other studies, for the discussions about the mapping of the CADMOS and Moodle elements as well as for giving us inspiration for the scenario of the presented case study. CADMOS can be downloaded from the website: http://cosy.ds.unipi.gr/cadmos.

References
Bailey, C., Zalfan, M.T., Davis, H.C., Fill, K., & Conole, G. (2006). Panning for gold: Designing pedagogically inspired learning nuggets. Educational Technology & Society, 9 (1), 113122. Berggren, A., Burgos, D., Fontana, J.M., Hinkelman, D., Hung, V., Hursh, A., & Tielemans, G. (2005). Practical and pedagogical issues for teacher adoption of IMS learning design standards in Moodle LMS [Special issue on Learning Design]. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2005(02), 124. Cabellero, C., Moreira, M. A. & Rodriguez, B.L. (2008). Concept mapping as a strategy to explore teachers mental representations about the universe. In A.J. Canas, P. Reiska, M. Ahlberg & J.D. Novak (Eds.), Proceedings of the third international conference on concept mapping (Vol.1, pp. 205212). Helsinki, Finland.

330

M. Katsamani et al.

Caeiro-Rodrguez, M. (2008). poEML: A separation of concerns proposal to instructional design. In L.Y. Botturi, & T. Stubbs (Eds.), Handbook of visual languages for instructional design: Theories and practice (pp. 185209). Conole, G. (2008a). Capturing practice: The role of mediating artefacts in learning design. In L. Lockyer, S. Bennett, S. Agostinho, & B. Harper (Eds.), Handbook of research on learning design and learning objects (pp. 187207). Hersey, PA: IGI Global. Conole, G. (2008b). Using Compendium as a tool to support the design of learning activities. In A. Okada, S. Buckingham Shum, & T. Sherborne (Eds.), Knowledge cartography software tools and mapping techniques (pp. 199221). London: Springer. Conole, G. (2012). Designing for learning in an open world. New York, NY: Springer. Conole, G., Mundin, P., & Galley, R. (2012). Evaluating a new approach to learning design. In V. Hodgson, C. Jones, M. de Laat, D. McConnell, T. Ryberg, & P. Sloep (Eds.), Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Networked Learning 2012. Retrieved from http://www.networkedlearningconference.org.uk/abstracts/pdf/conole.pdf Currier, S., Campbell, L., & Beetham, H. (2006). JISC pedagogical vocabularies project report 1: Pedagogical vocabularies review. Bristol: JISC. [Online]. Retrieved October 24, 2012 from http://www.jisc.ac.uk/uploaded_documents/PedVocab_VocabsReport_v0p11.doc Dalziel, J.R. (2007). Imagining and developing a system for reusable learning designs: Lessons from LAMS. International Journal of Continuing Engineering Education and LifeLong Learning, 17(1), 3342. Derntl, M., Neumann, S., & Oberhuemer, P. (2011). Propelling standards-based sharing and reuse in instructional modeling communities: The open graphical learning modeler (OpenGLM), ICALT 2011, 11th IEEE international conference on advanced learning technologies (pp. 431435). Athens, GA. Grifths, D., Blat, J., Garcia, R., Vogten, H., & Kwong, K.L. (2005). Learning design tools. In R. Koper & C. Tattersall (Eds.), Learning design, a handbook on modelling and delivering networked education and training (pp. 109135). Berlin: Springer-Verlag. Hernandez-Leo, D., Villasclaras-Fernandez, E.D., Asensio-Prez, J.I., Dimitriadis, Y., JorrnAbelln, I.M., Ruiz-Requies, I., & Rubia-Avi B. (2006). COLLAGE, a collaborative learning design editor based on patterns. [Special issue on Learning design, educational technology & society, 9(1), 5871]. Athabasca, Canada: International Forum of Educational Technology & Society. IMS Global Consortium. (2003). IMS learning design specication. Retrieved from http:// www.imsglobal.org/learningdesign/ Katsamani, M., & Retalis, S. (2011). Making learning designs in layers: The CADMOS approach. In Proceedings of the IADIS Multi Conference on Computer Science and Information Systems 2011 (pp. 305312). 2026 July, 2011. Rome, Italy. Koper, R. (2005). An introduction to learning design. In R. Koper & C. Tattersall (Eds.), Learning design: A handbook on modelling and delivering networked education and training (pp. 320). Berlin-Heidelberg: Springer. Laurillard, D. (2008). The teacher as action researcher: Using technology to capture pedagogic form. Studies in Higher Education, 33, 139154. Milligan, C.D., Beauvoir, P., & Sharples, P. (2005). The reload learning design tools [Special issue on Advances in Learning Design]. Journal of Interactive Media in Education. In C. Tattersall, R. Koper (Eds.). Retrieved from http://jime.open.ac.uk/2005/07 Neumann, S., & Oberhuemer, P. (2009). User evaluation of a graphical modeling tool for IMS learning design. In M. Spaniol, Q. Li, R. Klamma, & R.W.H. Lau (Eds.), Advances in web based learning (ICWL 009), 8th International Conference, Aachen, Germany, August 1921, 2009, Proceedings (pp. 287296). Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer. Paquette, G., Lonard, M., & Lundgren-Cayrol, K. (2011). The MOT+ visual language for knowledge-based instructional design, instructional design. Handbook of visual languages for instructional design: Theories and practices (pp. 697717). Prieto, L., Asensio-Prez, J., Dimitriadis, Y., Gmez-Snchez, E., & Muoz-Cristbal, J. (2011). GLUE!-PS: A multi-language architecture and data model to deploy tel designs to multiple learning environments. In K. Carlos, G. Denis, G. Raquel Crespo, W. Fridolin, & W. Martin (Eds.), Towards ubiquitous learning (pp. 285298). Berlin: Springer.

Downloaded by [46.177.21.184] at 06:36 07 January 2013

Educational Media International

331

Sampson, D.G., Karampiperis, P., & Zervas, P. (2005). ASK-LDT: A web-based learning scenarios authoring environment based on IMS learning design [Special issue on Designing learning activities: From content-based to context-based learning services]. International Journal on Advanced Technology for Learning (ATL), 2(4), 207215. Sodhi, T., Miao, Y., Brouns, F., & Koper, R. (2007). Design support for non-expert authors in the creation of units of learning: A rst exploration. TENC: Publications and Preprints, Keur der Wetenschap. Retrieved from http://dspace.ou.nl/handle/1820/984 Specht, M., & Burgos, D. (2007). Modeling adaptive educational methods with IMS learning design [Special issue on Adaptation and IMS learning design]. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 113. Tattersall, C., Vogten, H., Brouns, F., Koper, R., van Rosmalen, P., Sloep, P., & van Bruggen, J. (2005). How to exible runtime delivery of distance learning courses. Educational Technology & Society, 8, 226236.

Downloaded by [46.177.21.184] at 06:36 07 January 2013