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2
2. Issue
Second Issue - December 2005
Editorial
Articles / Beiträge
  1. Software Engineering and eLearning: The MuSofT Project

    eLearning supports the education in certain disciplines. Here, we report about novel eLearning concepts, techniques, and tools to support education in Software Engineering, a subdiscipline of computer science. We call this "Software Engineering eLearning". On the other side, software support is a substantial prerequisite for eLearning in any discipline. Thus, Software Engineering techniques have to be applied to develop and maintain those software systems. We call this "eLearning Software Engineering". Both aspects have been investigated in a large joint, BMBF-funded research project, termed MuSofT (Multimedia in Software Engineering). The main results are summarized in this paper.

  2. Learning Software Engineering via Internet

    In recent years, education authorities worldwide, including the German Federal Government, have invested heavily in the development of e-learning and multimedia materials for institutions of higher learning. While for some subject matters the benefits of e-learning seem obvious, there are subjects, often consisting of a number of tenuously connected topics or requiring a balance of learning and training, for which it is a valid question whether appropriate learning materials can be presented via the Internet. Software Engineering belongs to this second group, both for its broad collection of topics and, particularly, for the required emphasis on teamwork and communication training.

  3. eLEARNING - EINE CHANCE FÜR KLEINE UND MITTLERE UNTERNEHMEN

    eLearning wird durch seine Flexibilität und Zugänglichkeit als bedeutendes Instrument für die Implementierung lebenslangen Lernens (LLL) angesehen. Es kann für kleine und mittelgroße Unternehmen (KMU) einen Katalysator des Wandels sein und bietet damit die Chance zur Verbesserung der wirtschaftlichen Leistungsfähigkeit. Darüber hinaus kann eLearning dazu dienen, die Integration von KMU in den europäischen Markt zu fördern. Bis jetzt wird eLearning im Rahmen der beruflichen Aus- und Weiterbildung jedoch nahezu ausschließlich in Großunternehmen genutzt, während es in KMU allenfalls eine marginale Rolle spielt. Im ersten Kapitel dieses Artikels wird auf den Perspektivenwechsel in der beruflichen Aus- und Weiterbildung eingegangen. Im Anschluss daran werden die zentralen Elemente von eLearning vorgestellt (Kap. 2). Die mit eLearning verbundenen Chancen und Herausforderungen für KMU diskutiert (Kap. 3). Abschließend wird auf Erfahrungen mit eLearning in der Praxis am Beispiel von drei EU-finanzierten Projekten eingegangen. Das Hauptaugenmerk liegt dabei auf dem laufenden Projekt ARIEL -Analysing and Reporting the Implementation of Electronic Learning in Europe -, das vom Institut Arbeit und Technik, Gelsenkirchen, (IAT) koordiniert wird.

  4. Multi-Channel-Learning (MCL)

    Lerneinheiten müssen stark variierenden Anforderungen gerecht werden. Neben unterschiedlichen Lerntypen spielen vor allem auch die Umfeldbedingungen eine wesentliche Rolle, in denen Lernprozesse stattfinden. Faktoren wie z. B. die Tagesform führen letztlich dazu, dass nicht einmal für eine einzelne Person konstante Lernpräferenzen herrschen. Mit diesem Beitrag wird vorgeschlagen, zur Lösung des Problems einer Mehrkanalstrategie zu folgen. Allerdings sind spezifische Eigenschaften von Learning-Content-Systemen (LCS) notwendig, um ein sog. Multi-Channel-Learning (MCL) zu ermöglichen. Diese Eigenschaften werden im Beitrag anhand von Informationsmodellen beschrieben werden. Sie sollen als Referenzmodell dienen, das sowohl bei der Entwicklung als auch bei der Auswahl und Anpassung von LCS hilfreich sein kann. Das Referenzmodell wird deduktiv abgeleitet und anhand praktischer Anwendungen geprüft. Vorgestellt werden sowohl Anwendungs- als auch Organisationssysteme, die nach dem Modell realisiert worden sind. Auf dieser Grundlage kann schließlich eine Nutzenabschätzung des Modells für das Multi-Channel-Learnings vorgenommen werden.

Project reports / Projektberichte
  1. Zur Implementierung von e-Learning-Kursen an Bayerischen Behörden

    Dieser Artikel gibt Einblicke in den Verbreitungsgrad von e-Learning-Kursen in öffentlicher Verwaltung und Behörden. Am Beispiel der Bildungsplattform BayLern® der Bayerischen Behörden werden praxisnahe Leitlinien zur Implementierung von e-Learning an Behörden aufgezeigt.

  2. Libre Courseware For Bayesian Decision Making

    This paper describes the ideas and problems of the Edukalibre e-learning project, in which the author takes part. The basic objective of the project shares the development and exploitation of software components for web-based information systems applied to education as well as organizing of teaching material for them. The paper concerns a problem of the mathematical-oriented courseware and describes the experience in developing LaTeX-supporting online converting tool.

  3. aXess: an authoring tool for XML content management

    The use of XML for representation of eLearning-content and for automatic generation of different kinds of teaching media from this material is with all its advantages nowadays stateof-the-art. In the last years there have been numerous projects that leveraged XML-based production environments. At the end of the financial advancement the created materials have to be maintained with limited (human) resources. In the majority of cases this is only possible, if the authors care for their teaching material without extensive IT-support. From our point of view there has so far been a lack of intuitive usable XML editors. The prototype of such an XML editor “aXess” is introduced with the intention to encourage a broad discussion about the required features to manage the content of eLearning-materials.

  4. Accessible e-learning

    People with disabilities often encounter difficulties while trying to learn something, because teaching material is for example not accessible to blind people or rooms, where courses take place, are not accessible to people using a wheelchair. E-learning provides an opportunity to disabled people. With the new German law on the equalisation of opportunities for people with disabilities for the first time access to information technology was explicitly taken up in German legislation. As a consequence of this law the framework law on universities (Hochschulrahmengesetz) was changed. The law now commit universities not to discriminate disabled students in their studies. For references on how universities can design accessible e-learning contents and provide accessible information online see http://wob11.de/links/anleitungen.html#elearning.

Editorial

We are happy to present the second issue of the "e-learning and education" journal. Producing an electronic open access journal is a very interesting and challenging task--we are in the middle of the ongoing discussion on open access. There are two important reasons: First, open access articles have significantly higher citation impact than non-open access articles. Second, open access is a way out of the libraries' journal budget crisis. Many people are talking about the "golden road" and the "green road" of open access. The green road is basically self-archiving of traditional publications by the authors. The majority of journals allow self-archiving and many authors already "archive" their articles either on their web page or in a dedicated repository. However, the potential readers still have to find these articles.

We are on the "golden road" by actively promoting an open access journal. Our journal is free for all and the long term accessibility is ensured; no articles will "vanish" because an author moves or removes his web pages.

More interesting are the challenges and possibilities of electronic publication. Weber-Wulff and Schmiedecke's article "Learning Software Engineering via Internet" has (embedded) additional material: a flash animation, a chat recording, and a movie. This makes the article an interesting experience and would have not been possible within a traditional, paper-based article. Similarly, "eLearning--a chance for small and medium sized enterprises" by Hamburg, Lindecke, and Terstriep also contains a flash animation. We hope that future articles will also use such possibilities for the benefit of the reader.

As you might have noticed, we have changed the mode of publication: There are still issues that are published regularly. However, the final versions of accepted research papers are now published as "previews" to achieve a timely publication. They are already citeable and their URL and URN stay the same when they appear in the next issue of eleed.

We have some exciting future plans for eleed and one of the next things will be the possibility to download articles in pdf format.

Again, this issue consists of three parts: reviewed e-learning articles, non-reviewed project reports, and e-learning book descriptions. In the first part, there are four interesting articles. Two of the articles complement each other--they both focus on teaching software engineering via e-learning.

In "Software Engineering and eLearning: The MuSoft Project" Doberkat et al present their experiences with e-learning specifically dedicated at teaching software engineering. Like any other engineering discipline, software engineering is not very well suited for teaching in a classical way. Doberkat et al present the project MuSoft, which enhances software engineering courses with videos, animations, and dedicated tools. The project's results include a portal which offers more than 250 different free learning objects in the field of software engineering.

While Doberkat et al focused on the learning objects, Weber-Wulff and Schmiedecke report about the experiences with a complete e-learning course for software engineering in "Learning Software Engineering via Internet". Besides discussion about content creation and didactical setup, they focus on experiences with online teamwork and communication training.

The article "Multi-Channel-Learning" from vom Brocke (which is only available in German) focuses on learning content systems with in a multi channel strategy. Such a strategy is necessary to adapt to the varying learner's context and preferences. Vom Brocke presents a reference model which has been implemented in two e-learning platforms (Freestyle Learning and OpenUSS) and reports on experiences.

The fourth paper, "eLearning--a chance for small and medium sized enterprises" by Hamburg, Lindecke, and Terstriep, reports on the chances and perspectives of the various European e-learning projects for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). It contains three examples of such European projects and reports on the state of the art in the European countries.

Besides the four scientific articles, this issue includes four non-reviewed project reports about e-learning in public administration, an authoring tool for XML content management, courseware for Bayesian decision making, and e-learning for the handicapped.

Also, we have included four reviews of interesting German books in the area of e-learning.

We hope that issue is at least as interesting as the first. Have fun reading it!

Jens Krinke
Co-Editor-in-Chief, eleed