Abstract:

The advance of Internet towards Web 2.0 conveys the potential it has in a wide range of scopes. The ongoing progress of the Web technology and its availability in teaching and learning as well as a students profile increasingly more used to managing an important amount of digital information, offers lecturers the opportunity and challenge of put at students disposal didactic tools making use of the Internet.
In the same way that the e-learning applications’ importance is increasing in the universitary field, there are still some critical questions that should be solved in order to make use of the potential offered by the new web technologies. The methodology to create effective content which may attract the interest of students properly is the aim of this work.
Everyone has his/her own way of learning, understanding concepts and assimilating knowledge. Therefore, the teaching-learning process should be tackled from a scheduled planning. In this planning the profile of students to whom it is directed as well as the objective of the content subjects’ and the learning tools used ought to be taken into consideration.
A learning object is an entity used in teaching-learning processes. Digital learning objects lead us to think of the same concept but making use of a new container: the whole hardware that supports digitalized information.
A concept map is a learning strategy used in the theory of knowledge known as constructivism. According to this theory, learning is a mental process of the individual that is developed as s/he interacts with the environment. That is to say, the learning process is better obtained manipulating the objects. Concept maps are diagrams that show a graphic view of the relationship amongst concepts.
The learning tools exposed have been developed with the goal of making students interact and manage them, understand their use and increase their knowledge through the observation and manipulation of the concepts and their relationship.
The educative content creation methodology exposed shows the different stages of the development process.
Interactive multimedia concept maps created have been developed following design principles which turn them into effective learning objects. Amongst their main characteristics we find: modularity, portability, scalability and extensibility.
Later this material will be at students’ disposal through Internet. The whole process should be developed according to a methodology that will guarantee an appropriate use of the resources and the achievement of the objectives proposed.
The learning tools developed are presented from a new perspective, characterized by the way they are scheduled and developed as well as their interactive and multimedia nature.
Combining the e-learning with this type of tools we can help students to understand methods and processes of each knowledge area better.
This paper exposes the experience acquired in the creation and distribution of these educative interactive multimedia learning objects: concept maps. They have been developed for subjects of programming languages of various official degrees from the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.

Keywords:

Concept maps, interactive learning objects, interactive multimedia concept maps, creation engineering, prototyping, learning process.