DEVELOPING A COOPERATIVE PLATFORM FOR RESEARCHING THE USE OF VIDEO-BASED LEARNING UNITS IN UNIVERSITY-BASED TEACHER EDUCATION

The project "LEVEL - Lehrerbildung vernetzt entwickeln” (developing teacher education in a network), which has been active since 2015, and its successor "The Next Level" are part of the BMBF's "Qualitätsoffensive Lehrerbildung" [1] (German Federal Ministry of Education and Research - “Quality Offensive in Teacher Education”). The projects' overall objective is to establish closer cooperation between various actors engaged in the education of teachers and to optimize and research video-based training formats in this higher-education scenario. In this projects, interdisciplinary and multi-phased, online-based teaching formats for study and training are developed which are based on the integration of videos recorded in lessons. To realize those projects, the platform VIGOR (Videographic Online Recorder) was developed and continuously enhanced to meet all requirements.

The platform VIGOR is a fusion of several existing eLearning systems. In order to ensure a seamless integration of the components and a positive user experience, the transitions between the systems were smoothed by various modifications. The core of the platform is a customized and enhanced Moodle instance which is used for user administration, exchange of content between authors as well as creation and distribution of learning content. With an extended version of the LernBar authoring system the authors have access to an easy-to-use authoring system which creates SCORM- and xAPI-compatible, interactive, video-based Web Based Trainings. Vilea serves as a video platform in which the lesson videos recorded in the project itself can be edited, shared and embedded in LernBar or Moodle courses. Mahara was connected as an ePortfolio management system for the users. A single sign-on was realized with the help of a CAS.

In addition to providing a platform for the cooperation of several actors and the distribution of learning content, the research of the implemented methods is a central component of the LEVEL projects. For this purpose, systems were designed to enable extensive usage data acquisition via SCORM, xAPI or other logs at the most relevant points of the system. These can be merged for analysis. Finally, the topics of data protection, pseudonymization and security concepts in general were extensively dealt with.

As of March 2020 VIGOR has been used by 140 authors and 5500 users. Due to its heterogeneous users, different requirements arose during the project, which have been implemented in an agile development process. The gradual opening of the platform for cooperation partners at other universities and schools, which do not have access to our university's own infrastructure, has also resulted in technical and data protection challenges.

In this paper we will present the concept and implementation of the customizations necessary to connect and extend the different systems mentioned above. We will also report on the continuous development process with an agile approach and the ongoing operation of the platform, including all the challenges involved. With this paper we want to support similar projects in better estimating the measures necessary to implement a system of this kind.

References:
[1] BMBF, Qualitätsoffensive Lehrerbildung – Projekt: Level, Accessed 12 March, 2020. Retrieved from https://www.qualitaetsoffensive-lehrerbildung.de/de/projekte.php?D=23#dtl