Abstract:

During last decade, there were a growing interest of consortia and E- learning community, to e-learning contents integrating simulation as a learning activity. Learning contents based on simulation; either as the main learning activity or as a training supplement; are widely used. The existing literature on simulation based learning activity, considers it to have a great ability to transfer skills into real-life and job situations and to produce positive learning outcomes, compared to other learning activities. In some engineering and technical higher education fields, as well as in high risk workplace training (medical, nursing and aviation), simulation based e-learning contents are considered to be the most cost effective to acquire transferable skills.

However, contributions on Simulation based e-learning contents are mainly focusing on simulation as the core content using either a simulator or a game generally running out of the LMS (Learning Management System) environment. There are very few contributions and integrated learning models containing simulation activities completely running on LMS execution environment.

This article’s first objective is to contribute in more specifying simulation learning objects with additional metadata to be more easily incorporated in LMS and standard e-learning contents generally. On the basis of the current release of LOM standard (Learning Object Metadata) we will discuss how well, the standard matches with simulation objects specification requirements. We will propose a new Metadata model that could support more easily simulation objects , especially in mixed E-learning content which uses simulation as a supplement activity (among others) and in which simulation activity should be executed by the learner, monitored and tracked by the tutor completely on the LMS.

Keywords:

e-learning, simulation, Standard, Learning object Metadata, Constructivism.