Abstract:

The provision of learning content via e-learnings is getting more and more important for schools as well as for Higher Education Institutes (HEI). In addition, the area of Lifelong Learning (LLL) is getting important, for companies and private persons. Due to the digital possibilities, LLL can take place everywhere and is not bound to a specific place.

It is possible to provide learning content in different ways and for different learning modalities. The learning content can be provided as a script, a classical e-learning course, a learning game or a combination of such modalities. The challenge is, that current implementations do not provide a possibility to switch between modalities. For example an e-learning course and a learning game, as it would be required for the mentioned example with the combination of two different learning modalities.

The described learning modalities have in common a didactical structure, which they are based on. We have already introduced the Didactical Structural Templates (DST), which approach is to make a digital representation of these didactical structures. The different learning modalities can be implicit as implementations of a shared DST. Another goal of the DSTs is to enable learners to switch between the different implementations of one specific DST without losing the learning progress. One recently solved challenge is, how it is possible to switch between the different implementations.

In this paper, we will present a solution for switching between the different implementations respectively modalities. This solution contains the features of the implementation registration, a recommender, which implementation will be the best fit for the learners’ preferred learning modality, a tracking of the learners’ progress, and the feature of providing the learners the choice to skip parts of the learning content.

After analysis and conceptual modelling, how the solution can be implemented, this paper will present a prototypical implementation as well as a first evaluation. The paper concludes with a summary and an overview of open challenges.

Keywords:

Didactical Structural Template, DST, IMS Learning Design, Qualifications-Based Learning, QBL, Qualifications-Based Learning Model, QBLM, Learning Modalities.