wiki:Project_summary

Brainstorm notes

This project will rapidly advance the ability of every education institution in New Zealand to expand the capabilities for individual teachers to author interactive e-learning content, by building on the national and international success of the eXe I project. Using eXe, these content resources can be shared and customised for local contexts and have the technical capability to be delivered by any standards compliant learning management system. Alternatively e-content can be distributed as web files that are uploaded on a webserver or distibuted in a way that can be viewed locally for students that have bandwidth and connectivity contraints.

The project will extend New Zealand's code development capability in eXe at local institutions, while at the same time expand the range of features which will be freely available for everyone to use through eXe's open source software licence. A series of developer's workshops will be presented, thus enabling individual institutions to code their own instructional devices and customise stylesheets for local institutions. In addition, a new eXe knowledge node will be established to promote long-term sustainability of the project. The experience gained through the establishment of this new eXe knowledge node will provide valuable insights for replicating such nodes locally and internationally.

Value added features in eXe will focus on: (1) authoring content for mobile delivery devices (e.g. photo iPods, palmtops and PDAs); (2) multimedia presentation templates, combining video that is synchronised with user-driven html displays (see vodcasts later in the proposal); and (3) new instructional devices (used in eXe) customised for Maori learners.

The project will significantly enhance the return on investment of previously funded eCDF projects, in particular:

  1. Providing an rich authoring tool that can be used by the NZOSVLE projects because eXe's exports comply with the international IMS/SCORM interoperability specifications;
  2. Authoring learning objects that can be stored in the eCDF open source learning object repository project;
  3. Transforming the findings of appropriate e-learning strategies for Maori learners into instructional devices that can be used for authoring culturaly relevant e-content.

In conclusion, eXe 2 will fill a significant gap in suite of avialable e-learning technologies, particularly for contexts plagued with connectivity and capability issues associated with the digital divide. Within the open source arena, it will be possible to: create, collaborate, store, retrieve and deliver rich e-learning content using eXe's capabilities in the following ways.

  1. Authoring interactive e-learning content offline with eXe;
  2. Working collaboratively on e-learning content using, for instance, wiki technology by expanding eXe's import/export functionality to include the wiki format;
  3. Storing eXe generated content in learning object repositories (for example using COLs learning object repository software);
  4. Delivering IMS/SCORM content packages in a wide range of proprietary and FLOSS learning management systems, including for example: Blackboard, WebCT, ATutor, Kewl-NextGen?, Moodle, OLAT, Claroline and Dokeos.

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