The eLesson Markup Language (eLML) is an open source XML framework for creating electronic lessons. It is a "spin-off" from the GITTA project, a Swiss GIS eLearning project, and was launched in spring 2004. The eLML project is hosted at SourceForge. The aim of eLML was to offer authors a tool that ensured conformity to pedagogical guidelines.
eLML is based on a teaching model called ECLASS (Gerson, 2000 ). ECLASS is an abbreviation for the following elements:
Entry: Stands for the introduction into the lesson or a unit (the sub-category of a lesson)
Clarify: A clarify element is used to explain some theory, models, principles or facts
Look: Examples that help the student to understand the theory
Act: This elements animates the student to become active, try out a model or discuss issues
Self-Assessment: Check if the learning objectives of the lesson or unit were fulfilled
Summary: Provides a brief summary of either the whole lesson or an individual unit
The original ECLASS model was slightly modified and e.g. additional elements like glossary, bibliography and metadata were added to be able to create a self-contained e-learning course. Furthermore, the three elements clarify, look and act together form a so-called "learning object" and these elements can be used in any sequence order and can even be used multiple times within one learning object. This allows that an author can start with an example (look) and then follow by explaining the theory (clarify) behind it or the other way round. Also the uncommon but sometimes very successful approach where the student starts with a short exercise (act) and only after having tried out some solutions can read the theory (clarify) behind it and see some real-world examples (look). The ECLASS model is on one hand flexible enough to represent different learning scenarios and to meet all the requirements needed by the creators of the e-learning lessons but ensures on the other hand that the content complies with the defined didactical guidelines.
These didactical guidelines where then mapped into an XML structure that allowed a strict checking if the author has correctly used the pedagogical model or not. The details are explained in detail below.
The XML structure of eLML
The described pedagogical model ECLASS is mapped onto an XML structure using XML Schema, as shown in this illustration:
An eLML lesson always starts with either the mandatory introduction (element entry) or a concise listing of the lesson’s learning objectives (element goals). The unit elements, described below, contain the actual content of a lesson. Following the units a lesson can have a summary and/or up to five self-assessments followed by an optional further reading and glossary section to list important resources and to describe terms used within the lesson. The XML Schema ensures that all glossary terms used in a lesson are defined in the glossary. The Harvard Referencing System or the APA style can be used for the bibliography. All citations, references, further readings etc., must be listed within the bibliography section, otherwise the XML parser issues an error and the lesson is not valid.
Through an amount of mandatory elements eLML ensures that at least the minimal metadata elements are filled out even though many authors do not like to fill in metadata information. The eLML metadata elements are a subset of the IMS Learning object metadata (LOM) that can be used to store data about the length of the lessons, the author(s), copyrights, the required knowledge to attempt this lesson and the basic technical requirements. The bibliography style elements and the metadata section are defined in a separate XML schema and thus can be replaced by other standards or definitions.
Within each unit a similar structure as on lesson level is employed. However, the elements glossary, bibliography and metadata are always defined for the whole lesson on lesson level. The actual content within a unit is stored in a number of so-called "learning objects" (not to be confused with the learning objectives – called "goals" within eLML). Each learning object describes a certain concept, model, equation, term, or process using all or some of the three elements clarify (theory), look (example) and act in free order. These three elements can have a special visual representation when transformed into a presentation format – e.g. a "gear" icon for act elements as used in GITTA to signalize the student that he or she has to "do" something – but their main purpose is to guide authors while creating content. Using the elements clarify, look and act, the author has to think about how a certain concept can be presented best to the student. Whether a learning object starts with some theory (clarify element) and continues with one or more examples (look elements) or, alternatively, the student first does something (act element) and then read the theory afterwards (clarify element) is left to the author.
Transformation and Presentation of an eLML lesson
Thanks to the use of standards like XML, XSLT or SVG all eLML lessons can be transformed and viewed with any web-browser on any platform and are totally software-independent. The two main transformation files that are included in the eLML package can transform a lesson into an "online" (both XHTML 1.1 and HTML5) and into a "print" (PDF) version (using XSL Formatting Objects) with one click. Both versions can be customized offering personalized layouts (see example below). More transformation files provided by eLML cover the following output formats: ODF (Open Document Format), DocBook, LaTeX and since 2010 also eBooks based on the ePub format. Since eLML supports both the IMS Global "Content Package" and the SCORM standard, the content can also easily be imported into any modern Learning Management System (LMS) like WebCT or OLAT. To create nice looking templates eLML offers a tool called "Template Builder" and it has built-in support for a CSS-framework called YAML. The following illustration shows an eLML lesson transformed into many different layouts and formats:
Tools for eLML
Starting with version 5, eLML offers a wide range of tools: The eLML Editor to create lessons (based on the Firedocs Mozilla Firefox XML-Editor, the Template Builder to create layout templates (created as a Google Summer of Code project), and Add-On's for Apache Lenya CMS etc. With eLML 7 release a new transformation tool to create online lessons in various formats was launched: EasyELML.
Screenshot of the new Firedocs eLML Editor
Screenshot of the eLML Template Builder
Copyright and legal issues
eLML is an open source project and available under the Apache 2 License. The main communication between the community users goes via the SourceForge website, specially via the eLML-Users Mailinglist (for general issues) and the RFE (Feature Request) Tracker (for discussions about new features).
The Dublin Core, also known as the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set, is a set of fifteen "core" elements (properties) for describing resources. This fifteen-element Dublin Core has been formally standardized as ISO 15836, ANSI/NISO Z39.85, and IETF RFC 5013. The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI), which formulates the Dublin Core, is a project of the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T), a non-profit organization. The core properties are part of a larger set of DCMI Metadata Terms. "Dublin Core" is also used as an adjective for Dublin Core metadata, a style of metadata that draws on multiple Resource Description Framework (RDF) vocabularies, packaged and constrained in Dublin Core application profiles.
The Semantic Web is an extension of the World Wide Web through standards set by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The goal of the Semantic Web is to make Internet data machine-readable.
Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language that defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. The World Wide Web Consortium's XML 1.0 Specification of 1998 and several other related specifications—all of them free open standards—define XML.
DocBook is a semantic markup language for technical documentation. It was originally intended for writing technical documents related to computer hardware and software, but it can be used for any other sort of documentation.
The Geography Markup Language (GML) is the XML grammar defined by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) to express geographical features. GML serves as a modeling language for geographic systems as well as an open interchange format for geographic transactions on the Internet. Key to GML's utility is its ability to integrate all forms of geographic information, including not only conventional "vector" or discrete objects, but coverages and sensor data.
XBRL is a freely available and global framework for exchanging business information. XBRL allows the expression of semantic meaning commonly required in business reporting. The language is XML-based and uses the XML syntax and related XML technologies such as XML Schema, XLink, XPath, and Namespaces. One use of XBRL is to define and exchange financial information, such as a financial statement. The XBRL Specification is developed and published by XBRL International, Inc. (XII).
The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) specification defines a set of document types for authoring and organizing topic-oriented information, as well as a set of mechanisms for combining, extending, and constraining document types. It is an open standard that is defined and maintained by the OASIS DITA Technical Committee.
The PBCore metadata standard was created by the public broadcasting community in the United States of America for use by public broadcasters and related communities that manage audiovisual assets, including libraries, archives, independent producers, etc. PBCore is organized as a set of specified fields that can be used in database applications, and it can be used as a data model for media cataloging and asset management systems. As an XML schema, PBCore enables data exchange between media collections, systems and organizations.
Learning Object Metadata is a data model, usually encoded in XML, used to describe a learning object and similar digital resources used to support learning. The purpose of learning object metadata is to support the reusability of learning objects, to aid discoverability, and to facilitate their interoperability, usually in the context of online learning management systems (LMS).
A metadata registry is a central location in an organization where metadata definitions are stored and maintained in a controlled method.
The National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) is an XML-based information exchange framework from the United States. NIEM represents a collaborative partnership of agencies and organizations across all levels of government and with private industry. The purpose of this partnership is to effectively and efficiently share critical information at key decision points throughout the whole of the justice, public safety, emergency and disaster management, intelligence, and homeland security enterprise. NIEM is designed to develop, disseminate, and support enterprise-wide information exchange standards and processes that will enable jurisdictions to automate information sharing.
The semantic spectrum is a series of increasingly precise or rather semantically expressive definitions for data elements in knowledge representations, especially for machine use.
Metadata publishing is the process of making metadata data elements available to external users, both people and machines using a formal review process and a commitment to change control processes.
This article describes the technical specifications of the OpenDocument office document standard, as developed by the OASIS industry consortium. A variety of organizations developed the standard publicly and make it publicly accessible, meaning it can be implemented by anyone without restriction. The OpenDocument format aims to provide an open alternative to proprietary document formats.
The Metadata Object Description Schema (MODS) is an XML-based bibliographic description schema developed by the United States Library of Congress' Network Development and Standards Office. MODS was designed as a compromise between the complexity of the MARC format used by libraries and the extreme simplicity of Dublin Core metadata.
PREservation Metadata: Implementation Strategies (PREMIS) is the de facto digital preservation metadata standard.
Metadata is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including:
The Office Open XML file formats are a set of file formats that can be used to represent electronic office documents. There are formats for word processing documents, spreadsheets and presentations as well as specific formats for material such as mathematical formulae, graphics, bibliographies etc.
The Publishing Requirements for Industry Standard Metadata (PRISM) specification defines a set of XML metadata vocabularies for syndicating, aggregating, post-processing and multi-purposing content. PRISM provides a framework for the interchange and preservation of content and metadata, a collection of elements to describe that content, and a set of controlled vocabularies listing the values for those elements. PRISM can be XML, RDF/XML, or XMP and incorporates Dublin Core elements. PRISM can be thought of as a set of XML tags used to contain the metadata of articles and even tag article content.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
