Developing Web-Based Learning Scenarios Using the IMS Learning Design: The ASK-LDT Environment

The need for e-learning systems that support a diverse set of pedagogical requirements has been identified as an important issue in web-based education. Until now, significant R&D effort has been devoted aiming towards web-based educational systems tailored to specific pedagogical approaches. As a response to pedagogical concerns towards standardization and interoperability needs, Educational Modeling Languages (EMLs) were introduced. These languages attempt to provide a formal way of representing the educational process in a commonly agreed manner. Nevertheless, still there exist very few web-based educational systems that support EMLs. One of the key issues to be considered when designing web-based educational systems to support EML is the adoption of easy-to-use tools for the definition of learning scenarios. In this paper we present the ASK Learning Designer Toolkit (ASK-LDT), a learning scenarios graphical authoring system that utilizes the IMS Learning Design specification.