The Essen Learning Model A Step Towards a Standard Model of Learning Processes

Several standards like the Learning Technology Systems Architecture (LTSA) or the Instructional Management Systems Project (IMS) provide a format to interchange, reuse, and combine learning contents. They do not cover didactical methods in detail. Therefore we developed an approach to specify methods as a part of the description of learning sequences. This representation and selection of learning and teaching methods is an integral part of the Essen Learning Model (ELM), a generic development model supporting developers, educators, and users on different levels of educational activities. We show how to use structured teaching processes as a guideline to implement learning environments. Introduction Due to the enormous amount of developments in the field of educational technologies, a variety of approaches, architectures, and systems have emerged in the last decades. Recent educational concepts like Virtual Universities changed the research focus from single user, local architectures, to a multi-user, globally distributed architecture. The need to combine and integrate different systems has led to several standardization projects, determining standard architectures and formats for learning environments, such as Learning Technology Systems Architecture (Farance, Tonkel, 99) or Instructional Management Systems Project (EDUCAUSE, 99). One of the main issues is to standardize of learning contents in order to make those contents available for integration, e.g., in a Virtual University. Less attention has been devoted to the standardization of learning and teaching methods. When choosing a course for the integration into a curriculum, the decision depends on the one hand on the content, on the other hand, the educator has to consider the teaching method used for a certain content. Therefore we focused on the representation of learning and teaching methods in order to develop a generic description. First of all, this description acts as a decision tool when integrating courses, secondly it guides the author implementing a course or a unit. The representation and selection of learning and teaching methods is an integral part of the Essen Learning Model, a generic development model supporting developers, educator, and users on different levels of educational activities (Pawlowski, 2000). In the following we point out the need of a standard representation of methods. The representation of learning processes was modeled in ARIS (Scheer, 98a), a standard modeling tool. Our implementation used this representation, but other process modeling tools could be used as well. We briefly describe ARIS, the implemented methods, the method selection process in the Essen Learning Model, and present a sample implementation from our university. Essen Learning Model (ELM) The Essen Learning Model was developed at the University of Essen. It is currently being evaluated to be used in different departments of our university. We will describe the design principles and the general flow of the approach. The Essen Learning Model is a modular system (Fig. 1), supporting development processes as well as the system’s use system on different levels: The support of curriculum design (C-level), the development of learning sequences (D-level), and the development of learning units (E-level). We distinguish between three abstraction levels: the g neric development model provides knowledge for a variety of contexts. This generic model is customized depending on the user’s needs and preferences, and transformed into a specific process model for each project. The process model provides a framework for educational technology projects. The third level is the result of the development process in form of certain implementations for each module. The result of ELM-C is a detailed network of learning objectives and goals. The structure and ARIS process model ELM-C