Extending IMS Learning Design services using Widgets: Initial findings and proposed architecture

IMS Learning Designs provide a specification for the activities undertaken by learners within an environment; currently the definition of the environment is typically a set of web resources and files, with the potential to add two basic types of tool: conferencing and mail. In this paper we describe our initial findings on using a lightweight approach to the addition of small applications (‘widgets’) to the palette of options available for Learning Design environments.