Browsing by Author "Brusilovsky, Peter"

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    Crossing the Borders: Re-Use of Smart Learning Objects in Advanced Content Access Systems
    Manzoor, Hamza; Akhuseyinoglu, Kamil; Wonderly, Jackson; Brusilovsky, Peter; Shaffer, Clifford A. (MDPI, 2019-07-19)
    Researchers in many disciplines are developing novel interactive smart learning objects like exercises and visualizations. Meanwhile, Learning Management Systems (LMS) and eTextbook systems are also becoming more sophisticated in their ability to use standard protocols to make use of third party smart learning objects. But at this time, educational tool developers do not always make best use of the interoperability standards and need exemplars to guide and motivate their development efforts. In this paper we present a case study where the two large educational ecosystems use the Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) standard to allow cross-sharing of their educational materials. At the end of our development process, Virginia Tech’s OpenDSA eTextbook system became able to import materials from Aalto University’s ACOS smart learning content server, such as python programming exercises and Parsons problems. Meanwhile, University of Pittsburgh’s Mastery Grids (which already uses the ACOS exercises) was made to support CodeWorkout programming exercises (a system already used within OpenDSA). Thus, four major projects in CS Education became inter-operable.
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    Ensemble PDP-8: Eight Principles for Distributed Portals
    Fox, Edward A.; Chen, Yinlin; Akbar, Monika; Shaffer, Clifford A.; Edwards, Stephen H.; Brusilovsky, Peter; Garcia, Daniel D.; Delcambre, Lois M. L.; Decker, Felicia; Archer, David W.; Furuta, Richard; Shipman, Frank M., III; Carpenter, B. Stephen, II; Cassel, Lillian N. (2010)
    Ensemble, the National Science Digital Library (NSDL) Pathways project for Computing, builds upon a diverse group of prior NSDL, DL-I, and other projects. Ensemble has shaped its activities according to principles related to design, development, implementation, and operation of distributed portals. Here we articulate 8 key principles for distributed portals (PDPs). While our focus is on education and pedagogy, we expect that our experiences will generalize to other digital library application domains. These principles inform, facilitate, and enhance the Ensemble R&D and production activities. They allow us to provide a broad range of services, from personalization to coordination across communities. The eight PDPs can be briefly summarized as: (1) Articulation across communities using ontologies. (2) Browsing tailored to collections. (3) Integration across interfaces and virtual environments. (4) Metadata interoperability and integration. (5) Social graph construction using logging and metrics. (6) Superimposed information and annotation integrated across distributed systems. (7) Streamlined user access with IDs. (8) Web 2.0 multiple social network system interconnection.