To Store and Retrieve Software Components for Interactive Learning Environments: the ECR Repository
Résumé
In the field of Interactive Learning Environments (ILEs), most existing or in the making repositories are devoted to Learning Objects (LOs). These objects have static or dynamic contents and are designed to be used in an ILE. As far as we know, repositories where ILE designers can retrieve and re-use software components do not exist. Therefore, we elaborated and implemented a repository to store software components that could be used to build an ILE. This has led us to propose a specific metadata schema, named Learning Software Component Metadata (LSCM) to describe the software components. It is based on Learning Object Metadata (LOM) for the learning aspects and on Basic Interoperability Data Model (BIDM) for the software aspects. In this paper, we first classify software components in four categories, according to their roles in the ILE construction. Then, we describe the repository itself.