Design criteria for the development of an institutional learning object repository

Abstract

The production of educational contents in academic environments has been traditionally developed without an integral plan which allows their adequate distribution and access. In addition, it produces effort duplication and misuse of resources. As a possible solution, this work proposes Learning Objects and Knowledge Repositories to be used. The authors state some design criteria for developing a web-enabled Learning Object Repository, according to the IEEE Learning Object Metadata standard. This repository would be used in a university educational context, replacing the disjointed procedures that are currently employed. Not only knowledge, but also human resources are the main entities in this proposal. Interoperability, portability and efficiency are the non-functional requirements considered at this design stage. In order to satisfy all of requirements, the combined usage of standard-compliant file-repositories and a relational database is proposed. The data consistence between these storage methods is assured by a specific mechanism delineated with this intention; in addition, some intuitive operators are defined for the specification of search criteria in arbitrary metadata queries.