STANDARDIZED ARCHITECTURE FOR INTEGRATED OPEN COURSEWARE

In recent years, hypermedia has been grown in interest in Advanced Research on learning. Furthermore the extension of hypermedia toward intelligent hypermedia becomes more than obvious, to meet perfectly specific requirements of learning, such as the learner modelling, diagnosing and guiding the learner in his investigation. Independently of any existing systems, this paper specifies a layered conceptual architecture, based on integrating Hypermedia Systems and Intelligent Knowledge Based Systems skills, for courseware purpose. This architecture may apply for a wide range of Computer Assisted Learning courseware (CAL) as well as for Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS). As far as the knowledge representation is crucial for this architecture, two formalisms are chosen because of their complementarity. The object formalism is chosen to represent static and predefinned knowledge, whereas the rule formalism applied for modelling dynamic knowledge and reasonning processes either in the framework of the domain knowledge, the learner modelling or teaching strategies expertises. To foster interoperability in an open and distant learning, an interchange format fitting to this architecture, making use of existing and forthcoming standards in the area of multimedia, is manipulated for exchange between different production or learning platforms.