Integrated Management of Courses in a Distance Learning Environment

In this paper we present a set of tools to be used together with a Learning Management System (LMS) for the integrated management of adaptive educational paths. For the sake of the modularity and reusability of components, both the LMS and the tools are stand-alone applications; on the other hand they are designed and developed such that they provide users and programmers with integration capabilities and a high degree of mutual interoperability. The proposed tools cover the life-cycle of the learning process; starting from the definition of the contents and their organic structure, passing through the authoring of the teaching materials and the packaging in standard learning objects as well as the definition of metadata for easy information retrieval and categorization over the web, until the delivery of courses to the students and their final assessment. The whole activity and life-cycle are profitably supported by the EifFE-L environment, an open source platform aimed to promoting distance learning techniques by providing easy to use web interfaces and friendly tools to an audience as wider as possible. © 2006 by Knowledge Systems Institute Graduate School. All rights reserved.