Session T2E 978-1-61284-469-5/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE October 12 - 15, 2011, Rapid City, SD 41 st ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference T2E-1 Work in Progress - LOM4CE: LOM for the Content Ecosystem Alfonso Vicente, Regina Motz, Martín Llamas and Manuel Caeiro alfonso.vicente@logos.com.uy, rmotz@fing.edu.uy, martin@uvigo.es, mcaeiro@det.uvigo.es Abstract - E-Learning is as much or more related to learning than technologies, but technology specialists have been commissioned, often alone, to create specifications and standards for E-Learning, focusing much more on technologies than learning. Learning is an internal process that occurs in the minds of people, so it is always a personal process. As each student has their own cognitive style and learning preferences, a goal that began with the application of technology to education is the personalization of instruction. One of the main obstacles to automate personalization is the lack of specifications and standards for describing learning objects at different levels of granularity. This work extends the concept of Content Ecosystem, giving semantic definitions for each Educational Object in the hierarchy. Index Terms - Content Ecosystem, E-Learning, Learning Object Metadata (LOM), LOM Application Profile. INTRODUCTION Most recent research on E-Learning focuses on technology related to Learning Objects. Despite this, there is widespread confusion about the Learning Object concept, e.g. what should be a Learning Object or how big it should be. A contributing factor to this confusion is that the term Learning Object has two meanings: one is "any type of educational content" and the other "a specific type of object within an object hierarchy". The Learnativity’s Content Ecosystem is a hierarchy of Educational Objects, in which the Learning Objects are one specific type of Educational Objects. This hierarchy suggests four types of Educational Objects: Content Assets, Information Objects, Learning Objects and Learning Components. Although the Learnativity’s Content Ecosystem is widely accepted in theory, as far as we know there are no attempts to distinguish between the types of Educational Objects through metadata. Hereafter, we will use the term Educational Objects to refer to the more general objects, reserving the term Learning Objects for one specific type within the hierarchy. SEMANTIC DEFINITIONS FOR EDUCATIONAL OBJECTS For this work, a Content Asset can be any digital resource. With a little more context, an Information Object can be composed of several Content Assets, but its distinctive feature is that must have an Instructional Type (e.g. Exercise, example, simulation, question). A Learning Object, in turn, may be composed of several Information Objects, but will only be a Learning Object, if it has one Educational Objective. An Educational Objective consists of two parts, a verb and a noun (e.g. “motivate about the need for referential integrity”). A Learning Component has several Learning Objects, but its distinctive feature is that it follows an Instructional Strategy, and has more of one Educational Objective. Thus, the main distinction between Educational Objects is not the aggregation level, nor the size in bytes, nor the duration; is semantics. FIGURE 1 SEMANTIC DEFINITIONS FOR THE CONTENT ECOSYSTEM OBJECTS. RELEVANCE AND FAILURE OF LOM STANDARD LOM is the most outstanding standard for describing educational content, and although LOM means Learning Object Metadata, the meaning of Learning Object in the LOM language is "any type of educational content". LOM is an IEEE standard and is relevant for that. It is a conceptual schema that let to describe educational content (but not only Learning Objects, in the sense that we use them) through an element hierarchy grouped in nine categories. Only one of the nine categories describes educational characteristics, but it is too generic and simple to describe educational objectives for the different types of educational objects. There have been many criticisms of the generality of LOM. The IEEE recognizes LOM is generic, and describe the way to extend it, through application profiles. LOM is basically unchanged from 2002, when it is published as international standard. During the year 2010 have been carried out LomNext meetings, but no major changes are planned. RELATED WORK In 1999 and 2000, Wiley [9]-[10] argues that the LEGO metaphor generates a “LEGO-type thinking”, in which the blocks can be assembled in any manner, and by anyone. Because of this way of thinking, some people generate