Towards a Common Graphical Language for Learning Flows: Transforming BPEL to IMS Learning Design Level A Representations

Abstract

The need for e-learning systems that support a diverse set of pedagogical requirements has been identified as an important issue in web-based education. Until now, significant R&D effort has been devoted aiming towards web-based educational systems tailored to specific pedagogical approaches. As a response to pedagogical concerns towards standardization and interoperability needs, IMS Learning Design (IMS LD) specification was introduced. Nevertheless, despite the wide adoption of the IMS LD specification still a common language for graphically representing learning flows is missing. This is due to the fact that although the IMS LD specification provides the means for technically representing learning flows (that is, sequences of activities), it does not provide guidance on how these flows could be represented in a human understandable way. As a result, there exist several authoring tools for designing learning activities that export content packages conformant with IMS Learning Design, but these tools are using different representations of the learning process. On the other hand, there exist standards for creating human understandable graphical representations of processes (i.e. the Business Process Modeling Notation standard), that could be useful in providing common representations of learning flows. In this paper we examine the ability of using BPMN as a common representation notation for learning flows modeled using the Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) and present an algorithm for transforming BPEL Workflows to IMS Learning Design Level A learning flows.