Broad-ecos: ecossistema de e-learning baseado em serviços educacionais

Abstract

The use of Virtual Learning Environments in academic and corporative training is a real fact and there is a strong trend of growing because of advantages such as flexibility and cost. Besides that features as informal learning through mobile devices and lifelong learning, and the increasing availability of high quality educational resources on the web and on mobile devices must be considered. To keep up with this evolution, the organizations responsible for e-learning environments invest to develop educational resources and services, frequently equivalent in more than one platform, hindering innovation and sharing. In this scenario, it is almost impossible that a single organization incorporates all the innovations in the educational domain. This dissertation presents, in the perspective of Software Ecosystem, the BROAD-ECOS approach, identifying individuals, communities, organizations and software resources that comprise them, and defining an infrastructure to turn the existing Virtual Learning Environments into platforms that allow the integration of external educational services, promoting the development, sharing and reuse of compatible educational services in an inter-organizational context. These services have control of the integration level and support for a common model, which enables interoperability among different providers, and are based on open standards, common libraries and accessible documentation. The evaluation of the proposal was done in two steps. The first one validated the ecosystem elements by means of a questionnaire, applied to professionals with experience in e-Learning, both from academia and business training area. Then, scenarios were performed to evaluate the artifacts considering the proposed goals, justified by the need to demonstrate the technical feasibility of concepts and technologies involved in a real context of use. The results showed the feasibility of the proposal.