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ALOCOM documentation

The ALOCOM Ontology

The ALOCOM ontology distinguishes between content fragments (CFs), content objects (COs) and learning objects (LOs). Content fragments are learning content elements in their most basic form, like text, audio and video. These elements can be regarded as raw digital resources and are uncombined with other elements. Content objects aggregate content fragments and add navigation. Navigation elements enable structuring of content fragments in a content object. Besides content fragments, content objects also include other content objects. Finally, LOs aggregate content objects and add a learning objective.

The ALOCOM ontology defines a number of component types:
  1. Content fragment type: The distinction is made between continuous content fragments and discrete content fragments . Discrete content fragments are further specialized into text, images, graphics and links. Continuous content fragments are subdivided into audio, video, animations and simulations.
  2. Content object types: Besides content fragment types, the ALOCOM ontology defines a number of content object types. For defining content object types, we used the classification given in DITA. DITA has a generic topic type and the three core information types: concept, reference and fact. We extended this model with a slide information type. Besides these information types, many of the DITA building blocks are included in the ontology as well. Examples of these building blocks are definitions, sections, paragraphs, lists and comments.
  3. Learning object types: For now, we only defined a slide presentation LO type. The idea is to extend LO types with a report type, an assessment type, etc. We first dealt with one of the simplest and most common LO types, the slide presentation. This LO type is the easiest because a lot of components of a slide presentation already have an explicitly defined structure.
Figure 1: The ALOCOM Ontology

Structure of the ALOCOM framework

Our main focus is on the development of tools for disaggregating learning objects into their components (i.e. disaggregators) as well as for repurposing learning object components in real-world applications (i.e. aggregators). For now, we developed a framework that provides both functionalities for slide presentations. Since the most popular tools for slide presentation authoring are MS PowerPoint and OpenOffice.org, the proposed framework focuses currently on slides presentations authored using these tools. The framework decomposes MS PowerPoint and OpenOffice.org slide presentations and assembles components into new MS PowerPoint and OpenOffice.org slide presentations on-the-fly. These disaggregation and re-aggregation processes are illustrated in Figure 2.
  • In the disaggregation process, a slide presentation is parsed and disaggregated into clear segments (slides, paragraphs, lists, list items, images, diagrams and tables). In the second step, these segments are categorized into more meaningful content objects like definitions, examples, concepts and references. We use text patterns to classify these content objects. In the last step, content objects are described with metadata using the Automatic Metadata Generation (AMG) framework (http://ariadne.cs.kuleuven.ac.be/amg/).
  • The opposite (aggregation) process searches for components in the learning object repository and adds them to a slide presentation. Since authors prefer to use authoring environments they are familiar with, this functionality has to be integrated in present authoring tools. We have currently developed an add-in for MS PowerPoint. The same functionality will be provided for OpenOffice.org.
Figure 2: The ALOCOM Framework


The framework supports importing and exporting different representations of slide presentations. So far, we have developed the following transformations:
  1. import of MS PowerPoint slide presentations
  2. import of OpenOffice.org slide presentations
  3. export to DITA (to HTML, PDF and PS)
  4. export to SCORM
  5. export to MS PowerPoint
  6. export to OpenOffice.org
We need to develop the following transformations in order to make the framework fully operational:
  1. import of SCORM content packages
  2. import of DITA-based content


Figure 3: The ALOCOM framework
 
 
   
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