Architectural Descriptions For The E-Learning Transition

Architectural Descriptions for the e-learning Transition
Master thesis submitted to the Dept. of Technology Management, Dept. of

Information Systems, Eindhoven University of Technology
Presented by Oriol Esteban Domènech
Supervised by Dr. J.B.M. Goossenaerts
Eindhoven, The Netherlands, February 14th, 2007

Architectural Descriptions for the E-learning Transition
ABSTRACT
Because ICT is becoming an ubiquitous tool in practically all the aspects that concern our society,
this graduation project is focussed on finding out the requirements, among the key stakeholders
of the learning society environment (the so called Educational Market), for boosting the
implementation of e-learning solutions. For achieving this objective, the project addresses the
transition between the traditional learning methods (AS-IS) and the innovative methods used in e-
learning (TO-BE). The reasons for incorporating ICT into the educational process are: to enhance
the quality of learning, to maintain a competitive advantage, and to improve the access to
education.
The project follows the stages of a regulative cycle, the FAST methodology. In the first part, we
analyze the current situation of the key stakeholders in the three scales (institutions,
organizations and persons) of the Learning Society by using repository content elements tables.
In the second part, by means of Project Charters, the analyses are focussed on the desired
situation that can be achieved thanks to e-learning. And finally, the third part is an evaluation
phase which is aiming to find the requirements for closing the gap between the current and the
desired situations.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 6
2. Problem Statement ................................................................................................................ 8

3. Methodology and Approach ............................................................................................... 11
3.1. Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 11
3.2. Regulative Cycle of Reflective Worksystems ................................................................ 11
3.3. Regulative Cycle in the Case of ICT-Reliant Worksystems .......................................... 13
3.4. Project Portfolio Management ........................................................................................ 18
3.5. Workplan and Structure of the Report ........................................................................... 19
4. A Domain Model for the Learning Activity System........................................................... 21
4.1. Overview ........................................................................................................................... 21
4.2. Principals (Stakeholders) ................................................................................................ 21
4.3. Entities .............................................................................................................................. 22
4.4. Rights, Responsibilities, Restrictions and Contracts ................................................... 23
4.5. Class Dictionary ............................................................................................................... 24
5. Learning Architecture Descriptions................................................................................... 26
5.1. Institution Scale ............................................................................................................... 27
5.2. Organization Scale ........................................................................................................... 30
5.2.1. Publisher ......................................................................................................................... 31
5.2.2. Educational Centre ......................................................................................................... 36
5.3. Personal Scale.................................................................................................................. 43
5.3.1. Learner ........................................................................................................................... 44
5.3.2. Teacher........................................................................................................................... 46
5.4. Cross-Scale Architectural Links ..................................................................................... 48
5.4.1. Purposiveness ................................................................................................................ 48
5.4.2. Domain Statement .......................................................................................................... 50
6. The E-Learning Framework ................................................................................................ 51
6.1. The Worksystem Framework .......................................................................................... 51
6.2. E-Opportunities for Learning Problems ......................................................................... 54
6.3. System and Technology Requirements ......................................................................... 58
6.4. Reference Architecture for Technical Integration ......................................................... 59
7. Project Portfolio Management ............................................................................................ 61

7.1. Institution Scale Project Charter ..................................................................................... 61
7.2. Organization Scale Project Charters .............................................................................. 65
7.2.1. Publisher Project Charter ................................................................................................ 65
2
7.2.2. Educational Centre Project Charter ................................................................................ 68

7.3. Personal Scale Project Charters ..................................................................................... 70
7.3.1. Learner Project Charter .................................................................................................. 70
7.3.2. Teacher Project Charter.................................................................................................. 72
7.4. Specific Case of Study .................................................................................................... 74
7.4.1. Decoupling Language and Content................................................................................. 74
7.4.2. The UNL-Case ................................................................................................................ 76
7.4.3. Digitization ...................................................................................................................... 80
7.4.4. Conceptual Project Charters for Interlingua and Content Institutions .............................. 83
8. Conclusions ......................................................................................................................... 85
8.1. Is an Acceleration of the Uptake Feasible? ................................................................... 85
8.2. Recommendations for a Successful Implementation of E-Learning ........................... 87
ANNEX I. Repository Content Elements. ................................................................................. 89
ANNEX II. Educational Market Domain Model. ........................................................................ 92
References ................................................................................................................................. 95
3
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1. Learning scenario ........................................................................................................... 9

Figure 2. Regulative Cycle, adapted from Van Strien, 1795. ....................................................... 12
Figure 3. Methodology Approach Superposed upon the Multi-scale Interactions ........................ 13
Figure 4. FAST life cycle model. .................................................................................................. 14
Figure 5. FAST refinement. .......................................................................................................... 14
Figure 6. Balanced Scorecard...................................................................................................... 15
Figure 7. The 3-V model. ............................................................................................................. 16
Figure 8. FAST methodology across scales................................................................................. 17
Figure 9. Workplan....................................................................................................................... 20
Figure 10. Market class diagram. ................................................................................................. 21
Figure 11. Stakeholders in learning ‘market’. ............................................................................... 28
Figure 12. Stakeholders related to a publisher............................................................................. 31
Figure 13. Organizational structure. ............................................................................................. 32
Figure 14. Publisher process overview. ....................................................................................... 35
Figure 15. Stakeholders in the university environment. ............................................................... 37
Figure 16. Organizational structure of a faculty............................................................................ 38
Figure 17. Student specific processes and Teacher specific processes. ..................................... 40
Figure 18. Student registration. .................................................................................................... 41
Figure 19. Manage examinations. ................................................................................................ 42
Figure 20. Value flow Diagram. .................................................................................................... 48
Figure 21. The worksystem framework . ...................................................................................... 51
Figure 22. COMBINE 4+2 Tier Reference Architecture ............................................................... 59
Figure 23. Reference Model for Technical Integration, reflecting three scales............................. 60
Figure 24. UNL operation principles............................................................................................. 77
Figure 25. UNL value network...................................................................................................... 78
Figure 26. UNL System structure. ................................................................................................ 79
4
LIST OF TABLES
Table 1. Class Dictionary of the Market. ...................................................................................... 25

Table 2. Repository Content Elements for Institutions Scale. ...................................................... 29
Table 3. Repository Content Elements for Organization Scale: the publisher. ............................. 32
Table 4. Repository Content Elements for Organization Scale: the university. ............................ 38
Table 5. Repository Content Elements for Personal Scale: the learner. ...................................... 45
Table 6. Repository Content Elements for Personal Scale: the teacher....................................... 47
Table 7. Components of the worksystem framework. .................................................................. 52
Table 8. Society scale project charter. ......................................................................................... 64
Table 9. Organization scale project charter: publisher. ................................................................ 67
Table 10. Organization scale project charter: educational centre. ............................................... 69
Table 11. Personal scale project charter: learner......................................................................... 71
Table 12. Personal scale project charter: teacher. ....................................................................... 73
Table 13. Institution scale project charter for interlingua and content institutions. ....................... 83
Table 14. Organization scale project charter for interlingua and content institutions. .................. 84
Table 15. Personal scale project charter for interlingua and content institutions. ......................... 84
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1. INTRODUCTION
The Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are really changing. They follow the rate
of the continuous scientific progresses in an economic and cultural globalization framework. They
contribute to the fast obsolescence of some knowledge and the rapid creation of new knowledge,
as well as, the arising of new values, causing continuous transformations in our economic, social
and cultural structures. Their influence in almost all the aspects of our lives is increasing
dramatically. For instance; the access to the labour market, the public health system, the
economic management, the industrial design, the communications, the information, the
enterprises and institutions organization, the education… The large impact they have in all these
fields has converted the ICT into an essential element in our lives.
For this reason, our research topic will be focussed at one of the fields mentioned before, the
education, as we think it is one of the institutions in our society that can obtain more benefits from
the application of ICT systems.
Deepening in our scope, our aim in the project is to map the transition between the traditional
learning patterns used nowadays for the majority of the institutions and the new and innovative
learning methods that could be attained with the support of the new technologies, the ICT. ICT
helps to make the education system more responsive to its environment. Regarding this fact, it
has an impact on relations between educational centres, broader educational community,
parents, local authorities, firms, associations, explicit knowledge artefacts (content), etc. Learners
and teachers are, however, among the most concerned. The new learning practices are called e-
learning.
To get more insight in the research topic it is useful to consider some definitions of e-learning. E-
learning as defined by Waller and Wilson (2001) “is the effective learning process created by
combining electronically delivered content with (learning) support and services” (44). Another
interesting definition of e-learning but regarding a different point of view was made by Stokes
(2000) “a means of becoming literate involving new mechanisms for communication: computer
networks, multimedia, content portals, search engines, electronic libraries, distance learning, and
Web-enabled classrooms. E-learning is characterized by speed, technological transformation,
and mediated human interactions” (37). A conclusion can be extracted from these lines; e-
learning is an answer to the exponential growth of information that characterizes the modern
educational market and reflects the speed at which this information must be assimilated.
But nowadays, only the innovators and early adopters are leading its implementation. E-learning
is still far from being mainstream in our societies. But, what are the reasons for the slowness in
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take-up? Actually there is no simple, single reason, which can be regarded as the cause of this
lack of diffusion. E-learning and its successful implementation / evolution requires open industry
standards, quality digital content provision, the appropriate ICT, proper planning and processes –
all must play together in a new way.
Meeting the challenge of accelerating the uptake of e-learning in a rapidly transforming society,
requires new thinking about how we acquire knowledge and skill, and how we deploy learning
resources that can keep us with the knowledge economy.
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2. PROBLEM STATEMENT
Why have e-learning strategies? Why e-learning is better than the traditional educational
methods? The answer to these questions is simple: applying ICT to educational content and
methods can dramatically enhance the learning performance.
Nowadays, new visions and ideas are entering education. New educational methods are being
introduced to support complex learning and the development of professional competencies.
Moreover, the flexibility is increased by making education less dependent on time and place and
making personalized learning routes available for different learners.
At the same time, new technologies are being developed and are becoming increasingly popular
in education, in addition to other fields. Many technological optimists have expressed the hopeful
expectation that „the availability of technology (and content) in education will automatically
change teaching processes, learning processes, and learning outcomes…‟, but actually, this
expectation is far from being achieved. But this prediction is even too optimistic since such
changes have to be introduced gradually.
But, why if the technology is available, most of the institutions are not using e-learning solutions
or using them below their potential? This question is really our problem statement, and has
multiple answers. In our point of view, the hypothesis is that current e-learning solutions do not
fulfil the needs and requirements of all (or a sufficient number of) the stakeholders involved in the
educational environment. The majority of the literature consulted is focussed on design within
micro-cosmos, and in a few cases it is focussed at analysis. In these analyses it is explained how
to apply technology to education, but always regarding one or a few of the stakeholders, never
the entire environment and value-chain is considered. The lack of broad and clear analysis leads
the institutions to not take risks in an area with significant network externalities.
Therefore, the research question that this graduation project is aiming to answer is:
What requirements for the learning society members are needed for boosting the uptake of e-
learning?
The problems mess in the Educational Infrastructure can be understood more easily with the
following diagram (Figure 1) in mind. This diagram separates the types of stakeholders in the
society of learning. The three vertexes of the triangle symbolize each of the scales of a Social
System: society, business (cooperation) and person. The green triangle depicts the current
situation of learning, and the blue one the desired situation using e-learning solutions. The orange
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ellipse is the area where non-interoperabilities are manifest. Several problems occur in the
demand-supply interactions of the entities in the business and the personal scales because the
institutions and utilities don‟t fit these interactions. For many interaction problems, the root
problem exists at the society scale, and causes effects at the other scales.
PERSONAL SCALE
“people as demand
drivers”
SOCIETY SCALE
“institutions/capacities,
infrastructures/utilities”
BUSINESS SCALE
“corporation as supply
creator”
Figure 1. Learning scenario. Source: (15).
The aim of this analysis is to offer architecture descriptions that can support the allocation to the
right scale of the problems, and the design of solutions that can fulfil the whole blue triangle in
order to overcome the non-interoperabilities that exist, so we want to diagnose the problems in
each scale, and determine for classes of problems the suitable scale to solve them and to
enhance the performance of all the entities.
The approach to tackle this problem is by mapping the eco-system in which the e-learning
transition must be achieved: from the traditional learning practices to more modern e-learning
methods.
In the mapping, we will start determining the main stakeholders that take part in the educational
system. Once determined, we will develop a deep analysis of each of them regarding the current
learning system. In this phase, cumulative models are created: the Architecture Descriptions. In
reference to these cumulative models, other performance-alert-driven analyses, using specific
research methods, are applied in order to determine how the ICT facilities (e-learning) could
9
improve the learning performance. The latter analyses are called incremental and are supported
by Project Charters.
Finally, the joint use of architecture descriptions and project charters is studied to find out the
connectivities and dependencies regarding the stakeholders‟ requirements, needs and
specifications, as they engage in the e-learning transition.
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3. METHODOLOGY AND APPROACH
3.1. INTRODUCTION
Firstly, it is interesting to make an overview of the scenario that concerns an IS (Information

Systems) worksystems (Deploying a Society wide architectural framework, Jan Goossenaerts
(14)).
One of the missions of the Information Systems research it is to enhance the reflective
capabilities regarding worksystems, livelihoods and habitats, from the global scale
(macro/society) to local scales (micro and pico/person), with a focus on the meso-scale
(business). The reflective capabilities include governance, management, analysis, design and
delivery. Another important fact is the term defined as cross-scale assets. By cross-scale assets
we mean the methodology and repository structure that is proposed for the use at each of the
scales mentioned in the last section. In principle, the described activities and repository structure
must be instantiated for each worksystem or habitat.
3.2. REGULATIVE CYCLE OF REFLECTIVE WORKSYSTEMS
The project is a problem-based, analysis-focused research since it is aiming to find out a concrete
solution to solve a range of problems. Moreover, the problems are not given in a crisp manner;
hence we also have to make use of a methodology to determine the problems that occur in the
society of learning, our topic research. Although this graduation project will not go as far that it will
include the design of the e-learning environment, we will use a (pre-empted) regulative cycle as a
guideline for the process of the project. To give more insight into the phases that will be covered,
a description of a general regulative cycle is given below (Figure 2).
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Regulative Cycle
Problem mess
Orientation phase
Evaluation Problem definition
Implementation Analysis and diagnosis
Design
Figure 2. Regulative Cycle, adapted from Van Strien, 1795.
As mentioned before, the Design and Implementation phases will not be covered in this project
since it is an analysis-focussed project. After the completion of the Analysis and diagnosis phase,
a final phase to evaluate and infer conclusions is planned. Summarizing, the project consist on
three phases (43);
1. Orientation phase: a first orientation into the problem mess, resulting in the research
assignment, including a problem statement, objectives and a research workplan.
2. Analysis phase: an in-depth analysis of the problem field. The aim of this phase is to
identify the gap between actual behaviours against desired outcomes, and obtain
information about the stakeholders, resources and assets that are relevant to closing the
gap.
3. Evaluation phase. This phase is the last one but the most crucial phase, with all the
subsequent work based on the outcomes of the analysis. From these outcomes some
conclusions and specifications will be drawn.
The regulative cycle explained before (Figure 2) will be applied at each of the scales of the
worksystem. In abstract terms, it must be assumed to exist for each of the stakeholders at these
scales (personal, organization and society). Special attention will be given to relationships across
these scales.
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Problem mess
Problemmess
Problem mess
...
ORGANIZATION SCALE

Evaluation
Evaluation Problemdefinition
Problem definition

Implementation
Implementation Analysisand
Analysis anddiagnosis
diagnosis
Problem mess
Problemmess
Problem mess
Design
Design
Design
...
SOCIETY SCALE

Evaluation
Problem definition

Implementation
diagnosis
Design
Design
Design
Problem mess
Problemmess
Problem mess
...
PERSONAL SCALE

Evaluation
Problem definition

Implementation
diagnosis
Design
Design
Design
Figure 3. Methodology Approach Superposed upon the Multi-scale Interactions
3.3. REGULATIVE CYCLE IN THE CASE OF ICT-RELIANT WORKSYSTEMS
We refer to an ICT-reliant worksystem as the joint system of a worksystem or habitat and its
information system (terminology of Alter, 2003). A concrete worksystem will be positioned at one
of the three scales. Generally, the ICT-reliant worksystems need patterns for the worksystem
development and IS acquisition, the life cycle models. Although there exist many life cycle (or
regulative cycles, section 3.2) models for ICT-reliant worksystems or their equivalents, we will
use the FAST (Framework for the Application of System Thinking (45)) of Whitten et al (2004),
since it draws the important distinction between the life cycle stages System Operation and
Maintenance (SOM) and System Development (SD) (Figure 4).
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Figure 4. FAST life cycle model.
The next picture (Figure 5) proposes a further refinement of the FAST life cycle stages by
dividing SOM into the life cycle foci Evaluation & Monitoring (E&M) and Primary Process & Asset
Maintenance (PPAM), and by dividing SD into life cycle foci Project Portfolio Management (PPM)
and Project Execution (PE). A performance alert from E&M will activate PPM in which the alert
will be handled by creating a new project or initiative, or by attaching the alert to the problem
statement for an existing project.
Life Cycle Stage Life Cycle Stage
ICT reliant work

System system System Operation &
Development Maintenance
Using a system Using the acquired

development workbench ICT and systems
Life Cycle Focus Life Cycle Focus
Project Portfolio Evaluation &

performance alert
Management Monitoring
Using portfolio tools Using the acquired

E&M tools

Primary Process
Project Execution & Asset
Maintenance
Using project tools and Using the assets & ICT
repositories operational systems
Figure 5. FAST refinement.
A Balanced Scorecard (Kaplan & Norton, 1993) is one much used device for capturing,
structuring and communicating knowledge on organisation objectives. It supplements traditional
financial measures with criteria that measure performance form the perspective of customers,
internal business processes, and learning and growth. A balanced scorecard-based system
14
provides both a template and a common language for identifying and measuring sources of value,
and for assembling and communicating about them in the perspectives customer, process,
learning and growth, and financial (shareholders).
Figure 6. Balanced Scorecard. Source: (25).
In the case of the ICT-reliant worksystems, regulative cycles must be enabled by repositories for
the architecture descriptions and the project charters and deliverables for the projects that
incrementally improve the worksystems. For this reason there is an even further development of
FAST that breaks down the life cycle stage system development into eight Development Process
Phases: Scope Definition, Problem Analysis, Requirements Analysis, Logical Design, Decision
Analysis, Physical Design & Integration, Construction & Testing and Installation & Delivery. These
development process phases can be classified into three groups, the so called 3-V model (Figure
7). These three groups are the Direct Decisions (V1), Operations Projects (V2) and the ICTA
Projects (V3). The separation of the three V's is due to the pragmatic approach of addressing
performance alerts in an open mood, first looking for solution options with minimal costs and
risks, and without prior bias to using specific technologies, or to in-house development of a
solution. The 3-V model offers solution path options with increasing knowledge intensity.
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Figure 7. The 3-V model.
The repository structure that supports the 3-V model is shown in Figure 7. One option is to
stratify these models in a repository that is structured in accordance with the workspaces of
COMET methodology (7).
The different models (layers in the repository structure) are supportive for the system-focussed
activities and concerns of particular stakeholders of the system:
 The value and risk model is relevant for the owner of the worksystem or habitat. It
supports the value and risk management for the system or habitat at the level of
Direct Decisions (V1).
 The operations model matters for the employees of the worksystem, or for the
inhabitants of the habitat. It supports the operations design and analysis at the level
of Operations Projects (V2).
 The ICT model is most complex and primarily matters for the information system
developers as they engage in ICT projects (V3) related to the system, work system
or habitat.
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Market
System ICT reliant work System Operation &
Development system Maintenance

Project Portfolio Evaluation & 25%25%

performance alert
Management Monitoring
Project Using the acquired

25%25%
Using portfolio tools
Charters E&M tools
Balanced
Scorecard
Primary Process
Project Execution System
Organization
ICT reliant work System Operation & & Asset
system
Development Maintenance Maintenance Database
repositories Using a system Using the acquired
operational systems

2525
Project Portfolio
Management
performance alert Evaluation &
Monitoring
25
% 25 %
Project Using portfolio tools Using the acquired % %
Charters E&M tools Balanced
Scorecard

Primary Process
Project Execution & Asset Database
Market Maintenance
repositories Using project tools and Using the assets & ICT
Person
System ICT reliant work System Operation &
Development system Maintenance

Organizations
repositories
22
Life Cycle Focus
Project Portfolio
Life Cycle Focus
2
525
performance alert Evaluation &
Project
Charters
Management
Using portfolio tools

Monitoring
Using the acquired

5%
% 5
E&M tools
Life Cycle Focus

%%
Balanced
Scorecard
Life Cycle Focus
Primary Process
Project Execution & Asset
Maintenance Database
Persons
repositories
Figure 8. FAST methodology across scales.
Figure 8 shows the FAST methodology applied to the three scales. It can be seen that at each
scale that the Evaluation and Monitoring is supported by a Balanced Scorecard (Figure 6).
The life cycle focus Project Portfolio Management is supported by Project Charters, which are
used to tackle the problem that has caused the performance alert. For a further explanation of the
Project Portfolio Management and the Project charters, see section 3.4.
It also can be seen the relationships between the Repositories structures and the Project
Charters across scales. These relationships are depicted with arrows. The blue arrows connect
the Repositories structures. These repository structures and data analysis (for instance, data in
the databases linked to the Primary Process and Asset Maintenance focus) can be used to
diagnose problems. The grey arrows connect the Project Charters of the different scales and they
will be used for designing the cross-scale (if necessary) solutions of the problems detected.
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3.4. PROJECT PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT
The performance alert mentioned in the previous section 3.3 can be caused because of three
main reasons:
 Problem – an undesirable situation that prevents the organization from fully achieving its
purpose, goals, and/or objectives.
 Directive – a new requirement that is imposed by management, government, or some

external influence.
 Opportunity – a chance to improve the organization even in the absence of an identified

problem. What new technology, information, computing and communications are offering.
These reasons are at play for all three scales, independent of whether or not information systems
are being implemented as a reliable component in the work systems. Regarding our scope, the
performance alert is caused by an opportunity. This opportunity is provided by the emergent
Information and Communications Technology.
As depicted in Figure 5, the performance alert comes from the System Operations &
Maintenance (SOM) life cycle stage. More specifically, from the Evaluating and Monitoring. In our
case, a bundle of performance alerts comes from the analysis phase we have explained before.
We will analyze the key stakeholders using a multi-scale application of the COMET methodology
and we will try to find out the reasons that cause these performance alerts or the determinants
that produce them. Once a performance alert has been initiated, it must be handled in the Project
Portfolio Management of the worksystem under consideration. The PPM is a life cycle foci of the
System Development (SD). The leverage of a PPM means to develop a project (or use a former
project) aiming to give a solution for the problem detected in the previous analysis. In our case of
study, we will develop a project charter for each of the stakeholders to analyze the transition from
the traditional learning to e-learning, regarding their problems, goals and risks.
A definition for a Project Portfolio and a Project Charter is given below (16):
 The project portfolio. There is a project portfolio for a set of related ICT-reliant
worksystems. The project portfolio is the collection of all projects that are under
consideration. Each project in the portfolio has a scope in terms of the assets,
resources, primary and support activities that it may affect, and the value impact it may
achieve (it would follow from a performance alert and a change proposition). The project
portfolio is used to trace the origin and progress of the system development activities to
18
be performed in a series of projects. Each project is characterized and described by its

charter and it matters for the worksystem through its deliverables.
 Project charter. In the portfolio, each project is described by a project charter. This is the
final deliverable for the preliminary investigation phase. It defines the project scope, the
change proposition and its value impact, the plan, methodology, standards, and so on.
The following COMET elements are typically included in a project portfolio system. The
project charter is defined in the context of the VARM (Value And Risk Model) of the work
system that is addressed in the project. The following project descriptors are used in
COMET:
o Problem Statement. The problem statement provides more insight into the
current problems and opportunities from the perspective of the monitoring and
evaluation of the system: what, when, where, who, why of the performance alert.
o Assumptions.
o Vision Statement. It states what should be different once the project has been
implemented.
o Scoping statement. It states the scope of the project: where, who, when, what
can be affected by the project.
o Goal Model. The purpose of the Goal Model is to agree with the Stakeholders
the business goals that will be met by realizing the project. Reference is made to
the VARM.
o Project Risks: What business and technical vulnerabilities and threats may
hinder the successful completion of the project.
3.5. WORKPLAN AND STRUCTURE OF THE REPORT
To develop this Graduation Project, the work has been structured in different phases (section
3.2) in order to achieve the before mentioned objectives. These phases will be filled in with
research methods as explained in the Methodology and Approach (Section 3).
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WORKPLAN
Institutions Orientation Phase Analysis Phase Evaluation Phase
In-depth analysis Diagnosis

Focus on Focus on
Institutions Institutions
(Chapter 5.1) (Chapter 7.1)
Define
Problem
Otganizations
(Chapter 2)

Choose Identify Draw
Focus on Focus on
Methodology Stakeholders Conclusions
organizations Organizations
(Chapter 3) (Chapter 4) (Chapter 8)
Literature Scan
(Chapter 2, 3)
Persons

Focus on Focus on
Persons Persons
Figure 9. Workplan.
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4. A DOMAIN MODEL FOR THE LEARNING ACTIVITY SYSTEM
4.1. OVERVIEW
For the first step of our research, we have to determine the stakeholders, entities and their mutual
relationships in the society of learning. To carry out this task, we propose a domain model of the
educational environment. The domain model of the Educational Market is shown in Figure 10. It
is based on the SimpleEconomy (17) market model, where simple entity classes and transactions
patterns are provided. The SimpleEconomy model contains the classes Person, Organization,
Product Types and Product Instances. I have adapted this model to the educational market, so I
have added new classes as is depicted in the figure below. The shadowed part refers to the core
educational model.
* -has a role in -has object in

Principal * RRR * * InstitutionObject
*
2..*
-uses
* Instance
Contract
Organization *
Person
* Product
1
Study Contract
1 Awarded Diploma
Educational Centre
* 1 -studies at * -delivers *
Student 1 * 1
1 awarded to- Labour Contract Educational Services
*
-works at 1..* awarded by-
Publisher *
* Diploma
* -regulates
1 -delivers *
Teacher 1 Educational Material
1 give funds/regulates- Government
Figure 10. Market class diagram.
4.2. PRINCIPALS (STAKEHOLDERS)
In order to specify more the stakeholders of the domain model and to adapt them to our analysis
needs, a refinement of them is given. Hence, from now we will consider the following
stakeholders because they are among the key actors of the educational system.
Personal scale
 Learner. We will also use the term learner as well as student (Section 5.3.1).
 Teacher. The teacher is an employee of the educational centre and we will carry out an
in-depth analysis of this stakeholder due to we consider it is the key employee in the
educational centres considering educational purposes (section 5.3.2).
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Organization scale
 Educational Centres. The analysis will make reference to only one kind of educational
centres; the University. The reasons are given in section 1.1.1.
 Publishers. The related business that has to apply more changes to its infrastructure to
adapt its processes to the e-learning market (section 5.2.1).
Institutions Scale
 Government. To government we also refer all the institutions and bodies in charge of
regulating and enacting rules and standards (section 5.1).
A further explanation of them is done in their respective sections pointed out above.
4.3. ENTITIES
By entities we refer all the instances that are created by the principals for the proper performance
education activities in a learning society. In a broad sense, and as depicted in Figure 10, the
InstitutionObjects‟ sub-classes (also called ValueEntities in other models, for more details see
(14)) are the „abstract containers‟ of the content entities in the educational market. These content
entities are classified into Educational Services and Education Material, both linked to
InstitutionObject. The first one refers to the services delivered by the educational centres to the
learners. Some content elements are created for this purpose, like the curricula, the diploma,
grading methods (works, exams, exercises …). The latest, the Educational Material, it is linked to
the publishers, so it refers mainly to publications, offered to support the Educational services.
These entities before mentioned are common for both traditional learning and e-learning.
Nevertheless, in e-learning some of theses entities are used in a different way, for instance
because they can be digitized (e-publications), or new entities are created exclusively for e-
learning. The curriculum becomes more flexible since it can be delivered online and fit learners‟
habits. Also the assessment methods may change. Issues like plagiarism must be taken into
consideration due to the reports can be uploaded over the Internet. Apart from the entities that
are adapted to engage e-learning requirements, the new entities created are mainly focussed on
digital resources and tools (like Learning Management Systems, Content Management Systems,
etc) to give support to these resources. For instance, we can have a look at the case of AAQUA
(3) (Almost All Questions Answered). AAQUA is an Indian multilingual question and answer
forum which provides online answers to questions asked by farmers and agri-professionals over
the Internet. The powerful tool developed by AAQUA, a multi-lingual system that uses among
22
others UNL1 (39) allows authors to create content in one language (with encoder), and
readers/learners to view it in any other language (with converter).
Having a look at the Learning Management Systems (also called Virtual Learning Environments),
these systems‟ features cover a broad range of areas including self-directed learning, content
packaging, digital repositories, integration with other systems, learner information, metadata,
question and test. The LMS is the most implemented e-learning tool, the majority of high
education centres makes use of it, but currently LMS are still used below their abilities.
It is also interesting to point out some important issues related to e-publications. Apart from the
publishers that publish the digital books, journals, articles and so forth, with the new Internet tools
any user with a minimum knowledge in computing, is able to publicize any kind of content. Hence,
this content has to be regulated and for this purpose, the European Commission has intervened
in the affair by creating the European Digital Library Initiative (i2010: Digital Libraries) which aims
is to carry out joint actions in order to homogenize the digital publications. For more information
about this, consult (19).
4.4. RIGHTS, RESPONSIBILITIES, RESTRICTIONS AND CONTRACTS
All principals have specific RRR relationships to instances (42). An RRR object links an
InstitutionObject instance to a Principal instance to indicate that the latter holds a right,
responsibility or restriction for the former. For instance, the use by the Publisher of the copyright
of its publications is restricted by an ownership of this copyright for a certain period of time. And
the use by the other principals with respect to these materials can be restricted by the rules
enacted by the public agencies; in this case the restriction could be the non-reproduction of the
publication.
The contract is the basic relation between principals. The contract is a legal agreement that has
certain implications among the principals concerned. The contract regulates and imposes some
conditions in the relationship. For instance, the teacher signs a labour contract with the
educational centre. This contract implies that the teacher has to carry out its teaching tasks in
exchange for money.
1
UNL is a computer language that enables computers to process information and knowledge. It is an artificial
language that replicates the functions of natural languages. Using the UNL, people can express all kinds of
information and knowledge that conveyed by natural languages and computers can intercommunicate using such
information and knowledge.
23
4.5. CLASS DICTIONARY
A classification of the entities types and classes is listed in the Table 1. This table is developed
just for having a rapid overview of the meaning of each class in the domain model.
Class Definition
1 Principal The representation of an organization or a person in
possession of legal capacity (rights and duties).
2 Organization Hierarchy system with decision capacity.
2.1 Educational Centre Is the institution where the educational services are carried
out. The educational centres are the employers of the
teachers and other employees (by means of the labour
contracts) and offer the educational services to the students
(by means of the study contract). When a student finishes a
course successfully, the educational centre gives him the
diploma.
2.2 Government Is the entity responsible to give funds to the Educational
Centres for developing the Educational Services. Other
important missions of the Government are to enact rules and
standards for the market, regulate the products and ensure
that the rights, restrictions and responsibilities in the market
are fulfilled.
2.3 Publisher Is the company that provides the educational material,
referring to publications, that is used for the persons that takes
part of the market.
3 Person The representation of each physical person relevant in the
context of the system. In our case we have the students and
the employees.
3.1 Student The student is the person who attends to the educational
centre to receive educational services through educational
materials. The person who transfers them the knowledge is
the teacher.
3.2 Teacher The teacher is an employee of the educational centres. The
mission of the teacher is to help students to learn using proper
pedagogies.
4 RRR RRR means Right, Restriction and Responsibility. The aim of
this class is to regulate the relationships between Principals
and InstitutionObjects and to set up formal agreements among
24
these relevant parties.

5 Contract The contract is a formal agreement between principals.
5.1 Labour Contract Formal agreement between certain persons and an
organization for working for an employer in exchange of
salary. The person becomes and employee.
5.2 Study Contract Formal agreement between certain persons and an
educational centre in which the person becomes student.
6 Educational Services All the required services to perform the educational
processes. These services are delivered by the educational
centres.
7 Educational Material All the required teaching material to perform the educational
processes. Equipment, hardware and software do not belong
to this class. Publishers are the providers of these materials.
8 Diploma Legal document that the educational centre delivers to the
students that have passed successfully all the subjects that
compose certain courses, degrees, … The diploma is used by
the students to certify a certain level of training.
Table 1. Class Dictionary of the Market.
25
5. LEARNING ARCHITECTURE DESCRIPTIONS
This section will develop the in-depth analysis of the learning worksystems of the key
stakeholders that have been identified in the market domain and resource model (section 4).
This chapter focuses at analyses in the current educational market, without taking into account
the e-learning. The e-learning transition will be analyzed Section 7 and 8. The architecture
descriptions (and hence the subdivision of this section) follow the multi-scale application of
COMET methodology as described in ANNEX I. Repository content elements.
As the Repository Content Elements tables are used to give a quick reference on the worksystem
of the scenario it concerns, a more extended explanation (if needed) of some of the content
elements is added as text (out of the tables) in order to give more insight about the analysis.
26
5.1. INSTITUTION SCALE
The social environment where the educational processes are carried out is the educational
market. Although we name it „market‟, actually it is not like a common market, since it is
characterized by multiple non-economic interests of several of their stakeholders. For instance,
the aim of the educational centres is not to obtain an economic profit, their real aim is to offer high
quality education services to those people that want to acquire new skills or knowledge for the
purpose of enhancing their performance, and this within given budgetary constraints.
The institution scale consists of the governments, other regulating bodies and not-for-profit
networking or academic organisations. Serve as an example, the case of New Horizons for
Learning (29), a non-profit network of people, programs, and products dedicated to successful,
innovative learning. Although nowadays it has finished its activities, it is interesting to have a look
to its main goals:
“
 Acts as a catalyst for positive change in education
 Seeks out, synthesizes, and communicates relevant research and information
 Supports an expanded vision of learning that identifies and fosters the fullest
development of human capabilities
 Works to implement proven strategies for learning at every age and ability level
 Builds support for comprehensive lifespan learning communities
”
To summarize, the main functions of the stakeholders that act in the society scale include
regulating, funding, and quality assurance.
Shorthand Description
SRM.VARM.MS The mission of the Education Institutions is to provide a framework of services and
resources to the educational centres in order to allow them to train people from both
academic and emotional point of view up to the level the person can attain. Therefore, the
education is oriented to develop the personality and the abilities of the individuals, aiming
to provide them with all the knowledge necessary to become right members of the society
and to take part in the sustenance and development of that society.
27
SRM.VARM.DS
Educational Centres Learners & Teachers
Learning
Non-governmental organizations Technology providers
Governments and intergovernmental organizations Publishers
Figure 11. Stakeholders in learning „market‟.
SRM.VARM.MIR  Governments’ expenditure for creating new learning resources and assets.
 The increase of employee and related businesses in the educational market.
 Enrolment ratios by educational level.
SRM.VARM.MVRR Values:
 The money invested by the institutions is converted into human capital. They
don‟t have an economic interest therefore it doesn‟t exist a direct return of
investment.
 Education also contributes to the realisation of other important developmental
goals, such as economic growth, changes in attitudes, development of political
consciousness and increased social mobility.
Risks (38):
 Not all investment in education is beneficial to development.
 Resources are often insufficient and the quality of education is disappointing.
 Discrepancies between educational needs and financial resources.
 Unequal access to education.
 Mismatches between education and labour market.
SRM.WOM.PM For the principal model, see Figure 10. Although we have introduced new stakeholders in
the repository SRM.VARM.DS that don‟t appear in Figure 10, we are not going to depict
again the model. Only mention that the enterprises, the technology providers, the non-
governmental organizations and the intergovernmental organizations are subclasses of the
class organization.
SRM.WOM.MAM The assets are mainly related to the infrastructure and institutions that the society build for
its educational purposes. Using the different capital categories of the Sustainable
Livelihoods Framework (SLF), we can identify as human capital the teachers and
professors, as social capital the education related rules and regulations, as knowledge
capital the curricula and their embodiment in learning content, and as physical capital the
educational centres, libraries, computer networks.
SRM.WOM.MRM The resources created by the society‟s public agents are basically legal-oriented or
supportive for the educational processes. They include the national exams, grading
schemes, credit systems such as the ECTS, etc. The public agents tend to create
dependant sub-bodies in order to administer the education and to everything it concerns.
28
The main goal of these sub-bodies is to enforce rules and standards in order to achieve the
best performance in education. These rules and standards must be followed by the
principals. For instance, these sub-bodies are in charge of the accreditation of the
diplomas, modifying curricula, verifying the compliance of the given education with the
curricula, etc.
SRM.WOM.IRM The institutions in the educational market interact directly with the educational centres and
the publishers. For the former, they regulate the educational systems, evaluate the
educational quality, fund the educational institutions, develop stable curricula and accredit
the diplomas. For the latter they enforce the compliance to the property rights and ensure
certain stability in the curricula.
Table 2. Repository Content Elements for Institutions Scale.
As learning is a social need, the number of stakeholders, directly or indirectly related to is huge,
so for having a global view of the market, it is better only to take into account the ones that are
tighter related. Regarding this fact, an explanation of the roles of some of the stakeholders is
given below. The Educational centres are addressed in (Section 1.1.1), the Learners in (Section
5.3.1), and the Publishers in (Section 5.2.1).
 Governments and intergovernmental organizations (IGO): they are the bodies that enact
the standards and regulations for the learning methods and patterns. The Governments,
represented by their Ministries of Education are responsible for promulgating the laws
that will rule the education in their own influence areas. They also subsidize the public
educational centres. The IGO are organizations that depend on a group of governments
and their main goal is to improve the education performance. For instance, the
Commonwealth of Learning. Its aim is to give support to the countries that are members
of the Commonwealth in terms of education and encourage the development and sharing
of open learning/distance education knowledge, resources and technologies.
 Technology providers: The software and hardware providers are the other principals that
have a commercial vision of the education. They are the technology suppliers. They
provide to the end users with the resources needed to perform their learning duties.
 Non-governmental organizations (NGO): they have an important role in developing

countries by implanting educational systems and providing schooling to the
underprivileged. In other emerging economies they offer support to implant new
technologies in the education systems.
29
5.2. ORGANIZATION SCALE
The analysis in the organization scale starts from the Market Domain Model developed in Figure
10, from which we can extract the stakeholders that comprise the organization scale. These
stakeholders include the Educational Centres and the Publishers. Also the technology providers
take part of this group, but as we consider that the former stakeholders will be the ones who will
experience major changes, and here in larger numbers, we are not going to analyze them.
By analysing the educational centres and the publishers we have both visions of the educational
market, the non commercial vision and the commercial vision. As mentioned before the aim of the
educational centres is not to earn money, is just to give a useful service to the society. On the
other hand, the publishers, like any common business, have as the necessary objective to
achieve an economic profit.
There is a direct relationship between the educational centres and the publishers; they need one
another. The educational centre receives, in exchange for money, from the publisher the
publications that fit the curricula. For the secondary education, the curricula (the set of courses
that compose a degree) is developed by the society-scale education institutions (governmental
bodies –society scale-) and is common for all the educational centres. Universities have more
autonomy in deciding their programmes. Often these programmes must be accredited. For the
publishers, the educational centres -and the facilities and entities related to them, like libraries-
are really important since they are supposed to be one of their main sources of income.
30
5.2.1. PUBLISHER
The publisher belongs to the publisher industry, which is concerned with the production and
dissemination of literature and information; in other words, the main goal of the publishing
industry is to make information available for the public view.
The process of publishing consists in four main stages. Firstly, a draft of the document
(magazines, books, journals, literacy works, and other works dealing with information) to be
published is submitted by the author. Secondly, there is a phase of negotiation between the
author and the publisher; and after this phase the work is accepted or rejected. If it is accepted,
then starts the editorial stage. In this third stage, the author has to rewrite or apply changes to the
original text to ensure that the work matches with the publisher requirements. And finally, the
work is designed and published.
ORM.VARM.EMS The mission of the publishers is to provide publications to the society members.
Traditionally they provide the publications to the book shops, libraries, research centres …
in paper format, but actually they don‟t sell directly to the final customers. For instance the
mission statement of Denlinger's Publishers, Ltd: “We will earnestly strive to enrich and
entertain our customers through reading, by promoting one constitutional right „freedom of
speech‟. And, with honesty and integrity, strive to recognize and promote authors by
publishing their works”.
ORM.VARM.ECS
Material suppliers Readers / learners
Publisher
Authors / researchers Book shops / Libraries
Figure 12. Stakeholders related to a publisher.
ORM.VARM.EIR Customer perspective:

 Number of agreements with educational centres for publications that fit the
curricula.
 Number of subscriptions to the company.
Internal business processes perspective:
 Number of titles, copies per title and run length of each title.
Learning and Growth perspective:
 Number of citations of its publications.
31
 Number of renowned authors, which lead to increase the sales.

Financial perspective:
 Expenses in technology for publishing.
ORM.VARM.EVRR Values:
 Acquire copyrights for publishing and produce for selling.
 Attain agreements with the educational centres and the curricula developers for
providing publications.
Risks:
 This is an intermediated market, so the publishers require some intermediates,
like libraries, to sell their products to.
 The publications become obsolete for a specific curricula.
 The appearance of electronic formats can drive the learners to change their
habits and decrease the use of paper formats.
ORM.WOM.CM For the community model, see Figure 10, which depicts the stakeholders and their
interactions. From the point of view of the publisher, some stakeholders defined in
ORM.VARM.ECS of this table don‟t appear in this figure. They are the material providers,
the book shops libraries and the authors / researchers. The first two are Organizations and
the last ones are Persons.
ORM.WOM.EAM The next list includes the main assets that the organization controls to sustain the service
flow. Social capital includes the Trademark and copyrights; human capital includes the
editorial team. Physical capital includes the equipment and facilities.
ORM.WOM.ERM The following list enumerates the principal resources that concern an publisher:
 Organizational structure.
Directorship
Human resources
Production Dpt. Sales Dpt. Purchases Dpt.
Dpt.
Figure 13. Organizational structure.

 Distribution channels.
 Supply channels.
 Intellectual property rights.
ORM.WOM.WRM The process carried out for the publisher is mainly described in the introduction of this
section. This process and how the publisher interacts with the other stakeholders it is
depicted in the activity diagram of Figure 14.
Table 3. Repository Content Elements for Organization Scale: the publisher.
The roles of the main stakeholders involved in the publishing environment are pretty similar to the
ones that take part on a traditional market. In one side we have the providers: authors /
researchers and the material suppliers; on the other side we have the consumers: the book shops
and the libraries, and the readers / learners.
 Author / Researchers. Both authors and researchers are the stakeholders who are
interested in publish their works. Thereby they are interested in make business with the
32
publishers in order to sell their works, so the money flows from the publisher to author /
researchers.
 Material suppliers. Their role is to be the providers of the raw material like paper, ink,…
and also to provide the equipment required for publication tasks.
 Readers / learners. The users of the publications. They are in the bottom step of the
interaction flow. They don‟t buy publications directly from the publisher, they make use of
the intermediaries like book shops or libraries. For more information about learners see
Section 5.3.1.
 Book shops and libraries. They are in the middle position of this market. They act as
retail sellers, in the case of the book shops, or as service providers, in the case of the
libraries. They deal with the publishers the purchase of the publications for the purpose of
providing these publications to the readers / learners.
Apart from these stakeholders, as we have already said in the Enterprise Mission Statement and
in the Institution Scale development, the rules and standards, like intellectual property law, that
the publishers must follow are enacted by public agents, the Governments and related
institutions.
Some assets and resources mentioned in the Table 3, are further explained in the list below;
 Equipment. The equipment required to develop the publications consist of plotters,

printers, computers, bookbinding machines, databases and so forth.
 Facilities. The publisher requires some essential facilities. These facilities have to be of
industrial character since the publisher requires also a plant and machinery.
 Distribution channels. The distribution channel is not direct, since the publishers don‟t sell
their products directly to the end users, they make use of intermediaries such as book
shops, educational centres or libraries.
 Supply channels. Usually are the own authors or researchers who hand in their
publications to the publisher. Hence, in many occasions both entities set up agreements
to obtain profit of the relationship.
33
 Intellectual property rights. Logically all the publications have to protect the Intellectual
property rights of the author. To resolve this, the publications have a copyright, to
preserve the authors‟ rights, in order to avoid their illegal use, unless a previous
agreement has been reached.
 Organizational structure. Although not all the publishing companies have the same
organizational structure, basically it responds to the same scheme (it has a departmental
framework, Figure 13). Each department has their own employees carrying outs tasks
related to their department. The roles of these departments are explained below:
 Human resources department. The main purpose is to manage the personnel of the
organization.
 Production Department. This department is in charge of developing the publications

using the appropriate tools.
 Sales Department. Its goal is to offer the services of the company to other
businesses that may be interested in purchasing its services.
 Purchases Department. It has two main missions. The first one is to deal with the
authors and researches and the other is to deal with the suppliers the purchase of
equipment.
From another point of view, it is also important to analyze the processes. The principal process
carried out by a publisher (Table 3, ORM.WOM.WRM) is depicted in Figure 14.
34
:author/researcher :Publisher :Intermediates :Teacher/learner
Submit work
:work
Recieve work
Negotiate
[deny]
[accept]
Hand over copyright
:form
Start editing
Apply changes
:work
Accept changes
[no]
[yes]
Publish work
:publication
Purchase publication
: publication
Buy/borrow publication
Figure 14. Publisher process overview.
35
5.2.2. EDUCATIONAL CENTRE
For the next development, the repository content elements table describes the architecture
description of one kind of educational centre, the university. The reason for this choice is that
nowadays most of the e-learning systems are mainly applied in high-education centres, and the
university may be the most representative. Although e-learning can be applied in other
educational centres, its implementation in these other centres is more difficult that in the
university due to several reasons, like less infrastructure, not enough trained students … . So, for
these reasons the university is the best possible testing ground.
Furthering in the university performance, it can be added that it is not only an institution to learn,
is also a place to research. Most of the best researchers are combining their investigation duties
with teaching tasks, so they contribute to the knowledge creation. This is an added value for the
university that has the privilege to count on these experts.
Serve as an example the mission statement of the Faculty of Technology Management in the
Technische Universiteit Eindhoven;
“
Technology Management encompasses all activities that are needed to achieve the
maximum yield from technological developments in a socially responsible manner.
This is the only way to ensure that technological developments are cost-effective in
the long term.
Technology Management has two sides to it. On the one hand it is concerned with
organizing technical product chains for products or services, both within companies
and other organizations, and within the networks of those organizations. It is not only
production and distribution that play a role here, but aspects such as marketing,
design and innovation, purchasing, storage, sales, maintenance and service. On the
other hand 'technology management' means that, right at the beginning of the
development and production processes, we can take into account the risks for the
environment and our living conditions, the long-term consequences for society, and
the perception and needs of consumers, both in the western world and in developing
countries. Policies can be developed on a regional, national and international level
based on our expectations about the acceptance of technology.
”
ORM.VARM.EMS The mission of the university is clear and concise; to educate and train the students in
order to become the most qualified professionals in their fields of study, work or research.
The university is the highest step in the educational system; hence the most renowned
teachers are also members of the university community.
36
ORM.VARM.ECS
Students Teachers
University
Directorship Other employees and staff
Figure 15. Stakeholders in the university environment.
ORM.VARM.EIR Customer perspective:

 Enrolment in each level of education (Acceptance percentage).
 Entering grade averages.
 Percentage of international students.
 Students‟ engagement, support and satisfaction.
Internal business processes perspective:
 Number of graduates (completion rates).
 Number of degrees granted.
 Grades average.
 Drop out rate.
Learning and Growth perspective:
 Research awards.
 Number of publications and patents.
 Number of grants received.
Financial perspective:
 Operating revenue by source (grants, academic fees, donations...)
 Investment of the government.
 Earnings by co-operative students (students who carry out internships in
companies).
For more information and real values on these indicators see (41).
ORM.VARM.EVRR Values:
 Investment in facilities, equipment and up-to-date technology.
 Offer supportive services to students.
 Setting agreements with companies for co-operative students.
 Setting agreements with publishers for textbooks that fit the curricula.
 Funds received from the government and academic fees that pay the students.
Risks:
 Inappropriate personnel (for instance, incompetent teachers).
 Textbooks and curricula that becomes obsolete.
 There are some dis-connectivities when the student finishes his degree and has
to start working. Sometimes is not easy to cross the bridge between the
university and the labour market because the students are not enough prepared
for carrying out some tasks. They need additional training; most of the time this
training is provided by the company.
ORM.WOM.CM See Figure 10. The new internal stakeholders that appear in this section are the
directorship and the other employees and staff of the educational centre. They both are
sub-classes of the class Person.
37
ORM.WOM.EAM The assets that the university controls to offer its service flow belong to different classes.
Human capital comprises the teachers, the other employees of the university and the
students. The physical assets include the infrastructure, equipment and computer
networks. The social capital includes the educational services, imprints and grading
system. The knowledge capital includes the curricula, learning contents and teaching
methods.
ORM.WOM.ERM The following list enumerates the principal resources that concern the institution.
 Organizational structure.
Faculty
Directorship
Department Department Department

…. ….
directorship directorship directorship
Department Academic
office staff
Other employees Teachers
Figure 16. Organizational structure of a faculty.
 Diploma.
 Other resources created by the university are the tests, exercises, works and all
the methods which purpose is to evaluate the learners’ achievement.
ORM.WOM.WRM We define two main processes carried out in the University (Figure 17):
 Student specific processes.
 Teacher specific processes.
Table 4. Repository Content Elements for Organization Scale: the university.
To have an overview of the new stakeholders within the university environment, a brief
explanation of their roles is given. For the Learners and the Teachers see Section 5.3.1 and
Section 5.3.2.
 Directorship. The role of the members in the directorship is to manage the university.
Some members of this group are the Educational director, the Administrator and the
International Relations Director.
 Other employees and staff. This group includes the Facility Management (responsible for
scheduling courses and exams), Student Advisor (gives support to students) and other
employees non related to educational processes like security members, maintenance,
receptionists and so forth.
As mentioned in the Table 4, the assets belong to different kinds of nature. Some of them, and
the resources have to be clarified:
38
 Facilities. A university has some essential facilities. The main one is the campus. The
campus is the area that contains all the faculties and other buildings related to the
university. Inside the campus we find computer rooms, offices, meeting rooms, food
service facilities as well as the educational facilities like lecture room buildings or
laboratories.
 Computer networks (Intra-networks). The majority of the universities have a network

used as a communication channel for internal use.
 Imprints. The university publishes some documents, books or patents. Because of this,
the university owns a copyright, to preserve its intellectual property rights. Some
universities have their own imprint (brand name under which a work is published).
 Organizational structure. The university structure varies depending on the institution, but
always consists of the union of several faculties. Each faculty is specialized in a field of
study and the degrees given are related to this field. Moreover, each faculty is
independent from the others. The structure of one faculty varies depending on the
educational establishment. At the same time the faculties are divided into departments,
and even further in sub-departments. To have an overview of this fact, we will describe
one possible faculty structure.
 Department directorship. The members of the department directorship are the

Educational director, the Administration and The international Relations Director.
 Academic staff. The teachers and other employees with academic duties, like
student advisor or facility management belong to this group.
 Department office. To this department belong the personnel that are not carrying
out academic tasks. Secretaries, security members, maintenance, etc.
Linked to the information flow in the university, we can consider the key processes that are
carried out. Although there are plenty of processes in the university environment, some of them
are non related to academic purposes. So, regarding our scope, learning, we can consider the
non-academic processes not important in our analysis. Nevertheless, even without considering
the non-academic processes, the quantity of processes is still too large, but there are two of them
that given in a general view, can summarize the main goals of the institution.
39
Student registration Course Conception
Student Activities Course Preparation
Student Unregistration Course Execution
Course Evaluation
Figure 17. Student specific processes and Teacher specific processes.
These two main processes can generalize almost all the academic activities of the university. The
Student specific processes can be applied to some other processes, since the sub-process
student activities has a general meaning. For instance, the flow could be the next, course
registration, course activities (lectures, assignments, …) and course unregistration. Another
example, exam registration, exam activities (do the exam) and exam unregistration. Furthermore,
the Teacher specific processes, that cover from the course conception to students evaluation is
the case of only one course performance, but by the union of these processes we can map
almost all the processes.
On the other hand, there are some other processes that cannot be applied to these ones. For
instance schedule rooms, lecturers and timetables, give student support, coordinate non-
academic activities and so forth, but as we have said before, they are not in the focus of this
study.
Each „box‟ in the Figure 17 is a sub process that can be described in more detail. A couple of
them are described hereafter.
40
 Student registration. For instance the registration of a new student in the university.
:Applicant (learner) :Academic staff
Apply for admission
:form
Check availability
Accept admission
[yes] [no]
:student data
Enroll university
Figure 18. Student registration.
41
 Course execution. For instance the management of an examination .
:Academic staff :Exam supervisor :Teacher :Administration
Schedule exam
Prepare exam paper
:paper
Print exam
Prepare exam list

:exams
:list
Check attendance
:exams
Mark papers
Record provisional results
Validate results
Send out results
Figure 19. Manage examinations.
42
5.3. PERSONAL SCALE
The personal scale includes the learners and the teachers. Both have influence in the educational
centre environment. The learner enrols at the educational centre, where it attends to lectures to
acquire more knowledge and is graded to evaluate his achievement; and the teacher is an
employee of the educational centre, who is responsible for giving knowledge to the learners and
evaluates them. So the dependencies between the learner and the teachers are clear, the
teacher is the provider (of knowledge, content, …) and the learner is the consumer.
They also have relationships with the publishers. Both are consumers of publications, in most
cases are the teachers who recommend a certain literature to learners. But the relationship they
have with the publisher is not a direct relationship, they make use of intermediates. Besides, the
teachers can have another kind of relationship with the publishers, since in some cases they are
also authors of books, so they are the providers of the publishers at the same time.
In the development of this section, and in-depth analysis of both stakeholders is done.
43
5.3.1. LEARNER
The learners, or also called students, are the final users of the learning system. They receive the
services of the education centres. They are supposed to attend to lectures and do the works, test,
exams or other assignments. They are graded and when they finish all the courses that comprise
the curricula, they are awarded with a diploma. The diploma testifies that the student has
successfully completed a particular course of study. This diploma is used for its owners to get
access to the labour market.
ERM.VARM.AM The learner‟s main goal is simply to get more knowledge through study, experience and
training to attain future achievements.
ERM.VARM.PCS Some stakeholders interact with the learner in order to achieve his / her ambition. Firstly
the teacher. The teacher is the society member to which the learner engages to get more
knowledge; the teacher is one of the knowledge enablers and acts as intermediate. On the
other hand, the learner is related and linked to the educational centre by means of a study
contract. Sometimes, if the student is doing an internship, he / she is related to an
enterprise, where the student gets additional knowledge.
ERM.VARM.EIR The principal registers used to verify the extend of achieving of the learner ambitions is
clear and concise;
 Hours per day of work and studying. This indicator shows the effort made by the
learner.
 Marks / grades. The marks or grades are used to evaluate the knowledge
acquired by the learner during its training program. At the end of the degree, an
average of the marks obtained in all the courses is done. This whole mark is the
one that figures in the diploma.
 Absenteeism.
 Grants received.
SRM.VARM.EVRR Values
 The students can do an internship, so their are giving support by offering their
knowledge to the enterprise where they are doing the internship, but at the same
time, the students get more knowledge and experience in the real „business
world‟. The internship can be remunerated.
Risks
 School failure (or drop out). Some students aren‟t able to keep going their studies
due to different reasons.
 Not using a proper method for learning or studying.
 Students not prepared enough for the labour market.
ERM.WOM.RM For more details see Figure 10.
ERM.WOM.EAM Using the SLF classification of the capital, the learner assets can be identified. The human
capital includes the learning community. The physical capital includes the educational
material and the equipment (computers) used for learning. The knowledge capital includes
textbooks and the social capital the student record.
ERM.WOM.ERM The learners make use of all (or almost all) the resources that the institutions and
organizations create for the learning society to give support to learners in their learning
tasks. Apart from this, learners use their own resources to achieve their ambitions. These
resources include study methods, schedules, learning path, etc.
44
ERM.WOM.BM Learners do a lot of activities in the educational centre. To model such amount of
processes is an arduous task, and moreover is not the aim of these research project.
Otherwise, the Student Specific Processes (Figure 17) is useful to model learners‟
activities. As explained before, it is a specific process but can be generalized easily to
represent other processes. The following list enumerates some of these activities:
 Register course.
 Register exam.
 Do works, assignments, exams …
 Use educational centre resources.
 Interact with teachers (e.g. consultations).
 Study (self-studying or team studying).
Table 5. Repository Content Elements for Personal Scale: the learner.
45
5.3.2. TEACHER
Teachers are employees of the educational centres; it means that there is a labour contract
between both parts. They are the knowledge providers, they have to train the learners. For
providing this knowledge, teachers make use of teaching methods, called pedagogies. Taking
into consideration student‟s background knowledge, environment and learning goals is crucial for
choosing the proper pedagogy.
ERM.VARM.AM The teacher, in the high educational centres, the universities, usually it has two main roles
or ambitions. The first role is knowledge provider or knowledge enabler. They transfer the
knowledge to the learners by using a proper pedagogy and even in some cases they are
also students advisors, projects supervisors,… The other main role is to carry out research
tasks. The majority of the teachers work also in research and development in their own
fields of study. Instead of these two main roles, sometimes they can carry out other duties
in the educational centre, like represent the institution in seminaries or conferences.
ERM.VARM.PCS The instances of society members that the teacher engages with in order to achieve its
ambitions are the students and the educational centre staff. As explained in the former
repository, the teachers transfer the knowledge to the learner; they act as trainers, so it
exists a hierarchical relationship between teachers and learners.
The teacher is also linked to the educational centre staff, since he has a labour contract
that relates him to the educational centre. This labour contract regulates the relationship
between the teacher and the educational centre.
As explained in the first lines of Section 5.3, in some cases teacher are also authors of
publications, therefore apart from being consumer of the publishers they also become
providers.
ERM.VARM.EIR Due to teachers carry out two tasks, teach and research, two different groups of indicator
are required. For testing pedagogical achievement:
 Success-rate of students in the course delivered.
 Proportion of students who complete the course in scheduled time.
 Effectiveness of program planning.
For testing research achievement:
 Number of publications per year.
SRM.VARM.EVRR Values
 The teacher, as any other employee, receives an income from the educational
centre for the teaching duties carried out. This income is embodied in the labour
contract.
 Agreements with publishers to publish their works, and the subsequent copyright,
reports economical benefits to the teacher.
Risks
 Use wrong pedagogies. This fact can cause learners discourage, and in extreme
situations, the learner drop out. So, to choose the proper pedagogy is a really
important point.
 The teacher, as knowledge providers, has to follow a long-life training, since
some courses are related to fields of knowledge that are not static, they evolve.
So teachers without a continuous training run the risk of using obsolete contents
and pedagogies.
ERM.WOM.RM See Figure 10.
46
ERM.WOM.EAM Teachers‟ foremost assets are related to knowledge capital. This capital includes all
teaching contents (basically literature). The physical capital includes the teaching material
and the equipment used for teaching. The social capital includes the pedagogies, which
means using the most suitable teaching methods to achieve its own and learners‟
ambitions and goals. And the human capital includes the teachers‟ community.
ERM.WOM.ERM The resources used by the teacher to protect, sustain and make use of his / her assets are
mainly focused on pedagogies.
ERM.WOM.BM Like the learners, the teachers carry out a lot of processes in the educational centre, and it
is not feasible to model all these processes. But in this case we can make use of the
Teacher specific process (Figure 17) as it generalizes most of the teachers‟ processes.
Some of them are listed below:
 Give lectures.
 Evaluate students.
 Course development and planning.
 Research tasks (not all of them).
Table 6. Repository Content Elements for Personal Scale: the teacher.
47
5.4. CROSS-SCALE ARCHITECTURAL LINKS
This section tries to find out the cross-scale architectural links (by using the analyses of the
repository content tables) in order to draw parallelisms between the stakeholders. This group of
linkages will be used in the following section 7 for the development of the project charters and in
the last section of this graduation project in order to draw the attained conclusions.
5.4.1. PURPOSIVENESS
First of all, it is interesting to trace the value-flow chain of the learning society. Figure 20 depicts
several stakeholders involved in the market, and their activities. The shadowed „boxes‟ represent
the activities of the stakeholders that we are analyzing. The other activities in the market (they
appear in the Domain and Context statement in the respective repository content tables) are not
performed by key principals, therefore they are not analyzed in this graduation project. The
principals are depicted by pentagons. By doing this exercises we can have a rapid overview of
the interactions between the principals and the values they exchange. To depict the exchange
entities, we use coloured circles. Three different kinds of exchanges are described: money
exchanges, goods / services exchanges and information exchanges. Apart from this, storages or
repositories are also depicted. Besides, this diagram is also useful to depict the dependencies
between the society members.
Curriculum Rules, regulations

Institution Enact
Maintenance And standards
Curricula Publisher Fund Educational

centre
Material Technology Suporting

Publishing Education
supply provision services
Educational
staff
Publications
Authoring Selling /
Learning Teaching Person
borrowing Teacher
Learner
Author
money goods/services information repository
Figure 20. Value flow Diagram.
From the analysis of the repository content tables we can find out noticeable commonalities
between stakeholders and draw as a result some statements:
48
 The activities of institutions, publishers, educational centres and teachers involve

knowledge and content. They all form a network of services with the learners as the
foremost beneficiaries of this framework of knowledge and content.
 The stakeholder share some sources of value and risk:
o Educational centres, teachers and learners can receive money by means of

funds, grants … from the institutions.
o An obsolete or rapidly evolving curriculum does affect all the principals of the
learning society, although in different ways.
o Students‟ failure also has cost impact on educational centres and institutions.
 They also share some assets and resources:
o The education related rules and regulations, since they have to be enforced by
all the stakeholders analyzed.
o The curricula, that are developed by the institutions, applied by the educational
centres and teachers, supported by the publications of the publishers and
followed by the learners. This includes content definition, posting this content
and developing materials for assessments.
Taking into account these assumptions, we can define some statements
 These facts reflect the dependencies that the principals have on technology.
 As we have mentioned before, the learning-society creates a framework of services and
contents for educational purposes. This framework can be enhanced by the use of ICT to
avoid problems like obsolescence of contents, since by applying new technologies this
content can be published broadly at the act and can be updated more rapidly and easily.
 In some educational centres exist some non-interoperabilities between teachers and
learners that cause problems like drop out rate of learners. To tackle with these problems
it is necessary to take some measures on the matter. One of these measures could be to
diversify the teaching methods so that the students could choose the methods that better
fit them interests.
 Other issues than can cause students‟ failure concern mobility of students and prior
knowledge before entering into the educational centre.
 The increasingly importance of funding institutions, since educational centres need more
and more infrastructure to face with the appearing problems in and more competitive
society.
49
5.4.2. DOMAIN STATEMENT
Another important point is the case of principals filling different roles. This is of sum importance
because when analyzing the transition to e-learning, the roles of some stakeholders will be
redefined. This could be done in a concerted manner.
 A student or a teacher fills the role of the author of a work when is solving a problem or
case proposed in a textbook.
 The educational centre fills the role of the publisher when they have its own imprint to
publish its works. Also in the case that they do not have an imprint but they publicize for
instance the master thesis of a student.
 Students can fill the role of the teacher when they are studying or working in group and
one of them explain the others something related to what they are working.
 The educational centre fills the role of the research related institution when funding
researchers.
 An organization, as an employer, pays for training (or educational services) their
employees, so it fills the role of an institution, as a funder.
The Project Charters in Section 7 must take advantage of the cross-scale architectural links
defined above. How to take advantage of them is explained in the next sections.
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6. THE E-LEARNING FRAMEWORK
First of all, and before deepening in the analyses of the stakeholders, it is important to have a
quick look at the framework of the worksystem and what e-learning can offer to the learning-
society members.
Actually, the e-learning solutions have the same aim that the traditional face-to-face learning, but
owing to the appearance of new tools (thanks to ICT), the performance of their process can be
enhanced, and in some cases, new services can be created.
6.1. THE WORKSYSTEM FRAMEWORK
As e-learning is considered a capability in a worksystem, it is interesting to start giving a brief

overview of a worksystem framework and the particular case of the e-learning worksystem. What
a worksystem is, it is explained in section 3.3, but in order to offer more insight, other aspects of
the worksystem are tackled in the following lines.
Figure 21. The worksystem framework . Source (24).
From a static view, the so called worksystem framework, some basic elements for understanding
and evaluating the worksystem are identified. These elements are also useful in describing the
system, describing possible changes, identifying problems and opportunities and tracing the likely
impacts of changes to the system (4). Figure 21 provides a representation of the structure and
components of the worksystem framework, and Table 7 a brief description of the components.
51
Component Description
Participants Principals who perform the work
Information Created and used by the participants
Technologies Tools and techniques
Business Processes Steps used to perform the work
Products & Services Physical objects, intangibles, and services produced
Customers Those that receive direct benefit from the products
Environment Organizational, cultural, competitive, technical and regulatory
environment within which work takes place
Infrastructure Resources relied upon but managed from outside the work system
Strategies Plans used to achieve the goals
Table 7. Components of the worksystem framework.
The e-learning worksystem framework is described by D. Jones (24) and an explanation of all the
components is given;
 Participants. Participants are all the members involved in the learning environment,
starting from the institutions and finishing with the learners.
 Information. Academics can spend most of their time on planning and development
creating information and content. The current trends on teaching require authentic
information, which provides multiple perspectives and that is not seen as the focus (31).
For this reason, the contemporary environments should integrate academic and
administrative support services directly into the student‟s environment (33). Information
supporting these services is generated and consumed by people, from different fields,
performing different roles, belonging to different parts of the organization and is stored in
a variety of computer and non-computer based systems. This diversity leads to problems
such as information ownership, version control, limited reuse and many others.
 Technologies. The use of ICT, and even more specific, Learning Management Systems
(LMS), is a common institution response to e-learning. Such systems are used to be an
administrative tools to facilitate classroom tasks. LMSs alone may not be sufficiently
conductive to supporting the design, development and operation required within
contemporary learning environments, hence, some aspects as pedagogies, support
student critical thinking, generation of knowledge or collaborative teamwork, must be
regarded apart from these systems.
52
The technologies used in e-learning are involved in an on-going process of change,

providing a continuous challenge to management. The increasingly consumers‟
technological sophistication demands for pedagogical innovations and sustained
technology (21).
Technology can help by providing efficient effects which may improve existing practices.
Besides, technology is regarded as a source of strategic advantage, an enabler of
previously impossible practices and of significant transformation (21),(18).
 Business processes. Educational processes include content production, packaging

content, credentialing programs, accreditation, marketing, registration, payment, record
keeping and assessment in addition to other processes (28). The use of e-learning to
facilitate routine procedures can be critically important both to the efficiency of services
and in shaping the choices of students (11). Teaching and learning are two highly
personalised processes. Academics, as knowledge workers and providers, have
considerable autonomy about how they perform tasks which encourages diversity.
 Products and Services. Teaching products include educational services, educational

material and the interactions between stakeholders. Educational services may include
services such as career counselling, social facilities, library services, credentialing,
curricula development, instructional delivery and student evaluation (1). Responsibility for
these products is often distributed amongst the organization without a single point of
delivery and often with separate information technology systems.
 Customers. Students, the general community, government, business and professional

bodies can be regarded as the customers of “learning and teaching products”, but we can
consider the students as the most important customers. Summarizing, customers can be
persons and organizations. An essential component of facilitating learning is
understanding learners, their learning styles, attitudes and approaches (2). Hence, how
to deal with the variety of backgrounds and expectations of students is one of the
greatest challenges facing higher education (30).
 Environment. A strategy that is of sum importance for effective e-learning is to recognize

the different cultures of learning between and within organizations (26). The many parties
involved magnify traditional problems of politics, management expectations, disruption to
the balance of power, technical concerns and differences in cultural values (23).
Uncertainty about the future and other developments highlight the importance of building
institutions that are responsive to change. Innovation within higher education is
53
constrained by a lack of competition, habits, values and traditions and institutional

arrangements and policies such as incentive structures, copyright and intellectual
property rights (11).
 Infrastructure. Existing technological infrastructure requires modification to fulfil the

performance, scalability and availability requirements of e-learning (20), so the
institutions need to reorient their infrastructures from their existing state. Information
systems infrastructure that is flexible and adaptable can be powerful enablers of
innovation, but rigid, inflexible systems are serious obstacles to organizational
effectiveness and success.
 Strategies. The implementation of e-learning requires a revision of existing strategies,

especially those associated with program development and institutional technology.
Transformational change through e-learning requires institutional leaders to articulate a
clear vision, demonstrate a broad understanding and acceptance of that view, apply
focused use of resources and encourage widespread collaboration throughout the
institution (20).
Technology projects fail due to the innovators underestimating the consequences of new
technologies and failing to accommodate environmental and contextual factors affecting
implementation. The realities and subtleties of a comprehensive conception of a learning
environment, which integrates virtual and physical, academic and administrative, have
eluded education policy makers and designers (33). Those who support a social shaping
perspective of e-learning in universities emphasize that there are many paths that can be
followed by the developers of e-learning (11).
6.2. E-OPPORTUNITIES FOR LEARNING PROBLEMS
After this description, now we have an entire vision of the environment concerning e-learning.
Returning to the FAST regulative cycle, Section 5 belongs to the Evaluation and Monitoring life
cycle focus. We have used the repository content tables for determining the reasons of the
performance alert. As highlighted in Section 3.4 the performance alert is commonly activated for
three main reasons, due to problems, directives or opportunity. In our case of study is mainly
related to an opportunity that ICT is offering us, but there are also some problems that arise when
we focus in each of the scales, for instance the ineffective interactions between stakeholders.
Below are listed some of these problems, that at the same time cause slowness in the uptake of
e-learning (34);
54
 Resistance to change. It is a common reaction to a change process, which hinders the

adoption of new technologies.
 Time of adoption of innovations. Not all the people can adopt a new technology at the
same pace, for this reason it is difficult to state when a technology is completely adopted.
 Online course design preference. The variety of e-learning course design makes it
difficult to define a typical e-learning course. Integration, interactions, … are issues which
have to be taken into consideration, and for this reason, it claims for a standardization of
these designs.
 Learning styles. Learning styles refers to how students prefer to learn, which is
influenced by students‟ personal style and preferences. It is not easy to find
methodologies that can merge these learning styles.
 Self-directed learning. It refers to the autonomous or independent learning. In self

directed learning is the learner who initiates and makes the decisions about what training
and development experiences will occur, and how. This way of working is not yet
accepted by all the students.
At this point, it is interesting to review the literature about e-learning, focussing on what e-learning
can provide. There exist many definitions for e-learning, a couple of them are already given in the
introduction of the project, but all these definitions agree by saying that e-learning will
revolutionize the educational panorama. With the help of ICT, computer-based learning, Virtual
Learning Environments (VLE), etc., some hurdles of the traditional learning can be overcome,
since some studies (35) , (8) have revealed that e-learning solutions can enhance teaching and
learning methods and fulfil better learners and teachers needs. Outcomes of these studies are
really enlightening and help us to understand the real problems of education and how it could be
improved;
 Interactivity is a key point, since students seem to learn more when they engage in dialog
with their teachers, when they are interacting with the material, when they are applying
the theories and studying, so incorporating computers and the Internet in teaching offers
the prospect of more interaction. For instance, before lectures, the teacher can ask his
students to share any confusion by email, between lectures the students can email
questions to teachers, thereby the lectures can be restructured in order to help learners
to overcome these problems.
55
 Collaboration it is also an important point. E-learning emphasizes collaborative learning –

learners teaching other learners-. Students working together in teams learn more.
 Another reason is that provides the possibility to assign projects to match up with
students interests, since each student has different abilities, learning style and interests.
This can be called “customization”, and can be defined as providing many different
methodologies for learning the same material.
 Gives and opportunity to add controversy and debate to their teaching, since Internet
makes it easier to connect the learners with experts whose opinion differs from the
instructor‟s.
As said before, these four principles can be seen as the main reasons for applying e-learning in
the educational systems. These are only a few of the large list of benefits of e-learning. But, while
technology is decidedly the driver of this evolution, the principle challenges we face in ensuring
the design of optimum systems lie not in technology itself, but rather in the realms of learning
psychology and instructional design (10). The context of the educational systems will change, and
some concepts have to be redefined and new ones explained, so it is overriding to demarcate the
added value in the e-learning environment (13);
The flexible organization of learning
1. Understanding time and space. Studying always takes plays in a physical context and in
e-learning this physical context is exemplified by the lack of physical presence. This fact,
that seems to be a contradiction, impacts a feeling that learning is independent of time
and space and a feeling of unrealistic easiness of learning. Therefore teachers have to
deal with this problem by planning interactive activities and the course structure
beforehand. To succeed in implementing e-learning depends to a large extent on the
teachers‟ ability to plan and use pedagogically appropriate methods in teaching.
2. Access to digital material. Effective and efficient systems that support students‟ access to
electronic material must be provided. In addition to this, students should be informed
about appropriate materials available electronically.
The improvement of teaching quality
1. The design of learning environments and courses structures. In e-learning the role of the
teacher should be redefined and it is changing from lecturing to designing learning
environments. The new main tasks of the teacher is to know the tools and the
56
characteristics of the learning environments they use well enough to make pedagogically
reasonable choices and solutions in the planning of teaching. Whether these tools are
carefully designed and appropriately selected, it allows teachers to concentrate on the
essential content of the substance.
2. The quality of teaching materials. In e-learning environments, teaching materials can be

produced and updated easily, and the knowledge can be transferred to teaching via the
net. The designers take the responsibility to produce high quality materials to improve the
quality of these teaching materials.
The development of learning and communication skills using web-based learning

environments.
1. Collaborative web-based learning. Collaborative web-based learning offers various ways

(inquiry, problem-based learning, articulation and dialogue, debate and personal
reflection, etc.) for learners, instructors and experts to interact. Online courses, based on
the theory of collaborative learning, give learners and opportunity to learn by sharing
information and argumentation in a multidisciplinary way.
2. Individual self-directed web-based learning. Students are able to actively choose

program components in whatever desired order, which develop self-directed skills.
The innovative use of ICT in teaching.
Thanks to the technological innovations it is possible to develop new functional and pedagogically
appropriate teaching methods. When planning the course, teachers should carefully consider the
possibilities for learning provided by the environments. The course objectives and the teaching
methods should be reflected and closely connected to the use of environments‟ tools. In some
cases the technological improvements have caused changes in teaching methods.
Another aspect that should be demarcated is how can we take advantage of cross-scale
architectural links in order to get concerted projects charters. With the knowledge acquired in the
former sections we have enough background about how the stakeholders interact, which are the
dependencies between them, which processes they carry out, which sources of value/risk and
assets/resources they share, how is the hierarchical network of services they form, and so forth.
Being conscious of what e-learning can offer, its advantages and drawbacks, the projects
charters are aiming to enhance these features mentioned above.
57
6.3. SYSTEM AND TECHNOLOGY REQUIREMENTS
Regarding the requirements of the system and technology, service oriented reference
architectures offer a platform that can meet most of the requirements that are listed in the
literature, and that are summarized below:
 Choose the correct standards and technologies not only for developing e-formats but
also for software tools. By „correct‟, we mean mature standards and technologies that
can achieve interoperability with other systems. It is not a good practice to choose the
last cutting-edge technology, since its success is not yet ensured.
 Quality content. Designing and developing e-learning content is probably one of the most
important aspects for e-learning. The content has to fit the curricula, and the key
members in charge of developing this content should be mainly the teachers and the
publishers. This task must evolve continuously due to the curricula should not be static,
because there is the need of a dynamic curricula adaptable to the pace of change.
 The e-learning systems should be “pedagogically neutral”. It means that pedagogies do

not have to be set by the system, they should be chosen by each instructor.
 Characteristics that e-learning software should have:
o Scalability. This is a very important issue since the system should be scalable for
future improvements and for giving services for an hypothetic increase in number
of users.
o Compatibility. The software has to be compatible with other e-learning solutions

on the market if we want to achieve a network of interoperable e-learning
systems.
o Usability. The system should be easy to use for the members of the learning
society, if not potential user will never make use of it. The software should be
simple and straightforward.
o Maintainability. The system must be cheap to maintain over a long-term period.

The systems should be easy to administer and simple to update, both the
content and the software.
o Modularity. E-learning solutions should be developed as small interchangeable
58
learning objects. A learning objects is a small piece of instructional content.

These learning objects can be reused as necessary to meet the needs of the
learners.
o Accessibility. Organizations have to be sure that the technology they use is

available to all the users. The system has to offer an equitable access and total
availability, 24/7 (24 hours a day during the 7 days of the week).
6.4. REFERENCE ARCHITECTURE FOR TECHNICAL INTEGRATION
Service oriented reference architectures offer a platform that can meet most of the requirements
that are listed in the literature. The COMBINE 4+2 tier model (Berre et al., 2006) distinguishes
four tiers: the user interface, user service, business service and business resource tiers. The user
interface tier provides human end users with a presentation layer that enables them to interact
with the system. The user service tier provides single-user logic, and may need single-user
resources for local persistence services. The business service tier provides components that
represent business logic and functionality, whereas the resource service tier provides global
persistence services.
Legacy
User Presentation Tier
User Service
Interface
Domain
Tier User Dialog Tier

Component Infrastructure
User Service
Tier
User Resource
LA LS
Service Tier Key
Component
Business Service
Business
LA Local Adapter
Service
Tier
Domain
LS Local Storage
RA Resource Adapter
Resource RA RA
Service Database
Tier Inter-component
communication
Figure 22. COMBINE 4+2 Tier Reference Architecture
Technical integration focuses on the development and execution environment. It provides us with
tools and solutions to develop and execute software models. The software bus is used as an
architectural pattern for handling technical integration of software systems.
Figure 23 shows how a software bus comes into play when integrating the systems of a person,
an agency and a university. The software bus will make use of infrastructure and
59
registry/repository services, which also include models of the institutions and common patterns.
Each software system can be structured according to the tiered architecture of Figure 22. In the
agency, the business service tier is replaced by an institution service tier, and for each person,
there is a home service tier.
Agency A University B
(Physical World) (Physical World)
Institution
Institution Business
Transactions rules& Transactions
Institution Institution patterns Business Business

person Tasks
Institution
Collaboration
Business
Collaboration Tasks
apps Processes Processes
Users Institution Business Users

Vertical Vertical
Integration Visual Models Textual Models Integration
User Interface Services
Model Service Task Data

Resource Services
Mgmt. Mgmt. Exec. Mgmt.

User Services
Mgmt.
Home Services
Software Bus ( Intranet )
Software Bus ( Intranet )

Registry/Repository

Resource Services
Resource Services
Insitution Services
Business Services
User Services
User Services
Software Bus (Internet)
Infrastructure Services
Software System Software System
Figure 23. Reference Model for Technical Integration, reflecting three scales 2
How to map specifically the e-learning solutions into the reference architecture for technical
integration is not tackled in this graduation project and it should be developed in further research.
2
Extension by Goossenaerts, on the basis of the Reference Model for Technical Integration in INTEROP D9.1 (page
24), Arne-Jørgen Berre, Axel Hahn, David Akehurst, Jean Bezivin, Aphrodite Tsalgatidou, François Vermaut, Lea
Kutvonen, Peter F. Linington, INTEROP Deliverable D9.1 “State-of-the art for Interoperability architecture
approaches” Model driven and dynamic, federated enterprise interoperability architectures and interoperability for
non-functional aspects. www.interop-noe.org
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7. PROJECT PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT
First, we look at the current projects and innovations that are planned or have been performed
recently (at the different scales), next, the interlingua case (including UNL) introduction is
proposed as a specific case study, in need of cross-scale concertation.
7.1. INSTITUTION SCALE PROJECT CHARTER
Some initiatives in the institution scale have been carried out in order to leverage the application
of e-learning solutions. One of the active entities at the society scale is the European
Commission, who adopted an e-learning initiative the 2000. This e-learning initiative and
subsequent action plan, which explains the procedures and how to implement it, is considered
one of the foremost recent action regarding the application of ICT in education.
The aim of this plan is to encourage the players in the field of education, as well as those
concerned in the social, industrial and economic sectors, for the purpose of introducing ICT to
education systems in order to enhance their performance. The four lines of the plan developed by
the e-learning initiative consist of improving infrastructures and facilities and establish
communication networks between research institutes, universities, research libraries,…; give to
the learners the appropriate knowledge to develop a digital culture; the development of quality
content and services; and the development of cooperation.
The e-Learning action plan contains six main actions, the principal ones are as follows
(ICT@Europe.edu, European Commission);
At society scale:
 Developing infrastructure through the establishment of digital networks in universities and
disadvantaged regions;
 Devising a decision-making support tool in the form of an information base that contains
qualitative and quantitative indicators regarding the use of ICT for educational purposes;
At person scale:
 Training teachers, identifying and promotion best practice, and investing in research on
the qualifications required for future teachers;
To attain these goals, the European Commission and the other bodies, also depending on the
EC, are deploying some programmes like IST Programme, eContent, GO Digital, etc.
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There are also some other bodies, non related to governments, that are trying to carry out some
initiatives for the successful implementation of e-learning. For instance the eLearning Industry
Group, eLIG. It is an open consortium of leading ICT (Information and Communications
Technology) companies and e-learning content providers who seek to promote e-learning
throughout Europe, in schools, universities, the workplace and homes. It was launched on 25
April 2002 in partnership with EU Commissioner Reding.
The principal goals of eLIG, can give us more insight about the aim of the principals in the
institution scale. For more information vsit the web site of eLIG, www.elig.org.
 A better balancing of public investment between software and hardware (Society scale,
system development phase).
 The need for specific actions to support Europe's cultural and linguistic diversity (e.g.
public funding for adapting content and making it accessible via Digital Libraries under
sustainable licensing conditions) (Society scale, system development phase).
 Respecting Intellectual Property Rights and the introduction of balanced Licensing

Conditions. (Society scale, institution rules and patterns –see
 Figure 23).
 Maintaining fair competition conditions while exploring new business models based on
Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) (Society scale, institution rules and patterns)
 More education & training for all citizens in the use of ICT (Person scale)
 The development and deployment of a common core of content, in terms of skills

(Society scale, repository in suitable agency).
 The deployment of interoperability and open standards for content exchange, re-usability
and re-localisation: more R&D is needed on these topics (Society scale, institution rules
and patterns).
For a better understanding on how e-learning can change the current scenario in the society
scale, the next table (project charter) offers us more insight;
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SRM.PC.PS The current education market tends to adopt new technologies to improve the educational
methods and to attain a better performance, therefore it is evolving to e-learning.
The reasons for this change are that the benefits that can be achieved by using e-learning
can overcome the mismatches that exist in the traditional educational methods.
The benefits that can be fulfilled by its use, involve several institutions of the learning
system. For instance, the educational centres, like universities, can make use of the e-
learning to aid the traditional teaching methods. There exists also the case of the called
“Open Universities”. They offer distance education using the Internet as the main tool for
delivering teaching services. From the business aspect, some enterprises can use the e-
learning methods to train their workers, called e-training.
Hence, all the advantages and opportunities that can be attained are only limited by the
evolution of the ICT systems. Yet a lack of scale-awareness and concertation in the
initiatives cause fragmentation and unsustainable outcomes.
SRM.PC.AS The e-learning is the base of the distance learning (or distance education). This fact
doesn‟t mean that e-learning is going to replace completely the face-to-face learning, not
by now, as they can coexist together. Therefore, we can consider the e-learning as a
support for the traditional face-to-face learning, and as a means for collaborative learning
content development.
Another assumption is that the Government and the other regulatory bodies have the
interest in applying the ICT systems in the educational market since they are the main
funders and want a well-educated population.
We also assume that different delivery methods will coexist in the learning experience.
SRM.PC.VS The processes carried out in the organizations that comprise the educational market can
be dramatically modified and enhanced. An overview of these processes is given below:
 The economic profit that the organizations will achieve by implementing e-

learning solutions. E-learning cuts travel expenses, reduces the time it takes to
train people, and eliminates or significantly reduces the need for infrastructures.
 E-learning permits to upgrade learning content easily and quickly and then
immediately distribute the new information a large number of people. Besides
learning is 24/7. E-learning can start at school-age, but after graduation, it can
support lifelong learning.
 Provides an increasingly valuable learning experience. An organization effort can

be enhanced through the effective use of e-learning that helps customers derive
increased benefit from the site. So, they can be given personalized learning
paths.
 Scalability. The e-learning solutions are highly scalable with a little effort or
incremental cost.
 The institutions have the duty of developing standards for e-learning in order to
achieve a homogenized learning environment. The appearance of new standards
is crucial since they have the role of standardize the formats. The growth of
standards means that this field is studied by the experts in order to improve the
performance of the related organizations.
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SRM.PC SS Due to the high transaction cost that is required to evolve the ICT infrastructures, in a
concerted manner, the e-learning solutions (considering only high education centres)
cannot be applied in all the scenarios. Convergence regarding governance is slow.
SRM.PC.GM
SRM.PC.PR This list of risks is of sum importance and must be taken into account when developing e-
learning solutions.
 The risk that by enacting a poor standard, the society gets locked in with inferior
solutions.
 Lack of acceptance of the e-learning solutions by the middle (educational centres

and enterprises) or end users (learners).
 Rapid erosion of the solutions that result from fragmented efforts.
 As technology evolves fast, some e-learning solutions become obsolete rapidly.

This could lead to some organizations to waste considerable sums of money by
replacing the equipment.
 E-learning enhances organizations responsiveness; due to it can reach an

unlimited number of users simultaneously connected, this can be critical when
organization practices and capabilities have to change fast.
Table 8. Society scale project charter.
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7.2. ORGANIZATION SCALE PROJECT CHARTERS
7.2.1. PUBLISHER PROJECT CHARTER
The traditional publishers, whose main business is based on hard copies, have to readapt their
processes and products in order to reorient their commercial activities, since the emerging e-
learning market is continuously changing. The publishers have two options, either refound the
company to provide only online resources or create departments to deliver the electronic
resources but keeping the traditional „hard copy‟ business. At least one of these changes has to
be applied if the organization wants to get a piece of the e-learning market.
Bartolic-Zlomistic & Bates in (6), pointed out that for a successful implementation of e-learning
solutions in an educational centre, benefits and limitations to the organization, and to the learners
and teachers should be balanced. After applying a multi-scale architectural approach, and
considering the commonalities that can be leveraged on the basis of a service oriented technical
architecture (
Figure 23) we can in addition point at the opportunities to share investment costs.
ORM.PC.PS Nowadays the new trends that lead our society to adopt e-learning solutions are changing
the traditional way of working of the publishers. If the publishers want to become active
members of the e-learning market, they must change the traditional paper format to
electronic format, the so called electronic publishing. Electronic publishing, or e-publishing,
is the starting point of the publishing revolution, because the technology allows publishers
to deliver information to readers quickly and efficiently. It will also impact the way we read,
offering new hardware and software devices.
This doesn‟t mean necessarily that all the publishers change totally to electronic formats
since the life cycle of the paper format is not yet forecasted. However, the publishers must
start making use of the electronic formats if they want to be competitive in the near future,
or even nowadays.
ORM.PC.AS It is assumed that proper standards (developed by the institutions) and compliant software
tool are available. This is the goal of some organizations, like eLearning Industry Group,
mentioned before.
The market could be developed faster than expected because leading publishers and
technology companies are pouring money and resources into improving e-publishing
technology. This could involve removing the paper channel for certain publications.
ORM.PC.VS Some economies can be achieved by using e-publishing:
 The additional costs to pass from the printed to electronic format are modest and
production processes only have to be modified slightly. But once the e-format is
implemented, and the printed versions are given up, the costs are dramatically
reduced.
 By using electronic format publishers can lower costs, so they can raise profits.
 The supply chain is reduced. This is caused by the reduction of raw and
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manufactured materials (paper, ink, printers, …).
 With the help of the Internet and by using the electronic publications, it‟s easy to
expand the market presence.
 Support for searching and indexing.
ORM.PC SS The publisher is one of the stakeholders in the educational market that has to apply more
changes to adapt itself to e-learning.
 Facilities. Although an e-publisher is a kind of e-business, it still needs some

facilities. These facilities do not have to be of industrial character since an e-
business is known by the fact that requires less infrastructure than a traditional
business, so the only facility needed is a workspace where the employees can
carry out their tasks and for placing the equipment.
 Distribution channels. The difference between the traditional publisher and the e-
publisher is that the latest uses the Internet (via web) as a distribution channel
instead of the usual transport methods that uses the first one. Besides, the
publications can be directly sold to the customers, without intermediates.
 Equipment. The equipment required to develop the e-publications is quite

different from the one needed for a common publisher. Equipment such as
plotters, printers, bookbinding machines and so forth are completely useless. The
equipment required for this case is more software and hardware oriented. By
software we refer to all the tools and applications for developing electronic
sheets, and by hardware we refer all the computing equipment.
During the transition from the traditional publisher to an e-publisher, two stakeholders
disappear, the material suppliers and the book shops, because they have no sense in this
new market; however, two new stakeholders appear, so they exchange their roles. This two
new stakeholders are the following;
 Software and hardware providers. Their role is to be the technology providers of

the publishers. They are in charge of developing the equipment (computers,
servers, databases,…) and the software tools for the publication tasks.
 Digital services providers. Digital services providers mean digital businesses

linked to publishers, so the publisher offer its services to these businesses. They
are the new intermediates. Examples of these applications are digital libraries,
digital ebook shops and learning management systems. For instance, there is the
case of Questia (www.questia.org) a digital library which allows to the user to
search and consult digital publications.
ORM.PC.GM The main goal is to offer a service more flexile than the traditional publishing industry and
furthermore the organizations can cut time and economic costs due to the new distribution
channels and the change of equipment and material required, respectively.
ORM.PC.PR  The readers or learners don‟t make use of electronic formats. The dominance of
printed publications is still high, and it is difficult to forecast when the conversion
to electronic formats will be completely achieved is risky. The reason could be
the lack of high resolution portable light screens.
 For enterprises related to new technologies, due to relevant technologies change

too rapidly, the life of product cycle is shortening so the organizations cannot
make long-range planning.
 There is also a real fear that the role of the publisher in the value chain will
change. It looks that what is left for the publishers is the editorial work and
marketing, as the actual content creation and distribution will be done online.
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Also many Governments are reconsidering how educational materials should be

archived, delivered and used in future in educational centres.
 The self-publishing threatens the existence of the publishers / e-publishers.
Table 9. Organization scale project charter: publisher.
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7.2.2. EDUCATIONAL CENTRE PROJECT CHARTER
From the point of view of the educational centre, a significant question is formulated; Why is the
question of benefits and the added value of e-learning so interesting and why are the institutions
of higher education so hard fighting to secure funding for technology? The answer to this question
is clear; because nowadays higher education must respond on many fronts, including workforce
training, just-in-time learning, shortages of teachers, geographically limited learners, significant
changes in part-time and full-time learning and learners with special needs, mobility of students,
life-long learning, and so forth (13). Therefore the benefits of using various media and teaching
methods should be systematically investigated. Teachers and learners should choose the
pedagogically most appropriate methods and tools for each learning situation.
Bartolic-Zlomistic & Bates in (6), pointed out that for a successful implementation of e-learning
solutions in an educational centre, benefits and limitations to the organization, and to the learners
and teachers should be balanced. After applying a multi-scale architectural approach, and
considering the commonalities that can be leveraged on the basis of a service oriented technical
architecture (
Figure 23) we can in addition point at the opportunities to share investment costs.
After this brief overview of the scenario concerning the educational centre, the project charter for
this organization is developed;
ORM.PC.PS The majority of the processes carried out in the educational centres can be enhanced with
the use of the e-learning tools and at the same time adapt their performance to the new
learners‟ needs like, mobility, self-learning, etc.
ORM.PC.AS It has to be assumed that the educational centre has the interfaces required to leverage the
e-learning solutions (ICT) and content that exist in a peer network, in addition to own
equipment, solutions and content to offer to this network, and to differentiate its own
offering. There must be suitably trained personnel. Necessary e-learning standards must
exist.
ORM.PC.VS It is difficult to have a vision on how the processes in the educational centre will be in the
future; it will depend on much more sharing of e-learning solutions and content. E-learning
can be used in two different ways:
 As a supplement of face-to-face learning. The software tools and digital content

are used to support the face-to-face learning by delivering some academic
material online. Learning Management Systems are used extensively.
 As the sole medium for delivery. This is the case of the Open Universities, which
deliver all the courses via the Internet, and where face-to-face meetings are
minimal.
ORM.PC SS These changes in the (traditional) educational centres would affect all the stakeholders that
this institution concerns, starting from the learners and teachers and finishing by the
directorship, thereby all these stakeholders have to adapt themselves to e-learning if they
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want to obtain the maximum profit of their use. This means that some stakeholders have to
change their roles, for instance, the teacher has to be more a content provider than a
lecturer, and also the learners have to get used to the use of ICT in learning.
ORM.PC.GM The goal of the educational centre is the same explained in Table 4, to offer educational
services to the society members; but with the use of the information and communication
technologies these services can be delivered in a different way, 24/7, with richer content
delivered via multiple channels.
ORM.PC.PR In a market with poorly programmed society scale e-learning activities, the education
centre projects will be subject to the following risks:
 Possible mismatches between the educational centres applications and the
stakeholders (learners and teachers) needs. This could happen, for instance, if a
software tool, like the Learning Management Systems, is not designed taking into
account the user‟s requirements and then there is a lack of acceptance from the
users and it is used below its potential.
 The rapid obsolescence of software applications, due to its large dependence of
the technology..
In a multi-scale approach, where the society scale addresses the common problems, these
risks will be reduced. Yet, in the case of poor standards, the multiple centres may
collectively suffer from the lock in (see the risks in Table 8.
Table 10. Organization scale project charter: educational centre.
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7.3. PERSONAL SCALE PROJECT CHARTERS
The project charters in the personal scale have a focus on the person in different roles. In this
case we analyze the roles of the learner and the teacher. The main problem that concerns e-
learning in the personal scale is related to the need to adapt to multiple user-interfaces of the
various e-learning applications (and others) that are used in the different roles that a person fills.
Because of this, there is the need of applications interface convergence. Society scale
harmonization can support mobility of people and it can facilitate lifelong learning as an extension
to the full time learning during the formative ages.
7.3.1. LEARNER PROJECT CHARTER
It is obvious that the learners are likely to be the stakeholders more favoured by the use of e-
learning solutions into the educational environment. These numerous advantages include access
to many varied sources of information, flexibility in relation to the traditional restrictions of space
and time, greater autonomy (mobility between schools and universities) and, in certain cases, the
greater convenience of learning through the use of e-learning facilities rather than in contact with
teachers, etc.
But these positive aspects cannot hide the consideration of matters such as the following
(ICT@Europe.edu, European Commission):
 The expectations and requirements of different groups of learners, since the learners do
not constitute a homogeneous group of people with the same level of motivation.
 The time needed to assimilate the knowledge is not reduced due to the use of ICT, so
this fact must be take into account, since it would be mistaken to assume that the period
needed to appropriate knowledge will diminish.
 The impact of the presence and use of ICT on implicit learning.
So these advantages and constraints are of great importance in the definition of the new situation
that concerns the learners.
ERM.PC.PS Nowadays, for the learners just get more knowledge is not enough, they also want to
improve the way they get this knowledge. Learners are looking for more freedom when
learning, the so called anytime, anywhere learning, that means that people can use the
learning resources with an availability 24/7 just having the proper tools.
E-learning can fulfil the learner‟s requirements, since can engage learners on thinking
about and planning their own development and also raise their self-awareness. Recently, it
has appeared another need, the need to get access to remote resources (digital libraries,
databases,…), this can be also solved by using e-learning tools.
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ERM.PC.AS The learners have enough background in the use of ICT applied to educational systems, so
its use is not a problem for learners. In other words, learners know how to use the
technology, but this doesn‟t mean that this is the proper use academically speaking.
ERM.PC.VS  The learner becomes more independent and autonomous due to he/she has the
freedom to decide the learning path he/she wants to follow.
 By using the appropriate tools, the learners can create learning communities,
consisting of groups of learners that share the same interests and habits.
Learning now occurs globally.
 The learner can use a vast variety of media, such as internet, to carry out his/her
purposes.
 The distance learning allows to people that because of their job (or for other
reasons) cannot study, to combine their duties with the learning program. This
matters also for lifelong learning.
ERM.PC SS
ERM.PC.GM The new goal for the learner is to achieve more empowerment. As mentioned before, new
ambitions for the learners have appeared. One of these ambitions is to track their own
training program, the self directed learning. Also they have to decide when and where to
learn (referring to anytime, anywhere). In conclusion, all the tasks that the learners have to
assume empower them and they become more independent.
ERM.PC.PR In a market with poorly programmed society scale e-learning resources, the learner will be
subject to the following risks:
 For the learners that are not enough self-motivated, or technology-proficient, the
lack of guidance can cause difficulties to get ahead.
 The e-learning solutions can entail the loss of physical meetings between the
learners or learners-teachers, which can cause social isolation.
 The learners may have excessive dependency on technology enablers as they
need some equipment to perform their learning.
In a multi-scale approach, where the society scale addresses the common problems (Table
8) and education centre approaches comply with standards (Table 10), these risks will be
reduced. Yet, in the case of poor standards, the multiple learners may collectively suffer
from the lock in.
Table 11. Personal scale project charter: learner.
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7.3.2. TEACHER PROJECT CHARTER
The introduction of e-learning into the educational systems calls first and primarily for clarifying
the role of the teacher. Most of the experts involved in the ongoing debate admit that the core of
the education still remains in the physical interactions between teachers and learners. The role
played by particular teaching methods and resources, and therefore ICT, in the process of
teaching and learning seems to be increasingly important, and likely to lead to changed in the
typical tasks performed by the teachers.
Even where education makes an extensive use of e-learning solutions (ICT), the professional
demands on teachers should not be relaxed. In addition to regard e-learning a more
comprehensive and updated form of teaching and learning, redefining the role of teachers could
result in a new set of responsibilities. When individual learners will be able to acquire virtually any
information, the role of the intermediaries, as well as teachers and all those who provide access
to information, knowledge and culture is set to be rethought and enhanced.
ERM.PC.PS There is an increasing pressure on educators to incorporate e-learning solutions into
traditional classroom programs in new and creative ways, but most teachers are unable to
integrate the ICT use into their everyday classroom practice. This requires a significant
effort due to several reasons, like that technology changes fast and that there are no
standards, so there is a risk of erosion. The new main ambition of these educators is to
improve the traditional learning methods, to attain more interaction with the learners. This
could not be achieved by the traditional face-to-face teaching, so the appearance of the
ICT applied to higher education has opened a new range of opportunities.
ERM.PC.AS The teachers have to be trained in the use of ICT, to be able to constantly create new and
exciting ways in which to use e-learning in order to provide web-based education and
training opportunities, so they require a life-long learning. Serve as an example the
following statement (5) “For teacher education institutions to be able to train and graduate
beginning teachers who have the necessary knowledge, skills, understandings and
attitudes to make effective use of ICT in their teaching practice, a number of capabilities
need to be in place. These can be categorised as: leadership and vision in the use of ICT;
infrastructure providing appropriate access and technical support; curricula/programs that
integrate the use of ICT; partnerships with schools to provide appropriate professional
experiences for pre-service teachers; competence in, and understanding of, the effective
use of ICT for teaching and learning by teacher education staff.”
ERM.PC.VS The teacher will make more use of ICT for teaching activities, including lesson planning
and preparation of teaching materials, recording students‟ assessment and other
administrative tasks, and their own professional development and continuing education.
But there are numerous studies, and while it is sometimes difficult to generalize the results,
from where can be gathered that the role of the teacher is more important than the
instructional design of the content; they have to manage how to successfully link
pedagogies and educational technology (12).
ERM.PC SS In the foreseeable future teachers and learners will not be anchored to classrooms as they
make appropriate use of various forms of computer enhanced learning. The traditional
positioning of teacher at the front of a classroom with students at tables around, but
basically facing the teacher, will be only one of many learning situations to be used each
day. Similarly, the traditional expository mode of teaching will become just one of several
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modes learners and teachers will switch between depending upon their particular needs. At
different stages of a lesson students might work as a whole class, in small cooperative
groups, in pairs, or individually.
ERM.PC.GM The goals of the teachers do not change because of the use of e-learning tools, but these
goals have to be reoriented in order to achieve them in the new scenario of e-learning.
ERM.PC.PR  Preparing e-learning content requires a big effort where little time is available.
Doing such preparation collaboratively spreads the effort and also the risk, for
instance if newly prepared content will be quickly obsolete because of emerging
superior technological solutions.
 Preparing teachers for a technologically rich future is difficult because new
teachers have not only to acquire proficiency in using technology for educational
purposes, they also have to undergo a revolutionary revision of the practices of
classroom teaching and learning. Chalk and talk will never be replaced while
teachers and learners meet face to face. However future teachers will spend less
time with a piece of chalk in their hand and more time with a handheld electronic
device or a mouse (5).
Table 12. Personal scale project charter: teacher.
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7.4. SPECIFIC CASE OF STUDY
The project charters previously developed offer a general view of what e-learning provide to the
members of the society of learning. They explain in a broad sense what e-learning can improve,
how it can be achieved, and what the risks are. But it is important to focus on a more specific and
technical problem, and this problem is related to language use in educational services: the
coupling of content and language. Such problem is briefly pointed out in Section 4.3 when we
quote about AAQUA and UNL and it is interesting to go further in this topic.
7.4.1. DECOUPLING LANGUAGE AND CONTENT
The problem of the coupling of content and language used for educational services is not recent,
but it emerges strongly with the popularization of digital resources and digital libraries, and the
promise of global markets. It has to be said that this problem not only concerns education, but
also other disciplines and interactions. This issue also can be addressed as an “inter-lingual
challenge”. What we mean with this term is that nowadays the need or lever-effects of accessing
to any kind of knowledge in any language is becoming increasingly important, and this does affect
all the levels of the learning society.
The inter-lingual challenge is faced by a globalizing society: how to overcome the existing
language barriers and achieve an inter-lingual world where people without a common language
still are able to communicate with success. Despite greatly dissimilar experiences, beliefs and
culture. If appropriate conditions for such interlingual interactions became normative, and if
translating systems were efficient and numerous enough, they might make it possible for most
people to cultivate their own languages and communicate interlingually without the burdens of
widespread language learning (32) and the risks of communication errors. It is widely considered
that the best solution is to develop systems that are able to translate from one language to
another; these systems are called Machine Translation. In this way the cultural heritage of all the
languages can be preserved and values like diversity, integration, equity, efficiency and
sustainability can be achieved in education, as well as in other fields like health,
telecommunications, etc. But this path faces with some problems, like the unwillingness of some
countries that have powerful and influential languages to support these initiatives, due to most of
the digital resources are available in their language. Also the digitization poses problems.
Summarizing, actually what is required is a work-system able to translate natural language

content into a pivot language -which must be a standardized and universal intermediate
language- and the pivot language into another natural language. This procedure supported by the
interlingua architecture. If the intricacies of grammar, meaning, and communicative strategy could
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be understood and codified, language barriers might disappear altogether on the web, and in
other situations where fully automatic translation services are applied to content that is compliant
to certain structures, and exists in textbooks, problems, tests, etc.
UNL is an example of an interlingua, among others. How UNL works will be explained later, but
before, a description of the effects of using such systems is given for all the levels of the learning
society environment.
Institutions Scale
In a multi-scale approach, the responsibility for addressing the inter-lingual challenge is partly
with the governments overseeing multilingual countries, and also with inter-governmental
organizations in which these governments are represented. The international community is
responsible for the architecture and defining the intermediate language, and the national
governments are responsible for encoder/decoder between their language and the intermediate
language. Due to the nature of the challenge it has to be tackled by a group of governments
rather than a single government. The hurdles that this challenge can help to overcome comprise
such different aspects as foreign trade, external relations, and of course, education.
Referring to education, imagine the case of a country with more than one official language, for
instance the case of India, which has about 20 official languages. Or consider the case of a Union
with 27 countries, and about the same number of official languages. Add to this the current
explosion of knowledge and the resulting dynamism in educational content. For much of these
content, making it web-accessible in an intermediate language, with multiple natural language
viewing services, will give rise to massive (translation) cost-reductions.
Organizations Scale
Also organizations can benefit of inter-lingual systems, as it helps them to promote their products
and services in globalized markets. The advantages are similar to those that can be attained by
institutions, but applied to their particular goals.
 Publishers. For the publishers, it involves a great opportunity to expand their area of
influence to other countries for a reasonable investment.
 Educational centres. It is a great chance for the educational centres to share knowledge
with other centres that use also other instructional languages. Another beneficial issue
that arises is for internal communication. For instance when the educational centre count
on foreign students, teachers or researchers.
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Personal Scale
All the individuals in general, and in the educational environment in particular, can benefit from
the inter-lingual tools and can help people to communicate regardless of their natural language.
For instance, a person that wants to check one web-site that is originally developed in one
language. If this web-page is developed using inter-lingual systems it can be consulted in another
language. Considering educational purposes, the number of applications that can make use of
these systems is large, so both teachers and learners can eliminate the barriers that language
entails in education. For example, teachers and learners have more accessibility to digital
resources since the language cannot be considered a problem any more.
Until now, the issues explained above demonstrate positive aspects and advantages about inter-
lingual systems, but there also some less positive points must be considered.
The main problem is that these systems have a limited domain with a limited number of concepts,
hence their performances are not always as good as expected, and the translations are not
correct. Another negative point is that not all the languages can be translated since it is not
feasible to have databases containing information about all the languages. Also other drawbacks,
like double-meaning words, arise the logical limitations of these systems, which require more
research and investigation for enhancing their performance.
7.4.2. THE UNL-CASE
UNL, Universal Networking Language, was launched by United Nations University as an

encoding of knowledge for sharing across computer systems, especially on the web. Nowadays
the system is still under deployment, improvement and management by the Universal Networking
Digital Language Foundation under the UNL programme. Although there are other inter-lingual
systems, like BabelCode or KCE (Carnegie Mellon University), UNL could be considered the
most representative and their latest results suggest that UNL can potentially capture a broad
range of natural language constructs.
The principles of operation are simple. UNL is an intermediate language (more exactly a
computer language) which allows translating from one natural language to UNL, whereby the
resulting UNL document can be translated to another language.
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Natural UNL
UNL UNL Verifier
Language EnConverter document
expressions
Text
Web server
Natural
UNL
Language DeConverter
document
Text
Figure 24. UNL operation principles.
UNL distinguishes between language resources, software for processing language resources,
and tools and systems for maintaining and operating the language processing software or
language resources. There are two types of language resources, the language dependent part
and the language independent part. Linguistic knowledge on concepts that are common to every
language is considered language independent and is stored in one database, called UNLKB.
Moreover, each language has its own language servers containing word dictionaries, analysis
and generation rules and software for language processing; these are considered the language
dependent resources. These servers are connected through Internet, as well as the UNLKB
database (through UW Gate).
Figure 25 depicts the UNL value network. There are five different stakeholders that take part of
this network. It is important to distinguish between the Global Institution and the Country
Institution. The first one is in charge of the maintenance of the entire system, and the latest
carries out activities such as Language-UNL mapping maintenance and De/EnConversion
certification. Other institutions are the Educational centre (maintenance of UNL content), Content
tools developer (products development) and Person, which is characterized by two main
activities, content creation and content reading.
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Global Country
Institution Institution
Language-
En/
UNL UNL
DeConverter
maintenance Mapping
Certification
maintenance
UNL lang. UNL lang. Converter

independent dependent Product
resources resources specifications
Compliancy
maintenance
UNL
Content
EnConverted DeConverter
Maintenance Product
enabled enabled
of UNL content development
authoring reading
Educational Content tool

Person
Centre developer
Figure 25. UNL value network.
We can see also which stores are shared among the different scales. These stores are the
language independent resources, the language dependent resources –both are common for the
whole system and are used for the creation of UNL content-, the UNL content as well and the
converter product specifications. This last repository stores the specifications for the
En/DeConversion.
For instance, content creation involves the language dependent resources, since the content is
created in a specific natural language, the converter product specifications, since this content has
to fulfil the requirements for the EnConversion certification, and it also has to be compliant with
UNL language independent resources. Finally, once the content is created it is stored in the UNL
Content database.
The structure of the UNL system comprises a set of components and applications and their UNL
databases. The main components and applications are as follows (see also Figure 26):
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Figure 26. UNL System structure. Source: (39).
 UNL document. A UNL document is a collection of UNL document files, which contain the
UNL expressions for each sentence of natural language.
 UNKLB. It is a database that contains the relationships between UWs (Universal Words),
which are the words used for the UNL system.
 UW Dictionary. It stores the links between words of natural language and UWs.
 UNL Verifier. The verifier checks if a UNL expression is correct syntactically, lexically
and semantically.
 UNL Language Servers. They convert the natural language to UNL expressions and vice
versa. They contain the EnConverter and the DeConverter, as well as the respective
languages dictionaries.
 UW gate. It is the access point to the UNKLB and the UW Dictionary through the Internet.
 UNL proxy server. It communicates the computer of the user with appropriate language
servers. It is also in charge of checking if a web-page is written in UNL or not. If the page
is written in UNL, then triggers the translation process.
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 UNL Editor. It is the tool for producing UNL documents.
 UNL Explorer. The Explorer allow to the users and developers to make use of the UNL
System infrastructure and to develop UNL Knowledge System.
 UNL Encyclopedia. It contains all the knowledge of the humankind (like any
encyclopedia), but expressed in UNL. The important issue is that allows to be consulted
in the native language of the user.
The system can be used for anybody with access to the Internet. To provide the EnConverter and
the DeConverter services the system makes use of the language servers of both languages, the
source and the target. For instance, whether we want to read in Dutch a home page that is
developed in Spanish. When the page is developed in Spanish, the UNL Editor recognized the
contents as Spanish, and the Language Server EnConverts the text into UNL. Once the text is
EnConverted, the Spanish Language server sends the results to the UNL Explorer. When we
want to read this page in Dutch, the UNL Viewer recognizes that the page is developed in UNL,
and sends a request to the Dutch language server, which DeConverts the UNL into Dutch, and
sends the results back to the UNL Viewer.
7.4.3. DIGITIZATION
We have to take into consideration that all we have explained in Section 7.4.2 it is only possible if
the resources are digitized or if they are created directly into UNL (this is possible only with new
materials), therefore another aspect of sum importance comes up, and it refers to digitization of
works and how to preserve the Intellectual Property Rights.
Apart from helping us to read online documents in the language we choose, digitization also
provides wider access to all sorts of materials –texts, photographs, manuscripts, images-, and
preservation of these materials, which sometimes are rare, fragile or unique.
Digitization -referring to the whole process-, for instance in the case of libraries, is not a easy
task. It requires project management, funds to carry out the project, selection of appropriate
materials and take into account legal issues (like copyright), among others (27). On the other
hand, for an individual, to digitize -referring only to the process of posting information in a digital
resource- any kind of resource created by itself it is not difficult at all thanks to the applications
developed in the recent years. Examples of this applications are OCR tools (Optical Character
Recognition).
80
In this case it is better to break down the analysis only into two levels, the Institutions and the
Rightholders. By rightholders we consider the organizations and the persons. The decision of
making such division is that organizations as well as persons hold the same rights in terms of
copyright law.
Institutions
The institutions are in charge of enacting the rules and regulate the use of the copyright. The
copyright do not have to be registered, it is a right that comes up with the creation of the work.
Normally, the author of the work is the first owner of the copyright, except in some cases, e.g. if a
work is made by an employee during an employment, in this case the employer is the owner of
the copyright. The copyright can be transferred to another person, so it can be bought, sold,
inherited, licensed and transferred, wholly or in part (40). For instance, when an author wants to
publish his works, frequently the publishers require the transference of the copyright to them.
Due to the current easiness in digitizing documents, it is interesting to have a look to the legal
issues involving digitization, the copyright. Nowadays there is a need of adapting the copyright
law to the digital environment to protect these materials in a same way as material in any other
media.
Digital material is also protected by copyright, they do not have any special copyright status. Any
material send through the Internet or stored in web servers or databases is protected by the law.
If anyone wants to put, download or distribute copyrighted material on the internet, should be sure
that the owners of the copyright allow doing it unless they are the owners of the copyright.
For databases there is a specific law, the so called Database Right. Database right protects the
collection of information that the database contains. The database right, like the copyright,
subsists automatically when the database is made. Its main goal is to protect the investment in
obtaining, verifying and presenting the contents of a database as distinct from the intellectual
effort in creating it (for more information see, Directive 96/9/EC of the European Parliament and
of the Council of 11 March 1996 on the legal protection of databases).
The effort of the European Commission to regulate the digitization and the copyright in digital
resources is reflected in the European Digital Library Initiative (Copyright Subgroup – Interim
Report). This initiative aims at making Europe‟s diverse cultural and scientific heritage more
accessible trough the Internet and to preserve it, for guaranteeing its survival. Three main points
are tackled in this initiative:
 Online accessibility.
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 Digitisation.
 Preservation and storage.
The legal challenges (Intellectual Property Rights) of this initiative were discussed by the
Copyright Subgroup from the High Level Expert Group in order to take decisions about the legal
issues regarding digitization. The report made for this group argues about digital preservation,
orphan works (whose rightholders cannot be identified or located) and out-of-print works (that are
no longer commercially available).
Rightholders
For rightholders the governing principles are:
 Respect for copyright and related rights, including moral right of creators and performers
of copyrighted works;
 Digitisation and use within the premises of libraries should take place with rightholders‟
consent or be based on statutory exception;
 Online availability should take place with rightholders‟ consent;
 Rightholders‟ consent means in principle rights clearance, which should be based on
individual or collective licensing or a combination thereof.
For libraries, archives and museums it is important:
 To have legal certainty in their activities;

 Access means either within the premises of libraries, archives and museums or online
availability;
 For borne digital works or works digitised by rightholders this means getting permissions
for access to works;
 For analogue works this means getting permissions for large scale digitisation and
access;
 Legal certainty presupposes a solution for so called orphan works: unknown or non
locatable rightholders and their works.
These proposals should be considered as practical solutions to be enforced by the different

stakeholders to solve issues related to digitization.
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7.4.4. CONCEPTUAL PROJECT CHARTERS FOR INTERLINGUA AND CONTENT

INSTITUTIONS
In this section we propose three project charters that put together and align all the issues
discussed in the last sub-sections in order to have a cursory and general overview of the topics,
and articulate the allocation of tasks in concerted regulative cycles. Table 13 gives the institution
scale project charter, Table 14 the organization scale and Table 15 the person scale charter.
ERM.PC.PS It supposes a lot of effort and entails a high cost to translate evolving documents into
different languages, even more in countries that have several official languages. To do so,
some kind of dedicated regulation and a comprehensive set of ICT-based services have to
be developed and sustained.
ERM.PC.AS A sufficient number of interoperable standards are developed for digitizing and
encoding/decoding content.
ERM.PC.VS By digitizing the documents, we achieve more availability of resources and we can
preserve rare and unique documents. Thanks to tools like interlingua translators a better
service can be offered to the users.
In a globally scalable solution, large volume translations needs can be facilitated by

decoupling the translation process into an author and reader part: the author creates the
intermediate document (e.g. in UNL) while the content is being created, the intermediate
document is transferred, and the decoder-enabled reader can view the document in the
own language.
ERM.PC SS This challenge should be addressed by a public-private partnership which includes inter-
governmental bodies, since the effort of even only one country could be considered as
insignificant in terms of globalization, if we want to achieve a homogenized market, while
avoiding the free-riding.
ERM.PC.GM  Preserve the cultural heritage of the countries.

 Offer more availability of resources.
 Regulate digitization.
ERM.PC.PR  If different countries develop their own standards, it could be possible that these
standards cannot be aligned among countries, so interoperability cannot be
achieved.
 The copy-right and digital content regulations of one country clashes with the
regulation of other countries.
 Interlingua tools cannot capture the full expressiveness of natural languages.
Table 13. Institution scale project charter for interlingua and content institutions.
ERM.PC.PS Language use problems and non-digitized resources entail high costs and lower efficiency
of processes. Moreover, for each individual company, and globally the gain of market is
very unpredictable. Many resourceful customers do already speak or read one of the global
languages (English, French, Spannish, Chinese, Arabic,..)
ERM.PC.AS Organizations have trained personnel that can aqcuire the skills for using interlingua
authoring , digitization and reading tools.
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ERM.PC.VS Organizations will use translating and digitizing services. This will provide more efficiency in
both internal and external processes, for instance in international trade and services.
ERM.PC SS Both services make possible to the organization to widen their business scope and
overcome barriers (like language) that before the appearance of digitization and translators
seemed to be impassable.
ERM.PC.GM  Much better control of the organization performance.

 Improve internal and external communications and reduce costs.
 Accelerate administrative and management tasks.
ERM.PC.PR  Used solutions and services become obsolete as superior solutions to these
problems reach the market.
 In the absence of strategically sound and sustained inter-governmental initiatives,
there will be a risk that encoded content according to one solution must be
reprocessed as solutions become obsolete.
Table 14. Organization scale project charter for interlingua and content institutions.
ERM.PC.PS Individuals do not have complete availability of resources due to accessibility problems that
sometimes suppose a hurdle too high to overcome.
ERM.PC.AS (For a decoupled translation) Persons in the authoring role will be capable to use the
encoder. Many authors will consider it attractive that their content can be accessed
globally, in commercial or in voluntary value streams.
ERM.PC.VS If documents are digitized and created using interlingua tools, there will be no obstacle for
individuals to consult documents that have been originally developed in another language
and that are placed in another place different form where the individual comes from.
ERM.PC SS Due to institutions and organizations are really interested in digitization, they will invest
money for developing tools for this purpose. These tools will facilitate individuals to digitize
their own works in a rapid and easy manner. By this way more knowledge will be available
for everyone.
ERM.PC.GM  Have the possibility to post any kind of document in digital resources.
 Have less dependence on organizations such as publishers.
ERM.PC.PR  The software tools are not easy to use. If this happens, user will not use them.
 Individuals do not make a proper use of the tools.
 In the absence of a sustained and strategically sound efforts, the person will have
to switch tooling very often, or content has to be recoded.
Table 15. Personal scale project charter for interlingua and content institutions.
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8. CONCLUSIONS
This section aims to tackle the last part of the workplan of this graduation project, the evaluation
phase. The research question formulated in Section 2 comes to the fore again, and we will try to
give the best answer. This answer is shaped first as conclusions and later we give some
recommendations for a successful implementation of e-learning in education.
8.1. IS AN ACCELERATION OF THE UPTAKE FEASIBLE?
In the past sections we have analyzed the two situations of traditional learning and e-learning. We
have specified the problems, interactions and dependencies among principals, and even we have
analyzed a problem that arises when using e-learning, the language use. Although the need of e-
learning comes from an opportunity (that is basically what causes the performance alert), other
problems arise in each level when we want to lead the transition to e-learning. In Section 6 we
have suggested the supposed reason for the slowness in the uptake of e-learning in educational
centres, and also we have proposed what e-learning can offer to its users. But now, when
drawing the conclusions, it is important to state the following question, do concerted regulative
cycles give an approach to overcome the problems / reasons for slow uptake?
In the elaboration of the analyses we have discovered several problems. Briefly these problems
are:
 Interactivity problems among stakeholders. For instance lack of communication between

teachers and learners, or in organizations due to their hierarchical structure.
 There is no convergence of interfaces and information is transmitted for different

channels causing communications disruption.
 High costs of publication. The cost in infrastructure for publishing is high and it is
increasing due to the shortage of raw materials.
 Language use in education. This problem tackled in Section 7.4 refers to the growing
need of using materials developed in a language different from the instructional tongue.
 Curricula maintenance. Curricula become obsolete faster and this can cause a rapid
erosion of knowledge.
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 Students’ drop out. Students‟ failure can be caused for several reasons, mobility, prior
knowledge, … to name some of them.
For these problems, solution options were given in the corresponding project charters:
 The proper use of all the possibilities of software tools, like Learning Management
Systems, can improve interactivity among stakeholders. Learners can create learners‟
communities to help themselves for learning tasks, communication between learners and
teachers can be done rapidly and easily, also internal communications inside
organizations, such as educational centres can be enhanced.
 Also if these software tools are appropriately developed, taking into consideration the
specific requirements of the different scales, there will be a convergence of interfaces,
because there is no need to have different interfaces for different principals, entailing a
high reduction of learning and switching costs.
 Digitization. The applications developed for digitizing make this task much easier and
faster. Nowadays, even people with a minimum knowledge in computing can post their
own works over the Internet. Digitization cuts dramatically the costs of publishing.
 Interlingua. Interlingua addresses the problem of language usage in education. If the

content is created using interlingua architectures it can be consulted in different natural
languages.
 Flexible curricula. The curricula should be more flexible due to the rapid evolution of the
knowledge in some disciplines. So, the courses have to be developed to fit e-learning
requirements and using language-neutral representation of content.
 Blended and distance e-learning. Blended learning is an intermediate discipline that joins
methods of traditional learning and e-learning. Both disciplines can be applied to
overcome problems like mobility of students that at the same time can cause students‟
failure. Distance learning creates new possibilities for life-long learning.
But there are also some problems that affect education and that e-learning cannot face:
 Mismatches between education and labour market. E-learning cannot give a solution to
this problem. The dis-connectivities between both markets are more related to the
teaching methods used in high educational centres.
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 Pedagogies used by the teacher. Although we recommend in Section 8.2 that the e-
learning solutions should pedagogically neutral, the pedagogies have to be taken into
account when developing the courses, and pedagogies and e-learning are not aligned.
We are aware that a more in-depth analysis, mainly related to software, needs to be elaborated in
further research since this graduation project focuses at the entire environment relating
education.
8.2. RECOMMENDATIONS FOR A SUCCESSFUL IMPLEMENTATION OF E-LEARNING
This part is more considering the conditions the environment should fulfil that describing how the
scenario would be (this is done in the project charters). These recommendations were identified
through careful analysis of articles, papers, published research and, of course, our analyses done
in Section 7. The issues listed blow take into account aspects related to technology, regulations,
interactions and dependencies among stakeholders.
First of all, it has to be said that to implement e-learning systems in educational centres requires
the effort of all the members in each level of the society of learning. Without the consensus on
architecture, roadmap and a division of responsabilities, the probability of success is low, so it
has to be considered as a fundamental requirement.
Technical requirements (see Section 6.1) can be addressed by adopting a (service oriented)
reference architecture, such as the 4+2 tier reference architecture used in COMET, and by
implementing a range of collaborative learning solutions on the basis of it.
Requirements for the members (stakeholders):
 It is required some kind of institutions for e-learning. Nowadays, it does not exist a global
institutional approach, only there are some internal regulations that affect particular
organizations (basically educational centres). As a result, different organizations make
use of different regulations and this causes creates an undesirable heterogeneous
market. So institutions, like European Commission, should define normative rules with
the purpose of homogenize the market.
 Within a strategically sound institutional context, industry should invest for boosting e-
learning. Organizations such as publishers and technology providers have to invest in
research and development on new content business models that take advantage of a
richer infrastructure and institutional approach. Regarding applications and services,
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interfaces should be made compliant to standards so that end-users can easily adopt the
new applications and services in their work processes.
 Organizations should develop corporate e-learning strategies. This strategy should

regard a gradual implementation of e-learning because of its obvious complexity, in
scalable steps. The strategy should be developed in teamworks, to tackle different points
of view.
The first approach that can be implemented before e-learning is the blended learning.
Blended learning is an intermediate method between the traditional learning and e-
learning, and it uses techniques of both, technology based material, face-to-face lectures,
etc.
 Teachers can be viewed as the bottleneck on one side and as the principal carriers of
change on the other hand. For attaining the second option, teachers should adapt their
roles and become more a quality content provider than a lecturer. Long-life learning is
another point that teacher should consider since e-learning continues evolving.
 If learners want to make an appropriate use of e-learning tools, they should be trained in
their use. Yet this training must start in the first levels of the educational system.
These are our recommendations for implementing an e-learning environment. They should not be
considered as a roadmap that guarantees success. Yet we think that the probability of success
of e-learning solutions increases substantially if they fulfil most of these recommendations, and in
addition fulfil the requirements of the key stakeholders as they are articulated and allocated in
projects that pursue concerted regulative cycles.
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ANNEX I. Repository content elements.
For the architecture descriptions in each of the scales it will be used the following table that
contains the Repository Content Elements (Value and Risk Model (VARM) and Worksystem
Operations Model (WOM)). In addition, in this table a short description is given of each repository
content element, and how is related to other repository content elements (16).
Repository
Content Element Shorthand Description
Mission Statement SRM.VARM.MS A description of the conditions the public agent wants to achieve and sustain for
its members.
Enterprise Mission ERM.VARM.EMS A description of the continuous service flow the enterprise wants to offer to its
Statement customers, in exchange for their attention or money.
Compliance with Society-enacted institutions is a constraint for EMS.
Ambition Model PRM.VARM.AM A description of the general ambitions of a person.
Compliance with Society-enacted institutions is a constraint for AM.
Domain Statement SRM.VARM.DS The identification of the different kinds of principals and objects that will be
involved in or affected by the services that the public agents will enact in order to
fulfil their missions.
Enterprise Context ERM.VARM.ECS The identification of the different kinds of principals and objects that the
Statement enterprise will engage with in order to fulfil its missions.
Person Context PRM.VARM.PCS The identification of the different kinds and instances of society members that
Statement the person engages with in order to achieve its ambitions.
Market Indicator SRM.VARM.MIR A register with the names, definitions and specifications of the indicators that the
Register public agents use to verify the extend of achievement regarding the conditions
they want to achieve and sustain for the society's members.
Enterprise Indicator ERM.VARM.EIR A register with the names, definitions and specifications of the indicators that the
Register enterprise uses to verify the extend of achievement regarding the service and
product flow the enterprise wants to offer to the market, and regarding the
enterprise's compliance with the society's enacted institutions.
Person Indicator PRM.VARM.PIR A register with the names, definitions and specifications of the indicators that the
Register person uses to verify the extend of achieving his/her ambitions, and regarding
the person's compliance with the society's enacted institutions.
Market Value & Risk SRM.VARM.MVRR A register with the identified sources of values and risks, their indicators,
Register references to their (past) measurements and future expectations. These values
and risks (vulnerabilities and threats) continuously influence the chances of
achieving the conditions public agents want to sustain for the society's members.
The sources can be natural (temperature, water, wind, earthquakes,..) and social
(perverse missions and ambitions or careless behaviour of principals.)
Enterprise Value & ERM.VARM.EVRR A register with the identified sources of values and risks, their indicators,
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Risk Register references to their (past) measurements and future expectations. These values
and risks influence the chances of achieving the service and product flow the
enterprise wants to offer to the market, as well as its compliance with the
society's enacted institutions.
Person Value & Risk SRM.VARM.PVRR A register with the identified sources of values and risks that influence a person's
Register ability and chances to achieve his/her ambitions, as well as the compliance of
the person's behaviour with the society's enacted institutions.
Principal Model SRM.WOM.PM A model that includes all the principals that are recognized by the society's
institutions, either in the role of public or civil agents.
Community Model ERM.WOM.CM A model that includes all the principals that are recognized by the enterprise's
work processes and their refinements (as specified in ERM.WOM.WRM. It must
be aligned with SRM.WOM.PM, but typically it will include specialization classes
to differentiate principals in relation to ERM.VARM.EMS.
Role Model PRM.WOM.RM A model that includes all the principals that the person engages with during
his/her behaviour (as specified in SRM.WOM.BM. It must be aligned with
PRM.WOM.PM, but typically it will include role models with respect to
SRM.WOM.IRM and their specialization by enterprise principals with whom the
person interacts (as defined in ERM.WOM.WRM of those enterprises).
Market Asset Model SRM.WOM.MAM A model of all the assets that are recognized by the society's public agents as
contributing to the conditions the public agent wants to achieve and sustain for
its member principals. It will include land, rivers, sea, forests, roads, harbours,
airports, utilities, the assets owned by the principals, etc.
Enterprise Asset ERM.WOM.EAM A model of all the assets that the enterprise controls in order to sustain the
Model continuous service flow it wants to offer to its customers, in exchange for their
attention or money. It will include facilities, brands, distribution channels,
equipment, intellectual property rights, etc.
Person Asset Model PRM.WOM.PAM A model of all the assets that the person owns in order to achieve his or her
ambitions.
Market Resource SRM.WOM.MRM A model of all the resources that are created by the society's public agents to
Model support the enactment of the institutions that are considered necessary to fulfil
the society's mission. It will include administrative records, organisational
structures, acts, etc. In contrast with Assets, Resources can more easily be
modified (in principle, and for capable principals).
Enterprise Resource ERM.WOM.ERM A model of all the resources that the enterprise creates, acquires and maintains
Model to realize the flow of products and services identified in its mission statement. It
will cover the information flows, organisational structures, worker-roles, etc.
Person Resource PRM.WOM.PRM A model of all the resources that the person uses to protect and sustain his/her
Model assets and use them in achieving ambitions.
Interaction SRM.WOM.IRM A model of all the principal interactions that the society's public agents have
Refinement Model specified to ensure that society SOM and SD are consistent with
SRM.VARM.MS and they recognize the values and risks identified in
SRM.VARM.MVRR . This model offers reference models to which the models of
principals (as specified in ERM.WOM.WRM and PRM.WOM.BM ) should be
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compliant.
Work Refinement ERM.WOM.WRM A model of all the enterprise processes and SRM.WOM.IRM interaction
Model specializations that the enterprise has specified to fulfil its missions
(ERM.VARM.EMS), pursue its values while avoiding the risks
(ERM.VARM.MVRR). As far as interactions and the use of restricted assets and
resources is concerned, the models must be compliant with SRM.WOM.IRM.
Behaviour Model PRM.WOM.BM A model of all the person processes and SRM.WOM.IRM interaction
specializations that the person has selected to achieve his/her ambitions
(ERM.VARM.AM), pursue its values while avoiding the risks
(PRM.VARM.MVRR). As far as interactions and the use of restricted assets and
resources is concerned, the models must be compliant with SRM.WOM.IRM.
Table I. Explanation of the Repository Content Elements (VARM and WOM)
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ANNEX II. Educational market domain model.
To develop the market domain model of the educational market we use the base of the
SimpleEconomy (17) market model, which we consider our core domain model (Figure I) .

*
2..*
-uses
* Instance
Contract
Organization *
Person
* Product
Figure I. Core market class diagram.
In the current educational market the main organizations that are involved in the educational
process are the educational centres, the publishers and the government, and in addition, the two
firsts deliver product types (Figure II).

*
2..*
-uses
* Instance
Contract
Organization *
Person
* Product
1
Study Contract
Labour Contract Awarded Diploma
Educational Centr
* -delivers *
1 * 1
Educational Services
*
1..* awarded by-
Publisher *
* Diploma
-regulates
1 -delivers *
1 Educational Material
give funds/regulates- Government
Figure II. Market class diagram.
The Educational Centre is the entity responsible for carrying out the Educational Services. In
most of the educational systems exists three types of educational centres: the primary schools,
the high schools and the Universities. The focus of this report is only the University, since is the
top level institution in the Educational Market.
92
Educational Center
University
Figure II. The University as an Educational Centre.
The Publishers are the entities that have the economic interest in the market. They are
responsible for delivering the educational material, such as books and other kind of publications,
to the stakeholders of the market. They are also interested in publishing the educational material
developed for the stakeholders.
Finally the Government has the goal of regulating the correct performance of the educational
system. It is also obliged to give funds to the educational centres, considering the non-private
education system.
In a further development of the Market domain model focused on the University entity, from the
class Person can be derived two new sub classes: Student and Employee (and teacher is a sub-
class of employee), as is shown in Figure III.
Person
Student Employee
Figure III. Subclasses derived from the class Person.
The association between Labour / Study contract and Person specializes the associations
between Persons and InstitutionObjects. In this case, the student signs a formal agreement with
the University, the Student Contract, and the Employee can sign one ore more Labour Contracts
with the university.
The whole model is depicted in the Figure IV.
93

*
2..*
-uses
* Instance
Contract
Organization *
Person
* Product
1
Study Contract
1 Awarded Diploma
Educational Centre
* 1 -studies at * -delivers *
Student 1 * 1
1 awarded to- Labour Contract Educational Services
*
-works at 1..* awarded by-
Publisher *
* Diploma
* give funds/regulates- -regulates

1 -delivers *
Employee 1 Educational Material
1 Government
Teacher
University
Figure VI. Market Domain Model.
94
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Architectural Descriptions For The E-Learning Transition

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Architectural Descriptions for the e-learning Transition

Master thesis submitted to the Dept. of Technology Management, Dept. of

Presented by Oriol Esteban Domènech

Supervised by Dr. J.B.M. Goossenaerts

Eindhoven, The Netherlands, February 14th, 2007

2. Problem Statement ................................................................................................................ 8

7. Project Portfolio Management ............................................................................................ 61

7.2.2. Educational Centre Project Charter ................................................................................ 68

Figure 1. Learning scenario ........................................................................................................... 9

Table 1. Class Dictionary of the Market. ...................................................................................... 25

Figure 1. Learning scenario. Source: (15).

3. METHODOLOGY AND APPROACH

Firstly, it is interesting to make an overview of the scenario that concerns an IS (Information

3.2. REGULATIVE CYCLE OF REFLECTIVE WORKSYSTEMS

Evaluation Problem definition

Implementation Analysis and diagnosis

Figure 2. Regulative Cycle, adapted from Van Strien, 1795.

Evaluation Problem definition

Implementation Analysis and diagnosis

Evaluation Problem definition

Implementation Analysis and diagnosis

Evaluation Problem definition

Implementation Analysis and diagnosis

Figure 3. Methodology Approach Superposed upon the Multi-scale Interactions

3.3. REGULATIVE CYCLE IN THE CASE OF ICT-RELIANT WORKSYSTEMS

Figure 4. FAST life cycle model.

Life Cycle Stage Life Cycle Stage

ICT reliant work

Using a system Using the acquired

Life Cycle Focus Life Cycle Focus

Project Portfolio Evaluation &

Using portfolio tools Using the acquired

Life Cycle Focus Life Cycle Focus

Figure 5. FAST refinement.

Figure 6. Balanced Scorecard. Source: (25).

Figure 7. The 3-V model.

Life Cycle Stage Life Cycle Stage

Using a system Using the acquired

Life Cycle Focus Life Cycle Focus

Project Portfolio Evaluation & 25%25%

Project Using the acquired

Life Cycle Focus Life Cycle Focus

Life Cycle Focus Life Cycle Focus

Life Cycle Stage Life Cycle Stage

Using a system Using the acquired

Using portfolio tools

Using the acquired

Life Cycle Focus

Figure 8. FAST methodology across scales.

3.4. PROJECT PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT

 Directive – a new requirement that is imposed by management, government, or some

 Opportunity – a chance to improve the organization even in the absence of an identified

be performed in a series of projects. Each project is characterized and described by its

3.5. WORKPLAN AND STRUCTURE OF THE REPORT

Institutions Orientation Phase Analysis Phase Evaluation Phase

In-depth analysis Diagnosis

In-depth analysis Diagnosis

In-depth analysis Diagnosis

4. A DOMAIN MODEL FOR THE LEARNING ACTIVITY SYSTEM

* -has a role in -has object in

Figure 10. Market class diagram.

4.2. PRINCIPALS (STAKEHOLDERS)

4.4. RIGHTS, RESPONSIBILITIES, RESTRICTIONS AND CONTRACTS