A Framework and an Architecture for Supporting Interoperability Between Digital Libraries and eLearning Applications

One of the most important applications of Digital Libraries (DL) is learning. In order to enable the development of eLearning applications that easily exploit DL contents it is crucial to bridge the interoperability gap between DL and eLearning applications. For this purpose, a generic interoperability framework has been developed that could also be applied to other types of applications which are built on top of DL, although this paper focuses on eLearning applications. In this context, a framework for supporting pedagogy-driven personalization in eLearning applications has been developed that performs automatic creation of personalized learning experiences using reusable (audiovisual) learning objects, taking into account the learner profiles and a set of abstract training scenarios (pedagogical templates). From a technical point of view, all the framework components have been organized into a service-oriented Architecture that Supports Interoperability between Digital Libraries and ELearning Applications (ASIDE). A prototype of the ASIDE Framework has been implemented.