Metadata Management and Sharing in Multimedia Open Learning Environment (MOLE)

This paper presents a framework and an architecture for learning resource management and sharing aiming at facilitating the implementation of such functionality on top of existing Learning Management Systems. It also presents the implementation of this framework and its integration with the MOLE (Multimedia Open Learning Environment – http://www.moleportal.eu/) system. Main components of this architecture are: (a) the LOM Editor, an intuitive web based tool that is able to accommodate different Application Profiles, while getting adapted accordingly; (b) The LOM Repository that stores the metadata generated by the LOM Editor and implements the common repository services (search/expose, submit/store, request/deliver) for the management of metadata records; (c) the user interfaces that exploit those services to expose the metadata management functionality to end-users; and (d) an OAI-PMH interface that allows for harvesting of the repository metadata from large repositories/federations (e.g. ARIADNE, Organic.Edunet etc.) on top of the repository.