Pedagogical Validation of Courseware

Creating courses by combining Learning Objects (LOs) sourced from third parties, known as courseware, is becoming more popular of late. Although courseware has advantages over traditional courses, it can be difficult to ensure a consistent instructional approach and strategy that satisfies the original courseware construction concerns, due to the abstracted view of LOs the course creator now has. Courseware validation, validates a constructed course against a validation model which specifies correct and incorrect course behaviour. Our approach to courseware validation allows the course creator to specify a validation model using a novel information architecture which captures the major course construction concerns. Validation can then take place within the context of this archtecture. This ensures the original concerns are realised in the constructed courseware.