0_ CUPRINS - IPA SA

On MADM E-Course
CORNEL RESTEANU 1 , MIHAELA RESTEANU 2
1
National Institute for Research and Development in Informatics (ICI)
8-10 Averescu Avenue, 011455, Bucharest 1 Romania
2
Economic Studies Academy,
6 Romana Square, 010572, Bucharest 1, Romania
Abstract: - After creating a lot of e-courses, the authors arrive at the conclusion that such a course is made
from a specific part named course’s digital content and a general part named course’s shell. The first part
is represented by the knowledge that must be transferred from the teachers to the students, in this case the
MADM knowledge. The second part, the general one, is represented by the mediator of this transfer. The
paper’s goal consist in describing the structure of course’s digital content as well as the course’s shell,
both generating an ICT product belonging to the software as a service class.
Key-Words: - Creativity and Personal Development, Livelong Learning, Enhanced Learning Technology,
Information and Communication Technology, Internet Computing, Software as a Service.
1 Introduction
Every person currently learns in his / her social
live, “from the pre-school years to postretirement”.
In the Creativity and Personal
Development (CPD) era, the Lifelong Learning
(LLL) concept acquires new meanings with the e-
courses development in Enhanced Learning
Technology (ELT) using Information and
Communication Technology (ICT), mostly Internet
Computing (IC) tools. “Education and Training
2010” European work program [1] has a strong
support in Romania. Therefore, the e-learning
(EL) domains had been encouraged.
As an example, a fundamental research in the
Multi-Attribute Decision Making (MADM) field
[2, 3], a branch of Operations Research (OR)
domain, was completed with a LLL tool [4, 5] by
producing a MADM e-course with a general shell
(GS) that can present the digital content (DC) not
only for this course but for every one presenting
the same structure of its knowledge thesaurus
(KT). KTs that have the same structure belong, in
the present case, to the OR domain containing
mathematical programming, graph theory,
transport problems, stochastic processes, queuing
theory, game theory, decision analysis etc. Also,
for example, the engineering domain has, for most
of its sub-domains, the same structure for the KTs.
One can say that in every domain there are subdomains
with the same structure of KTs. Therefore
it is very important, not only from the informatics
point of view, to exist, if is possible, unique ECS
for each domain that promote the EL. Nowadays,
EL technology exploits all the observations
presented above.
Figure 1. An e-course is content into a shell
2 E-Course’s Digital Content
First, DC contains a small part dedicated to the e-
course auto-presentation, usually a sound film, and
a part dedicated to the users’ guide, usually a text.
Obviously, these are knowledge about knowledge
i.e. meta-knowledge (MK).
Second, DC contains the main part, namely KT,
represented by the genuine e-course’s knowledge.
KT is divided, at its tour, from its functional point
of view, into two parts. The first part is the KT for
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