A Content Model for Elsevier Optimized Learning Suite

This presentation will provide an overview of all major content design decisions underpinning the learning experience made available in the Elsevier Optimized Learning Suite. The EOLS is an innovative product offering from Elsevier Education division that has been designed to provide the most effective learning experience to the student. Making the student reach their learning goals in an effective, safe and ubiquitous way (ie mobile and desktop delivery) is the driver for this product. This requirement puts high demands on providing adaptive content that takes into consideration the whereabouts of the student, the learning history, the performance of peers, personal learning preferences and one-on-one adjustments by the tutor. The work is centered on the design and engineering of a content model that supports these traits that make the product innovative and new-in-class. 

The focus in the talk will be on the usage of syntax, semantics and the usage of recommender systems to support the organization of content, the encoding of features and the modeling of interactive behaviors. The detail of the talk will be on a description of the Content Model that includes document markup expressed in XHTML5 and RDF, metadata modeling in JSON-LD and the integration of SKOS vocabularies. 

Within this design, using the semantic encoding for Student Learning Objects, a finely grained delivery of learning objects can be achieved from a central server under orchestration of student tracking and recommender services. The Learning experience is framed in module under editorial control, but both students, tutors can software agents can create an adaptive optimized learning path that presents the most successful learning plan to the student. The work of the content development project will be put in context by presenting a demonstrator of a live product.

An overview of the implementation landscape will be discussed with an emphasis on author environment, storage, Quality Assurance and supplier engagement showing the realization of the content model in a genuine operational setting.