A modular approach to e-learning content creation and maintenance

Preparing multi-media rich e-learning content is a labour-intensive process, requiring great time investment from content experts and multi-media designers. This high labour cost is particularly acute in fields in which knowledge changes rapidly. Keeping material current requires periodic review and updating of the material. Thus there is a need for tools to facilitate the updating of asynchronous e-learning material. While much software exists for content creation, content maintenance has received relatively little attention. We present an Learning Content Management System (LCMS) that addresses two aspects of this problem: updating course structure and updating course content. Our approach organizes course material into modular units and externally specifies course structure. We introduce the notion of Updatable Content Unit (UCU). The content author can define such units at content creation time or any time there after. Our system provides functions to search for UCUs, edit them, and integrate them back into the surrounding material.