Enhancing educational metadata with mobile assisted language learning information

During the past years, technological advancements have significantly influenced Language Learning by providing teachers and students with access to a large amount of digital language learning resources. Additionally, the growth of mobile communications industry has led to the development of a new approach to Language Learning called Mobile Assisted Language Learning (MALL). On the other hand, digital educational resources and activities are typically organized as Learning Objects and supported by Educational Metadata, they are stored in Learning Objects Repositories (LORs) facilitating efficient search, retrieval and re-use among different educational communities. Although the IEEE LOM Standard is used for describing educational resources with metadata, it is beyond its scope to directly support the description of characteristics related with MALL. In this paper we target addressing this issue, that is, to propose an IEEE LOM Application Profile that can be used for tagging educational resources suitable for Language Learning and supported by Mobile and Wireless Devices. © 2010 IEEE