Guided Customization for Learning Objects

In recent years, the idea of open software has expanded and involved several new types of applications with the intention of democratizing information and knowledge. In the educational context, this idea has been evolved and called open educational resources (OER). One of the characteristics of OER is that users (i.e., teachers and students) can adapt the educational software to their needs. This adaptation is only feasible if users have access to software codes and expertise to perform the adaptation. However, adjustments for the OER community are quite specific and require the direct intervention of a teacher who usually does not have skills to perform technical changes. This work then describes a strategy for adapting Learning Objects (LO), called guided customization. This strategy proposes that ,at the design step, the LO development team states precisely what resources can be adapted. Similarly, users of these resources will be associated with profiles indicating which level of adaptation, depending on their qualification, can be accomplished without, however, compromising the pedagogical content of the resource. Thus, resources can be customized by users at execution time, making the real benefits of OER become evident in practice