ReST-Based Web Access to Learning Design Services

The IMS learning design model defines how users are engaged in learning activities to use learning objects and learning services. Although these are similarly accessible from URLs in a learning design, they are essentially different in the form of accessing their features and operations from a learning activity user interface. This paper proposes a representational state transfer (ReST) architectural style of accessing a learning service and its constituent resources from a web-based environment. A methodology to guide the design of learning service access is also described. The method is applied to integrating operations of a generic wiki service in the client interface of a learning activity, and validated on actual wiki services providing ReST-based programming interfaces.