Evaluation of Using Software Infrastructure and Multimedia Technologies for the Creation of Complex Learning Resources

This paper proposes the provision of software infrastructure to support new types of pedagogically and technologically augmented collaborative learning resources by means of an innovative application framework called Virtualized Collaborative Sessions Framework (VCSF). The VCSF approach helps meet challenging pedagogical requirements in online collaborative learning, such as increasing student´s engagement and learning performance during the collaboration. In turn, the systematic application of the VCSF enriched with semantic and multimedia technologies enables e-learning developers to embed successful collaborative learning experiences from external learning tools in a software reuse fashion. Our application framework was prototyped and successfully tested in real environments, thus showing the software reuse capability and the pedagogical benefits of the VCSF approach. In this paper, we report on the evaluation stage of our research.