<ML>3 Module Dimensions
The educational material to be implemented with <ML>3 is divided into modules for appr. 8 hours of lessons, which encapsulate a topic in a consistent way. These mid-sized modules can be combined to courses without semantic breaks, adhering to the pre-defined relationships between their topics. Each module contains structured text with markups, multimedia elements, exercises, interactive visualizations, practical training and additional information for teachers and students.
The abstract module description in <ML>3 includes parameterization of the document components in three dimensions, namely: target group, intensity and output device.
The scalability of a module regarding to a specific target group comprises specific elements for teachers and learners besides the common module content. For learners, self tests and virtual experiments can be offered in order to monitor their learning success. For teachers, didactic hints, sample solutions and suggestions for exams can be given.
The scalability of intensity plays an important role for the composition of courses, where the module can be adjusted to the course context regarding to the deepness of the topic and the available time slot. It is distinguished between basic versions (for two hours of lectures), advanced versions (for four hours of lectures and two hours of exercises) and expert versions (with the full amount of content for eight hours of lectures and four hours of exercises).
With the help of the output device dimension, the modules can be fitted to various educational scenarios. The slide version supports the presentation in traditional face-to-face learning and only consists of short phrases and essential multimedia elements, separated into short units. The online version includes full texts, multimedia and interactive components as well as navigation mechanisms and is designed for self learning. Finally, the script represents the printable equivalent of the online version, without interactive elements and with static versions of dynamic multimedia, and can be used as additional material for both of the other scenarios.
The values for these dimensions can be added as parameters to most elements of the <ML>3 language. In order to ensure printability, alternative texts or images can be declared for multimedia elements. These mechanisms allow for a high degree of scalability and flexible reuse of the <ML>3 modules, keeping consistency of different documents belonging to a specific topic. The combination of possible values of the three dimensions leads to a total amount of 18 versions per module, which opens up new vistas for the creation of individual course material.
<ML>3 specifications and additional material can be found in the Downloads section of this website.
