Research Network

TELOS

Glossary of Terms

Version 1.0

January 25, 2005

Revision History

Date / Version / Description / Author
February 15, 2003 / 0.1 / First Draft from the edusource Glossary with some new TELOS terms from the Vision document / Gilbert Paquette
March 1, 2003 / 0.2 / Draft augmented and revised / Karin Lundgren-Cayrol
March 23, 2004 / 0.3 / Added contributions from other themes / Karin Lundgren-Cayrol, Gilbert Paquette, Ottman Basir, Abdulmotaleb El Saddik, Christopher Brooks
December 22, 2004 / 0.6 / Extended glossary, including terms from Use Case documents and conceptual framework. Added terms from Theme 2.1 and Theme 6.3. / Karin Lundgren-Cayrol, Anis Masmoudi, Claire Banville
January 19, 2005 / 0.7 / Integration of terms defined in the conceptual framework document by Ioan Rosca and validation of version 0.7 / Gilbert Paquette
January, 20, 2005 / 0.8 / Verifying terms, adding missing terms and correcting English. / Karin Lundgren
January, 25, 2005 / 1.0 / New terms and review / Gilbert Paquette
LORNET Research Network / Version: 1.0
Glossary of Terms / Date: January, 25, 2004

Table of content

Table of content 2

Presentation 2

A 2

B 2

C 2

D 2

E 2

F 2

G 2

H 2

I 2

J 2

K 2

L 2

M 2

N 2

O 2

P 2

Q 2

R 2

S 2

T 2

U 2

V 2

W 2

X 2

Y 2

Z 2

Presentation

The TELOS Glossary of Terms is part of the TELOS architecture documents that comprises

TELOS Glossary of Terms (GT)

TELOS Vision and Orientations (VO)

TELOS Use Cases Specification and Requirements (UCSR)

TELOS Conceptual Framework (CF)

TELOS Software Architecture (SA)

TELOS Implementation and Deployment (ID)

TELOS Testing Process (TP)

The TELOS glossary of terms includes concepts, expressions, abbreviations and keywords (i.e., terms) used in the above mentioned documents as well as some other terms from other sources that are of particular interest to the TELOS architecture.

It is a living document that will accompany all the TELOS related activities throughout the life of the LORNET project. It will be regularly updated to reflect the evolution of the architecture as well as research advances by all LORNET teams. A French translation of the term is provided when appropriate.

The TELOS Glossary of Terms uses three columns to describe each term:

·  Term – the concept, expression, abbreviation or key word being defined. The term is in English with the French translation in parenthesis.

·  Definition – a short definition of the term and its usage in the LORNET context. If needed, addresses or articles will be mentioned to provide further explanations.

·  Source – the original source of the definition; if the term is proposed by a LORNET theme, it will be indicated with T1 to T6 (e.g. LORNET/T2).

The set of sources are taken from-

-  ANSI - from the American National Standards Institute

-  DCMI - Dublin Core Metadata Initiative

-  eduSource – Terms from the eduSource Suite of Tools Glossary

-  IEEE/LTSC - IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee

-  IETF - Internet Protocol Suite and its associated applications

-  IMS Global Consortium – Instructional Management Systems

-  IMS Abstract Framework: Glossary

-  IMS/CP - IMS Content Packaging specification

-  IMS/DRI - IMS Digital Repositories Interoperability Specification

-  IMS/Ent - IMS Enterprise specification

-  IMS/ES - IMS Enterprise Service Specification

-  IMS/LD - IMS Learning Design Specification

-  IMS/LIP - IMS Learner Information Package Specification

-  IMS/MD - IMS Metadata specification

-  IMS/QTI - IMS Question & Test Interoperability Specification

-  IMS/RDCEO - the IMS Reusable Definition for Competency and Educational Objectives Specification

-  IMS/SS - IMS Simple Sequencing Specification

-  ISO/IEC - a formal definition from the ISO/IEC

-  LC – Learning Circuit Glossary

-  OAI - Open Archive Initiative.

-  OKI - Open Knowledge Initiative

-  OLF – Office Québécois de la langue Française: Grand dictionnaire terminologique

-  OMG Object Management Group

-  MISA – Glossary of Terms for the LICEF Learning System Engineering Method

-  SC36 –ISO/IEC JCT1 SC36 committee

-  SCORM - ADL’s Sharable Content Object Reference Model

-  W3C - World Wide Web Consortium

-  Webopedia – The #1 online encyclopedia dedicated to computer technology

Common acronyms for computer science and web terms:

-  .Net - Microsoft software architecture

-  DOI – Digital Object Identifier (DOI®)

-  EJB - Enterprise JavaBeans™

-  FTP - File Transfer Protocol

-  HTML – Hypertext Markup Language

-  J2EE – Java 2 Enterprise Edition: Java architecture

-  LDAP – Lightweight Directory Access Protocol

-  URI – Universal Resource Identifier

-  URL – Universal Resource Locator

-  WSDL – Web Services Description Language

-  WSDL – Web Services Description Language

-  XML – Extensible Markup Language

-  XSLT – Extensible StyleSheet Language Transformations

TELOS Glossary

English Term
(French Term) / Definition / Source /

A

Access
(Accès) / An action (such as sending a query or a request by clicking on a direct hyperlink) by either a human or machine enabling the retrieval of data. / IMS/DRI
Access Control (Contrôle d’accès)
/ A technology that selectively permits or prohibits certain types of data access. / ISO
Access Management Service/System
(Service/système de gestion d’accès) / The application of data about users, user profiles and services to access control systems so that users, authenticated or not, have access to those systems, functions and resources.
·  An Access Management service/system could merely be a system that rotates passwords or that checks for the user's IP address
·  An Access Management Systems could also seek to support single sign on, where the user is challenged for a single name and password and has access to more than one system or resource. / eduSource
Accessibility
(Accessibilité) / A characteristic of technology that enables people with disabilities to use it. For example, accessible Websites can be navigated by people with visual, hearing, motor, or cognitive impairments. Accessible design also benefits people with older or slower software and hardware.
http://www.imsglobal.org/accessibility/accwpv0p6/imsacc_wpv0p6.html
http://www.learningcircuits.org/glossary.html#A
http://www.w3.org/WAI/ / IMS
LC
W3C
Act
(Acte)
/ An Act is a component of play, which is a sequence of acts. In each act, different activities are set for different roles and are preformed in parallel. When an act is completed, the next act starts until the completion requirements for the learning design are met. / IMS-LD
Action
(Action)
/ An instruction or series of instructions to be followed should the condition in a conditional rule be evaluated by an application as being “true”. See Condition / eduSource
Activity Sequence
(Séquence d’activités) / Declares the relative order in which elements of content are to be presented to the learner and the conditions under which a piece of content is selected and delivered or skipped during presentation. / IMS-SS
Activity Structure
(Structure d’activités) / An abstract description of an organization of activities (such as a sequence or tree structure) in which the activities themselves are not explicitly identified, but into which activities may be placed, in order to create actual organizations of activities (such as an activity sequence or an activity tree)
Arbitrarily complex structures of activities can be formed, such as tree hierarchies with options and sequencing of sub-activities. / IMS-LD
Activity Tree
(Arborescence des activités)
/ An Activity tree is the representation of the parent-child relationships between activities. It is a hierarchical collection of activities with associated rules and specifications of (learning) activities, conditions and limits. The activity tree describes the steps in a process in order to achieve a desired outcome. / IMS/SS
Activity/ Learning activity/ Support activity
(Activité /Activité d’apprentissage/Activité de support)
/ A resource designed with the expectation that the user undertake some action to be undertaken by an actor playing a role within a specified environment. There are two types of activities: learning activities (reading, writing, etc.) or support activities (community building, marking, tutoring, etc.).
An activity is a kind of operation. / IMS-LD
Actor
(Acteur) / An Actor is defined indirectly by a role or a coherent set of roles that a user or other agent plays with respect to a system. In UML/RUP methodology, actors are a key part of a Use Case Diagram where they are linked to the roles they perform. In a function, which is a multi-actor process, actors perform operations where they use or produce resources for other actors.
In TELOS, the main actors are Engineer, Technologist, Designer, Learner, Facilitator, Administrator, Composer and Explorer. / LORNET/ T6
Actor Model
(Modèle d’acteur) / An actor model refers to a representation of a generic actor that can be of two types, Agent (an application) or User (a person). An agent is an application, whereas the user is a person. The Actor Model contains a list of attributes describing preferences and properties of the actors, either generic or related to the system. Its instantiation with data about the user obtained from traces during interaction with the system is called an actor profile. / LORNET/T2
Administrator
(Administrateur)
/ A TELOS Actor that prepares a certain type of the TELOS cascade aggregates. A Core, LKMS, LKMA or LKMP administrator prepares the corresponding aggregates for its users. / LORNET/ T6
Agent
(Agent)
/ A software, system component or active object designed for a specific, automated task such as the discovery of metadata or to request assets. http://about-the-web.com/shtml/glossary.shtml
A TELOS agent is a communication interface with the TELOS kernel that allows the connection of a user or a system component to TELOS, and eventually, represents him or it in the system. The object controller equips a system with an agent controller, and a user with an agent interface connector. A TELOS agent can declare, deliver, request or receive services to or from users or agents. / IMS /DRI

Aggregate

(Agrégat) / A resource obtained by grouping, integrating or orchestrating together finer grain resources, thereafter called components of the aggregate, according to some aggregation process or principle. The aggregation principle defines an aggregate type. / LORNET/T6

Aggregate Components

(Composantes d’aggrégat) / Conceptual components, not necessarily resources, having different roles in the aggregate. They can be declarations (abstract definition of the aggregate parts), components (the aggregate resources) or manipulators (tools allowing the composition and use of the aggregate)
The TELOS conceptual architecture distinguishes five types of aggregate components.
·  K: Knowledge declaration (semantic indexing), documents (ontologies or metadata) and manipulators
·  R: Resource declaration, actual library items and manipulators
·  A: Aggregate declarations, component resources and manipulator (tool)
·  S: Support or assistance declarations, agents and manipulators
·  C: Control declarations, agents and manipulators / LORNET/T6

Aggregate type

Aggregation principle

(Type d’agrégation
Principe d’agrégation) / There are three major types of aggregates depending on the aggregation principle and the types of components that are aggregated.
1- Grouping: simple assembly of entities selected by some useful criteria (goal, owner etc)
·  Collections: composed from documents and tools
·  User Groups: composed from persons
·  Environment Spaces: composed from persons and objects
·  Meta-groups: composed from groups
2 - Integration: assembling a system of inter-cooperating entities, acting as a coherent whole
·  Fusion: composed from documents and tools
·  Teams: composed from persons
·  Projects: composed from persons and objects
·  Meta-systems: Composed from other systems
3 - Orchestration : a process oriented aggregation, based on a coordinating principle between the "participant" entities
·  Programs: composed from documents and tools
·  Persons Coordinations: composed from persons
·  Functions: composed from persons and objects
·  Meta-functions: composed from other functions. / LORNET/T6

Aggregation

(Agrégation) / The process of assembling resources from one or more places (repositories or elsewhere) and grouping them together in a coherent entity. The result is a new resource called an aggregate and the initial resources are called components of the aggregate.
The aggregation process is composed of four main phases:
·  Composition, where the aggregate is produced by an actor called a composer,
·  Exploration preparation, where the aggregate is prepared for use or exploration by an administrator,
·  Exploration where the aggregate is processed or used by a user or an agent,
·  Analysis where a facilitator (person or agent) analyses the exploration of the aggregate to provide composition support / LORNET/T6

Aggregation Actor

(Acteurs d’agrégation) / Generic TELOS actor participating in the life cycle of the aggregation process: Composer, Administrator, Explorer and Facilitator. / LORNET/T6

Aggregator

(Agrégateur) / A system extension tool allowing the assembly of an aggregate from a group of components according to one or more aggregation principles. / LORNET/T6

Alert

(Alerte)

/ A message instigated from a repository and received by a resource user often to inform a resource user or agent of new or updated metadata and/or resources. / IMS/DRI

Application

(Application) / System, system component, tool, or agent that uses the Application Services to support an eLearning function. These are specific to the domain of use (e.g., student system, course management system, etc.) and they can vary from large, monolithic systems to very small agents. / IMS-IAF

Application Layer

(Couche d’application)

/ In the IMS Abstract Framework (IAF) it is useful, for completeness, to refer to the layer where applications reside. / IMS-IAF

Application Profile

(Profil d’application)

/ A set of one or more standards and/or specifications, and where applicable the identification of chosen classes, subsets, options, vocabularies and parameters of those standards/specifications necessary for accomplishing a particular function. In this context, the SCORM and CANCORE are Application Profiles. / IMS-IAF

Application Program Interface (API) (Interface de programme d’application (API))

/ An application program interface is an implementation of a Service AccessPoint (SAP) or collection of SAPs. A set of standard software interrupts, calls, functions, and data formats that can be used by an application program to access network services, devices, or operating systems. / SC36

Architecture

(Architecture) / The Architectural view of a system is an abstract model or representation that discards details of implementation, algorithm, and data management and concentrates on the
behavior and interaction of ‘black-box’ components. In the context of eLearning, an architecture is a representation of a collection of services, which cooperate to provide a particular set of electronic-based learning capabilities. The abstract framework can be used to create any number of eLearning architectures. / IMS/IAF

Assessment