The main components are: (a) the learning management system Moodle (Cooch, 2010), (b) the content management system Alfresco (Alfresco website, 2014), (c) the learning activity management system (LAMS Internationalization website, 2012), (d) the module for employers’ requirements collecting and intellectual analysis.
Integration of these components allows implementing the adaptive lifecycle management of training components and educational technologies. In the educational space, personalized student’s environments are synthesized, united in clusters according to the preparation level, socionic types, psychological portraits and other characteristics (Deev et al., 2015). The introduction of a personalized learning process based on the lifecycle models synchronization for the environment components ensures the learning process monitoring and the educational trajectories changing taking into account the changing standards and employer’s requirements. The mechanisms help to analyze the destabilizing factors, leading to the risks of obtaining a low-quality and obsolete education.
The educational management system is an instrumental tool for creating and modifying educational programs. The learning activity management system has the functionality to manage learning activities and is used to develop, upgrade and distribute online training materials with the provision of shared access. The learning management system Moodle is suitable for managing the specialist’s training in the smart learning environment in most cases. It represents the distance learning platform. The structure of the system includes categories and courses where educational content is located. Categories combine courses related to similar topics. In each course, you can use various elements (questionnaires, lectures, polls, forums, tests, hyperlinks, books, files, etc.) as tools to support the learning process. The system Moodle provides a large list of functions and representational state transfer queries and uses the access keys for authorization. To access requests in the system, you must create a web service with only authorized user’s access to it, assign functions related to checking and generating categories and courses, select users and create authorization keys for them.
Currently, there are a lot of different content management system for creating, editing and managing Web content. Content management system works with multimedia data: documents, video and audio material, images and photos. The main purpose of such systems is the storage and Web publishing of information materials. The information educational space is created on the system Alfresco, which implements the basic functionality of supporting the component’s lifecycles. To support the life cycle synchronization process, the environment’s components developed new modules in the form of web scripts and dashlets. The Alfresco web script is a request service that is linked to a specific universal resource identifier.
For educational resources and data exchange between the environment’s components, the following technologies and formats are used:
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Requirements for educational programs and resources are exported in XML format (eXtensible Markup Language).
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Representational state transfer (REST) and Web distributed authoring and yersioning (WebDAV) protocols are used to access educational resource kits.
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Data on the use of educational resources are transmitted through Asynchronous Javascript and XML requests in the text-based JavaScript Object Notation data exchange format.
The methodology of work in a learning environment includes the following main stages:
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Search, analysis and selection of standards and employers’ requirements for educational programs and electronic educational resources.
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Export requirements to the Alfresco system and to the Moodle system.
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Synthesis of electronic educational resources in the Alfresco, taking into account the requirements and information about the previously created content in the Moodle system.
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Synthesis of a personalized training program according to the specialist training level, taking into account the standards and employer’s requirements (Harmelen, 2008).
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Selection and filling of a personalized training program for a specialist with a certain level of qualification with electronic educational resources.
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Training specialists using the toolkit environment from Moodle system.
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Competences evaluation in accordance with the standards and employer’s requirements and making decisions on training completion or referral for retraining with correction of the personalized training trajectory.
Many scripts have been developed for support the training specialist’s technology. It’s can be divided into 2 main types: data repository scripts and presentation scripts. Data processing scripts are designed for reading, changing and accessing educational content through the application programming interface for JavaScript. Presentation scripts are required to provide a Web interface. Sample scripts:
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Viewfiles webscript provides data collection for building a cloud storage tree with educational content, defines documents and folders, returns a response to requests in the JSON format,.
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Repository-operation webscript performs file operations on documents and folders in accordance with user rights (copying, moving, renaming, creating directories, deleting), returns the status of the execution results.
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My-favorite webscript adds documents and folders to “favorites”, deletes them, returns the execution status.
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Get-path webscript gets information about the directory location, returns the path to the object.
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Get-xml webscript gets the file structure and writes it to an XML file with nested elements, returns a link to the generated file.
JavaScript dashlet controls the menu buttons pressing, events, is responsible for displaying the data, creates and processes requests. Its main functions include: directory tree display, electronic educational resource viewing, resource metadata changing, resource saving, folders XML exporting, directories creating, viewing, copying, moving, deleting, adding a resource to your favorites.
In the process of synthesizing educational programs and training, a large number of educational resources are used in different subjects, areas and complexity levels. To solve the problem, a cloud storage with a set of electronic educational resources and various information and regulatory materials are developed. The model of the educational content warehouse is represented, shown Fig. 5. The model contains the main storage entities with the specified attributes and relationships between them.
The diagram shows the basic entities, namely educational programs, objects, version archives, object types, availability status, object relationships. The versions of educational content contain comments that indicate changes in relation to previous versions. Interconnections are established between the initial information and regulatory materials and ready-made versions of electronic educational resources. Many versions of educational content allow you to monitor the stages of its lifecycle and use different versions for training in different disciplines and directions within the framework of the convergent education model. Since the development of educational content is often performed by author’s team, it is also necessary to store data on the modernization and refinement of previously created elements of educational content. Content authors can change at the lifecycle stages of an electronic resource. Therefore, the convergence model defines one more lifecycle feature of educational content. The parts of content developed for one educational program can be repeated many times in electronic educational resources intended for other programs. At the same time, convergence of training programs leads to the fact that the number of repeating parts should strive for maximum. Therefore, content’s fragments in one direction completely or with adjustments are included in electronic educational resources in other directions. An example is the animated videos that are used to demonstrate the work of the models ISO/OSI and TCP/IP. Rollers are used in any resources in the areas related to computer networks, administration of information systems, work on the Internet, etc.
The environment’s architecture with intellectual mechanisms for training managing is built as like an open information system shown in Fig. 6.
Intellectual modules include:
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A modules of search, intellectual analysis and clustering of educational standards and employers requirements.
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A module for automated synthesis of personalized or group training trajectories in accordance with the identified clusters of standards and employers.
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A module for predicting the training results on personalized trajectories based on neural networks with the deep learning mechanism.
For the collection and intellectual analysis of requirements, open sources on the Internet are used, such as websites of employment agencies with a list of vacancies and specialist requirements, social networks, forums, etc. At the same time, polling technologies, questionnaires and search tools are used to adapt the individual learning trajectories and synthesize a personalized educational environment for the training of specialists. For questioning representatives of the real sector of the economy, an Internet site has also been created in the region for which the training specialist’s process of the required profile is being implemented. For scanning and selection of job advertisements on the Internet, a search robot has been developed. It collects information about requirements for the specialist’s competencies and forms the final report in XML format.
The main system’s users are administrators, educational content authors (teachers, tutors), web designers, trainees, guests, employers. Access to the environment is provided through the Internet and local networks with support for mobile access technology. Administrators have the rights to any actions with content. They perform the managing functions of layout designer’s work, assigning tasks, forming training modules and exporting resources to the storage. For each module, metadata is created with links to the resource and source objects. This allows to automate the training modules updating in the event that the author makes changes. Imposers have access to the materials assigned to them for work. Authors have the right to manage their materials and view the finished resources of other authors. All users can communicate through messaging systems.