LORIS

LORIS is an acronym for a very long, yet explaining, software name: Learning Objects Repository Integration System. Obviously, Loris is a lot more cute and easy to pronounce. The aim of the project was to integrate different learning objects databases spread around universities of different countries. Beyond the paper, a prototype was developed with an interface allowing a user to search for papers in all the participating universities as a unified repository.

The challenge

The greater obstacle to achieve our goal was the differences between the databases. Both in the database scheme and the database type. The same article would be stored in a relational database using LOM scheme by one university and in a object-oriented database using SCORM scheme by another. To address this problem, a set of abstraction layers and wrappers were used. Fortunately, the article was accepted in the International Conference on Next Generation Web Services Practices in 2005.

Abstract
In web-based education there is an emphasis on reusing and sharing instructional content due to the complexity of the development process of high-quality learning materials. It leads to the learning objects orientation as well as to partnerships among institutions to promote sharing of these objects. In order to allow local autonomy and less local effort when participating of this global environment, we developed LORIS, an integration system of learning objects’ repositories. This system is based on the mediators and wrappers architecture, implemented through web-services. Our approach allows local autonomy and also an interoperable integrated view. LORIS is being adopted by PGL, an international partnership project for promoting web-based education.

You can read the full article at

http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/NWESP.2005.49


  • Technology employed: java, web services