A Method for Identifying and Formalizing the Underlying Instructional Design Language of Existing LMSs

The use of existing LMSs presents many difficulties related to the design and operationalization of learning scenarios. Teachers have to encompass the LMS technical features and services in order to understand the underlying way of designing. Generic instructional design editors fail in bridging the gap between how they design a learning scenario and how the learning session can be set up within the target LMS. If LMSs could be able to make explicit their intrinsic and implicit learning design model, it can be exploited as a proprietary format to build tools and facilities dedicated to this LMS. The research presented in this paper aims to present our method in terms of necessary analysis and steps for the identification and the formalization of such LMSs’ instructional design languages. The method takes into account three different viewpoints: a viewpoint centred on the LMS macro-HMIs (Human-Machine Interfaces), a functional viewpoint and a micro viewpoint. We concretely illustrate the proposed method about the Moodle platform.