72 May 2001/Vol. 44, No. 5 COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM

The ARIADNE
Knowledge Pool System
With the exploding popularity of the Internet
and Web, opportunities for useful educational
applications of digital resources have also
increased dramatically. However, developing
and exploiting these applications entail many
challenges. Producing quality content is difficult and costly. Whereas academic researchers are
used to producing written material, producing rich digital learning resources may require a mul-
tidisciplinary team with a background in pedagogy, graphical design, computer programming,
and other disciplines. Moreover, the integration of digital learning support with more traditional
paper-based material and face-to-face lectures in a pedagogically sound way is not straightforward.
COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM May 2001/Vol. 44, No. 5 73
Digital libraries of educational resources can
help overcome some of these challenges [8], saving
time and energy while avoiding the continuous
rebuilding from scratch of similar materials. Such a
library would at least make it easier to learn from
what others have already experienced. Educational
digital libraries could also make the practical man-
agement and social appraisal of learning materials
more like the management and appraisal of
research material. In particular, creating quality
learning resources would be regarded (and possibly
rewarded) like scientific publications. An example
of an initiative along these lines is the recently
introduced ACM Journal of Educational Resources
in Computing, which encourages the submission of
learning materials by treating them as journal sub-
missions.
In order to promote the concept of “share and
reuse” for educational resources, ARIADNE, the
European educational digital library project, was
initiated in 1996 by the European Commission’s
telematics for education and training program.
Since then, an infrastructure has been developed in
Belgium and Switzerland for the production of
reusable learning content, including its description,
distributed storage, and discovery, as well as its
exploitation in structured courses [6, 7]. The core
of this infrastructure is a distributed library of digi-
tal, reusable educational components called the
Knowledge Pool System (KPS) now actively used
in both academic and corporate contexts.
KPS content can include “anything digital”
without format restriction. When a conceptual
document consists of more than one file (such as an
Erik Duval, Eddy Forte, Kris Cardinaels, Bart Verhoeven,
Rafael Van Durm, Koen Hendrikx, Maria Wentland Forte,
Norbert Ebel, Maciej Macowicz, Ken Warkentyne,
and Florence Haenni
{
{
This European-based distributed
digital library of educational
resources delivers reusable
components to hundreds of
multicultural/multilingual
teachers and learners.
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