e-learning materials development: implementing software reuse principles and granularity levels in the small using taxonomy search

The development of e-learning materials is typically acknowledged as an expensive, complicated, and lengthy process, often producing materials that are of low quality and difficult to adapt and maintain. It has always been a challenge to identify proper e-learning materials that can be reused at a reasonable cost and effort. In this paper, software engineering reuse principles are applied to e-learning materials development process. These principles are then applied and implemented in a prototype that is integrated to an open-source course management systems. The reuse of existing e-learning materials is beneficial in improving developers of e-learning materials productivity. E-learning material reuse is performed, in this research, based on construct's granularity rather than on unified constructs of one size. In addition, search for potential reusable constructs is performed using a taxonomy of majors and subjects. This taxonomy can be detailed further as needed. To narrow down the search, one may specify additional criteria, including the level of students, the language used, the format of the material,...etc. Finally, keywords can be provided to specify potential reusable constructs.