In the chapter the possibility of using e-learning platform as an environment for education of XML language issues has been analyzed. Among them, basic XML structure elements and XML instance analysis were considered.Synonym block, were created.
The architecture of the module is similar to other built-in modules, but its functionality entailed introducing the specific solutions, suitable for tasks that XML module should implement. Additionally the simple mechanism, determining the number and difficulty of tasks to be solved by given learners, depending on their current progress, was proposed in the developed activity. It is based on numbers of their attempts undertaken to obtain proper task solution. Besides, more advanced XML language issues, directed to the group of participants being at a higher education level, were taken int o consideration as well. Thus, retrieving relational data as XML and querying XML data with usage of advanced methods were implemented.
All of the extensions were made using PHP scripts and were tested in the chosen database servers: MySQL, MS SQL Server and Oracle DBMS.
Results of all tests were satisfactory, confirming preliminary assumptions for the possibility of using e-learning MOODLE platform as the environment for interactive teaching of XML language issues. However, there are some limitations in the proposed solution. One of them is the necessity to define the XML elements’ attributes as the independent tags in XML instance and cannot be placed within other tags. Besides, there is no possibility to attach externally parsed entities to an XML document. Developed functionality does not cover the subject of XML Queries, either.
Elimination of these limitations as well as evaluation of prepared solutions for wide group of beneficiaries are the first steps of the future work. Next, t here is an addition planned to the presented work, extending grader report module with mechanisms assessing solutions of XML tasks. Furthermore, it is worth mentioning that the proposed functionality regards XML language issues but some of its mechanisms are generally enough to be exploited in other areas of education. The lexical analysis and text management (for instance in subject of programming languages) are good examples of such fields.
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