4 The ERDRM System Model Based on the previous sections, this section brings forth the ERDRM, a digital rights management system model for educational resources.. Trusted Add-on License
Trang 14 The ERDRM System Model
Based on the previous sections, this section brings forth the ERDRM, a digital rights management system model for educational resources
4.1 Functional Components of the Model
Educational resources is based on a collection of files, including text, images, video and other multimedia formats, but most of the formats cited above can be expressed
by HTML files, and HTML, GIF and JPG are common formats used in learning ob-jects Our system applies C/S infrastructure There are server-side and client-side in this model The server provides three services: content packaging, licensing manage-ment, content distributing The core of Client is the trusted Add-on, which is in charge
of the requesting and executing of rights Fig 2 describes the functional components
in detail
Trusted Add-on
License Manager
The third party
License Manager
Access Control
Packager
Licenses
management DB
User/role Info
DB
Learning Objects Repository
Content Repository
Request/Licensing portal
Web Explorer
Content Packaging License Management
Resource Distribution
Server Client
Fig 2 The model’s functional components
Content Packaging This module includes learning objects repository and packager
Granularity is a key issue must be considered in the protection of resources This model encrypts and protects the content in denomination of learning object The educational resources to protect are stored in the learning objects repository The packager encrypts
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and packages the educational resources, and sends to users along with the metadata It also creates the rights, keys and other information which will be delivered to license management module
License Management This module includes license manager, license management
DB, and the 3rd party license manager It is mainly used to receive the request comes from client, create and distribute license License is a computer file consists of permissions, keys and information about the author and distributor Enlightened by Osvaldo’s work [11], we use the third party license manager because of the reusable features of educational resources If the learning object is aggregated with another object and that one was protected, the third party license manager works
Resources Distribution This module includes user/role information DB, content
repository, and access control, as well as a request/licensing portal It handles the user authentication, access control policy, education resource distribution and financial business
Client This is a web explorer which contains a trusted Add-on It helps users to
access and use the educational resources The trusted Add-on collects users’ identities and other information, controls the usage of the content If no license is found, it will make a license request to license manager
4.2 Expression, Control and Implementation of Rights
Expression, control and executing of the rights information flow are very important in DRM As mentioned in section 1, both XrML and ODRL are XML-based and they have been accepted by several standards organization XrML is perfect but complex, its parser is bulky and takes long time to download and run XrML is protected by patents All these make it is far from a suitable REL for educational resources DRM systems On the other hand, ODRL has been a standard of OMA’s mobile DRM rights expression language COLIS, OPENIPMP and many other projects have ap-plied ODRL as an REL In our model, we still apply ODRL as reference REL
4.3 DRM System on e-Learning Platform
Digital rights management of educational resources is part of the e-Learning platform, so
it has to integrate seamlessly with the other systems, such as learning management sys-tem, learning content management system and resources management system (Fig 3) All entities in DRM-enabled e-Learning platform have to support the expression, management and control of the learning object’s rights information Learning object’s rights information flow exists in the whole lifecycle A simple example, learning con-tent management system gain educational resources with rights attributes from re-sources management system, and delivered them to learning object exchange system in security, the DRM system protects the learning objects to be distributed and add rele-vant authentication and rights information on them, then learning management system manages the license and permissions The user accesses and uses protected learning objects while he or she participates in the activities of learning management system as authorized The user can reuse the learning object to create a totally new learning object
Trang 3Modules in a whole e-Learning platform have all kinds of interactions, which isn’t limited to the situations mentioned above In DRM-enabled e-Learning platform, DRM system works on the Parties directory, learning object exchange system and learning management system In a broad sense, all entities have participated in the implementation of digital rights management
Learning Management
Learning Content Management
Resources Management
Learning Object Exchange
Parties Directory Reuse
Rights Tracking Permissions
Management
Secure Delivery
Rights Attribution
Rights Validation Content Source
Content Use
DRM direct acting areas
DRM System
Fig 3 DRM-enabled e-Learning platform
5 Conclusion
Many e-Learning organizations and high schools have attempted to apply DRM tech-nology in web-based education, but most of them focus on rights expression language and the standards There is no real mature solution for the realization of digital rights management By analyzing the education’s particular demands on digital rights man-agement, we proposed a digital rights management system model for educational re-sources We studied the expression, control and execution of rights and the relationship between DRM system and other systems on e-Learning platform in section 3 Our next work is developing the product system based on the model Many of these open issues and problems are intertwined and will require an integrated approach to be satisfactorily resolved, and this is the work we should make great efforts in the future
Acknowledgments This paper is supported by NSFC of China (NO.60673010),
partly supported by National Great Project of Scientific and Technical Supporting Programs Funded by Ministry of Science & Technology of China During the 11th Five-year Plan (NO 2006BAH02A24), and supported by the Natural Science
Foun-dation of Hubei Province (NO 2006ABC011)
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References
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© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2008
Kun Xiao1, Shihong Chen1,2, and Xi Chen1
1
School of Computer, Wuhan University, Wuhan Hubei 430072, China
2
National MultiMedia Software Engineering Technology Research Center,
Wuhan University Wuhan 430072, China zfsnxk@yahoo.com.cn,chen_lei605@sina.com,chen_xi@163.com
Abstract Many designers pay much more attention to establish an e-learning
system but ignore to judge what material is proper for courseware merger This paper tries to realize it via the Petri net The relationship between material and knowledge point (KP) is closely So, in order to use the Petri net, it presents the relationships among KP as the net firstly Based on the relationships among KP,
It analyzes the relationships among material in detail and brings forth the rial sets (MS) net And then, it gives the formalization description of the mate-rial Petri net (MPN) based on the Petri net (PN) and provides the method of the transformation from the MS net graph to MPN When material is merged into the courseware, some speciality of material can be checked by the MPN The experiments shows that the MPN can validate the reasonableness of the material merger effectively
Keywords: Petri net, material, courseware
1 Introduction
The syllabus consistes of some knowledge point (KP), and KP may be reflected in the different types of material The method, which puts material and KP together, aids teacher to organize the individual courseware automatically Some researchers concern the researchs of the KP[1, 2, 3], others concern the construct of e-learning[4, 5, 6] They have the good idea of utilizing e-learning[7, 8] However, many intelligent tutor systems organize the material into a suitable special courseware ineffectively Although the KP
is in closely connection with the material, the KP and the material have a lot of different still The KP in the syllabus is always reflected in some material, and the material al-ways reflects some KP When the material is discussed, the relationships between the material and the KP must be concerned together If we ignore this point, we would have difficulty to validate some cases
• When the courseware is designed, any KP reflected in the material in the course-ware does not excess the scope of the syllabus
• If the material is learned in the courseware, it must reflect in one or more KP in the syllabus
• the material taught at the earlier stage does not use the KP reflected in material taught at the latter stage