Reuse- and Aspect-Oriented Courseware Development

Abstract

No longer can courseware providers deal with one homogeneous target group, one learning form and possibly one pedagogical approach. Instead they must develop a broad range of courseware, each serving its specific target group, each adjusted to a specific learning and teaching form, each appealing to its own learning and teaching scenario, and each incorporating its own pedagogical approach, and to do all this in a cost-effective and timely fashion. The thesis of this paper is that only an approach that is much more dictated by software engineering principles than what has been usual so far will meet these needs. Because of the economical constraints, the overriding engineering principle should be component reuse, and if several distinctive concerns become interwoven – above all content, didactics and technology – component reuse should be augmented by aspect-oriented programming. The paper develops and details a novel courseware engineering process that combines software reuse, component technology and aspect-oriented programming.