Given the nature of the project, it is necessary to consider the work from different perspectives: firstly, in terms of the forms of learning, and the way in which the system is going to model and implement them. Secondly, as far as the development of educative software components and their integration in final applications are concerned, even though they are prototypes, they have to offer robustness and efficiency.

Design

In this sense, the design process will follow the following principles:

· Collaborative design . The system will be tested and evaluated with real users from the first version onward. [ Gould & Lewis, 1985 ] , [ Greenbaum & Kyng 1991 ] , [ Karat, 1997 ] .
· Iterative design. The design will be undertaken in several cycles. In each new functionalities will be incorporated and tested, including the interfaces and the way in which the learning is organized. In successive scenarios, users of different levels and unequal formation will be used, where the elements of the system are analyzed.
· Learning evaluation . In each design cycle information is gathered about the use of the system about the users. This information is compared with the predicted results. Information from user surveys will also be considered. An evaluation is anticipated that will improve the functionality of subsequent prototypes.
· Quantitative and qualitative evaluation. Both are the types of formative evaluation. The first one talks about the identification of the characteristics of a situation and the second one tries to find the causes and consequences of the observed characteristics.

Development and integration of software

An n-tier architecture will be developed using Java and XML technology, the structure of which will be very similar to that presented in figure 2 (although the acronyms related to Java are well known generally, in case some of them that appear in the figure are not well-known, it is possible to find their definition and description in the Javasoft Web pages (www.javasoft.com). The architectures client-servant (denominated as a '2-tier' architectures) have shown to be limited as systems distributed on the network for many reasons (although they are still popular because they are quite easy to devlop) including the fact that they are usually very difficult to update and to extend due to the dependency of propietary protocols (typically related to the access to the data bases) and the mixture of the presentation logic of data and application. The presented/displayed solution is an architecture of n-levels where there are a client and several servants (connected among them), but the problem in these cases is the underlying technology and the connection of the distributed components in the severs.
The mixture of Java and XML technologies offers many possibilities for the preparation of n-tier architectures. Java is a programming language and powerful operating environment, oriented to the network and able to run on any computer platform where there is an installed Java virtual machine. It is a tool for which there are very many API and systems available that can serve as candidates for their incorporation in this architecture. XML offers a portable way to represent information between systems, where due to the rules on its structure, it can be validated and easily turned into other formats.

Figure 1: Initial rough draft of the architecture of the system

The architecture in figure 2 constitutes presents a rough draft for this project where the main work will consist of specifying the details of the components, its functionality and connectivity. Boxes *1 and *2 should be noted, which correspond to the technological infrastructure and the connection protocols for the interchange of data. With respect to first, there are several possibilities that that could be candidates, such as, technologies from Apache the project (www.apache.org) as Turbine (a framework for the generation of Web applications servers), Jetspeed (a framework for the development of portales and interfaces of users), and technologies of Sun (www.javasoft.com) like Jini (a system of agents for the management of the services of components distributed in network) and EJB (Enterprise Java Beans), which facilitate the separation of functionalities in a server of applications in the network). With respect to the second box, it is predicted that a modular architecture where the protocols of exchange of information and remote access will be encapsulated in core modules will be developed, where the architecture can dynamically load the protocol handler a tool requires at run time. The advantage of this approach is that it allows the incorporation of new protocols in the future with no need to modify the general structure of the architecture.

Management of the project

As far as the management and control of the project is concerned:
- A Web site will be created for the project with a zone of restricted access for the members of the project, where all the resources and software of general use for the different contemplated tasks will be located. The person in charge of each task will be in charge of which each piece of software is available.
- On the Web site an updated version of the work plan, together with information on the state of each task and the interrelations among them will be available.
- Periodic seminars involving all the project participants will be given, in which organizational aspects of the project will also be discussed.

References

[ Gould & Lewis 1985 ] Gould, J.D., Lewis, C. (1985)?Designing for Usability: Key Principles and What Designer Think, Communications of the ACM, Vol. 28, No.3, March, pp. 300?311.
[ Greenbaum & Kyng 1991 ] Karat, J., (1997)?Evolving the Scope of User-Centered Design?
Comunications of the ACM, Vol. 40, no. 7, July, pp. 33-38.
[ Karat 1997 ] Greenbaum, J., Kyng, M., (1991) Design AT Work. Cooperative design of
to computer systems, Lawrence Erlbaum.