This document provides you with the following information about the Lykeon Environment :
Click on any of these subjects for additional information.

• General Background
• Overview of the Basic Lykeon Elements

• The Learning Tree
• Tests
• Themes
• Diary

• The Lykeon Rector
• The Lykeon Index
• The Lykeon Mercator

General Background

As the result from a research project EduCase subsidized by Flemish Government (IWT) Arboth Learning Technologies developed a software environment called Lykeon. This environment was further elaborated in a research project subsidized by the European commission and it is currently being commercialized. The Lykeon environment will eventually consist of seven components :

• A database, called the Lykeon Thesaurus, that contains the full description/setup of a learning environment
• A toolkit, the Lykeon Scriptor, that allows the designer to define the learning environment in the database
• A web application, the Lykeon Lector, that converts the database into a dynamic set of interactive webpages that make up the user interface of the learning environment. This web application also tracks the learners progress.
• The Lykeon Rector, a web based application that allows you to register students, follow-up their progress, administer their data and print reports.
• The Lykeon Index, allows you to search a glossary, the thesaurus and the actual content of the web pages. Currently only the glossary is being implemented.
• The Lykeon Mercator, allows you to produce a "Knowledge Web". This is an interactive encyclopedia where students can not only find subject-related information but can also put each subject in relation to other subjects.
• The Lykeon Forum, finally is the knowledge marketplace where students, coaches, experts,... can communicate, confront and share their ideas. This component of Lykeon is still in the development phase.

These seven components of the Lykeon environment are graphically summarized in the figure at the right.

A basic installation of Lykeon consists of the Lykeon Thesaurus and the Lykeon Lector.
The Lykeon Scriptor is only required if you want to maintain your learning environment in-house. But you can also subcontract these activities to Arboth Learning Technologies.

In this basic installation, Lykeon offers the learner - through the Lykeon Lector - an environment where he/she can consult :

• The Learning Tree : an annotated table of contents and list of learning goals. Tests and progress assessment are an integrated part of the Learning Tree.
• The Themes page : a cross-reference where learning resources can be found in correlation to a number of themes or subjects
• The Learning Diary : the personal diary of each learner where he can retrace his learning history, can indicate favorite learning resources and can add personal comments to learning resources

In what follows the components currently available will be elaborated.

The Basic Lykeon Elements

The Learning Tree

In Lykeon we allow the educational professional to start from the Learning Goals to be achieved. These Learning Goals can be defined on a meta-level or can be specified on a more concrete level, i.e. sub Learning Goals.

To accomplish these Learning Goals, one can add one or multiple Learning Activities, which can be associated with Learning Resources.

The Learning Resources which are supported by Lykeon are : simple text, text files, pictures, video, Microsoft Office documents, webpages (local HTML files), URL's (Internet Web sites), music or sound files. Actually, any program (.exe file) can be started from within Lykeon.

Another important type of Learning Resources are tests, which will be discussed in the next paragraph.

These learning goals and activities can be presented in a non-structured way. The learner is free to click on everything, no matter what the relation or order between the subjects is. In a way, this is the same thing as surfing the Internet.

Tests

Lykeon allows to include tests, which are then presented as a Learning Resource. These tests, which consist of a number of questions and a number of answers, are to be defined up front in the Lykeon Toolkit. For each question, a score must be assigned. The sum of these scores make up the total score for each test. A score to pass has to be defined as a percentage of the total score.

Lykeon supports two kinds of questions, namely, single (one answer is correct) and multiple (more answers are correct) multiple choice.

Lykeon also allows one to automatically generate feedback after each question or at the end of the test. This feedback is defined in the Lykeon Toolkit. In this way, tests can really serve as a learning resource.

Both the questions and the answers can be multimedia supported, i.e. text, pictures and video can be attached. Both questions and answers can be generated in random order.

Tests can be defined as being judgmental for the achievement of a specific learning goal. Using the results of these ‘judgmental’ tests are available to the learner in a learning goal progress report.

Themes

In the learning tree, the learning resources are structured based upon the learning goals of the application. But learning resources for different goals can still have a thematic relationship. E.g. one could have a learning tree that is structured around a number of countries. For each of these countries learning resources on cultural heritage can be available. The themes-concept in Lykeon allows you to relate these different ‘cultural’ learning resources by :

• Creating a theme ‘Culture’
• Linking the relevant learning resources to this theme

These themes are then available to the learner via specific icons. Learning resources can be classified in multiple themes. Whenever the learner is studying a specific learning resource, he/she is informed automatically about the theme(s) this learning resource belongs to.

For very complex knowledge domains, the themes themselves can be put in a relations network.

Diary

The diary keeps a record of everything you visit in an Lykeon application. All the visited pages are listed and hyperlinked, so that you can jump easily to pages you want to revisit. The test results are also shown.

There is the possibility of getting a summary for each Learning Goal visited. The learner can also indicate pages of special interest (favorites) and can add small personal comments to each learning resource. These comments can be regarded as virtual Post-Its.

The Lykeon Rector

The learners are registered through an administration function. If required, auto-registration can be foreseen. The administrator can be given access to the progress reports and even to the full learning diaries of the individual learners, thus being able to follow-up their progress. Follow-up reports are available. Statistics on how learners respond to questions/tests can be made available.

The Lykeon Index

The Glossary is the Lykeon dictionary, where users can get information about terms, concepts and abbreviations used in the educational application.

In the future this Glossary will be expanded into a fully functional Lykeon component called the Lykeon Index. This Lykeon Index will allow the student to search information that resides both in the Thesaurus and in the webpages that are part of the learning application.

The Lykeon Mercator

Case 1, in an organization : Insight in Procedures.

What procedures are in place, what is their version, content, author,....? What procedures relate to what functions in the organization ? How do the procedures relate to specific legislation ?

Case 2, in school : Environmental Insight

What animals live in Africa ? What do they look like, sound like ? What animal depends on what other animal ? What kind of environment do they require ?

Case 3, general interest : Learning about Jazz

Get an overview of the most important jazz musicians. What instruments do they play ? What does such an instrument look like ? How does this instrument sound when played by this musician ? What records does this musician play on ? What songs did he compose ? Who else played these songs ?

For each of these examples and for any other comparable environment you can imagine, the Lykeon Mercator offers you an 'empty encyclopedia'. All you have to do is define the subjects and their relations. The complete interface to the students is generated automatically.