A flexible architecture to integrate external educational tools in virtual learning environments

In the last years, we have witnessed the evolution of learning environments towards a modular approach based on services, widgets and customizable architectures including web services and cloud computing. In this context, a pedagogical path can be formally and explicitly described and carried out using several devices, but also several platforms and services from different sources. This is shown in the new EHEA (European Higher Education Area)perspective, with transversal activities in the long term, involving several
courses or topics.
In this work, we propose an architecture to declare abstract educational environments oriented to configure and manage the outcomes of educational tools. Our architecture approach offers abstract services, covering educational interactions and topics like learning object, metadata, content aggregation,social and activities model and others. These concepts can be used by tool developers not familiarized with them, and the implementation for a given platform or service can be done by expert developers. Finally, the services used within a tool or activity are declared by instructional designers. The architecture facilitates the outcomes of the educational tools to be managed as learning objects and reused by other tools to perform more complex activities.